Media Event Discourse in the Korean Context: Analyzing Young Viewers’ Responses to President Yoon’s Inauguration Broadcast

This study tested whether the media event theory proposed by Dayan and Karz (1992) can be applied to television broadcasts of national events.The responses of 346 Korean college students who watched the broadcast of President Yoon Suk Yeol's inauguration ceremony, a coronation-style media event, were analyzed.The Results indicate that viewers' responses to the event's rituals, symbols, and messages ranged between neutral and weak agreement.The conservative president garnered weak support from conservative and moderate viewers and weak antipathy from liberal viewers.These results suggest that media events persuade centrists and supportive groups to a limited extent, gradually reshaping public sentiment.This study extends the media event theory by proposing that viewers' preexisting dispositions and alternative interpretations result in the limited effects of media events.The findings highlight audience fragmentation in which their ideological divisions diversify their reactions to media events.Dayan and Karz's notion that such events promote unity was applicable to politically polarized societies, such as South Korea, but not fully so.According to the analysis, messages was an influential variable.Increasing viewer agreement with messages enhanced favorability toward the entire media event, including the rituals and symbols.This study partially validates the media event theory and presents new implications for how conservative and moderate viewers react to such events.