Symbolic Interactionism and the Media

Abstract

The merger of three streams of thought into a unified perspective on information technologies and social structure defines the pragmatic, interactionist contribution to the study of the media. This merger, which synthesizes the theories of Simmel, Mead, Innis, Ong, and McLuhan, is best represented in the work of James Carey, Carl Couch, and David Altheide. These projects are extended in the critical pedagogy and interpretive communication paradigms. In this chapter, the author summarizes and elaborates upon these legacies, offering his version of this project, rewriting it to fit a critical, interpretive, feminist, cultural studies approach to the analysis of information technologies, the media, the audience, and the political economy of communicative acts in everyday life. Informed by James Carey's theories of democracy and his ritual model of communication, the author presents a discussion that interrogates the place of critical pedagogy in a free democratic society.

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