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DOI: 10.1177/0267323111428404
2011 26: 378 European Journal of Communication
Simon Cross
Global Age
Media Events in a Nick Couldry, Andreas Hepp and Friedrich Krotz (eds),

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378 European Journal of Communication 26(4)
The content analysis also reveals that the media refer more often to European-level
actors and regulations and to actors in other European countries than to any other category
of actors, including national ones. Interviews with journalists from the newspapers studied
(Chapter 5) also found that difficulties in covering Europe were common to all journalists
and did not vary significantly by country, type of newspaper or type of journalist. These
difficulties included issues of access, limited news space and making stories on Europe
interesting to their readers. However, journalists all saw their role as educators over Europe
rather than as advocates (with the exception of British journalists, who did report targeting
national governments and political parties).
The results discussed here are not indicative of the totality of the volumes findings.
Many other findings are worth noting, including comparisons between member states (and
the specificity of the cases of the UK and Switzerland) and Chapter 10s thorough exami-
nation of Eurocriticism along nation state and political ideology lines. There is little doubt
the studies are wide-ranging and provide much-needed empirical insight into an area of
growing interest. They address questions such as who is visible in news stories about
Europe, how claims are represented and how this varies across the domestic and transna-
tional levels, and they account for differences at the European level as well as for domestic
and state-to-state interaction. The structure of the studies and their scope make the findings
rare and valuable, and the approach to the topic is novel. There is much to be commended
in the book, particularly in terms of its empirical contribution.
Where the volume falls short is the ability to synthesize findings with a more theoretically
sound conceptualization of the public sphere, which is uncritically presented as something
that can be consolidated (particularly so in Chapter 1). The public sphere is equated with
apparent public opinion rather than the mechanisms through which that opinion is devel-
oped. Instead of conceiving of the mass media as arenas for the strengthening of the public
sphere, the European public sphere is represented as a project that can be managed.
In terms of readability, the volume sometimes lacks coherence the presentation centres
on methodology rather than on theme or findings. Interviews with journalists (a total of
110 across the newspapers) and with key political actors (112 in the seven countries), as
well as a study of virtual patterns of communication, complement the content analysis. All
are very interesting but none is adequately introduced in Chapter 2 on methodology, and
each is presented as self-contained. Attempts to cross-reference results across chapters
prove distracting, possibly because reference is made to particular findings and not to
general conclusions. Once again, the wide-ranging nature of the study may have necessitated
this, but it is not adequately resolved in the Conclusion. Instead of synthesizing results
across the volume, the Conclusion begins by outlining four ideal types of European public
sphere. These ideal types should have been introduced much earlier in the volume and
reference made to them in every chapter (rather than to particular findings in other chapters)
in order to build greater cohesiveness and provide a guiding framework for the reader.
Nick Couldry, Andreas Hepp and Friedrich Krotz (eds)
Media Events in a Global Age. London: Routledge, 2010. 25.99. 309 pp.
Reviewed by: Simon Cross, Nottingham Trent University, UK
DOI: 10.1177/0267323111428404
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Book reviews 379
From the 1981 puffery of Charles and Dianas wedding, through Dianas spectacularly
kitsch 1997 funeral (Elton on song), to the 2011 marriage of William Windsor to Catherine
(nee Kate) Middleton, the dysfunctional royals can always be guaranteed to put on an event;
a media event that is. The finely choreographed nature of that latest royal media event was
so damn eventful that the nation was granted a days holiday (another version of David
Camerons implausible refrain were all in this together) so that we could all share deep
joy as we watched the happy couple utter, mutter and stutter through their vows. I for one
certainly wanted to toast the happy couple.
The WindsorMiddleton bash was the international media event of the past year (Im
hesitant about calling it global event since Im not sure whether the majority in China,
India, Africa and elsewhere bothered tuning in or logging on). Now I come to think of it
(and I have tried hard not to), the Royal wedding probably turned out to be the only British
media event of April 2011. As media events quickly come and go, the Japanese nuclear
catastrophe is likely to have been the Asian media event of March 2011, and the Eurovision
Song Contest held in Dsseldorf in May was no doubt the European media event of that
musically and televisually boring month. Following this through, the nature of media events
seems less like high holiday interruptions to normal media routines and more like the
monthly norm in our mass-mediated age.
The preponderance of media events or, if you like, the downright eventization of the
media (as the back cover blurb puts it in the current vogue amongst communications scholars
for adding ization to anything media-ish) is why Media Events in a Global Age is so
useful for getting to grips with the diversity and dynamic character of media events demand-
ing attention. Nick Couldry, Andreas Hepp and Friedrich Krotz have done a sterling job
in putting together an impressive array of international (mainly, though not entirely,
European) researchers to rethink the nature and character of media events, media rituals
and media spectacles. Their editorial efforts have been rewarded with a book packed with
conceptual and theoretical refinement of the meaning(s) of the media event balanced with
short but nevertheless nuanced empirical detail from almost all of the assembled authors.
The inspiration for this international collection on media events is of course Daniel
Dayan and Elihu Katzs key 1992 book Media Events (both Dayan and Katz contribute
important separate chapters to this volume Katz with Tamar Liebes). In Dayan and
Katzs original functionalist account of the consensual nature of media events, broadcast
television both frames and enables public participation in major social events such as
set-piece state occasions and international sports events by making them into media
events supportive of the socially integrative requirements of the political centre. Dayan
and Katzs discussion of the meaning of live broadcasting of contests, conquests and
coronations directed attention to central symbolic issues and how their eventization not
only helps shift public perceptions but also affects political responses. This set the course
for future research in this area.
In Couldry, Hepp and Krotzs view, the term media events, as well as Dayan and
Katzs functionalist reading of them as socially integrative broadcast events, was in need
of updating within an analysis of globalized and digitalized media cultures. Thus, in their
thoughtful introduction to the collection, Hepp and Couldry note that the original approach
to ritualized media events was focused on the historical context of national broadcasting.
They then make their pitch for understanding the notion of media events in its full
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380 European Journal of Communication 26(4)
theoretical context, in order, they say, to understand the basis for researching media
events today as an important aspect of power processes in a global age (p. 1). This
emphasis on theorizing and analysing media events in globalized media cultures gives
the assembled 19 chapters in the collection distinctiveness across six thematically linked
sections: media events rethought; the history and future of the media event; media events
in the frame of contemporary social and cultural media theory; media events and everyday
identities; media events and global politics; and media events and cultural contexts.
Thus, within and across these six sections, the assembled authors consider a diverse
range of national, international and global media events, including: the 2008 Beijing
Olympics; the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 and the tsunami catastrophe in 2004; the 2008
US presidential election; the Eurovision Song Contest; the controversy of the 2006 India-
hosted Miss World contest; the 9/11 attacks; the 2004 Athens Olympics; the WTO as a
media event; the Catholic World Youth Day. With such a diversity of topics to choose
from I want to briefly note one or two of the case-study pleasures to be found within this
impressive volume.
Take for instance Goran Bolins chapter Media events, Eurovision and societal centres
(located within the section Media events in the frame of contemporary social and cultural
media theory). What I like about Bolins contribution is his carefully steered path between
Dayan and Katzs media events theory emphasizing socially integrative aspects of media
events and a critical approach to this liberal functionalist account taken by Couldry (in his
earlier writings) criticizing media events theory as overestimating the workings of the
media in holding society together. Bolin takes the Eurovision Song Contest seriously, using
it to expose the myth of the mediated center and to critique the role of spectacular media
productions for providing what he calls bases of authority, i.e. the Eurovision event
constructs a particular imagined value of the nation-state and with it Europeanness.
Another particularly interesting chapter is Agnieszka Stepinskas essay 9/11 and the
transformation of globalized media events (located in the section Media events and global
politics). Stepinska brings domestic US news reporting of the 9/11 political media event
into a productive colloquy with the consequences of a proliferation of new communication
technology around the world. Her argument about information flow following the 9/11
attacks is that depending on the context and the audience, the same event may be consid-
ered to be a domestic or foreign news story, as well as a national or international media
event (p. 203). In the case of the reporting of the 9/11 terror attacks, Stepinskas analysis
of the reporting in terms of being a disruptive media event resulted, she shows, in a variety
of media representations as well as differences in audiences perceptions.
These two randomly selected chapter examples illustrate, I hope, something of the
diversity of the case studies offered in this valuable collection. But what emerges as an
overall picture in this book is that Dayan and Katzs media events concept (although being
generally viewed as interesting and also potentially useful) has shown it can and should
take centre-stage in how we are to theorize specific contexts, texts and technologies of
globalized media events. As Stuart Hoovers very helpful summarizings and meditative
conclusion put it, media events are today largely deterritorialized (p. 286) and a book
such as this inevitably becomes a challenge to the neo-Durkheimian project: whether such
globally experienced events can be integrative (or be a centre) in any real sense (p. 286).
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Book reviews 381
Across the chapters as a whole the jury is out on a definitive answer to this question, not
least because all of the contributors mobilize their own conceptually nuanced approach to
what they take media events to mean for their own case studies/cultural geographies. But
what do emerge are high octane theoretical explorations of media events in the contexts of
cultures and technologies that are reshaping the global media landscape of events. As such,
I have to point out that the style of book as a whole is unlikely to appeal to colleagues looking
for undergraduate-friendly case studies dealing with media events. Happily, then, this is a
splendid collection for those who want to really think about media events and are prepared
to immerse themselves in what Hepp and Couldry describe as a thickening of mediated
communication across different media products and diverse audiences and participants.
Marwan M. Kraidy
Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2009. 16.99. pp.
Reviewed by: Dana Nassif, Loughborough University, UK
DOI: 10.1177/0267323111428402
Marwan Kraidys Reality Television and Arab Politics brings a significant, insightful and
up-to-date contribution to the growing literature on Arab media as it explores the relation-
ship and overlaps between popular culture and politics by examining the connection
between Arab reality television programs and the wider political, economic and socio-
cultural forces shaping contemporary Arab public discourse. The book demonstrates the
ways in which Arab reality television has become a vibrant space in which politics is
expressed and negotiated, and draws on the volatile geo-political environment which
shapes the politics of the Middle East and Arab Western relations as a way of understand-
ing the context of public controversy in which these shows are received, and the social
and political implications to them displayed through religious, cultural and moral mani-
festations. Kraidys book examines and compares between three shows -Superstar, Al-Rais,
and Star Academy- and traces the varied reactions to these shows by the public along a
scale which ranges across those who avidly follow the shows from young people and
adults on one side, to those who condemn them on another, on the grounds that they violate
Islamic principles of social conduct and promote cultural globalization dominated by
foreign values of individualism, consumerism and sexual promiscuity.
Kraidys introductory chapter discusses how reality TV creates what he calls hyper-
media space, how it has repercussions on wider public deliberations of modernity and
authenticity, and how it engages with complex political, social, religious and cultural
issues. He states that being an inventive adaptation of Western formats of programs
which also claims to represent reality becomes a volatile combination for reality shows,
acquiring them opposition from a vocal minority of religious leaders and political activ-
ists who criticize the unfamiliar and alien in them. Kraidy argues that as hybrid texts
that merge global and cultural values, these reality programs disturb the boundaries of
identity, authenticity as well as concepts of gender and ikhtilat (the unsupervised social
mixing of men and women unmarried to each other considered illicit by most Islamists
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