2013 Theses Doctoral

Global Iconic Events: How News Stories Travel Through Time, Space and Media

Sonnevend, Julia

This dissertation examines how a news event may become a global social myth. In order to track this voyage from the particular to the universal, I developed a theoretical concept of "global iconic events." I define global iconic events as news events that are covered extensively and remembered ritually by international media. I suggest five narrative aspects to consider in connection with them: (1) their narrative prerequisites; (2) their elevated and interpretative story; (3) their condensation into a simple phrase, a short narrative, and a recognizable visual scene; (4) their competing stories; and (5) their ability to travel across multiple media platforms and changing social and political contexts. I perform textual analysis on media representations from four distinct national contexts (West German, East German, Hungarian, and American) to examine two case studies. With the help of the central case study, the "fall of the Berlin Wall," I exhibit the successful social construction of a global iconic event. The second case study, the 1956 Hungarian revolution, illuminates some factors, in particular local counter-narration, incoherent and contextual international representation, forgetting, and marginality of the event's location, as instrumental in the failure of an event to become a global iconic event. While the East German border opening on November 9, 1989 was unintentional, confusing, and messy, its global message is not about "luck" or "accident" in history. Incarnated as a global iconic event, the fall of the Berlin Wall has come to communicate the momentary power that the otherwise hopelessly vulnerable individual can have. The event's elevated and interpretative story, condensed into a simple phrase, a short narrative and a recognizable visual scene, provides global civil society with a contemporary social myth. Through recycling, reenactment, possession, memorialization and other embodiments, the event's simple and universal story continues to travel successfully through time, space, and media, inspiring people in various parts of the world. In conclusion, I emphasize that when we examine the social construction of global iconic events, the stakes are high. I hope that this piece of academic writing will help us understand how powerful stories of events might shape the lives of those generations who come after us all over the world. Because in the end, after common currencies, military alliances, and international courts have failed, stories may well be all we have left to bring hope and unity.