Bearing witness - between the professional and the personal

An interview with Daniel Dayan

• Esther Chin, Daniel Dayan
• Platform: Journal of Media and Communication

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27 January 2010Daniel Dayan is well known for his research into the ‘public sphere’. His recent work has distinguished ‘public’ and ‘audience’, detailed the conditions for their development (Dayan, 2005), and discussed the ethical dimension of contemporary mediated public engagement through a critical review of Roger Silverstone’s concept of the ‘mediapolis’. Dayan has defined publics by their (self-) recognition as such, their collective ‘commitment’ to a stand, as well as their construction around a medium (such as television), an issue, and/or a ‘media event’.

Dayan is most famous for co-pioneering and developing, with Elihu Katz, a seminal work on ‘media events’. In this interview he considers the applicability of this concept to different cultural contexts, beyond the ‘ceremonial’ events studied in his 1992 book, and the Beijing Olympics of his 2008 book (Price & Dayan, 2008). He also provides an overview of the concept as it has developed from its conception to its contemporary relevance (for example, terrorist attacks).