Ritual Model of Communication
Beyond the message: the social world we enact together.
Explore James W. Carey’s ritual view through ceremonies, news, shared viewing and everyday practices. Learn to examine belonging without assuming everyone experiences it alike.
In this chapter · Open the contents
Read the practice as well as the message.
- Explain Carey’s transmission and ritual views using the same occasion.
- Distinguish repetition from socially meaningful symbolic action.
- Analyse participation, symbols, performance and continuity through time.
- Explain the newspaper example without equating drama with fiction.
- Investigate belonging, purposes and power with evidence appropriate to each claim.
Communication can bring a social world into view.
At a college graduation, an announcer reads names that most students already know. Graduates cross the stage. Teachers applaud. Families watch, photograph and celebrate. Little of this can be explained by asking only how much new information has travelled from a speaker to an audience.
The ceremony publicly recognises a transition. Familiar words, clothing, gestures and arrangements give that transition a visible form. Participants enact a relationship with the institution, with one another and with a shared account of what their achievement means.
The ritual view asks how communication creates, sustains and sometimes changes a shared cultural world through symbolic participation. It directs our attention to belonging, public recognition, recurring practices and the ways people make their lives meaningful together.
Who developed this approach?
James W. Carey developed the distinction between transmission and ritual views in his essay A Cultural Approach to Communication, first published in 1975 and later collected in Communication as Culture. This chapter uses “ritual model” as the familiar classroom name. Carey’s argument is an interpretive view of communication, not a fixed sequence of boxes that predicts every outcome.
The central question shifts from the delivery of messages towards the ongoing performance of a social world. Who takes part? Which symbols become recognisable? What relationships appear natural, important or worth remembering? What happens when participants interpret the same occasion differently?
A graduation announcement communicates dates and instructions. The ceremony also recognises people and renews relationships. Transmission and ritual identify different questions to ask about communication; they do not divide all events into two sealed categories.
Foundation: Carey’s A Cultural Approach to Communication, discussed in Dr. USP’s lecture. Contemporary cases, diagrams and exercises below are original teaching material. Campus, campaign and digital scenarios are fictional unless identified as scholarly examples.
Change the question and a different process comes into focus.
Under a transmission view, communication is approached through the movement of messages: who sends what, through which channel, with what reception or consequence? Under a ritual view, communication is approached through the symbolic practices that organise collective life and carry it forward.
Carey connects the first view with a metaphor of movement across space and the second with the continuity of social life through time. These are organising metaphors. Transmission can occur between people in the same room, and ritual participation can connect people separated by distance.
| Question | Transmission lens | Ritual lens |
|---|---|---|
| Central concern | The circulation, reception and consequences of a message. | The enactment, continuity and negotiation of a meaningful social world. |
| Typical emphasis | Information, delivery, comprehension, influence or coordination. | Participation, recognition, shared symbols, identity and belonging. |
| Time and space | How messages connect separated points or reach intended recipients. | How practices make relationships and cultural expectations endure or change. |
| Newspaper example | What readers learn and what follows from exposure to a report. | How recurrent reading presents an ordered world and invites readers into social roles. |
| Graduation example | Whether participants receive the correct date, venue and instructions. | How naming, clothing, applause and staging publicly recognise a transition. |
| Useful evidence | Message records, reach, comprehension, responses and relevant outcome measures. | Observation, symbolic forms, participant accounts, performance and patterns over time. |
Avoid a caricature of the transmission view
The lecture contrasts ritual communication with approaches centred on effects. That contrast identifies a difference of emphasis. It does not mean that every study of effects assumes a passive audience, a one-way channel or an identical response from everyone. Transmission-oriented research can examine interpretation, feedback and complex conditions of influence.
Equally, ritual analysis does not require us to deny information, persuasion or measurable consequences. A ceremony can also teach rules. A rally can also seek votes. The analytical task is to ask what each perspective reveals and what evidence supports the proposed explanation.
Self-check: choose a lens, then add the other
A university streams its graduation. One researcher asks whether viewers understood the joining instructions. Another asks how the ceremony represents membership in the university.
The first foregrounds transmission; the second foregrounds ritual. Both study the same stream. A stronger account may connect the questions while keeping evidence of comprehension separate from evidence of belonging.
Ritual involves symbolic action, not repetition alone.
In everyday speech, “ritual” can mean a religious ceremony or a familiar routine. In communication studies, the term directs attention to patterned action that carries social meaning. A handshake, an opening greeting, a ceremonial procession and a recurring news-reading practice can each be investigated in this way.
Sharing and participation
People participate when they take up recognisable positions in a symbolic occasion: speaker, graduate, witness, supporter, reader or viewer. Participation need not require everyone to speak. Watching a ceremony, keeping a moment of silence or recognising an expected greeting may also matter.
Yet presence alone cannot prove a shared experience. Someone may attend reluctantly, watch distractedly or reject the meaning organisers intend. Describe the invitation to participate, then investigate how people respond to it.
Symbols and shared understandings
A college crest, a song, a robe or a repeated phrase can gather meaning through a cultural history. The object is not powerful by itself. People have learned associations through which it becomes recognisable and significant.
“Shared” need not mean that every person supplies an identical definition. Participants may recognise the same ceremony while attaching different memories and expectations to it. The degree of common understanding is something to examine.
Performance
Here, performance means doing something in a socially recognisable form. Calling a graduate’s name publicly recognises an achievement. Applause acknowledges it. Camera framing can make that recognition visible to people elsewhere. These acts do more than describe an occasion from outside it.
Continuity through time
Annual occasions, recurring programmes and familiar greetings can connect present participation with remembered and expected occasions. “We do this here” becomes part of how a group recognises itself. A changed practice can also signal a changed relationship.
Repetition is a clue, not sufficient evidence. Opening the same app each morning may be a convenience. To justify a ritual interpretation, show how the practice involves meaningful symbols, expected roles, relationships or a recognised place in social life.
Does “common faith” mean religion?
Carey’s account draws on the language and history of religious fellowship, but its application extends to secular life. A college ceremony, a civic commemoration or a shared sporting occasion can carry a commitment to a common world without requiring a common religion.
What does “consummatory” mean?
The lecture uses this term for an activity valued in its performance or experience. Singing together may matter while people are singing; the gathering is not merely a device for producing a later result. This does not make the activity pointless or prevent it from also serving practical or political purposes.
Look across people, symbols, performance and time.
A sender–message–receiver drawing can help locate a message. Ritual analysis needs us to look more closely at the relationships and practices within which messages become meaningful. The following map provides a way to organise that inquiry.
Recognisable meanings, relationships and boundaries can be sustained, questioned or changed through communication.
People recognise positions such as host, graduate, audience, reader or supporter.
Ask: Who may speak, witness, join or remain outside?Words, images, gestures and narratives make values and relationships visible.
Ask: Which associations make these forms meaningful here?Voices, bodies, screens, spaces and sequences give participation a public form.
Ask: How does the arrangement shape what people can do?Remembered occasions and expected returns connect a present act with a continuing practice.
Ask: What is renewed, revised or disputed over time?Read the map through a college welcome ceremony
Participants and roles: new students are welcomed, current students guide them, and teachers speak on behalf of the institution. Symbols and stories: a crest, an account of the college’s past and a repeated welcome can represent membership.
Performance and setting: the order of speakers, seating and camera positions can distinguish recognised representatives from the audience. Time and recurrence: an annual welcome connects a new cohort with earlier ones, while a revised ceremony can announce different priorities.
Then test the interpretation. Do new students describe the event as welcoming? Do they recognise the symbols? Do online viewers feel included? An organiser’s intended message and a participant’s experience may differ.
Pause and extend the map
Imagine that the welcome ceremony introduces a student question period for the first time. What changes?
One possible answer: the pattern of participation changes, not just the quantity of information. New students gain a recognised speaking role. Whether this makes the occasion feel more inclusive depends on how questions are invited, selected and answered, and on participants’ accounts.
Reading the news can place us within a picture of the world.
Carey’s newspaper example is central to the lecture. A newspaper supplies information, but a ritual reading also asks how the practice repeatedly presents a world of people, institutions, conflicts and values. Readers encounter positions from which that world can be viewed.
A report can invite us to recognise ourselves as residents, parents, workers, students, citizens or supporters. Across a newspaper or news programme, these roles can shift. The interest lies in the world the account stages and in how readers enter, negotiate or resist it.
“Drama” does not mean fabrication
The term draws attention to actors, stakes, conflicts and possible resolutions. An accurate report can still arrange these into a meaningful portrayal. Ritual analysis does not excuse falsehood or remove the need to verify a factual claim.
College arts festival returns: students prepare to welcome the city.
Imagine a report that follows student rehearsals, introduces the organisers and describes the festival as a meeting between the college and its neighbourhood.
May read the preparations as a story about “our” collective achievement.
May recognise an invitation to enter the college as a guest.
May ask which students and art forms the account leaves outside its picture.
The routine can matter alongside the story
A household may watch the evening bulletin together and discuss it over dinner. The scheduled encounter can organise conversation and mark a familiar point in the day. A study that measures only recall of individual facts may miss that part of the practice.
However, a recurring bulletin does not necessarily bind a household together. It may prompt argument, reinforce separate loyalties or be treated as background sound. Observe the practice and ask participants what the occasion means to them.
The text: what the report portrays. The practice: how and when people encounter it. The experience: how participants understand their involvement. Evidence about one does not automatically establish the other two.
A useful research question is therefore: How does this news encounter place people within a recurring account of their social world? That question can sit alongside questions about accuracy, learning, influence and behaviour.
Coverage helps shape the occasion that people encounter.
A ceremony does not simply appear on a screen unchanged. Programme timing, camera positions, commentary, sound and the sequence of images help organise the mediated occasion. A close-up of a graduate and a wide shot of the audience make different aspects of recognition visible.
This explains the lecture’s point that medium and message can be difficult to separate in ritual communication. The form of presentation contributes to how the occasion is performed and experienced. The setting and style are part of what participants encounter.
Making an occasion publicly important
Extended coverage, an interruption of routine programming or a special ceremonial introduction can signal that an occasion deserves collective attention. Examine who makes that judgement, how resources are committed, and which groups recognise or dispute its importance.
The same process can occur on a smaller scale. A college may place its annual ceremony at the centre of a livestream, open with institutional music and invite alumni to watch. That staging proposes an account of the institution and its continuing community.
A related tradition: Dayan and Katz
In Media Events (1992), Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz examine exceptional live broadcasts of significant public occasions. Compare that focus with Carey’s attention to ordinary practices as well as ceremonies.
A popular clip or breaking-news story does not become a classic “media event” through popularity alone.
A large audience establishes attention only within the limits of the measurement used. It does not establish that viewers share an identity, accept the occasion’s values or experience the same emotion.
Related reading: Dayan and Katz (1992). The college-stream example is an original application, not a case from their book.
Find the symbolic work inside familiar occasions.
Choose a situation. Explain what a ritual lens reveals, then identify one claim that requires evidence from participants. Each scenario is fictional.
“The event invites people to recognise a shared identity” is a claim about its presentation. “Participants felt more attached afterwards” is a claim about experience or change. They require different evidence.
A shared occasion can gather around a screen.
Digital communication can carry ritual dimensions through recurring practices, familiar symbols and patterned participation. The medium’s novelty does not decide the question. Examine what people do with it, how they recognise the practice and what it means in their relationships.
A weekly creator premiere
Viewers arrive at a familiar time, recognise the opening phrase and greet returning participants in a live chat. A ritual analysis asks how the recurring occasion makes a group recognisable to itself. It does not infer community from the existence of a comment box.
A family’s festival greetings
Relatives share familiar greetings across distance. Images, phrases and expected replies can mark a continuing relationship. Some recipients may experience closeness; others may see an obligation. Ask what makes the exchange meaningful to them.
A shared hashtag
A hashtag can help participants recognise contributions as part of a common occasion. Images, repeated phrases and posting conventions may make participation visible. Yet the same label can gather support, criticism, irony, advertising and automated posts. A count cannot tell us which of these meanings is present.
Participation need not be simultaneous
People can watch a recorded ceremony later, respond to an anniversary post or revisit a recurring programme. They may still connect their encounter with a shared symbolic occasion. Whether the delayed encounter feels like participation requires investigation; simultaneity should not be made a universal test.
What about automated or AI-generated greetings?
A prepared greeting can enter an existing practice, but its production method does not settle its social meaning. One person may appreciate the remembered occasion; another may read a generic message as inattentive. Examine the relationship, wording, timing and recipient’s interpretation. Do not treat an automated output as evidence that a system shares the participant’s feelings or commitments.
Visibility, timing, moderation and access can influence who encounters a practice and who can participate. To explain a particular case, inspect those conditions. Ritual theory alone cannot establish how a platform selected or distributed a post.
These digital examples extend the lecture’s questions to contemporary settings. They are not claims that Carey developed a theory of current platform systems or that every recurring online activity forms a community.
Belonging is a question to investigate, not a result to assume.
The ritual view makes social relationships visible, but it can become too comforting if every shared symbol is treated as evidence of harmony. A ceremony may renew a relationship for some participants while leaving others unrecognised. A recurring media portrayal may make one account of collective life appear natural.
Who defines the occasion?
Ask who chooses the symbols, arranges the programme, receives the microphone and appears in the central images. Ask who can change these arrangements. These questions connect symbolic participation with institutional resources and authority.
Nick Couldry’s Media Rituals (2003) develops a critical approach that connects ritual with media power and challenges assumptions about media’s privileged relation to a social centre. This adds a useful question to a reading of collective occasions: how does the performance make particular institutions appear entitled to represent the wider public?
Expressive activity can also serve a purpose
The lecture describes ritual communication as expressive and often valued in participation itself. Read this as a difference of analytical emphasis, rather than a universal claim that rituals have no purposes. Organisers may plan an occasion to attract support, sell a product, welcome students or strengthen an institution.
A campaign may draw on familiar music and symbols while seeking persuasion. Participants may join for reasons the organiser did not intend. Keep intended purpose, symbolic performance, participant experience and later outcome distinct.
Which meanings can differ?
Symbols can carry associations that are partly implicit, and people may recognise them without offering a precise verbal definition. This does not mean every ritual message must be vague. Explicit words, rules and factual claims can coexist with layered symbolic meanings.
| Strength | Risk of overstatement | Better research question |
|---|---|---|
| Shows communication as participation in social life. | Assuming attendance means attachment. | How do participants describe their involvement, including reluctant or distant participation? |
| Highlights cultural continuity through recurring practices. | Treating repetition alone as ritual. | Which symbols, roles or relationships give the repetition significance? |
| Connects form and performance with meaning. | Inferring experience directly from a programme or text. | How do actual participants interpret the staging? |
| Makes collective identities visible. | Assuming one unified community without disagreement. | Whose account of the group is represented, accepted, negotiated or challenged? |
| Offers an interpretive framework. | Claiming a precise causal effect from observation alone. | What additional design would establish change and rule out alternative explanations? |
A ritual reading is strongest when it describes the symbolic practice closely, listens to participants and specifies the limits of its evidence. It need not compete with every other approach. Transmission, framing, effects research and studies of institutions can examine different parts of the same occasion.
Watch Dr. USP’s lecture with two questions beside you.
On the first viewing, ask what each view makes visible. On the second, note a concrete example for sharing, performance, continuity and symbolic participation. Use the chapter to refine the distinction without turning the two views into rigid event categories.
A viewing route
Approximate entry points based on the supplied transcript. Links open the relevant part on YouTube.
| Entry point | Focus | Question to answer |
|---|---|---|
| 00:01 · Opening distinction ↗ | Transmission and ritual as different views. | What changes when the question shifts from delivery to participation? |
| 00:57 · Effects and transmission ↗ | The lecture’s contrast with effects-centred approaches. | How can you explain the contrast without assuming every effects study treats audiences as passive? |
| 01:49 · Ritual and routine ↗ | Ceremonies, familiar actions and symbolic relationships. | What would make a repeated action socially meaningful? |
| 02:47 · Sharing and continuity ↗ | Participation and the continuing life of a community. | Can participants recognise an occasion without agreeing on every belief? |
| 03:44 · Reading the newspaper ↗ | A recurring encounter with an ordered world. | What could a ritual study discover beyond factual recall? |
| 04:37 · Roles and drama ↗ | Readers’ possible positions within an account. | Why does “drama” here not mean that a news report is invented? |
| 06:24 · Performance and media ↗ | Ceremonial coverage and the staging of importance. | How do form and coverage contribute to an occasion’s meaning? |
| 07:33 · Symbols and purposes ↗ | Ritual participation and its use in planned campaigns. | How can expressive participation and a persuasive aim coexist? |
Explain one occasion twice.
Choose a greeting, graduation or shared viewing practice. Write two sentences from a transmission perspective and two from a ritual perspective. Underline the different questions, then name evidence that would answer each.
Finish by explaining why a repeated act, a large audience or coordinated behaviour alone does not prove a common experience.
Ten questions to sharpen the distinctions.
Choose one answer before opening its explanation. These questions are for self-study; they do not submit or record a score.
1. Which question most directly expresses a ritual view of communication?
- How many recipients received a file?
- How much did a participant’s factual recall improve?
- How does a ceremony enact membership and shared meaning?
- How quickly did a signal arrive?
Reveal answer 1
Answer: C. The ritual view foregrounds symbolic participation and the social world enacted through it. Delivery, speed and recall can matter, but they ask different questions.
2. Which statement best describes the relationship between the two views?
- The same event can be examined through both lenses
- Religious events belong only to ritual; secular events belong only to transmission
- Ritual communication never conveys information
- Transmission occurs only across long physical distances
Reveal answer 2
Answer: A. Carey’s distinction concerns perspectives on communication. A ceremony or news encounter can involve information and the enactment of social relationships.
3. A student checks the same app every morning. What is the strongest conclusion from that fact alone?
- The student belongs to a community
- The app has changed the student’s values
- The practice is necessarily ceremonial
- The action is repeated; its ritual significance still requires investigation
Reveal answer 3
Answer: D. Recurrence is a clue. A ritual interpretation needs evidence of meaningful symbols, roles, relationships or an established place in social life.
4. What does “news as drama” principally invite us to examine?
- Whether every report is fictional
- How accounts portray actors, conflicts and positions of involvement
- Why factual accuracy no longer matters
- Whether all readers respond identically
Reveal answer 4
Answer: B. Drama concerns the meaningful portrayal of a social world. It does not turn a factual report into fiction or determine how every reader will interpret it.
5. Which claim requires evidence from participants rather than observation of staging alone?
- The ceremony uses a college crest
- The programme names graduates individually
- The audience sits facing a stage
- The ceremony made participants feel a stronger attachment to the college
Reveal answer 5
Answer: D. Staging can be observed directly. A claim about experienced attachment, especially a change in it, requires further evidence and an appropriate design.
6. What does “consummatory” emphasise in this context?
- The speed of media consumption
- The absence of meaning
- Value found in performing or experiencing an activity itself
- A requirement that all rituals end in agreement
Reveal answer 6
Answer: C. An activity can matter in its enactment, such as singing together. That does not prevent it from also having practical or political purposes.
7. A campaign uses familiar symbols and asks people to support a candidate. Which interpretation is strongest?
- Expressive participation and an instrumental aim can coexist
- The event cannot be studied as ritual because it has a purpose
- The symbols prove that everyone was persuaded
- Ritual participation makes policy information irrelevant
Reveal answer 7
Answer: A. Ritual and persuasion are not mutually exclusive. Distinguish the organiser’s aim, the symbolic performance, participants’ experiences and the measured outcome.
8. How do the approaches differ in scope?
- Carey excludes ordinary routines
- They are identical
- Any viral clip is a classic media event
- Carey also covers everyday practices; Dayan and Katz examine exceptional live occasions
Reveal answer 8
Answer: D. Their scopes differ. Popularity alone does not establish a classic media event.
9. Why ask who selects the symbols and receives the microphone?
- To prove that ritual communication always fails
- To connect symbolic participation with access and authority
- To measure signal speed
- To avoid asking participants what the occasion means
Reveal answer 9
Answer: B. An account of shared meaning should also examine who can define and represent the occasion. Authority and participation need not be distributed equally.
10. A group repeats a chant while disagreeing about tactics. What follows?
- Participation is impossible unless every opinion matches
- The chant proves identical political or sporting beliefs
- A shared practice can coexist with disagreement; its meaning must be investigated
- The disagreement makes all symbolic analysis irrelevant
Reveal answer 10
Answer: C. People can recognise and participate in a common occasion while disagreeing within it. Neither the chant nor the disagreement settles everyone’s experience.
Study a familiar practice without assuming what it means.
Your task: Analyse a low-stakes recurring practice or public occasion, such as a college welcome, weekly reading group, morning greeting or shared sports viewing. Write 400–500 words and include a small relationship map. Use a fictional case if observation is impractical.
- Set the boundary.
Describe the occasion, participants, setting and period studied. State whether your material is observed, supplied by willing participants or fictional.
- Apply both lenses.
Write one transmission question and one ritual question about the same practice. Explain how the questions differ.
- Inspect the symbolic action.
Identify two or three words, images, gestures, arrangements or stories. Explain their meaning in this setting, rather than assigning them a universal significance.
- Examine participation and time.
Who can speak, watch, join or change the practice? How does the occasion connect with earlier or expected occasions? Include at least one possible difference in experience.
- Match claims to evidence.
Use a brief participant account where appropriate and agreed. State what the evidence supports, an alternative interpretation and one thing you cannot conclude.
Did viewers receive and understand the timetable and joining instructions?
Possible evidence: the announcement, access records and a short comprehension task.
How do the welcome, symbols and recognised roles invite students into college life?
Possible evidence: observation, programme and visual analysis, and participant accounts.
| Criterion | Marks | A strong response shows |
|---|---|---|
| Conceptual distinction | 2 | The two lenses are applied to the same occasion without making them mutually exclusive. |
| Symbolic detail | 2 | Specific forms and their local meanings are examined. |
| Participation and continuity | 2 | Roles, access, recurring expectations and differences in involvement are considered. |
| Evidence | 2 | Observed staging, participant accounts and claims about outcomes remain distinct. |
| Reasoning and limits | 2 | The interpretation is supported, an alternative is considered and a limitation is clear. |
Research extension: follow a practice over time
Observe a recurring student-group opening across three meetings. Record the greeting, order of speakers, familiar references and any changes. Invite willing participants to explain what the opening means to them and how a newcomer might recognise or miss its conventions.
Compare the pattern you observed with the meanings people report. A changed greeting might signal a new priority, a practical adjustment or a different host’s preference. Do not decide among these explanations from repetition alone. The exercise can develop an interpretation; it cannot by itself demonstrate that the practice caused greater cohesion.
Couldry’s later practice-oriented approach (2004) offers a related methodological prompt: attend to what people do in relation to media and how those practices connect with other activities. It is a further framework, not an extra component of Carey’s original distinction.
Ready to move on?
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Follow the meanings. Listen to the participants.
Key terms
- Transmission view
- A perspective that foregrounds the movement, reception and consequences of messages.
- Ritual view
- A perspective that foregrounds symbolic participation in the continuing construction of social life.
- Symbolic action
- An act whose socially recognised form carries meaning within a cultural setting.
- Participation
- Taking part in a recognisable practice or occasion, including forms of witnessing and viewing.
- Shared understanding
- Some recognised meanings in common; the extent of agreement must be investigated.
- Performance
- The enactment of a meaningful social form through words, bodies, images, spaces or other means.
- Consummatory value
- Value found in the doing or experience of an activity itself.
- Cultural continuity
- The carrying forward, renewal or revision of recognisable practices and expectations over time.
- News as drama
- News considered as a meaningful portrayal of actors, conflicts and possible positions of involvement.
- Media event
- In the classic Dayan–Katz approach, an exceptional live broadcast of a significant public occasion; not simply any popular content.
- Solidarity
- A relationship of attachment or identification; its presence and extent require evidence.
- Ritualisation
- The shaping or recognition of practices as symbolically significant, patterned occasions.
Sources and further reading
Read Carey for the central distinction, Rothenbuhler for a wider account of ritual communication, and Dayan and Katz for exceptional broadcasts. Couldry adds critical and practice-oriented questions. Links lead to the lecture or publication records; some full texts may require institutional access.
- Pandey, U. S. (Dr. USP). Ritual model of communication [Video]. YouTube.
Open source / publication record ↗
Why read it? The lecture supplied for this chapter. Pair the newspaper discussion with the viewing prompts and cases. - Carey, J. W. (2009). Communication as culture: Essays on media and society (Rev. ed.). Routledge.
Open source / publication record ↗
Why read it? Begin with the essay “A Cultural Approach to Communication”. The distinction concerns views of communication, not two mutually exclusive lists of events. - Rothenbuhler, E. W. (1998). Ritual communication: From everyday conversation to mediated ceremony. SAGE.
Open source / publication record ↗
Why read it? Extends the discussion across everyday interaction, organisational life and mediated ceremony. - Dayan, D., & Katz, E. (1992). Media events: The live broadcasting of history. Harvard University Press.
Open source / publication record ↗
Why read it? A related study of exceptional live public broadcasts. Compare its scope with Carey’s broader ritual view. - Couldry, N. (2003). Media rituals: A critical approach. Routledge.
Open source / publication record ↗
Why read it? Connects media ritual with power and questions assumptions about media’s place at a social centre. - Couldry, N. (2004). Theorising media as practice. Social Semiotics, 14(2), 115–132.
Open source / publication record ↗
Why read it? A further approach to examining what people do in relation to media. Useful when developing observation-based projects.
Notice the next familiar gathering.
When a greeting, ceremony or programme returns, watch what people recognise before anyone explains it. Which words invite a response? Who can take a speaking role? What makes the occasion feel like “ours”?
Then change the lens. The Frankfurt School chapter opens a different inquiry into culture, media institutions and power. Compare what each approach reveals about who shapes the cultural forms people share.