Reference no: EM133683403

Question: Media and Community McLuhan explored how media furnish environments that shape the formation of communities on the grand scale of whole societies and historical epochs. The concepts we review next are on a smaller scale, but the underlying principle is the same. Where the social interaction approach looks at how various media compare with face-to-face interaction, the social integration approach holds that each medium must be taken on its own terms as an ecology for forming of communities. Face-to-face communication is not the ideal; it is merely one medium with a set of properties that foster a certain environment for certain rituals that create a certain form of community. But other media, each in its own way, are "able to facilitate a sense of belonging, security and community, even if individuals are not actually directly interacting in them." Radio audiences engage in rituals and create a community that is in solidarity with talk-show host Rush Limbaugh; television audiences do the same around the beloved characters of Lost or Seinfeld. Visitors to favorite websites form communities, as do players of online games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. By the same token, members of organizations may engage in rituals