For Carey, this connection to religion helps to emphasize the concept of shared beliefs and ceremony that are fundamental to the ritual view.
To support this idea, Carey refers to the messaging systems of ancient Egypt wherein, "transportation and communication were inseparably linked" and served as a method of control.
In contrast, for Carey a ritual view embeds the communication process in the broader sets of cultural traditions and social relations.
[15] Yet, Carey himself was inspired and influenced by a number of well-known philosophers and theorists, in particular, John Dewey, Harold Innis, and Marshall McLuhan.
[16] Moreover, Carey’s ritual and transmission view of communication, as Adam writes, draw largely from what Harold Innis implied in his work.
Specifically, that media influences and contributes to the fabric of society, and its maintenance over the course of time relies on dissolution of the tensions in communication, that is its ritual and transmission forms.
[17] In A Cultural Approach to Communication, Carey also references Marshall McLuhan’s assertion that, "the one thing of which the fish is unaware is water."
In so doing, James W. Carey supports the concept of "the symbolic production of reality", or what humans engage in, often unconsciously, as part of daily life, which forms the foundation for both of the ritual and the transmission views of communication.
[18] In order to elaborate on his ritual view, and specifically its religious connotations, Carey uses an example of mass media, the newspaper.
Carey details human interaction with newspapers to add another dimension to the ritual view, specifically drama.
"[6] In this way, the ritual view of communication is concerned with the presentation of reality in a particular moment in time, and how individuals interact and share in it.
In reference to Carey’s ritual view of communication Twitter enables the establishment, transformation, and maintenance of societal interaction.
That is, users are not a unified, cohesive group, rather a collective of individuals with often contrasting perspectives, seeking to find those who share their specific views.