Media Events

Golda Meir's relationship with the gender issue and the feminist movement was complex and ambivalent. This was evident both on the level of public perception in Israel and around the world, and on that of her own identity as a female leader or as a feminist. In 1977, the now defunct Israel Broadcasting Authority’s Channel 1 aired the television program This is Your Life in which Meir was the main guest. While covering mainly Meir's political biography, the three-hour program touched sometimes on the gender issue. This article focuses on examining the latter topic. Through critical viewing and qualitative content analysis of the program, the study sought to examine whether and how the issue of gender stood out throughout Meir's public career. The broadcast was found to include forty-seven gender references. These were classified into six main thinking patterns, among them, Meir's consistent identification with the domestic sphere; her framing as a leader with “feminine” character traits such as humanity, motherhood, and warmth; questioning her leadership ability in relation to “masculine” issues, such as national security; and many references to her personal relationships. The theoretical novelty of the present article lies in the possibility that it proposes examining the biography of a political leader not only through archival documents and collections but also through the mass media. Its main empirical conclusion is that in contrast to past research, the gender issue seems to have been prominent and significant throughout Golda Meir's political life.

"In his seminal study of Banal Nationalism (1995), Michael Billig posed an important question; why is it that people in Western nations such as Britain and the USA don’t forget their national identity outside of special commemorations when national flags are waved en masse. He suggested that such events are “not sufficient to sustain a continuingly remembered national identity” (ibid: 45) and pointed instead to the daily reproduction of nations through countless routine symbols and texts. This continues to be a powerful and highly influential thesis and Billig’s arguments have been utilised in a range of studies of both national (cf Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, Edensor, 2002) and other social identities (Cram, 2001, Aksoy & Robins, 2002, Szersknski & Urry, 2002, Beck, 2004, Gorringe, 2006).

However, in largely dismissing national events as “conventional carnivals of surplus emotion” (1995: 45), Billig overlooks the important, and somewhat under-theorised, link between banal and, what I have previously labelled as, ecstatic forms of nationalism (Skey, 2006). In this chapter, I want to focus on this relationship as a means of examining the significance of, and response to, the upsurge in national, mass flag waving events in England over the past decade.

It is my contention that we can use the wider debates surrounding these events as a form of “strategic lens” (Sassen, 2000: 143) with which to study the articulation of national identities at a time of significant social and political change within Britain as a whole .
"

This  theoretically  based  paper  will  explore  the  relationship  between  the  2006  FIFA World  Cup  as  a  global  media  event,  and  the  role  of  (tans-)national  representations within this framework. What significance do forms of nationality have in the context of global, transnational media events? 
I would like to discuss this question by using the example of the construction of national identity through media discourse. Due to the limited extent of the paper, the focus will be on specifically selected studies with regard to constructing German national identity through  national  narratives  and  media  coverage  within  the  scope  of  the  2006  World Cup.

Social media and social networking sites (SNS) in particular have become popular in current humanitarian campaigns. This article assesses the optimism surrounding the opportunities that SNS communication offers for humanitarian action and for the cultivation of cosmopolitan sensibilities. In order to evaluate the mediation of suffering and humanitarian causes through social media, I argue that we need to understand the architectures of social media and SNS in addition to analysing the content of the campaigns drawing on the literature on humanitarian communication. Focusing on the analysis of two humanitarian campaigns through social media, the phenomenally popular and controversial Kony 2012 campaign and WaterForward, the article observes that the architectures of SNS orientate action at a communitarian level which heightens their post-humanitarian style. However, an emerging new genre of reporting and commenting which is termed “polymedia events” can potentially extend beyond the limitations of SNS communication by opening up the space for reflexivity and dialogical imagination.

本文將首先對集體記憶、媒介事件和新媒体事件、媒介事件的集體回憶、新媒体事件的集體記憶四個領域的學術文獻進行梳理和回顧，為關鍵概念確立定義並且根據 「文化傳統-記憶生產者-記憶消費者」這一從受衆出發的分析框架，以此考察兩個問題（1）在新媒體時代，當大眾有機會同時成為記憶生產者和記憶消費者的時候，其集體記憶的形成和再現在多大程度上具有一致性和差異性；（2）這些一致性和差異性反映了新媒體事件集體記憶不同於傳統媒介事件的總體特徵。通過對一組不同階層、年齡、性別的受訪者進行深度訪談，並且對該組受訪者在互聯網上所生產的歷史文本進行文本分析。本研究發現新媒体事件的集體回憶，在不同階層、不同年齡、不同性別的社會群體中，具有一致性。具體表現在於不同社會群體所記憶的單件新媒体事件雷同。但是，本研究亦發現，不同社會群體在對同一件「印象深刻」的新媒体事件的參與程度、具體解讀以及該事件對於個體的意義呈現多樣性。

There was no Berlin Wall and it never fell. In this book I show that these claims are not in any way radical. My book is neither about conspiracy theories, nor about the fragile nature of truth. Instead, it considers the ways in which we recount and remember news stories of historic significance. Focusing on journalists covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and on subsequent retellings of the event, I discuss how storytellers build up certain events so that people in many parts of the world remember them for long periods of time.

This research examined the journalistic coverage of the month following the death of ten statesmen and three cultural figures between 1904 and 1995 in 14 Hebraic newspapers. The analysis leaned on three main theoretical approaches: media events, collective memory and myth. In addition, this investigation leaned upon three theoretical frames commonly used in communication studies: agenda setting, framing and priming.
A wide spectrum of newspapers was selected in order to present a diversified variety of journalistic points of view with respect to the pre-independent era, the post-independent era and the Israeli cultural and political map. To be more specific, this research examined ultra-orthodox, traditional-religious, right wing, conservative, main-stream, left wing and liberal newspapers. Specifically, these are the 14 newspapers that were analyzed: Havazelt, Hashkafa, Hatzfira, Haaretz, Doar Hayom, Hamashkif, Davar, Hazit Haam, Yedioth Achronot, Herut, Al Hamishmar, Hatzofe, Maariv and Hamodia.
The ten political leaders and the three cultural figures were selected, among several other parameters, according to the representation of their death as a pivotal media event. These are the ten politicians that were chosen: Benjamin Zeev Herzl, Haim Arlosorff, Zeev Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Levi Eshkol, David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin. The cultural figures were: Hayim Nachman Bialik, Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Nathan Alterman.
The examination of the journalistic coverage manifested significant differences among these ten political leaders and three cultural figures. That is to say, each one was treated differently with respect to the journalistic practice, coverage and tone. On the one hand, most of the deceased were described and/or glorified as highly esteemed leaders. On the other hand, some newspapers presented the death of certain politicians and cultural figures as marginal events. Furthermore, some newspapers chose to strongly criticize the deceased’s life work or shaped their heritage in an ambiguous or controversial narrative.

„Reichspropagandaminister“  Joseph  Goebbels verkündete in seiner Rede vor den Vertretern der ausländischen Presse unmittelbar vor den Olympischen Spielen 1936, das „scharfe  Instrument  [der  Presse]  in  den  Dienst  des  Friedens und der Wohltat der Völker zu stellen“. Auf inhaltlicher Ebene wurde dieses ‚scharfe Instrument‘ mithilfe der sogenannten Presseanweisungen gelenkt. Hier setzt die vorliegende Arbeit mit der Forschungsfrage an: Welche thematischen Elemente erschließen sich aus den NS-Presseanweisungen der Vorkriegszeit - dem inhaltlichen Steuerungsinstrument der Presselenkung - zu den Olympischen Spielen 1936 in Berlin? 
Der  Schwerpunkt  dieser Studie liegt auf der Analyse von 66 Presseanweisungen mit Bezug auf die  Olympischen Sommerspiele  aus  den  Monaten  Juni,  Juli  und  August  1936.
Diese  bewusste  Auswahl  aus  den  insgesamt  über  100  Presseanweisungen  mit Olympia-Bezug ergab  sich  aus  der Annahme, dass das Gros der wichtigsten Anweisungen zu den Sommerspielen im Zeitraum des Austragungsmonats August und in der achtwöchigen Zeit vor dem Start der Spiele verkündet worden sei. 
Die  ausgewählten  Presseanweisungen  werden  auf  Aussageebene  mittels induktiver  Kategorienbildung  angelehnt  an  die  Methode  der  Grounded  Theory (Glaser/Strauss  1998)  qualitativ  analysiert  und  mithilfe  einschlägiger Sekundärliteratur  kontextuiert  und  interpretiert.

Croatia’s “Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day” (VHTD) is a state-sponsored event that commemorates the 1995 reclaiming of Croatian territories and the end of the Yugoslav war in Croatia. During this live-broadcast spectacle, Croatian people are encouraged to symbolically participate in the holiday and to identify with the story it tells. Dayan and Katz describe media events like these as ‘occasions of the state’. They “are televised as they take place and transfix a nation or the world”. Such events are used to disseminate a dominant state ideology along with specific ideas regarding the nation’s history and its place in the geopolitical map. Using Media Events Theory and combining it with Jeffrey C. Alexander’s work in Social Performance, this thesis argues that VHTD imprints selective war memories into the collective consciousness and that such memories rely on anti-Serb sentiments and distortion of Croatia’s role in the WWII. Semiotic analysis of the footage from VHTD celebrations (1995-2015) along with interviews with Croatia’s two presidents, indicates that VHTD supports ultra-nationalistic ideas that have strengthened the hegemonic influence of the right-wing parties and the Catholic Church. The thesis also argues that VHTD, in its current format, perpetuates the animosity towards neighboring Serbia and creates a ground for future conflicts rather than reconciliation or healing of the cultural trauma caused by the homeland war.

This article traces the trajectory of Baudrillard’s thought on simulation so as to critically compare this concept to the reigning definition of media events (Dayan and Katz, 1992). The present study begins by mapping the relevance of Baudrillard’s work to various subfields within communication, then excavates overlooked categories and under-theorized quantities related to media events within Baudrillard’s work, such as "audiences," "masses," the "individual" and the "social.” In conclusion, Baudrillard’s 1983 essay “The Ecstasy of Communication” (in Foster, 1983) serves as a thought-provoking counterpoint to the idea of media events in its emphasis on networked, fluid and schizophrenic communication. ‘Ecstasy’ remains an important touchstone for an alternative form of communication in a world of increasingly networked beings and hyper-mediated events where the line between consumption and surveillance is getting hazier by the day.

Neste trabalho, intenta-se analisar os processos de circulação da mobilização no microblog Twitter “Eu não mereço ser estuprada”. Para tanto, articulam-se os conceitos de midiatização, circulação e acontecimento, tensionando o modo como as dinâmicas de circulação interferem na constituição do que denominamos acontecimento midiatizado. Para tal, são descritas e analisadas postagens do Twitter para compreender como os atores sociais produzem sentidos acerca desse acontecimento desencadeador, identificando-se marcas discursivas que apontem para estratégias singulares de apreensão e de produção de outros acontecimentos. O acontecimento se midiatiza a partir da ação dos atores que se expressam nas redes por meio de distintos discursos que remetem as suas intencionalidades.

Głównym tematem książki jest proces mediatyzacji polityki podczas amerykańskiej kampanii prezydenckiej 2008 roku i właśnie z nim związana jest podstawowa hipoteza badawcza: media masowe w relacjach z polityką zdobywają pozycję centralną i od nich w większym stopniu zależy, jak te stosunki przebiegają. Chcąc rozbudować to założenie, można wskazać kilka hipotez pomocniczych, które pozwolą na uzyskanie pełnego obrazu mediatyzacji polityki. Po pierwsze, wpływ mediów masowych na system polityczny jest największy na poziomie struktur systemu, co znajduje później odzwierciedlenie w ich funkcjach. Po drugie, media wprowadzają własną logikę – medialną – w funkcjonowanie systemu politycznego, który – dążąc do medialnej obecności – działa według tych „wytycznych”. Po trzecie, media – posługując się określonymi stylami i tematami relacji – konstruują medialną rzeczywistość polityczną, z której społeczeństwo czerpie wiedzę na temat polityki.

Event adalah media komunikasi yang merupakan jembatan untuk meyampaikan suatu maksud atau tujuan dari pemilik event kepada target tertentu. Pada era ini event banyak diselenggarakan sebagai media promosi ataupun informasi. Perguruan Tinggi Raharja adalah lembaga yang bergerak dalam bidang pendidikan berbasis komputer dalam orientasinya. Setiap tahunnya Perguruan Tinggi Raharja selalu mengadakan event yang diadakan secara rutin sesuai dengan jadwal kalender kegiatan akademik yaitu RAKER XII. Dalam sebuah event, Desain Komunikasi Visual merupakan salah satu kebutuhan pokok sebagai sebuah alat penyampaian informasi dari sebuah event. Pengadaan event yang berlangsung biasanya membutuhkan berbagai bentuk media informasi dengan  pesan yang up to date dan jelas, serta membutuhkan nuansa desain yang baru setiap tahunnya. Unsur-unsur tersebut sebagai media penyampaian informasi yang dibutuhkan sebuah event seperti memperkenalkan sebuah event sesuai dengan misi yang diharapkan. Media informasi yang digunakan pada event RAKER XII berupa Banner Family Gathering Raker XII, Banner Raker XII, Banner Raker XII (Keunggulan), Spanduk Raker XII, Spanduk Tema Raker, Spanduk  Selamat Datang Raker XII, Pin Peserta dan Peninjau Raker XII, Umbul-umbul abawah RAKER, dan Cover Buku Renstra. Melalui perancangan Desain Raker XII ini diharapkan akan mendukung serta mensukseskan event Raker XII tahun 2015 pada Perguruan Tinggi Raharja, serta meningkatkan image Perguruan Tinggi Raharja agar dapat lebih dikenal masyarakat luas.

Kata Kunci : Desain Komunikasi Visual, Media Event, Media Informasi

All over the world diplomatic incidents create time and again unexpected concern amongst chanceries, capturing immediately global media attention and public interest. Despite this, their academic treatment remains either fleeting and anecdotal or exclusively focused on detailed analysis of some critical cases that were historically conducive to serious international crises or war. These approaches have been unable however to anticipate the transfiguration undergone by diplomatic incidents into media events. Against this background, this article advances a more comprehensive approach. After some introductory considerations, the notion of 'diplomatic incident' will be examined through four consecutive prisms: the phenomenology of the diplomatic incident as discrete event, or set of related events, rooted in some discernible causes, susceptible to be managed, and able to produce more or less controllable consequences; their consideration as memorable moments that serve as plot for the historical and popular narratives of national pride and shame; their functioning as dispositif through which the diplomatic system signals elements of friction and performs its constant adaptation to the changing functional and normative imperatives of the wider global system; and finally, their transfiguration through intense mediatization, into global media events, whose eruption and effects ostensibly exceed the capabilities of public diplomacy techniques of control. In these circumstances diplomatic incidents reset their old ritual value for testing the consistency of national political imaginaries, but within a completely new context, namely that of a de-territorialized global public sphere.

First of all we wish to reveal certain universally-structuralist qualities, same as culturally-relative features of scandals and their mediation in a non-Western society. Secondly, we will illuminate how the mass media take active part in processing political issues in Japan, where as anywhere else in the media-saturated modern industrial world politicians significantly depend on the media (and vice versa); where political live shows and news programs – including scandals – became an important force, at times driving public sentiment while eventually generating support for opposition; and where wealth and its surplus is inevitably tied to a higher potential to grasp and secure power. We will then proceed to the main part of the paper, where we focus more closely on Japanese political scandals whereby preparing theoretical ground for a discourse analysis in the scandal case study of Ozawa Ichirō – one of the most powerful political heavyweights, and simultaneously one of the epitomes of political corruption in Japan. 1 In our endeavor we were motivated by the fact that there exists plethora of literature on scandals in the west, but a detailed media discourse analysis of Japanese scandals is still lacking in academia worldwide.

In a journal article entitled "'No More Peace!': How Disaster, Terror and War Have Upstaged Media Events" (2007), Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes offered a substantial revision of Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Dayan & Katz, 1992). Katz and Liebes included " dark " events in the " media events " concept, distinguishing unexpected, disruptive events from the carefully scripted, integrative events that had been the sole focus of Media Events. They also claimed that disruptive events – like disaster, terror and war – have in fact upstaged more classical media events. In contrast, in this chapter I argue that ceremonial media events-as originally conceptualized by Dayan and Katz in the nineties-are still essential and powerful features of our social lives. First, I present an overview of the " pessimistic turn " of media events research and provide my criticism of it. Second, I discuss three contemporary case studies from three national contexts: the Obama inauguration (2009), the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton (2011) and the most recent World Cup (2014). These three events represent the three basic scripts introduced by Dayan and Katz: " conquest, " " coronation " and " contest. " I argue that the selected case studies (and many other events) still bring societies and nations together in our " disillusioned " media environment, providing momentary hope for local and cosmopolitan citizens.

ENGLISH (French below):
This paper investigates the main features of media scandal in contemporary Japan. This is important because it can add a fresh interdisciplinary direction in the fields of media studies, journalism, and Japanese philology. Furthermore, the sources from the mainstream media, semi-mainstream tabloids and foreign press were examined vie the lens of neofunctionalism where scandal is approached as a social performance between ritual (motivated expressive behavior) and strategy (conscious strategic action). Moreover, this research illuminates the logic behind the scandal mediation process in Japan, including the performances of both the journalists and the non-media actors, who become decisive for the development of every media scandal. In other words, the social drama of a scandal (and its construction as media event) represents a heterogeneous assemblage of various associated actors that together form a complex " scandal network " depending on their ideological and commercial leanings.

Cet article aborde des traits essentiels des affaires médiatiques dans le Japon contemporain. Il s'agit d'une étude interdisciplinaire qui enrichit non seulement le discours des sciences de médias et du journalisme, mais aussi la pholologie japonaise. L'inspiration théorique s'appuie sur la conception néo-fonctionnaliste du scandale en tant que performance sociale située à la limite du « rituel » (la conduite expressive à la motivation socioculturelle) et de la « stratégie » (une action stratégique délibéreée).

Television's coverage of the tragic events of September 11 can be viewed and understood as a paradigmatic disaster marathon. The salience of the attack's visual images, their exclusivity on the screen for a protracted period, and the invisibility of their perpetrators enhanced the attack's effectiveness. The paper highlights a number of problems that the September 11 disaster marathon poses to the profession of journalism and to society, and points out possible remedies for the future. It ends with a short discussion of the ways in which television's coverage of the event both resembled and differed from the media-event model, and of theoretical aspects of its unique dimensions as a disaster marathon.

What is so eventful about an event movie's arrival to the multiplex, and how does this eventfulness function as both an industry strategy and audience experience? Synthesizing an analysis of trade discourses, promotional campaigns, and manually-curated box office data, this article considers how the concept of eventfulness emerged as a discursive construction and spatiotemporal formation used by the industry to promote moviegoing as more meaningful than other forms of media experience in today's "anywhere-anytime" and "on-demand" culture. Eventfulness situates the movie theater at the center of a specific, layered structure of time-a stretched sense of promotional anticipation and cultural nostalgia which climaxes during an ephemeral moment-and space-a discursive space of cultural buzz leading up to the event, a local experience community marked by fan participation, and an imagined global audience which takes shape through the synchronization of the event as it simulates "live" broadcasting and connects audiences in time.

Media events have been described as broadcasts that involve an engaged audience viewing the same event simultaneously; though this definition is still relevant, the way media outlets interact with and react to their audiences has greatly changed. This is in part due to the emergence of social media platforms which allow a participatory audience, something that genre-specific television channels now rely on. Because these genre-specific, 24-hour channels seek to hook viewers with hyperbolic presentation and the illusion of large media events, the original definition must be adapted.

Global Perspectives on Media Events in Contemporary Society seeks to re-define the role of the media in relaying information about current events within a modern context. Determining what constitutes as and the proper presentation of a media event is of great importance given the ubiquity of media consumption. This book approaches the topic from historical, ceremonial, and globally cultural perspectives while addressing news, sports, and other significant current events. It is a vital resource for students and teachers of communication, media, and journalism, professionals in the media industry, policy makers, and sociologists.

The article argues that after December 2008 the continuous presence in public space in Athens, as well as the spectacular mediatization by news media, of various forms of so-called “anomie” and since 2012 of its spectacular and violent repression by the police, were instrumentalized by the Greek austerity government in an attempt to enhance and manipulate already existing feelings of precarity and insecurity among the population. Organized police operations in public space were turned into ‘media events’. Specifically ‘affective precarity’ is considered as a way of demobilizing precarity as a politically and economically operative concept. The article adopts Lauren Berlant’s analysis of the relation between ‘precarious people’ and the ‘austerity state’, as well as her concept of ‘cruel optimism’. Further, it draws on Paul Virilio’s approach to the administration of fear in relation to contemporary instantaneous means of communication that allow a synchronization of emotions beyond geographical limitations, as well as on Frank Esser and Jeroen Strömbäck’s notion of the contemporary mediatization of social reality and politics.

In January 2012 a moral panic about ‘hoon cyclists’ erupted after sports celebrity Shane Warne had an altercation with a cyclist on St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Warne took to Twitter and posted an account of the event. The altercation served to focus tensions around the positioning of the cyclist in Australian automobility. The concept of ‘acute event’ is combined with a longer history of other kinds of media event, such as ‘moral panics’, to better understand events that are discursively mediated. The role of Warne in the resulting ‘cyclist hoon’ moral panic acute event is an example of the organisational role of ‘celebrity’ in participatory media. Warne’s account of cycling affectively resonates with the other car drivers as the privileged subjects of Australian automobility. This affective resonance organised the discursive field of the moral panic acute event. In this case, the techniques of social media celebrity (to produce an authentic ‘ordinariness’) also produce an affective resonance of Warne’s experience of cyclists as a driver. The folk devil figure of the ‘hoon cyclist’ challenges the hegemonic norms of car-based automobility.

Academic literature on media events is increasingly concerned with their global dimensions and the applicability of Dayan and Katz’s theoretical concept in a post-national context. This article contributes to this debate by exploring the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) as a global media event. In particular, we employ a perspective from ‘inside the media event’, drawing upon empirical material collected during the 2014 Eurovision final in Copenhagen and focusing on the experiences of fans attending the contest. We argue that the ESC as a media event is experienced by its fans as a cosmopolitan space, open and diverse, whereas national belonging is expressed in a playful way tied to the overall visual aesthetics of the contest. However, the bounded and narrow character of participation render this cosmopolitan space rather limited.

The contemporary reformulation of the media events framework often focuses on the transformative role of mobile, video and social networking technologies in a global context, eclipsing another fundamental dimension: the geographically-bounded space of the media event. This article examines the surveillance and control of the physical space by organizers of the media event in an effort to control the wider global narrative extending beyond it, in this case the narrative of the controversial 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. For activists and other actors excluded from contributing to this narrative, infiltration of the physical space represents a potential vehicle for mobilizing media attention and engaging audiences with an alternative interpretation of the spectacle.

‘‘Media events’’ generate conditions of shared attention as many users simultaneously tune in with the dual screens of broadcast and social media to view and participate. We examine how collective patterns of user behavior under conditions of shared attention are distinct from other ‘‘bursts’’ of activity like breaking news events. Using 290 million tweets from a panel of 193,532 politically active Twitter users, we compare features of their behavior during eight major events during the 2012 U.S. presidential election to examine how patterns of social media use change during these media events compared to ‘‘typical’’ time and whether these changes are attributable to shifts in the behavior of the population as a whole or shifts from particular segments such as elites. Compared to baseline time periods, our findings reveal that media events not only generate large volumes of tweets, but they are also associated with (1) substantial declines in interpersonal communication, (2) more highly concentrated attention by replying to and retweeting particular users, and (3) elite users predominantly benefiting from this attention. These findings empirically demonstrate how bursts of activity on Twitter during media events significantly alter underlying social processes of interpersonal communication and social interaction. Because the behavior of large populations within socio-technical systems can change so dramatically, our findings suggest the need for further research about how social media responses to media events can be used to support collective sensemaking, to promote informed deliberation, and to remain resilient in the face of misinformation.

Two different forms of understanding media events have dominated the literature in recent times. One of them, represented by the original framework of Dayan and Katz, proposes that
these extraordinary situations have positive hegemonic effects and cohesive identities. The other one, which seems to predominate nowadays, supports the argument that media events
are performative constructions, open to a multiplicity of voices and readings, which may challenge or reinforce social structures of power. This paper is based on the suspicion that the latter perspective may not offer a complete understanding of media events. The literature which argues in favour of a multiplicity of voices, has adopted a definition of these events that considers occurrences which are not necessarily covered by television and are not transmitted in real time. Conversely, when looking exclusively at events broadcasted live, it seems that this presupposed multiplicity of voices should be examined more critically. Focussing on the live coverage of the rescue of the Chilean miners as a case study, this research uses Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the narratives constructed by two
television stations, one local and another global, in order to identify whether their accounts are hegemonic and cohesive or if they give place to disruptive and contradictory voices. While the limited scope of this research prevents reaching categorical conclusions, the findings suggest that this apparent polyphony is somewhat limited during the event, given that, at least in the case studied, the space for disruptive and subversive accounts seems to be scarce.

Recent work on media events has questioned their integrative function, arguing that they operate as sites of symbolic struggle between different interest groups. However, there have been relatively few studies of the experiences of those who design, organize and attend such events. We seek to address this lacuna with reference to the biggest non-sporting live TV event in the world, the Eurovision Song Contest. Drawing on data from the 2014 competition in Copenhagen, Denmark, we examine the varying levels of commitment that organisers, fans, broadcasters and journalists, have to the event and, in particular, note how this shaped responses to a controversial incident involving the Russian entry. While those with an ongoing interest, including organisers and fans, tended to emphasise personal narratives and individual freedom of expression, mainstream media and audiences adopted a far more cynical standpoint, privileging geo-political issues to make the event seem more relevant and compelling.
(under review - with Julie Uldam, Maria Kyriakidou, Patrick McCurdy)

Pensar a problemática do acontecimento no campo da comunicação suscita uma discussão ampla que remete a um diálogo pluridisciplinar. Da forma como este trabalho pretende discutir acontecimento, as reflexões dialogam com a questão da temporalidade e da narrativa como fatores constituintes do
discurso midiático. Fruto de um estudo maior que procura situar o acontecimento e o discurso da mídia inscrito por uma memória discursiva que garante inteligibilidade aos fatos do passado no presente, o trabalho procura percorrer possíveis olhares teóricometodológicos para uma análise do acontecimento sob o viés de uma temporalidade particular.

Jene Ereignisse, die als „Medienereignisse“ in das kollektive Gedächtnis eingehen, werden gemeinhin an einem außergewöhnlich großen Medienpublikum festgemacht („huge audience – the whole world watching“, Katz & Liebes 2007, 158). Trotz dieser konzeptionellen Bedeutung der Größe des Medienpublikums gibt es hierzu bislang kaum Forschung. In einer kritischen Zusammenfassung des Forschungsstands zeigt dieser Beitrag zunächst, dass WissenschaftlerInnen ihre Informationen zum Milliardenpublikum globaler Medienereignisse insbesondere aus den Medien selbst beziehen – und auch RezipientInnen durch diese Berichterstattung beeinflusst werden. Damit gewinnt die Frage an Bedeutung, wie und auf welcher Basis journalistische Medien über das globale Publikum berichten. Mittels einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse der britischen Berichterstattung über die Trauerfeier für Lady Diana wird exemplarisch gezeigt, dass Medienberichte die Quantität und Qualität des globalen Zuschauerverhaltens bereits im Vorfeld des Medienereignisses definieren und diese Spekulationen allenfalls auf interessengeleitete Aussagen stützen. Daraus folgen konzeptionelle Überlegungen zu Medienereignissen und Anregungen für künftige Studien.

This study applies a most similar systems design to examine ‘anniversary journalism’ of two epic global events in the year 1989 – the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen crackdown – as reported by the elite press in the United States and Britain from 1990 to 2014, through the combined methods of computerized network-based text analysis and critical historical discourse analysis. Findings suggest that the elite press in both countries continued to view these two events through the lenses of the lingering anti-Communist ideology in the post–Cold War era and shared an increasingly converged cosmopolitan vocabulary primarily in terms of the universal rights of global citizens. Most commemorative anniversary coverage drew on the memory of correspondents who had covered the events. We argue that both US and British representations have become central political-cultural icons facilitating the emergence of a memory transcending national boundaries. Meanwhile, results indicate that elite press discourses in the United States and United Kingdom still varied significantly with their respective national concerns and global position.

Pirms teikt jebko citu – 16. marta norises Rīgas centrā jau ilgstoši ir izteikts mediju notikums. Tā vēsta manis pirms četriem gadiem rakstīta publikācija šajā pašā portālā “Delfi”.1 Diemžēl nekādā veidā necentīšos iepriekš rakstīto apstrīdēt. Raugoties uz ikgadējiem notikumiem šajā datumā, ir skaidrs, ka pasākums pie Brīvības pieminekļa primāri ir nepieciešams dažādiem politiskajiem aktīvistiem savu vai naudas devēju mērķu sasniegšanai, bet Otrā pasaules kara un tā veterānu pieminēšana jau pasen ir atvirzījusies otrajā plānā. Ja nepieciešams vēl kāds pamatojums šai tēzei, tad katrs interesents arī šogad var pamēģināt aprēķināt triju grupu – gājiena dalībnieku, drošības nodrošinātāju un mediju pārstāvju – savstarpējo skaitlisko attiecību Brīvības pieminekļa pakājē. Pēc tam salīdzinājumam to pašu var izdarīt Lestenē.