The lasting charm of Media Events

This essay analyzes the power, charm and limitations of Daniel Dayan’s and Elihu Katz’s Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Harvard, 1992). It argues that the book presented a uniquely compelling and alluring concept, but has three limitations: Media Events has a present-centric view of events, a constrained understanding of conflicting narratives in the global context, and it is inattentive to how media events travel across multiple platforms. But overall, this essay concludes that ceremonial media events as described by the canonic book of Dayan and Katz are still important in the 21st century, and will survive the passing of time and media.