In today’s In-Depth post, which was presented at this year’s American Sociological Association Meeting in Denver, Lisa Lipscomb extends Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz analysis of media events to the new media and the new political environment. I am struck by how the analysis of Dayan and Katz still illuminates important political developments, and also appreciate how Lipscomb extension gives a fuller understanding of media politics of our day. Their work still shows how  institutionalized democracy is significantly constituted through television. She shows how extra institutional democratic forces, contributing to what Pierre Rosanvallon describes as counter-democracy, are manifested through Digital Events of the new electronic media.

Thus, the main events of this week and last: using the insights of Dayan and Katz, it is clear that the nominating conventions are anything but empty affairs. It is true that these conventions have long ago lost their instrumental purposes: before the fact everyone knew who the candidates for president and vice president would be, and the party platforms developed and passed at the conventions are ignored by the electorate and the politicians alike. Yet, the conventions still play a very important political role, ritualistically indicating that the election contest is now entering its decisive stage, and that it is now the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their party (to paraphrase the old typing drill).

Indeed, the nominating ritual confirms both the substantial existence and appeal of and the attachment to each of the parties. They try to refine and shape their message and appeal, and in the process, they define the terms of the American political contest and debate.  In societies of the past, such rituals occurred face to face: not only in conventions and politics, but also in processions, coronations, funerals and holidays of all sorts, reported first by word of mouth, later through the written word and the printed page. The major finding of Dayan and Katz is that since radio and television, political ritual continues through a type of broadcast, “media events,”confirming the central ideals and identities of social orders, and the competing conventional alternatives, and the alternatives to the dominant ones, as Lipscomb cogently summarizes in her piece.

But things are clearly changing. The new electronic media connect citizens in new ways. The dominance of television, which Dayan and Katz assumed when they published their book in the early 90s, is now being eroded, something that deeply concerns Katz. He is not sure that the new media environment supports a common public world, a free public life necessary for democracy. He fears that fragmentation of public orders challenge democratic practice. His are real and important concerns. I applaud this former collaborator of Paul Lazarsfeld for continuing to probe the political consequences of media. Yet, we need to understand how new media are now constituting political subjectivity and connection.

This is what Lipscomb’s post considers by examining the formation of a global protest, “a digital media event,” the case of the video of the murder of Neda Agha Soltan at the hands of the Basij, a voluntary militia that takes its orders from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini and its circulation through new media and old. She shows how a community of critical capacity comes to be formed, a most important development in the times of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and other new “new social movements.”

To read the full In-Depth Analysis “Digital Events: Media Rituals in the Digital Age” by Lisa Lipscomb, click here.