Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History

Assigned by Mirca for Media & Culture Seminar. Highly relevant to larger thinking about mass media society. Probably will be used for first substantive paper.

Bibliographic Deets
Dayan, Daniel & Katz, Elihu. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Harvard University Press. 1992.

Overview

 * Personal and social experiences are now heavily mediated, making events in media broadcasting (particularly TV) as important as (but very different than) social events that previously had to be experienced physically (in situ).

Defining Media Events

 * Events "such as the olympics" (1)
 * "If festive viewing is to ordinary viewing what holidays are to the everyday, these events are the high holidays of mass communication." (1)
 * "they are, by definition, not routine. In fact, they are interruptions of the routine" (5)
 * "in the most characteristic events, the interruption is monopolistic, in that all channels switch away from their regularly schedule programming to turn to the great event" (5)
 * The event is live (5) events are transmitted as they occur, in real time.
 * live & remote + interrupted but preplanned (aka developed, advertised) (7)
 * "these broadcasts events are presented with reverence and ceremony" (7)
 * "these ceremonies electrify very large audiences - a nation, several nations, or the world. They are gripping, enthralling. They are characterized by a norm of viewing in which people tell each other that it is mandatory to view... They cause viewers to celebrate the event by gathering before the television set in groups ... These broadcasts integrate societies in a collective heartbeat and evoke a renewal of loyalty to the society and its legitimate authority" (8-9)


 * Why study this?
 * 1) because they attract large audiences "attending to the same stimulus at the same time" (14)
 * 2) because they use "the rare realization of the full potential of electronic media  technology" (15) -> the one to many is JUST one to many
 * 3) "media events create their own constituencies" (15) -> event creates a community/network
 * 4) media events can "declare a holiday" "play a part in the civil religion" (16)
 * 5) "reality is uprooted by media events. If the event originates in a particular location, that location is turned into a Hollywood set." (17)
 * 6) "media events give insight into the aesthetics of television production" (18)
 * 7) They are "shades of political spectacle" -> not necessarily fascism, but part of it at times (18)
 * 8) can be " a response to prior events or social crisis" after the fact, sometimes year or years later (20)
 * 9) "intrinsically liberating function, ideologically; they serve a transformative function" (20)
 * 10) Is this "an expression of a neo-romantic desire for heroic action by great men followed by the spontaneity of mass action" (21)
 * 11) "Rhetoric of media events" (21)
 * 12) "media events privilege the home. This is where the "historic" version of the even is on view, the one that will be entered into collective memory." (22)
 * 13) "media events preview the future of television" "television replaced [radio] as the medium of national integration" (23)

Contest, Conquest, Coronation

 * Three types of "media events"
 * 1) Contest -> includes "the olympics" "they are rule governed battles of champions. They enlist hundreds of millions of spectators. Sometimes they are defined as play, sometimes as real, but the stakes are always very high" (26)
 * 2) Conquest -> "live broadcasting of 'great leaps for mankind'"
 * 3) Coronation -> "all ceremony" (26)


 * [I am focusing on the Contest for the purpose of my China Basketball & Global Media Paper]


 * "The story of an event cannot be told without form, and the form carries meaning" (30) "It follows that the retellings (and retellings and retellings) that characterize television's great events deserve careful analysis"


 * "Contests pit evenly matched individuals or teams against each other and bid them to compete according to strict rules" (33)
 * e.g. Olympics


 * "In the case of Contests, television typically underscores the rivalry between competing sides." "It is no coincidence that national rivalries play such an important part in the narration of Olympic Games" (38)


 * "Contests enlist the audience in two roles that are, in fact, contradictory. One of these is the role of partisan - to root for the home team as a committed loyalist. The other is to decide who won, to act as a referee." (41)

Performing Media Events

 * Television is "not reporting an event, but actively performing it" (91)
 * "They are not simply transmitting and event or commenting upon it; they are bringing it into existence" (91)

Reviewing Media Events

 * Effects on Organizers and Principals
 * 1) "Public commitment to mount an event makes the organizers politically vulnerable before the event takes place" (190)
 * 2) "During the event, principals are cast in mythic roles" (191)
 * 3) "The live broadcasting of an event creates pressure on the event to succeed" (191)
 * 4) "The live broadcasting enhances the status of principals, conferring both legitimacy and charisma during the event and after" (192)
 * 5) "Media events liberate leaders to act more or differently than they otherwise might" (192)


 * Effects on Journalists & Broadcasters
 * 1) "Media events redefine the rules of journalism" (192)
 * 2) "broadcasters are rewarded with status and legitimacy for abandoning their "adversarial" stance in favor of an integrative role" (193)
 * 3) "broadcasters also gain status as 'donors' of an event" (193)
 * 4) "media events provide media organizations with an opportunity to test new formats and to embark on technical experimentation" (194)
 * 5) "the challenge of the event reactivates the often forgotten enthusiasm of the beginnings of television" (194)


 * Effects on Viewers
 * 1) "interrupt the rhythm and focus of people's lives" (195)
 * 2) "the live broadcast transforms the ordinary roles of viewers, causing them to assume the roles proposed by the script of the ceremony" (195)
 * 3) "Media events five new status to the living room"
 * 4) creates "utopian openness to alternative possibilities" (195)
 * 5) "the event creates an upsurge of fellow feeling, and epidemic of communitas" "parties are organized, reuniting families, friends, and neighbors" (196)
 * 6) "event connects center and periphery" (196) "through direct communion with central symbols and values"
 * 7) "media events offer moments of 'mechanical solidarity'" (196)
 * 8) "redefine boundaries of societies" (197)
 * 9) "the success of the event is a cathartic event for viewers" (197)
 * 10) "empathic experiences which media events engender- sharing another nation's inner feelings" (198)


 * Effects on Public Opinion
 * 1) "confer status on the institutions with which they deal" (199) "thus sports and athletes are reinforced by the Olympic Games"
 * 2) "focus public opinion" (199)
 * 3) "encouraging or inhibiting the expression of preferences, values, or beliefs" (199)
 * 4) "attitude changes of major magnitude" (200)
 * 5) "crystallize latent trends in public opinion, giving voice" (200)
 * 6) "serve as catalysts to unexpected social movements" (200)
 * 7) "media events affect the international image of the society in which they take place" (201)


 * And many other "effects" section continue, with highlights::


 * From "Effects on Collective Memory" -> "media events are electronic monuments" (211)

Appendix

 * Worth a re-read in the future as it has sections like "Five Frames for Assessing the Effects of Media Events"

From reading At Cambridge