Available online at www.sserr.ro Social Sciences and Education Research Review 

(5) 2 124-132 (2018) ISSN 2393–1264 ISSN–L 2392–9863 

## **PROCEDURES, RITUALS AND CREATIVITY IN THE MEDIATIC TEXT** 

**Xenia NEGREA, Dan Valeriu VOINEA,** CCSCMOP, University of Craiova, Romania 

## **Abstract** 

In this study, we review the changes that the mediatic text has undergone so far, subject to change of delivery method. The channel, the support is part of building block of the the text, and implicitly of the message. Thus, as shown below, dialogue, interactivity, and participation are traits that not only modify the mediatic text, but also bring about changes at the level of media ideology: the categorical boundaries between the subjective and the objective, the soft press and the hard press (Vattimo)  weaken increasingly more. 

**Keywords** : online media, dialogue, subjectivity, information 

In this study we approach the theme of modern media writing, writing that is not competing with the image, but it is part of what specialty theory calls (in fact, since the 1980s) convergence. Researchers (Kawamoto 2003) spoke of a new type of text, a new journalist, a new bussines model, all dependent on a receiver that could get involved, and could _interact_ with the issuer. 

Many researchers agree that journalistic narrative urgently needs rehabilitation (Michael Karlsson, 2011). Some producers and some researchers (Allen, 2008; Plaisance, 2007; Robinson, 2007) show that this is already happening. Kovach, Rosenstiel (2001) and Singer (2007) discuss the changes in 

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the media landscape and urge journalists to publicly state their rules to reinforce and differentiate from those who do not adhere to them. It has been observed (Vaia Doudaki, Lia-Paschalia Spyridou 2014) that, in general, the attention of the researchers has gone to the professional and organizational issues generated by online journalism (Castilhos Karam, 2009, Deuze, 2003, Singer, 2004) but too few studies refer to the patterns of online reports (Quandt, 2008; Vobic, 2011) and very few scholars have questioned narrative resorts (Karlsson and Stromback, 2010). 

For several years, however, they appeared theories that no longer oppose two types of journalism, but presents them in dialogue. Some researchers have gone further and have theorized online journalism as a form of traditional journalism (Quandt, 2008). Other researchers (Oblak, 2005) have shown that the links between journalism and the online environment have been sporadic, and the Internet has not revolutionized journalism in such a radical way as theorists predicted. Jacobson (2012) suggested that multimedia was used as an extension of the written word and not an original narrative format, the result is explained by the use of online writing techniques and the dominance of hierarchical news. 

The quality of online journalism is questioned and research has been carried out on journalists' and news consumers' attitudes towards the speed of reaction, but there is very little study on how this feature affects the content (Kopper et al., 2000). In the online environment, the press meets with a clearly defined audience: young people, an ignorant audience, but, as we shall demonstrate, who are in a relationship of media interdependence. Young people with media literacy are more likely to recognize what Goodman (2003) calls the "cultural triangle of fashion, sports and music" created and promoted by the entertainment industry. 

Our hypothesis is that the boundary between the representation of _hard_ and _soft_ media writing is, if not artificial, at least _weakened_ (Vattimo) by the historical challenges that have been traversed to this point. Digitization, the communication explosion, the financial and economic crisis of 2008, the 

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liberalization of image-text competition are, in our opinion, historical moments that have produced irreversible changes in media expression and expressivity. And these effects can be found at the content level, but also in the expectations of the public from the media. 

From the research so far, we have been able to systematize a series of features reunited in the concept of "new media": digitization, multifunctionality, ubiquity, bidirectionality, interactivity, specialization and decentralization, demasking, asynchrony, hyperreality and virtuality (M. Castells, Paul Virilio , L. Sfez). As we have demonstrated on several occasions, the _online_ environment has already produced modifications both on the skills and abilities of the actors of communication, and, of course, on the text. 

## **New skills and creative abilities** 

A threshold of these transformations was, as we have had the opportunity to show, the rethinking and repositioning of the recipient of the media message. In the digital era, the consumer has become, in the first phase, _the user_ . 

Of course, these pragmatic identity mutations correspond to the changes that the transmitter has incurred, respectively, the production and editing of messages. Mark Deuze (in Paterson and Domingo, 2008) inventories four changes made by new media on communication in general and on the text, in particular: (1) information flow, (2) alteration of selection, (3) acceleration of production times , (4) convergence cultivation: print - tv - online. We are, therefore, talking of a new world and a new language. 

Narrative structures, the architecture of various discursive types (from articles to entire publications) have been modified, journalistic expressions in tune with atomized texts of the nonlinear world have been reconsidered, with the dispersion of informational weight centers and the reconfiguration of reading and information consumption needs. 

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New skills and abilities for the producer and the recipient have generated effects both at the level of the text / message quality, but also at the channel and management level. Specialty research speaks about these new effects, such as: improving access to information, of the storage capacity for information, better transparency leading to production, freedom of expression, emergence, development and cultivation of participation modalities. 

Another change appears as to the type of broadcast - broadcasting is replaced by narrow casting (Maingueneau, 2007: 165). By default, there is also a shift from agenda-setting to agenda-melding. Most researchers, whose papers we have had access to so far, consider that the online environment has generated transactional mediated communication as a type of communication (J. Bryant, S. Thompson, 2002: 364). 

As demonstrated by speciality research, the online environment has, in the first instance, _caused an imbalance between demand and supply at the informational level_ (McQuail, 2004), a situation that has led to the reconsideration of the text production mechanisms by increasing motivation and exploiting the potential for inter-human communication. McQuail anticipates that, in the context of maximum freedom of communication, the written press is orienting itself towards _a model of consultation_ . 

The concept has been explored and exploited both in the media industry and in speciality research, in the context of the mutations generated by timeshifting devices, which has made information the main driving force, and innovation, the base principle (see Dorina Guţu-Tudor, 2008). 

Our idea is that the online environment has become in the last two decades an environment of _informational euphoria (_ Adam, 2005). But this feature raises many questions about the power that the editor, the gatekeeper, can exert. In the traditional environment, these were true arguments of authority and experience for credibility. In these circumstances, the online text may appear / can be considered, after Maingueneau's wording, a heterogeneous text, in a permanent reconfiguration, depending on the reader's " _decisions_ ", and the 

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informational euphoria require new ways of _directing information_ , other then titration, illustration, pagination, rubrication and the structural principle of the reversed pyramid. 

The appereance of personalized news feeds, depending on the former consumption habbits of the users, also leads to the creation of some filter bubbles, bringing the user information which tend to emphasize and radicalize his views and opinions. 

## **Emergency, subjectivity, performance** 

One of the most obvious changes comes from the genetics of the type of online communication, namely the writing in a constant news feed fashion. The issuer will develop what I. Ramonet calls the "cult of instantness." Thus, the ways of speeding up news are developed by a rhythm of dynamic reading and writing, bringing less time to verify information then in print journalism, because the deadline is always _„as soon as possible”._ 

Stylistic procedures are applied in online communication that are combined by specialized studies in the 3Cs: compression, conversion, convergence, and a first textual effect is the conciseness, which knows different degrees and types depending on the type of media and, implicitly, the text, since on this medium the communication unit is the _bit_ . The consubstantial interactivity of digital logic raises dialogue to the status of the main communication process. Thus, interactivity, transactivity, dialogue write new media texts. 

The traditional boundries between the so-called "serious" and "objective" writing actually means a mix of common methods, predictable expressiveness, detachment exercises, a simplistic theatricalisation of sobriety. This sobriety betrays what we have called an invisible, indigestible, powerful (until desemantized) ritualized writing. The transfer of expressiveness from the area (also overstated) of talent, inspiration, predisposition to the area of false ethical 

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and deontological pressures provoked (in my opinion) this still recoverable cleavage between _soft_ writing and _hard_ writing. 

The absence of nuance, expressivity, emotion does not automatically imply correct, just information. As the exaggerated coloring of the text (through rhetorical and semantic figures) - itself at a point of ritualization - does not immediately imply pseudo-advent or pseudo-information. Exaggerating expressivity and deontological anguish are diseases that have divided media expression into false territories of seriousness and entertainment. And these linguistic simplifications fertilize two ontological-professional fields, namely serious media and entertainment media. 

Thus, from expression, we reach a ritualization of the content and we assume, at least in the Romanian media, identical types of subjects that follow in a predictable temporal logic for anyone with minimal media literacy. We can talk here of a ritualization of the frequency criterion (from the series of _newsworthiness_ criteria), a criterion that takes into account the frequency, on the other hand a predictable synchronization of the content with the public agenda. I refer here to materials specific to the various fixed moments of the social calendar: start of the school year, winter holidays, other events with a cyclical frequency in the social agenda, etc. 

In these cases, for example, professional procedures have turned into rituals, a phenomenon that we observe at the level of expression. Thus, in the case of the beginning of the school year, the types of subjects are the same and follow the logic of the positive or negative peaks – students / teacher heroes (those with international acadamic achievements), respectively, deplorable conditions of the romanian educational institutions. We also recall other subjects with the same ritual weight: the cost of school supplies, the overcrowding of kindergartens, the absence of textbooks. 

As it is well known, the difference between procedure and ritual is given by the positioning of the issuer. If, in the case of procedures, we are talking about a set of operations that the issuer has at its disposal to collect, select and 

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hierarchize information about an (unforeseen) fact, and the result is extra information, plus knowledge, in the ritual, the fact is specifically selected to respond to limited professional functionality - predictable, expected and therefore sought. The informational effect, the knowledge effect does not exceed the level of confirmation. In other words, the information burden is not the workload of professional efforts, but the dose of acceptability and predictability. 

## **Conclusions** 

This repetition also extends to writing, so that we come to talk about and cultivate fixed formulas, formulas that go beyond the boundaries of the syntagm and proceed to phrases and paragraphs. This, let's say, conformism also reveals an anemia of professional profiles. The search for the predictable and not of the event has opened yet another path, the expressive over-reacing of which I was talking above. The absence of the social event leaves room for the linguistic event. The evaluation, over-reaching, over-interpretation (to remain in the area of still acceptable procedures) covers an informational goal under the pretext of _popular culture_ . 

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