Mediated Events and Discourse Practices
Summary
Mediated events denote occurrences that gain significance through organised and spontaneous dissemination across mass and social media platforms, transforming singular happenings into shared public rituals. Discourse practices encompass the strategic communication methods—narrativization, framing and participatory commentary—that shape collective understanding and response. Recent scholarship highlights how digital technologies have extended the life cycle of events beyond real time, enabled networked audiences to co-construct meaning, and blurred the boundaries between producers and consumers of discourse. This convergence has implications for political mobilisation, crisis management, cultural representation and institutional legitimacy, underscoring the need for interdisciplinary analysis at the intersection of communication, sociology and media studies.
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Mediated Events and Discourse Practices publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in mediated events and discourse practices across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Mediatization: The process by which events and social phenomena are shaped by media logics, technologies and institutional practices.
Media event: A planned or spontaneous occurrence that commands mass attention and is symbolically enacted through broadcast or networked platforms.
Hybrid media event: An occurrence that unfolds across multiple media channels, combining traditional broadcasting with participatory digital networks.
Liveness: The perceived immediacy and authenticity of content as it is transmitted or updated in real time.
Discourse practice: The repertoire of communicative strategies—such as framing, repetition and response—that actors use to construct and contest meanings.
References
- Mobile and platform users’ mediatized rituals in response to terrorist attacks: a discourse analysis of continuously collected screenshots. Journal of Communication (2024).
- Media Events in the Digital Age: Analysis of the Treatment of Elizabeth II and Juan Carlos I During the State Funeral. Journalism and Media (2024).
- ‘Absentmindedly scrolling through nothing’: liveness and compulsory continuous connectedness in social media. Media Culture & Society (2020).
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