New practices, ancient rituals: The organization of everyday life and power settings in the media

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on recent transformations in media consumption practices linked to the emergence of alternative media, and how they affect the processes of creation and legitimation of a dispersed form of power traditionally associated with the mass media. The myth that media such as TV, radio, and the newspaper function as a link to a kind of "social center" has been conveniently endorsed by the media industry throughout history, since it legitimates identity formations and modes of narrative that maximize commercial interests (COULDRY, 2012; TURNER, 2010). The ordering of everyday actions from categories based on the division between what is related to the media, and what is not, plays the structuring role of a typically contemporary dynamics of power. This dynamic, however, has changed with the popularization of social networks on the Internet. If, on the one hand, the emergence of new audience practices has diversified the possibilities of social organization, on the other, they seem to reinforce old forms of media ritualization responsible for the preponderant role that mass media still play in today's society.