Medical Rituals and Media Rituals

Abstract

In the present article the author examines the ritual elements of theprofessionalization during medical studies, and its interference with media content of medical significance, comparing the role of medical and media rituals on the way of becoming a doctor. It is to be explored how these medical soap operas, medical dramas, medical thrillers or crime stories do exert influence on medical identity and role expectations. Do medical students and their relatives (withmedical expertise frequently) identify themselves with these roles? Is their way of reception critical or naïve? How media rituals are organizing, modulating the students’ medical perception and expectations. Is there a mediated “shadow initiation” via media or it is excluded and denied? Does it perfuse the common social experience of becoming a doctor via peer communication and peer shapingof model behavior? We search the answers in the context of a theory of media rituals.

Keywords

• medical initiation
• professionalization
• medical drama
• media ritual
• abject gaze
• narrative analysis
• bioethics teaching