Couldry (2004) discusses “how the ritualised dimensions of media practice may have an ordering role in relation to other practices. The difficult question” he goes on to point out “is how far this anchoring role extends across social practice in general”. He mentions “as seen on TV” and aspects of celebrity culture as examples of media practice anchoring other social practices (shopping etc.)
This has some similarities with Crawford and Rutter’s idea that the social impacts on how gamers game, as well as gamers drawing upong gaming frameworkd and approaches in non-game social settings. I discussed this in my last post, and if we now add Couldry’s idea of media practices ordering or anchoring other social practices more generally we can see a bigger framework emerging that includes gaming practice within the broader everyday social world we live in.
While this isn’t a gaming example, I’m reminded of a friend’s amusement at me when I was in Japan, he’d asked what drink I wanted from a vending machine and I’d replied “anything with a character on it”. I’m wondering if this “anything with a character on it” has some equivalence to “as seen on TV”. That is, both are types of media practice that tell us about another type of practice, in this case choosing a drink (consumerism, quenching ones thirst, etc). But my choice of the 7 or 8 types of drinks was ordered around media practice – which of the drinks did I see as more valued, desirable because of its anchoring in the media/merchandise practice.
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