RITUAL MODEL OF COMMUNICATION: INTERPRETATIONS AND APPLICATIONS

An important part of the theory of mass communications is made up of the so-called models of mass communication. Usually, researchers distinguish four types of models — transmission, ritual, attention-grabbing and reception. This work is devoted to the ritual model. Usually, the ritual model of communication is associated with the name of James W. Carey; it is believed that the message in this model "is not an act of sending information, but a public expression of support for social beliefs" [5, 220]. The article pays attention to J. Carey’s own explanations, who emphasized not so much ritual and the formation of social solidarity as the category of "culture". Carey emphasizes the absence of contradiction between the transmission and ritual views on the transmission of information. The ritual view does not exclude the processes of information transmission. He only claims that it is impossible to correctly understand these processes without understanding the cultural context in which information activity takes place. American science in the field of communications does not pay attention to culture, because, according to Carey, it is so accustomed to the surrounding that it does not notice the usual. But the task of social sciences is to pay attention to the usual. The concepts of specialists in the field of media anthropology are considered. For example, the work of M. Komon deals with the ability of the media to ritualize social life; in his opinion, the media in modern society perform the same role as myth and ritual in pre-modern societies. E. Rotenbuhler argued that the relationship between a person and the surrounding reality always contains elements of ritual. As for attempts to apply the model in practice, in this work they are limited to considering the classic work of Dayan and Katz, which is devoted to media events: public ceremonies with all the signs of ritual that are broadcast on television.