What is a Media Event?

The term "media event" was coined by Dayan and Katz in 1992 in order to describe phenomenon in media[1]. In order to help define what separates "media events" from regular media and typical events, Dayan and Katz have essentially three criteria, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic level. On a syntactic level, a media event must dominate the media for a given period, leaving little time for the mass media to talk about anything else. On a semantic level, they must be presented as something with historic significance, the kind of thing you'll tell your grandkids about. Finally, on a pragmatic level, they must simply entrance a large segment of the population. If an event meets all three of these criteria, it's a media event[2].

Media events, according to Dayan and Katz, fall into three categories. They can be divided into to the contest, the conquest, and the ritual, with the drama being who will succeed, will the hero succeed, and will the ritual succeed, respectively. Things such as the Olympics and the World Cup fall into the contest category, wars and the moon landing fall into the conquest category, and coronations and funerals generally fall into the ritual category [3].

A truly behemoth media event will typically be followed by the statement "everyone remembers where they were when...", such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, and most recently the attacks on the World Trade Center of September 11th, 2001, better known as simply 9/11, which is indisputably the most significant media event of the 21st century for Americans. The WTC attacks dominated every channel for weeks. It was an attack so horrific that even comedies such as Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart paid their respects. By the Dayan/Katz criteria, 9/11 clearly fits all the prerequisites. Syntactically, the World Trade Center attacks were all anyone heard about for weeks. Semantically, 9/11 has effected foreign policy, every following election, domestic policy, brought about the Patriot Act, was a catalyst for two wars, and effected every plane ride anyone traveling in America has had since. Finally pragmatically, the World Trade Center attacks enthralled an incredibly large segment of the American population, as well as people around the world. For the next few days people were glued to the news, waiting to hear about people who had been pulled from the wreckage, first responders who lost their lives, more details on how the event happened, who was responsible, and what was being done to bring them to justice. Of the three categories of media events, the WTC attacks of September 11th probably fell under the "conquest" category, as it was something so incredibly out of the ordinary for the American people. There hadn't been an attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor, and the fact that it involved such a catastrophic civilian death-toll shocked and appalled the American people. The "heroes" of the media event were the firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and other first responders risking their lives in the dangerous rubble of the World Trade Centers to save the lives of those trapped.

John Fiske argues any major event of the modern era can be considered a media event, as any significant event that takes place will receive plenty of media attention. He even goes as far to say that the event is as important as it is because of it's media coverage, as without the media attention the given event receives, it wouldn't be followed and known by such a large amount of people, and therefore wouldn't have an impact[4].

With the idea in mind that events are only important if they are in fact media events, the phenomenon of media events is a telling example of how mass communication/media impact the real world.

[1] Couldry, Nick/Hepp, Andres. Media Events in a Global Age. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. Book. p1.

[2] Dayan, Daniel/Katz, Elihu. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. United States of America: First Harvard University Press, 1992. Book. p9-14.

[3] Couldry, Nick/Hepp, Andres. Media Events in a Global Age. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. Book. p2.

[4] Couldry, Nick/Hepp, Andres. Media Events in a Global Age. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. Book. p6.