A media event, as the term suggests, is a significant happening that is designed specifically for the purpose of being covered by the media. These events can come in various forms such as press conferences, political conventions, award ceremonies, protests, and charity events. They are often staged to grab the attention of the public through media coverage. Historical examples of media events include the Golden Spike event in 1869 and Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the US in 1959. While these events can help in disseminating information or promoting causes, they are often criticized for their lack of authenticity and may raise questions about the reliability of news. Besides, they also play a significant role in the tourism industry where staged attractions are provided for tourists. Celebrities, too, often create such events to maintain their glamorous image in society.
A media event, also known as a pseudo-event, is an event, activity, or experience conducted for the purpose of media publicity. It may also be any event that is covered in the mass media or was hosted largely with the media in mind.
In media studies, "media event" is an established theoretical term first developed by Elihu Katz and Daniel Dayan in the 1992 book Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Media events in this sense are ceremonial events with narrative progression that are live broadcast and gather a large segment of the population, such as royal weddings or funerals. The defining characteristics of a media event are that it is immediate (i.e., it is broadcast live), organized by a non-media entity, containing ceremonial and dramatic value, preplanning, and focusing on a personality, whether that be a single person or a group. The 2009 book Media Events in a Global Age updates the concept. The theory of media events has also been applied to social media, for instance in an analysis of tweets about the Swedish elections or an analysis of the Bernie Sanders mittens meme during the inauguration of Joe Biden.
Media events may center on a news announcement, an anniversary, a news conference, or planned events like speeches or demonstrations. Instead of paying for advertising time, a media or pseudo-event seeks to use public relations to gain media and public attention. The theorist Marshal McLuhan has stated that the pseudo-event has been viewed as an event that is separate from reality and is to simply satisfy our need for constant excitement and interest in pop culture. These events are, “planned, planted, or incited (Merrin, 2002)” solely to be reproduced later again and again.
The term "pseudo-event" was coined by the theorist and historian Daniel J. Boorstin in his 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America: “The celebration is held, photographs are taken, the occasion is widely reported.” The term is closely related to idea of hyperreality and thus postmodernism, although Boorstin's coinage predates the two ideas and related work of postmodern thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard. A media event being a kind of planned event, it may be called inauthentic in contrast to a spontaneous one.
In distinguishing between a pseudo-event and a spontaneous one, Boorstin states characteristics of a pseudo-event in his book titled "Hidden History." He says that a pseudo-event is: dramatic, repeatable, costly, intellectually planned, and social. It causes other pseudo-events, and one must know about it to be considered "informed".
A number of video artists have explored the concept of a pseudo-event. The group Ant Farm especially plays with pseudo events, though not so identified, in their works "Media Burn" (1975) and "The Eternal Frame" (1975).
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