Com 1020 Assignment 2

Introduction
Mass communication is the variety of all the media mediums together, and is aimed at a large audience. A ritual view is directed not towards the addition of messages in space but the maintenance of society in time, not the act of imparting information or influence but the creation, representation, and celebration of shared even if illusory beliefs, James,(1988: 43). This essay will discuss how mass communications has transformed the temporal and spatial foundations of the social-sphere.

This essay will start by defining the key terms which are communication, mass communication, and the para-social. The separation of social space from the physical place by mass communications, time and space and mass communications will also be discussed in the essay. The para-social interactions, how mass communications transformed the temporal and spatial foundations of the social sphere will then follow. The ritual dimensions of communication will also be discussed, the essay will then sum up the essay and give the researcher’s opinion. Definition of key terms
Communication refers to the transmission of meaningful messages; these messages are conveyed in images, language, gestures, or other symbols. Thompson. (1997:30)
Anthony R, (2004), defines mass communication as the process in which professional communicators design and use media to disseminate messages widely, rapidly, and continuously in order to arouse intended meanings in large, diverse, and selectively attending audiences in attempts to influence them in a variety of ways. A ritual is defined as a temporary, desirable generally and usually form of trance exhibited in the context of religion ceremony and belief attributed to the power of sympathetic spirits, Thaipusan, B, (2006).

The separation of social space from physical place by mass communication
In the past people used to travel from one place to another to deliver a message to others. It took a long time to reach the place especially if the place is too far. It took time to travel from situation to situation, and distance was a measure of social isolation and insulation .This means of communication had a great disadvantage, because by the time the messenger arrives it would be too late for them to respond to the message. For example, if someone is sent to deliver a message on someone’s death, by the time people from the other side get the message, the funeral will have taken place. The other disadvantage was that it was a laborious, and tidigious for the person who was being sent. For others to experience each other directly, they had to travel through space, stay through time, and admitted through the entrances of rooms and buildings, (Joshua: 1997; 42-43).

As time went on the print media was introduced. Print, like all new media, changed the patterns and of information flow to and from places. As results, it also changed the relative status and power of those in different places. Changes in media in the past have always affected the relationship among places. They have affected the information that people bring to places and the information that people have in given places. But the relationship between place and social situation was quite strong, (Joshua: 1997; 42).

Electronic media went on a step further, there lead to a nearly total dissociation of physical place and social ‘place.’ When we communicate through telephone, radio television, or computer, where we are physically no longer determines where and who we are socially. The relationship between physical place and social situation still seems so natural that we continue to confuse physical places with the behaviors that go on in them. For example the word ‘church’ and ‘home’ are used to refer both the physical buildings and to certain types of social interaction and behaviour, (Joshua: 1997;43).

Time and space and the mass communication
The spatial and the temporal isolation of physical location allowed for one definition of the situation to ‘saturate the time or space. Any medium can pull a person out of the definition of the situation. The print media and the electronic media, however, differ in their impact on the definitions of situations and on the relationship between situations and places. Print media tend to create new, totally absorbing definitions, because reading is done alone, silently, and there is still the boundary, because, it is mostly done in doors and there are special buildings designed for reading. The reader is connected to other by reading what they have written. On the other hand the electronic media destroys the specialness of place and time, Joshua (1997:50).

Television, radio, telephone and the internet turn once private place into more public ones by making them more accessible to the outside world. The analyses suggest that where there is a telephone is no longer the same. Places which are visited for the first time, but heard or seen them on the television, and internet will look familiar. Joshua (1997:50). McLuhan, (1964: 271) in Nicola, (2002: 283), states that telephone is an irresistible intruder in space and time. Telephone is specifically spatial: their sole function is to support social communication at a distance, and their ability to collapse distance has made it possible many spatial features of contemporary urban life. For example the office towers of the late modernity could not exist without telecommunication technologies to coordinate their internal space.

Para-social interactions
The audience, come to feel they know the people they view on television and hear on radios in the same way they know their friend, and associates. In fact many views begin to believe that they know and understand a performer better than all the other viewers do. Paradoxically, the para-social performer is able to establish ‘intimacy with millions.’ Audience usually considers the people they know through the media as likeable and interesting in the same way as a friend. The audience can rely on them to be themselves. Even performers with the traditional skills often exploit the intimacy of the new media. As a result of the close personal observation, many athletes, musicians, journalists, and politicians are judged not only on the basic of their talent but also on the basis of their personalities. The para-social framework may explain why many singing stars turn to more and more personal lyrics and themes as their careers develop and why the public officials often add more private information to the public speeches as they become more widely known (Joshua: 1997: 42). The audience considers the people they know through the media as normal people they can turn to for inspiration and advice. For example, if someone is addicted to drugs and by any chance watch soap and find someone who is also addicted to drugs in the soap, he or she will feel much better knowing that one of the actors and actresses are also addicted to drugs. Other audience considers the stars they see on television as their role model, because they think they know them and want to be like them in a way (Joshua: 1997: 42-45). For example people will consider Queen Moroka, an actress on generation to be their role model because, she is full of life, and she likes to create opportunities for herself, she is also brave and wise.

On the other hand the para-social interactions have has a great impact on the ‘socially isolated, the socially inept, the aged and invalid, the timid and the rejected, because electronic media provide the types of interaction and experience which were once restricted to intimate live encounters, it makes sense that they would have their greatest effects on those who are physically or psychologically removed from the every day social interaction. The strength of the para-social relationship increases with the viewer’s age, that many elderly people will become friends with the newscaster and that older viewer “interact with newscasters verbally. Even among the ‘average’ people, the para-social relationship takes its place among daily interactions with friends, family and associates.

Friends usually discuss the behavior of their para-social friends; they usually talk about their favourite presenters, actors and actress. Due to the para-social interactions when the ‘media friends’ such as Elvis Presley, John Kennedy, or Lebo Mathosa die or are killed or have accidents many people experience a sense of loss as great or even greater than the feeling of loss accompanying the death of a relative or true friend. Unlike the loss of a relative or friend the loss of a ‘media friend does not provide traditional rituals or clear ways to comfort the bereaved. The mourning for para-social friend is filled with the paradox and helplessness. Ironically but appropriately the media provide the most ritualized channels of mourning, Joshua (1997: 46).

Radio and television present specials and retrospectives. Many people use the telephone to contact the real friends who share the intimacy with the para-social friend. The pare-social relationship has also led to a new form of murder and a new type of murder motive, for example the murder of John Lennon was a stranger thing, he was killed by someone who they have never meet before, the murder knew John Lennon through para-social relations, Joshua (1997: 47)

How mass communications transformed the temporal and spatial foundations of the social sphere
The introduction of mass communications changed the pattern of space and time, and the way people used to socialize. Telephone was however the first means of electronic communication and a prerequisite of early broadcasting. Telephone provided a more efficient means of contact and it removed the need for material movement to access information and consequently refined both space and time. In addition, Keller, (1977: 284-5) in Jenie (1997: 596) states that telephone provides the opportunity to keep in touch with relatives and friends whom it is no longer possible to have regular face to face meetings with them. The telephone is clearly a means to geographic mobility one of the basic instruments holding people together. The social consequences of being able to talk to people in far-flung corners of the world are clearly awesome, yet the telephone aroused little sociological interest.

The television changed the way people live and people themselves. Audience knows what is going on around the world, through television viewing, they are now addicted to television, more, in which when they miss their favourite show; they feel ‘un-normal’. People no longer meet most of the days, neither at night for story telling, darts or cards playing, they spend their spare time either, listening to the radio, watching television, or busy on the internet. This arrival of mass communication has not only destroyed the time and space, but also the face to face interactions and the socialization of the communities. On the other hand some audience considers television, not worth watching on it. For example the Islander, television, unlike other technologies, simply arrived. They considered it as having no material ancestors and no history. As such television was a completely new phenomenon and became the scapegoat for the changes in the Islanders.

The arrival of mass communication destroyed the face to face contact of people, for example, people use telephones to communicate with their relatives, rather than going to their places, this prevent them from going there, to communicate in persons. This has also destroyed the boundaries of time and space. People no longer travel distances to deliver a message, they just give the message through the huge range of mass communications. They hardly visit, their relatives and friends, even though there is still the relationship between people, they now socialize through the mass communication.

The ritual dimensions of communication
The view of communication, though a minor thread in our national thought, is by far the older of those views. In a ritual definition, communication is linked to the terms such as sharing, participation, association, fellowship, and the possession of a common faith. A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but towards the maintenance of the society in time; not the act of imparting information but the presentation of shared beliefs. A ritual view of communication will focus on a range of problems when examining a newspaper. It will for example, view reading less as sending or gaining information and more as attending a mass, a situation in which nothing new is learned but in which a particular view of the world is portrayed and established. News reading, and writing, is a ritual act and moreover a dramatic one. What is arrayed before the reader is not pure information but a portrayal of the contending forces in the world. Moreover, as readers make their way through the paper, they engage in a continual shift of roles or of dramatic focus, (James; 1988:16-18).

It is recognised, as with the religious rituals, that news changes little and yet is intrinsically satisfying; it performs few functions yet is habitually consumed. Newspapers do not operate as a source of effects or functions but as a dramatically satisfying, which is not to say pleasing, presentations of what the world at the root is. It is in this role that of a text that a newspaper is a presentation of reality that gives life an overall form, order and tone. Under a ritual view, then news is not information but the drama, because it does not describe the world but portrays an arena of dramatic forces and action; it exists only in historical time; and it invites audience to participate on the basis of assuming often vicariously, and social roles within it. Neither of these counterposed views of communication necessarily denies what the other affirms. A ritual view does not exclude the processes of information transmission or attitude change. It merely contends that one cannot understand these processes aright except insofar as they are cast within an essentially rituatialistic view of communication and social order, (James; 1988:21).

Conclusions
Communication is no longer restricted to face-face interaction, and the time-space distanciation of modernity forms part of the daily lives. Mass communication technologies do not simply have the effects on society. The effects of mass communication technologies is not prearranged, but is shaped by the different uses to which they are put and often unexpected implications to those uses. In a ritual definition, communication is linked to the terms such as sharing, participation, association, fellowship, and the possession of a common faith. In the researcher’s opinion, gone are the days where people have to travel long distance, technology has changed the barriers of time and space around the world. This is a good thing because, the world has to develop and acquire new technology.

Reference List: * James, Carey, (1988). Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, Routledge, London and New York.

* Jenie, Betteridge. (1997). “Answering Back: The Telephone, Modernity and Everyday Life”, Media, Culture and Society, Vol.19, No. 4, pp.585-603.

* Joshua, Meyrowits. (1997). The Separation of Social Space from Physical Place” in O’Sullivan, Tim & Jewkes, Yvonne (eds), The Media studies Reader, Edward Arnold ltd, London.

* Nicola, (2002), “On the Move: Technology, Mobility, and the Mediation of Social Time and Space”, The Information Society, Vol. 18.

* Thompson, John. B. (1997) “Mass Communication and modern Culture” in O Sullivan, Tim and Jewkes, Yvonne (eds), The Media Student Reader, Edward Arnold Ltd, London.

* Anthony R, (2004).Voice of America, Mass Communication Media on Stamps. Curtis, Ph.D. Ltd, America. Available from * http://www.spacetoday.org/Stamps/Stamps.html. Accessed on the 15/ 09/07

* Thaipusan, B, (2006). A psycho- Anthropological Analysis of Ritual, Ceremonial possessions and self-mortification practices. Ward, Colleen, Malaysia. Available from http://www.jstor.org/view/00912131/ap020043/02a00020/0?frame=noframe&userID=a8d23231@monash.edu.au/01cce440610050106e00&dpi=3&config=jstor accessed on the 15/09/07.