Concept
ritual view
The view that sees communication less as carrying information and more as sharing, participation and community, focused on representing and maintaining shared beliefs. It is the view James W. Carey proposed against the transmission view.
The ritual view thinks of communication less as the sending of information and more as sharing, participation, fellowship and the possession of shared beliefs. For James W. Carey, the focus of this view is not the imparting of information but the representation of shared beliefs.
Carey’s best-known example is reading a newspaper. In his account, reading a newspaper is less like learning something new and more like attending a mass: nothing new is learned, but a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed. That is why people read or watch news they already know.
The ritual view also recalls the shared root of the words “communication” and “community”: both derive from the idea of “common”. The view is said to have been influential in communication research, especially in cultural studies. We will treat it in detail later, in the lesson The Ritual View of Communication: Carey.
Example
A family that watches the evening news at the same time every night may be doing so less for new information than for the habit of closing the day together (a hypothetical example).