Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz (1992) Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History

This chapter provides an overview of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz’s (1992) theory of media events, discusses the theory’s main developments and reflects their relevance in current scholarship in media and communication studies. The paper is divided into four sections. First, it presents the original media event theory as formulated by Dayan and Katz in their seminal book Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Second, the chapter analyses the main trends of the ‘critical turn’ in the study of media events in response to the original theory. Third, it explains how the theory of media events lives on in its revised and elaborated form in the academic literature. Finally, the chapter concludes with reflections on future avenues for the study of media events and the book’s legacy.