Media event
Media event is a term specifically used in media and communication studies that describes media reporting on a significant event that occurs outside the media and is perceived by the public as something special due to the active participation of the mass media .
features
According to the authors of the volume Media Events of the Modern Age , media events have the following characteristics:
- Condensation of social (transnational) communication;
- Retroactive effect of the media event on the development of the media and
- a wide range of many different media of memory.
Examples
Media events such as the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA , the funeral of Pope John Paul II , the Olympic Games , the 2006 World Cup (715 million viewers), royal weddings, certain national holidays and memorial days ( Diana Spencer's funeral service - allegedly 2.5 billion people), the television broadcast of the moon landing in 1969 (50% of the channels connected worldwide) or the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as threshold phases of the special ( Victor Turner ), refer to significant cultural contexts that are increasingly influencing orientation. and gain meaningful offers in the media society.
Pseudo-events
In a media society, however , the media have to produce more and more themselves out of the competitive economic situation and differentiate them from the other media. In order to attract attention, the media occasionally initiate communication events that are not based on external events for the purpose of reporting. For such cases, the term “pseudo-event”, which goes back to the historian Daniel Boorstin , has made a career in communication studies in recent years . In the early 1960s, Boorstin published the study “The Image. A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America ” .
theory
Since the late 1970s, the Israeli communication scientist Elihu Katz - later together with the French media researcher Daniel Dayan - has continuously developed an anthropologically oriented theoretical approach that represents one of the most prominent designs for the investigation of media events in modern societies. In particular, her 1992 book "Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History" , whose scholarly reflection on the emergence of national, often international, and in a few cases also global ritual communities as a result of media events and the special staging function of television, can be seen as a milestone within the cultural media and communication research.
The fact that Katz and Dayan's ritual-theoretical media event research has meanwhile achieved international fame is not only due to the numerous theoretical attempts to tie in with their scientific work. Likewise, a series of predominantly interdisciplinary research projects in this direction have pushed media event research further and further in recent years - even if it has not yet been possible to speak of an established, systematized research focus: Theoretical connections to cultural studies , for example, can be identified, but have recently been dealt with Media and communication sciences and ritual research also deal with media event theory.
State of research
In Germany , too, Dayan and Katz's work has meanwhile achieved a certain level of awareness, even if so far only isolated studies and cursory references to their ritual theoretical approach have been made. In contrast, French media event research is primarily oriented towards the work of the philosopher and historian Pierre Nora (* 1931). In contrast to Dayan and Katz, Nora assumes that it is the media themselves that generate events and thus an eventfulness. They do it in different ways: each medium - whether radio , press or television - produces special events of its own. All in all, however, all media work according to the same logic: They are forced to keep producing new events and have set up a gigantic detector system in order to track down everything that could attract the audience's attention. So many events are produced by the media, but that does not mean that they have to be artificial.
See also
literature
- Boorstin, Daniel (1987): The Image. A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York [orig. 1962]
- Frank Bösch: European Media Events , in: European History Online , ed. from the Institute for European History (Mainz) , 2010 Accessed on: June 13, 2012.
- Dayan, Daniel (2000): Religious Aspects of Television Reception. Major media events as reflected in the ritual. In: Thomas, Günter (Hrsg.): Religious functions of television? Media, cultural and religious studies perspectives. Opladen, pp. 191-204
- Dayan, Daniel / Katz, Elihu (1992): Media Events. The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge, Mass./London
- Katz, Elihu (1980): Media Events: The sense of occasion. In: Studies in Visual Communication, 6 (1980) 3, pp. 84-89. Cambridge, Mass./London
- Morgner, Christian (2009): World Events and Mass Media. On the theory of the world media event. Studies on John F. Kennedy, Lady Diana and the Titanic, Bielefeld: transcript
- Rothenbuhler Eric W. (1988b): The Living Room Celebration of the Olympic Games. In: Journal of Communication, 38 (1988) 4, pp. 61-81
- Weichert, Stephan Alexander (2006): The crisis as a media event. About September 11th on German television. Cologne.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensions/2009-3-118
- ↑ a b c Tobias Moorstedt: TV event Kate and William: The billion prophecy in southern Germany from April 28, 2011.
- ↑ See estimate BEFORE the broadcast: Frank Junghänel: FAREWELL FROM DIANA ALSO ON GERMAN TV: 2.5 billion viewers worldwide from September 5th, 1997.
- ^ Daniel Joseph Boorstin : The Image. A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New edition: Vintage Books 1992, ISBN 0679741801 .
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20140306233549/http://cf.hum.uva.nl/benaderingenlk/dui/ca/dui-ca-midden-4.htm#Nora