Media Events

From media events to my events: Chinese mediated festivals in the digital era1

“…We propose to understand contemporary mediated festivals through a lens of events. In their book Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (1992) , Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz proposed the term ‘media events’ as an assemblage of three elements: a ceremony that ‘interrupts the flow of daily life (syntactics)’, ‘sacred matters (semantics)’ that draw audience attention, and ‘responses (pragmatics) from a committed audience’ (1992: 14). Studying television live-broadcasting as pre-planned media events, Dayan and Katz argue that media can recreate ‘mechanical solidarity’ amongst the mass audience through modern technologies of social coordination (e.g., broadcast schedule, satellite distribution) with television as a ‘sacred center’.…”

“…Studying television live-broadcasting as pre-planned media events, Dayan and Katz argue that media can recreate ‘mechanical solidarity’ amongst the mass audience through modern technologies of social coordination (e.g., broadcast schedule, satellite distribution) with television as a ‘sacred center’. For them, ceremonial media events are central to societies because they are endowed to pre-empt people’s time and attention rather than ‘media-distorted spectacles’ (1992: 32). While Dayan and Katz aptly noted correlations between different media systems and event operations, they do not assert media centricity as the focus of their research.…”

“…With our findings, we demonstrate how mediated festivals increasingly mediate the Chinese young people’s display of the ‘networked self’ (Papacharissi, 2011) in a hybrid environment. Building on Dayan and Katz’s (1992) conception of ‘media events’ and our empirical findings, we propose to understand contemporary mediated festivals through a lens of ‘my events’ in three aspects. First, my events are integrated rather than an interruption of everyday life.…”

(Re)writing history: Examining the cultural work of the obituary and journalists’ construction of a former president’s legacy

“…In modern societies, the media sit at the core of experiences of death and collective mourning, and a series of mediatized rituals of bereavement mark the deaths of public figures in particular (Dayan and Katz, 1992). The news media have become ‘the main social platform in which public grief is constructed and delivered’ and determine what voices are ‘telling the society’s story and shaping its collective memory’ in the aftermath of a public figure’s death (Avital, 2019: 4).…”

W(h)ither Media Events? Building a Typology for Theorizing Exceptional Events that Break with the Norm in a Complex Media Landscape

“…Before assessing the ways in which more recent studies have sought to refine and reinvigorate the concept of media events, it is first worth briefly noting the original definition put forward by Dayan & Katz (1992). It referred to live events that interrupt daily routines and schedules, are preplanned and organized outside the media by large public or other bodies, involve ceremonial elements that are presented with reverence and electrify very large audiences (my emphasis, ibid: 4-8).…”