Media Events Research Paper

The ideal type of media event can be defined according to form, substance, and outcome (adapted from Dayan and Katz 1992). Formally, media events are interruptions of normal broadcasting routines for the live presentation of preplanned events, organized by agencies other than the media. Substantively, media events are presented with reverence and ceremony and are declared historic; they usually aim at reconciliation and emphasize the voluntary actions of heroic individuals (see Carey 1998 on conflict media events). The ideal type outcomes of media events are that they enforce a norm of viewing, exciting large audiences, who celebrate and renew loyalties, integrating their societies. Media events, then, fall within the category of secular and political ritual in modern life (Rothenbuhler 1998).

Outside the scholarly literature there are two related uses of the term media event. Among the professionals who coordinate events for media coverage, a media event is anything like a press conference, public appearance, or photo opportunity arranged for the purposes of media coverage. The corresponding pejorative use of the term casts a media event as a ‘pseudoevent’ (Boorstin 1961), as something without stature independent of media coverage. There are important grounds for criticism of the media in these regards that will be addressed below. These criticisms should not distract, however, from the evident social functions of genuinely special media events.

The live television broadcast of the funeral of President John F. Kennedy and the surrounding events attracted an extraordinary audience. For extended periods of time it appears a majority of all Americans were watching and hearing the same events at the same time on television. These were ceremonial events that followed a social crisis and preceded a return to normality. Research conducted at the time showed that huge numbers of people were attending to the television coverage, reporting that they thought it important, and rearranging their schedules to watch it, often in groups of family and friends. Many people also reported symptoms of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty in the days following the assassination, which receded to normal levels in the days and weeks following the televised funeral (Greenberg and Parker 1965).

Every four years the broadcasting media interrupt their normal schedules for special coverage of the Olympic games, a large, regularly reoccurring event, organized by agencies officially independent of the media. Much of the coverage is live and both broad-casters and audiences betray an ethical preference, in criticizing edited and tape-delayed coverage and packaged programming segments. Media agents emphasize the importance of the games within and beyond sports; they make frequent historical comparisons and provide coverage of preceding and concurrent social, political, and cultural events. The games attract an audience that is unusually large, heterogeneous, and attentive. They are more likely than normal television audience members to be in groups, to be eating and drinking, to have planned their viewing ahead of time, to have rearranged their schedule to accommodate the viewing, and to have visitors from outside the home (e.g., Rothenbuhler 1988).

Though the televised Kennedy funeral and the Olympic games might be thought to fall in different categories of seriousness, they have many indicators of seriousness in common. As in such diverse examples as Anwar Sadat’s first trip to Jerusalem, the funeral of Lord Mountbatten, the early trips of Pope John Paul II, or selected Senate hearings, the television coverage itself takes on a ceremonial style and the audience is recruited into a sense of participation at a distance.

The whole of the event, the coverage, and the audience activity constitutes a new event, a media event that is constructed as and functions as a ritual in mediated communication.

If the media event constitutes a ritual, and it is not a false one, that has major implications for social theory more broadly. The face-to-face context is conventionally presumed to be necessary for ritual and ceremony; such communicative products as television or newspaper coverage, commemorative art, or memoirs are considered byproducts. The audience on the scene usually is considered primary, and may participate in the ceremony as congregation or witness. Media audiences usually would be considered secondary spectators. In the media event, though, the happenings in the face-to-face context are only a part of the event, no more important than the coverage and the activities of the at-home audience. The audience on the scene of a state funeral media event, for example, plays a role on the stage of the event, while the audience at home becomes the official audience, or even a kind of dispersed congregation.

The media event is comparable to the broadcast distribution of religious ritual, both in its apparent functions for audiences and in the questions it raises for analysts. Broadcast coverage of a ritual would not appear to be the same thing as the ritual, anymore than a painting of a scene could be mistaken for the scene. Yet, observation consistently shows that for the faithful the broadcast coverage can function as participation in the ritual and have many of the same effects that physical participation would have. Who is to tell the faithful that television viewing does not count, if their belief and behavior confirms that it is special in their experience, and if religious leaders encourage such behavior and confirm their feelings? While the Pope himself has on occasion blessed the television audience, research shows that both commercial entertainment dramas devoted to religious subjects and apparently exploitative, money-raising television preachers also inspire genuine faith and devotional activity in some of their audience. Much of the television audience of Lady Diana’s funeral also, like the audience for the Kennedy funeral 35 years earlier, acted as if and felt themselves to be participating in the mourning. Of course the audience at home does not get wet if it rains, but that may not matter for meanings and effects that can work through mediated communication. The implication is that the media event is a new form for the ritual and ceremony that Durkheim (1912 1965) argued provides the quasireligious foundations of society.

Media events can invite critical, if not cynical, responses as opportunities for duplicity and bad faith abound. The intense audience attention they inspire is highly desirable to the media, their commercial or governmental sponsors, and the organizers of events. The ceremonial attitude is vulnerable to manipulation for political or commercial gain. The quasi-religious aspects can appear as pre-modern residuals, as failures

of rationality. Any given media event may deserve its critics, but when criticism is an intellectual habit not informed by the specifics of the case, then it is an instance of the larger category of distrust of mass communication. That twentieth century attitude can be traced back through a history of distrust of the image, all the way to Plato. But there are substantive grounds for concern as well.

Inevitably the work routines, technical requirements, and institutional values of media institutions come to bear on would-be media events. The most attractive, dynamic, or compelling parts of a ceremony or event may be scheduled for the greater convenience of the media or the easier access of large audiences. Scheduling of concurrent or succeeding portions of the event can be arranged to make it easy for television crews to move from one to the other, and to minimize the chances of either long periods of waiting or being caught by surprise. The scene itself can be accommodated to television cameras, with greater emphasis on a fixed central stage and activities that are highly visual, colorful, featuring dramatic movement, and adaptable to television scheduling. Television coverage will bring some of its own habits to bear as well, including close-up shots of emotional reactions and the reduction of complex events to simple narratives of personal tragedy, redemption, and triumph. As the work routines and values of the media come to bear on events, they alter those events and shift the balance of power among the sponsoring agencies, media, and audiences—and some of what is unique and valuable about media events depends on that balance of power. The ceremonial aspect of media events is quite distinct from what is normally expected of news coverage. There is reason for concern that that aspect could be misused, and that the attitudes and behaviors appropriate to ritual and ceremony might spread to other domains where they would not be appropriate. Becker (1995), Chaney (1983, 1986), Liebes (1998), and others have pointed to dangers of ritualizing media coverage. Politicians will prefer ceremonial treatment as it implies their actions are that much more important, while giving journalists and the public reason to regard them reverentially rather than suspiciously. From the media point of view, interrupting normal programming for special coverage can give the audience special reason to watch, it can enhance the status of the journalists and their channel, and the excitement can be its own reward. There are pressures, then, to ritualize even small events such as the opening of a press conference. Simultaneously, we can expect media organizations to be on their guard for any event large enough to warrant special coverage and the claim to being a participant in historic events. Such tendencies can short-circuit rational consideration and democratic process, and diffuse the resource of audience attention.

In sum, media events represent an important, new social form of dispersed ceremony. It is a form that raises important questions. On the one hand are questions about the power of communication and the necessity of the face-to-face context. On the other hand are the host of questions arising from the incongruity of serious, quasireligious social functions being served by media normally devoted to entertainment and profit. It is a form that can be abused or inappropriately imitated by politicians, government, the media, and other institutional interests.

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