Research On Media Ritual Of World Cup

As a unique social phenomena, ritual has a long history. From the religious rituals to the social customs and etiquettes, ritual is everywhere. Lies in its symbolic function, rite is very significant for the human society. It means ritual can maintain the social order and strengthen the social ideas through the symbolic function. Therefore, it is very important to look upon the event communication from the perspective of ritual view. As a sporting competition, World Cup shows more about its mega competition characteristics. However, the intervention of "media" gives the championship more symbolic meanings, to make World Cup Championship more like a carefully choreographed media ritual than athletic competition.This paper make an analysis of media ritual of the World Cup case, proceeded from the ritual view of communication which is come up with by James Carey, based on the "media event" and the "media ceremony" theoretical concept, and analyzed in the TV broadcasting of 2014 Brazil World Cup. Through the TV broadcasting, World Cup accord with the features of "media events" which is put forward by D. Dayan and E. Katz:interference, monopoly, live telecast and remote. Beyond that, mass media could makes the competition’s comprehensive report presented ritualized by using of symbol. The mass media built a "ritual space" for the audience in order to attract them to the ritual and share the deep meaning of the World Cup. Therefore, this paper mainly focus on the ritualized expression of television broadcast through the analysis of the World Cup television text, such like the ritual features of the media itself, the presentation of the symbols in World Cup opening ceremony and so on. Through analyzing the ritualized features, we can know more about the communication significance of the World Cup under the ceremony horizon. From the macroscopic level to microcosmic level, this paper explore the World Cup’s communication significance from three levels:the state, the society and the individual, in order to achieve the depth and breadth of research.According to the ritual view of communication, this paper defines the World Cup television communication from the view of ritual, interprets it from constructivism and reveals its cultural value and social significance of sports TV broadcasting from the perspective of cultural studies. It aims to expand the research thoughts of sports communication, especially the World Cup communication studies. Thereby broadens the horizon of the studies of international media event.