What is a media event?

According to Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, a media events are "high holidays of mass communication" and also "genres of media communication that may be defined syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels." They later proceed to describe the three "scripts" of a media event: the contest, the conquest and the coronation. According to these descriptions, there were many large global media events of the twenty first century. A couple media events of this century include natural disasters, September 11th, and the 2008 election.

Personally, I feel September 11th was a major media event for this century. September 11th devastated the lives of not only Americans, but people around the world as well. Through media and communication, the world was updated constantly. I was a child and in school at the time of the attack. Once I got home from school, the television was on and I was informed of the attack, as was the rest of the world. September 11th had a major impact on the United States, but also countries as well. It very quickly became known that this attack was a war of terrorism which would involve countries around the world.

Dayan, Daniel and Katz, Elihu. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge Massachusetts, London England: Harvard University Press, 1992.