A Ritualistic View’s Legacy Slowly Dies

The late James W. Carey, communications theorist and journalism professor, developed the perspectives of mass media consumption between two views: transmission view and ritual view. Carey believed that the ritual view is the more appropriate view for defining the population’s indulgence of media on a daily basis.

I give Carey credit, being a man who wrote about mass media before there truly was a mass media (if only theorists like him could see what media has turned into today). His argument made me wonder if there was substance to it, though I disagreed with his ritual view mostly.

Courtesy of: www.mediabistro.com

As I watch the news, read papers, and listen to the radio, there are similar perspectives on war, immigration, drugs, and more war on most of the main networks. How do we know if what we are told is going on overseas is the accurate depiction? Is the American perspective on global issues the right perspective?

I believe that Carey would be absolutely fascinated to learn about the popularity of Twitter, the pull that social media has on journalism today, and the overall transition into this mass consumption that has been slowly deteriorating for the past few years.  People are no longer relying on the main cable networks to provide them with the same news, but are looking to independent and private organizations on social media for news that they believe is a different approach to reporting.