Tradition and Technology in Local Newscasts: The Social Psychology of Form

Abstract

In Counter-Statement, Kenneth Burke distinguishs between the psychology of form and the psychology of information—meaning as brought by readers to a text and as supplied by a text. That distinction can help us understand local news as relevant, formalized, public information, where social standards of relevance (tradition) encounter technologically enhanced and restructured information (technology). These two competing presentational modes put into tension sociocultural and technological formalisms, grounding news in shared culture yet creating possibilities for new ways of seeing and understanding the world. Tradition stabilizes thought even as the new technologies rescore our senses of time and place, and both energize our lives.