FSMK Conference Transforming Media and Communication Ecologies

Espen Ytreberg is Professor of Media Studies at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. He researches media history and theory, and publishes literary nonfiction. His latest major academic publications are A Social History of the Media (4th edition with Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, Polity Press, 2022) and Media and Events in History (Polity Press, 2023).

Title: How mediated events have created environments

The great and minor events of history have long taken place in thoroughly mediated environments. Today’s virtual studios and social media layouts are in this sense new twists to an old tale, that of how media have taken on environmental functions of both infrastructural, social, temporal and spatial kinds. The talk traces the historical emergence of media environments for two kinds of large-scale events: planned ones such as conquests and exhibitions, and media-planned ones such as stadium concerts and Eurosong. It is argued that in all these event-cases, albeit by different technological means, media perform essential environing functions.

The talk follows on from a recent book (Media and Events in History, Polity Press 2023) that proposes seeing large-scale events not merely as a class of media output but as a main building block of contemporary societies. Mediation is how events can be built on a society-wide scale, and this construction work has been going on at least since the advent of industrialisation. The book bridges history and media studies in order to present this broader and deeper view of what events are and do.

Espen Ytreberg is Professor of Media Studies at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. He researches media history and theory, and publishes literary nonfiction. His latest major academic publications are A Social History of the Media (4th edition with Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, Polity Press, 2022) and Media and Events in History (Polity Press, 2023).