Media and Social Solidarity: Assessing Dayan and Katz’s ‘Media Events’

Abstract

While a convincing set of arguments exist in favor of the integrative role of media in contemporary societies, there remains suspicion based on the relative nature of what counts as ‘common values’ for whom. In this paper I delineate some of the key problems related to matters of mediated social solidarity, as instigated by Dayan and Katz’s famous neo-Durkheimian perspective of ‘media events,’ the exceptional gatherings produced by live media coverage of events like ‘contests, conquests and coronations’, which, arguably, interrupt routine and affirm social cohesion. I review some of the relevant literature in the field, with a brief case study of the homecoming of Croatian Winter Olympic 2002 winner Janica Kostelić. I show that, in the context of the proliferation of new media and global broadcasting, media events should be understood more modestly as momentary encounters with media’s representation of cohesion, while actual solidarity remains contingent upon the inter-discursive interaction with an event’s program.