Part of the reason why ritual views have become popular is that
cyberspace is so much more visibly a medium than is broadcast. Both the
medium and the content of cyberspace can be analysed, but the content is
not as socially visible as is the content of broadcast. I will return to this
contrast in the sections below on the nature of ‘interaction’ in broadcast
and network architectures.
As the medium of broadcast is less visible, media studies analysis has
always tended to gravitate to messages and genres, ownership and con-
trol. But an important counter-tradition to this can be found in the work
of James Carey and Elihu Katz.
Carey’s work has attained considerable popularity as a kind of
modern-day foundational expositor of the ritual approach, his key text being
Communication as Culture(1989). For Carey, social reality is partly produced
in communication, not simply reflected by it. Quoting from John Dewey,
Carey argues, ‘Society exists not only by transmission, by communication,
but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication’ (14).
Media might reflect the world, but they also produce the world. And
when individuals interact with media, they are, as Durkheim would sug-
gest, worshipping the way ‘society substitutes for the world revealed to
our senses a different world that is a projection of the ideals created by the
community’ (Carey, 1989: 19). However, such a ceremony need not be
driven by the desire for a ‘metaphysic of presence’, since typically the
medium that is interacted with is invisible.
Carey’s view of media is, in a way, remarkably similar to that of
Derrida and Baudrillard, in elevating the importance of the performative
role of texts, whether these be media texts or written texts. As Carey con-
jectures, ‘The particular miracle we perform daily and hourly – the miracle
of producing reality and then living within and under the fact of our own
production – rests upon a particular quality of symbols: their ability to be
both representations “of” and “for” reality’ (29).
Carey’s formula can be seen to parallel Derrida’s claim about the
double dimension of the sign: one aspect of it concerns the reproducibil-
ity of meaning, whilst the other is about the fact that texts themselves
constitute their own reality, which refer not to a beyond, but to each
other, to intertextuality, which we can only gain access to via specific
mediums.
In mounting the argument for communication as ritual, news is a
central focus for Carey because it is so typically thought of in terms of
information alone:If one examines a newspaper under a transmission view of communication,
one sees the medium as an instrument for disseminating news and knowl-
edge, sometimes divertissement, in larger and larger packages over
greater distances. Questions arise as to the effects of this on audiences,
news as enlightening or obscuring reality, as changing or hardening atti-
tudes, as breeding credibility or doubt. ...Interaction versus Integration 133Holmes-05.qxd 2/15/2005 1:00 PM Page 133