James Carey’s most famous work is a criticism of Communication Studies’ over-reliance on a social science view of communication. In sum, Carey argued that social science on mass media tended to rely on a model of communication that was pretty mechanistic.

A classic example from the middle of the 20th century is the Shannon-Weaver model:

For the scientifically-minded, communication was information transmitted between a sender and a receiver. The models this type of communication research produced were clearly inspired by the emerging space-engineering age. “Information source” and “destination” feel more suited for rocket telemetry than for understanding how a comedian’s joke lands. Thus, Carey contrasted the blindspot of these mathematical conceptions of communication as transmission. It was more than that, he argued. The bloodless models of social scientists had lost sight of the human part. It had lost sight of a major part of communication: creating and maintaining communities.

Social sciences of the early and mid-20th century created these models for good reason. Late 19th century mass media theory lacked rigor. What passed for media research in 1880 was little more than moral panics based on limited evidence and much speculation. Thus, the penny newspapers of the 1830s were stirring up the lower classes with sensational crime stories and corrupting readers with sexual intrigue. The loudest media critics of this time were not scientists but religious leaders and politicians. Like biblical prophets, media critics decried the collapse of traditional values as sensationalist newspaper headlines led the people astray.

Mass media research needed reform. The models growing out of quantitative science at the turn of the century would be that reform.

These new researchers, skeptical of those claiming media was fundamentally reshaping society, designed studies to get at that last part about the effects. Did propaganda win wars? Could violence in films make a population more aggressive or criminal? The quantitative research they conducted found surprisingly little evidence that media had a direct, powerful influence over individuals.

Over time, these findings accumulated and became known as the “Limited Effects” school of thought. Social science methods found minimal influence of media so consistently, one researcher proclaimed the field of mass communication research had been exhausted. Everyone could hang up their clipboards and go home.

This is when Carey enters the picture. Many researchers were not satisfied mass media had been fully understood. The relationship between media and society seemed more complicated and the effects more profound than quantitative research could reveal.

Offering the “ritual” approach as an alternative, Carey sought to explore new angles on the role of media in human life. His perspective is rooted in history and asks us to consider the communal aspects of communication. Perhaps media are more than information transmission. Instead of viewing humans as information receptacles, perhaps we can focus on how media brings people together, how it can bind a nation and create communities of shared belief. Viewing media as info transmission seemed to miss all of this.

In order to shift our understanding of media’s relationship to society, Carey focuses on the origin of words. “Communication,” he points out, shares roots with other words like community and communion. Its Latin origins meant both to impart and to share. While most communication and media scholars were focused on how information was imparted or “transmitted,” Carey focused on the idea of sharing. Sharing, after all, is how culture is created. Carey wanted us to examine the idea of shared culture and media’s role in shaping those bonds, as did a generation of cultural theorists who followed him.

Carey was skeptical that social science could effectively study this role of media. The transmission view of social science ignored some of the most important functions of media. Carey was a religious man, and careful readers can sense this in his writing. He sometimes speaks of communication in nearly mystical terms. Communication’s role in forming communities, he suggests, is ritualistic in a fashion . . . not unlike church.

In mainstream Christian churches, the congregation reads a common book (the Bible). Reading the Bible is a way to confirm an ordered worldview and share that with a community of belief. Very few church-goers are there for the information about Jesus. They are there not to learn new facts about the life of Jesus as much as to hear familiar stories and share in a narrative about their lives. They share faith, not information.

Carey argues that the newspaper of his time performed a similar function. In America and other Western nations, reading the news is to “subscribe” to a democratic worldview. When we think about the news, we engage in a collective experience. We subtly endorse shared values. Congregants become worshipers when in church. People become citizens when reading and talking about the news.

Scientific models of communication rescued us from overly speculative beliefs about media’s power to corrupt society wholesale. Carey’s work in the 1980s cautioned against relying too heavily on these models and sought to open up new vistas in the study of media.

A Ritual Model of Digital Media?

I would venture that Carey’s model is even more important today. The digital reconfiguration of media has provided a lot of opportunities to see “ritual” uses of media at play. How, for example, does the growth of opinion journalism reflect the church-like impulses of human communities? What insights about media can we gain by seeing digital communication through the ritual lens rather than mere transmission?

The “communion” function of media goes beyond news. Communities take shape around a variety of cultural identities. K-Pop stans, gardening enthusiasts, comic-book collectors . . . the internet has allowed almost any identity to find a group. Media make these identities possible. That’s what Carey find so mystical about communication. It is the basis for shared culture. It is how “the miracle of social life is pulled off.”

The cultural approach advocated by Carey, British cultural theorists, and others called attention to the role of media in distributing social power. Representation, they argued, was instrumental in structuring multicultural society by portraying cultures, race, and ethnicity. Often, these portrayals positioned some groups as outsiders, threats, and deviants. They are positioned as “others” in contrast to a “mainstream” constructed for the viewing audience.

Scholars in the cultural studies tradition have looked at film and television as sources of knowledge about the world for audiences. Examples of work on media representation are now near as prominent as the social science tradition. Shani Orgad (2015), for example, says the “new visibility” in global media means various identities compete for social power by managing how the group is represented in media. Studies of media portrayals fill journals, populate conference panels, and appear in popular news. The Media Education Foundation alone features dozens of documentaries addressing the representation of Arabs in early cinema, Black Americans in television, and women in advertising. The study of media and identity is tied to culture and, as culture changes and forms of representation multiply, identities will be created, maintained and adjusted in too many ways for cultural studies researchers to keep up.

If Carey is right, media play a significant role in shaping the shared reality we call culture. Shaping that reality, media also influences the unequal distribution of social power along class, gender, and racial lines. Analysis of how symbolic processes construct these identities will be of enduring value if we are to better understand the relationship between media and society.