The fourth issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies is here, and this time the issue focuses on media events. The articles emphasise that media events today are diverse and of many different sizes, and that the terms describing different kinds of media events have multiplied. But still some events stand out among others and draw the attention of large audiences.
Anne Jerslev professor at the Department of Communication at University of Copenhagen, and one of the editors of the issue, says the following:
"Media events today may be global mega events or smaller, national events. Social media of course also plays an important role as it gives media events a certain fluidity and may make the media events travel and transform during the process".
What happens when we bring media events into discussion in a digitalised media age characterised by datafication, audience fragmentation, and globalisation? That is the central question addressed by the five research articles and essay included in this issue. They conceptualise and contextualise, theorise, and study contemporary media events in the age of global, digital networks.
Dayan and Katz’s book as a starting point
The issue takes its point of departure in Dayan and Katz’s seminal book Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History from 1992. The book is still important, as it offers tools and concepts for thinking in terms of media historical, media cultural and media technological changes.
The concept, according to Jerslev, “may help us understand structures and audience patterns in media culture today, even though they differ significantly from Dayan and Katz’s description of media events”.
“Applying the concept of media events to a globalised and datafied media environment is certainly no easy task. Nonetheless, the six articles in the 2022 issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies take up this challenge”, continues Jerslev
Editors of this issue are Kirsten Frandsen, professor at the Department of Media and Journalism Studies at Aarhus University, and Anne Jerslev and Mette Mortensen, professors at the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen.
Mia Jonsson Lindell