The O. J. Simpson Trial

Improved Essays
‘Media event’ is a term first coined by Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz with regard to the festive viewing of television. A media event consists of three levels—syntactics (the interruption of the normal routines), semantics (the asserted meaning of the event) and pragmatics (the response of a committed audience). (Dayan and Katz 1992, p. 14) These occasions are preplanned, promoted and presented live to the viewers (Dayan and Katz 1992, pp. 5-7) which thus create a disruption of dailiness including the interruption of the broadcasting routine and the suspension of our sense of flow of everyday life. (Moores 2004, pp. 24-25) This essay will attempt to analyse the O.J. Simpson trial as a media event and explore the broader social meanings reinforced

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