What is a Media Event?

According to Andreas Hepp and Nick Couldry, a media event is a, “‘single,’ ‘outstanding’ ritual ceremony in media communication” (Hepp and Couldry, 2). The media event is highlighted, today, through news channels, websites, and newspapers. According to Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, there are three basic “scripts” of media events: The contest, the conquest, and the coronation (Dayan and Katz, 25-28). The Contest is comprised of actual competition. The most prominent “contest” I can remember would be the 2008 Election. The second script, the “conquest” was also seen in this election when Obama won. Eventually, we saw the “coronation,” the final script, when the celebration of Obama’s victory was seen on news stations everywhere, through his presidential inauguration. This coronation, consisting of a “ceremony,” (Dayan and Katz, 26) is addressed as a “Media Event” throughout the news, prior to it actually happening. We also know that Obama’s election into the presidency was, “something anticipated and looked forward to, like a holiday,” (12) exactly how Dayan and Katz describe a “media event.”

Hepp and Couldry also state that, “With the distribution of media products across different national borders and the emergence of the Internet, global communicative connectivity grows, making the thickenings of national ‘media cultures’ relative and overlapping. One must contextualize such national ‘media events’ as part of different media networks” (10). Here, we see that global news today, with the help of the internet, can make a single media event a global phenomenon in just minutes. In the case of the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, there was global interest and media coverage throughout the world within days. In the documentary, For Neda, we see a young American man hacking through computer codes in order to get access to the cell-phone video recording of Neda’s death. This media event caused chaos not only in Iran, but in other countries, interested in the welfare of the Iranians under Ahmadinejad’s unfair rule.

Of course, my global media event of the 21^st century was the September 11, 2001 attack. I specifically remember kids being called out of classes in my middle school, and eventually being told what had happened by my 6^th period, sixth grade Italian teacher. This media event was epic, not only for me and my classmates, but for the whole country. TV, Newspapers, and Online news were smothered with 9/11 News for weeks, creating a “monopolizing” effect on all aspects of media communication (Hepp and Couldry, 11). Even today, this media event still influences the news, the current war our country is in, and media events that will occur in the future.

1. Dayan, Daniel, and Elihu Katz. Media Events: the Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992. Print.

2. Couldry, Nick, and Andreas Hepp. Introduction: Media Events in a Global Age. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. Print.

3. For Neda. Dir. Anthony Thomas. HBO, 2010. Documentary.