Using "Ritual" to Study Journalism

Ehrlich, Matthew C.

doi:10.1177/019685999602000201

Cited by 22 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…However, invoking the argument of Thompson and others that "the public" itself is called into being through processes of mass mediation, the dissertation argues that rituals, inasmuch as they express some part of the political order, "can have social functions only via their communicative capacities"-a proposition which makes it of the utmost importance that "studies of civil ceremonies [are undertaken] by students of communication, who are equipped to analyze their specific communicative devices" (Rothenbuhler 1998, 104). Later it will be clear why Ehrlich's (1996) "heuristic, pluralistic understanding of ritual"…”

Section: News and Ritual/ritual And Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

Cairns¹

2021

Preprint

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This dissertation analyzes twentieth century changes in the representation of political authority in Ontario. It does so by conducting narrative analysis and framing analysis of newspaper coverage of the ceremonial Opening of the Legislature. In contrast to standard political science approaches to this key civic ritual, the dissertation builds upon cultural theory that views news as central to the social construction of reality and addresses three research questions: In what ways has the meaning of the legislative opening been represented in mainstream Ontario newspapers? How have mass mediated processes of ritualization changed over time? And what do answers to the first two questions suggest about the development of popular conceptions of political legitimacy in Ontario? Textual analysis demonstrates that social knowledge about the legislative opening has changed significantly between 1900 and 2007. During the first half of the twentieth century, journalists approached and described the Opening of the Legislature as a Social Celebration: a popular festival at Queen's Park that was also a break from routine policy discourse and partisan battle. By contrast, by the 1970s coverage was organized around the Speech from the Throne. Increasingly aggressive journalistic tones and techniques represented the ritual as a performance of rationality--a special iteration of Politics as Usual. Once a celebration of social order centred around Ontario High Society, the legislative opening is now depicted as a debate among competing interests in Ontario society. While remaining critical of the emergent ritual of liberal-pluralism for its part in normalizing systems of inequality, the dissertation argues that changes in newspaper coverage both reflect and reinforce the rise of what Smith calls "electoral democracy", a conception of politics in which extra-parliamentary actors are legitimized as participants in government. At the level of scholarly practice, the study makes an original contribution to recent debates in media anthropology by using longitudinal textual analysis to study the ritualization of civic ritual; and shifts in news coverage are used to advocate further interdisciplinary studies of legislative politics in Canada.

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Section: News and Ritual/ritual And Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

Cairns¹

2021

Preprint

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“…This selective construction of the homecoming displays characteristics that resemble key features of ritual performances (Ehrlich, 1996). Newspaper coverage of the homecoming is repetitive and formalized, following formulaic scripts that report on passengers' experiences, current transportation conditions, and improvements in transportation management.…”

Section: Ritualized News Framingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Staging a social drama: Ritualized framing of the spring festival homecoming in Chinese state media

2017

Journalism

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The transformation of Chinese media from the propaganda organ of the Party-state to its central means of hegemony has given rise to typified news practices that vary in formality but cohere in functionality. Integrating theories of media ritual and framing, this study explores how Chinese state media ritualistically manufacture a public consensus on the interpretation of the annual Spring Festival homecoming, a chronic social problem that exposes socioeconomic inequalities and policy deficiencies. An analysis of the 2014 homecoming coverage on China Central Television (CCTV) reveals that state media create and popularize a state-sponsored social drama, reducing a complex, multifaceted social problem to a one-dimensional transportation crisis. This media ritual, in accordance with both the state’s mandate to maintain social stability and the media’s logic of commercial success, contains alternative interpretations and obscures the important social concerns encapsulated in this issue.

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“…A number of dichotomies are routinely used to draw the line between trivial and proper news topics. These include entertainment versus information, infotainment versus edutainment, human interest versus public affairs, situational versus timeless issues, soft versus hard news, opinion versus fact, and unexpected events versus issue coverage (Biressi & Nunn, 2007;Boczkowski, 2009;Davie & Lee, 1995;Ehrlich, 1996;Hofstetter & Dozier, 1986;Knight, 1989;Reinemann, Stanyer, Scherr, & Legnante, 2012;Shaw & Slater, 1985). Many scholars have questioned the normativity that underlies the lines that separate information from what it is not.…”

Section: What Matters Topicallymentioning

confidence: 99%

Informed Citizenship in a Media-Centric Way of Life

Grabe

Myrick

2016

J Commun

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Two trends are prominent and universal to contemporary democracies: Voting rates are in steady decline while media use is growing. A transdisciplinary vantage point might help to redirect research trajectories that lead to alarming conclusions of democratic crisis. To that end, dominant ontological positions will need revision or perhaps replacement. This essay calls for (a) knowledge to be explicated beyond the written word, with serious consideration of the information value of images in the conceptualization of informed citizenship; (b) the deliberate entanglement of emotion with knowledge acquisition and political participation in explication and operationalization of active citizenship; and (c) reconsideration of electoral activities as the index of active citizenship, especially in the context of interactive media.

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Using "Ritual" to Study Journalism

Cited by 22 publications

References 25 publications

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

From social celebration to politics as usual : newspaper coverage of the Legislative opening in Ontario, 1900-2007

Staging a social drama: Ritualized framing of the spring festival homecoming in Chinese state media

Informed Citizenship in a Media-Centric Way of Life

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