Week Two: Media Rituals

1st reading: Couldry, Nick.  “media Rituals: the Short and the Long Route.”  Media Rituals: A Critical Approach.  London: Routledge, 2003, 1-20

Media is not only part of our lives, but is quite arguably playing a significant and central role in how we as humans are now defining ourselves in the modern and contemporary world we live in.  Without being completely aware of its transition into its position of high priority for many of us, media controls and defines our daily events and social or antisocial activities in a very powerful valuable way.

Consider social interactions.  Its everywhere we look in countless different forms.  Coming from a western/urban perspective, we can only assume that those from similar societies are also active and contribute to the need to constantly be ‘connected’ whether it be socially or merely connected with media itself.  Either way, media has an incredibly and increasingly strong hold on societies such as ours and it is only going to continue in the same direction, adding to a solid list of everything ‘media rituals’ would consist of.

Media rituals are the daily events and happenings that habitually involve a reliable and relatively practical way of communicating within our social networks.  This includes three main forms of media:  any repeated ritual (however meaningless), formalised ritual which belongs to a particular meaningful reason or custom, or rituals involving transcendent values.  This definition is suitable for everything relative before this particular point in time how that technology is changing and redefining contemporary media rituals constantly.  This makes it difficult to describe current and future media rituals and concepts because this idea of the three main forms of media rituals (as listed above) does not consider new and advanced technological abilities in the field of media, thoroughly argued by Couldry.

Returning to the introduction regarding established media rituals, it must be maintained throughout all new/current definitions of ‘media rituals’ people’s need and reliance on staying connected and sharing a social whole.  Emile Durkheim,  who was a French sociologist, raised several questions regarding this, particularly to answer questions concerning modern complex societies and how they remain structured.  Although Durkheim supplied and contributed the main concepts to media rituals, Couldry argues that these are more in tune with traditional media technologies and not what is developing technology-wise at present.  Couldry calls what we should be using to consider media ritual concepts as ‘neo-Durkheimian’.  These new media technologies that are constantly mentioned turn our ritual spaces into new areas of media altogether.  Every new day is different to the last from a technological perspective.

2nd reading: O’Shaughnessy, Michael, and  Jane Stadler.  “What do the Media Do to Us? Media and Society” Media and Society: An Introduction, Third Edition.  South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press, 2005, 31-58.

Discussing more of the general impacts the media has on society, the second reading allows us to see ‘the big picture.’  Some of the main issues raised are: censorship, privacy, viewer discretion, cultural interpretations, health and violence aspects and general implications the media presents that would directly affect the people.

In contrast with the first reading, the second has less of a focus and an easier read.  This is not the point however.  Couldry’s argument(s) present the issue of what the media is to us and how it should/could be defined.  Alternatively, the second readings provide us with the impacts and social implications of media once a definition has been established or one has been thoroughly considered/discussed.  Both readings however discuss the relationship between people and the media and as mentioned before, sharing a social whole.  The media is what connects people, directly and indirectly and this is why there are so many social and ethical issues regarding the media and the constant conflict between interests of the media as a business and the media as a social whole for the people/audience.