Media event
Media event is one in the media and communication studies specifically used term that refers to the media coverage of an important event that happened except medially and is perceived on the basis of active Mitwirkens of the mass media by the public as something special.
Features
According to the authors of the tape media events of the modern media events have the following characteristics:
- Compaction social ( transnational ) communication;
- Retroactivity of the media event on the development of media and
- A wide range of many different media of memory.
Examples
Media events such as the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 in the United States, the funeral of Pope John Paul II, the Olympic Games, the Football World Cup 2006 ( 715 million viewers), royal weddings, certain national holidays and observances (Diana Spencer's funeral - allegedly 2.5 billion people ), the television broadcast of the moon landing point in 1969 (50 % of the transmitter switched worldwide) or the opening of the Berlin wall in 1989 as a threshold phases of the Special (Victor Turner) on meaningful cultural contexts, the increasing influence on the orientation and acquire meaning deals in the media society.
Pseudo events
In a media society, the media must also produce themselves out of the economic competition out more and more and distinguishing it from other media. In order to draw attention to themselves, initiate media every now and then specifically for the purpose of reporting communication events, which is no other than media events based. For such cases has been in the communication science in the last few years the concept of pseudo event made a career dating back to the historian Daniel Boorstin. Boorstin has the early 1960s to the study " The Image. A Guide to Pseudo- Events in America presented ".
Theory
Since the late 1970s, the Israeli communications scholar Elihu Katz - later together with the French media researcher Daniel Dayan - continuously developed an anthropologically oriented theory approach, which is one of the most distinctive designs for the study of media events ( media events) in modern societies. In particular, her 1992 published book " Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History ", whose scientific reflection of the emergence of national and often international, and global ritual Communities shall apply in a few cases as a result of media events and the particular production function of television, can be used as milestone within the cultural studies media and communication research are considered.
That the ritual theoretical media event research by Katz and Dayan has now achieved international fame is due not only to the numerous theoretical links efforts to their scientific work. Likewise, a number of predominantly interdisciplinary research projects in this direction was the media event research pursued in recent years more and more - even if can not yet speak of an established, systematic research: Theoretical compounds can be identified, for example, to cultural studies that employ recently also the media and communication studies, as well as the ritual research with the media event theory.
State of research
Also in Germany the work of Dayan and Katz have now achieved a certain notoriety, even if available so far only a few studies and cursory references to their ritual theory approach. By contrast, the French media event research focused especially in the work of the philosopher and historian Pierre Nora (* 1931). In contrast to Dayan and Katz Nora assumes that it is the media itself that generate events and thus a eventness. They do it in different ways: Each medium - whether radio, press and television - Manufactures special, his own events. Overall, however, work all the media following the same logic: they are under the compulsion to always have to produce new events, and have a gigantic detector system designed to detect anything that might attract the attention of the audience. It therefore produces many events by the media, which does not mean that they must be artificial.