James Carey dies
From the New York Times obit for this most readable communication theorist:
Dr. Carey shunned the increasingly abstruse, highly mathematical theoretical work at the frontiers of his field, preferring instead to focus on underlying values. He drew from anthropology and sociology, James Joyce and Boston Red Sox lore, to explore the cultural dimensions of journalism in democracies. This took him from the quirks of futures markets to journalism in 18th-century France to Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist. His own most influential idea was the “ritual theory” of communications, a departure from the traditional “transmission theory,” which defines communication as getting ideas from one place to another. Dr. Carey argued that a newspaper is not a transmission of facts or truth. Rather, it is a form of drama. (May 26, 2006)
Technorati tags: journalism | obituary | communication theory
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