About the Book
How do stories of particular events turn into global myths, while others fade away? What becomes known and seen as a global iconic event? In Stories without Borders, Julia Sonnevend considers the ways in which we recount and remember news stories of historic significance. Focusing on journalists covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and on subsequent retellings of the event in a variety of ways - from Legoland reenactments to slabs of the Berlin Wall installed in global cities - Sonnevend discusses how certain events become built up so that people in many parts of the world remember them for long periods of time. She argues that five dimensions determine the viability and longevity of international news events. First, a foundational narrative must be established with certain preconditions. Next, the established narrative becomes universalized and a mythical message developed. This message is then condensed and encapsulated in a simple phrase, a short narrative, and a recognizable visual scene. Counter-narratives emerge that reinterpret events and in turn facilitate their diffusion across multiple media platforms and changing social and political contexts. Sonnevend examines these five elements through the developments of November 9, 1989 - what came to be known as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stories Without Borders concludes with a discussion of how global iconic events have an enduring effect on individuals and societies, pointing out that after common currencies, military alliances, and international courts have failed, stories may be all that we have to bring hope and unity.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. Events in Media
2. Global Iconic Events: The Five Dimensions of Transnational Storytelling
3. Foundation
4. Mythologization
5. Condensation
6. Counter-narration
7. Remediation
8. Stories Without Borders: Thinking With Global Iconic Events
Conclusion
Notes on Research Methods
About the Author :
Julia Sonnevend is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan.
Review :
"Julia Sonnevend's book is not only a splendid work of cultural history but a brave attempt to rethink the place of media in modernity. At once lucid, iconoclastic, and constructive, Stories Without Borders helps us imagine how events become not only larger but also smaller than life, only to become larger again; how they crystallize into milestones as well as signposts at crossroads. Without succumbing to chic theoretical turns or what she deftly calls 'the
tyranny of details,' she helps our collective intelligence along a needed path to maturation."
--Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism and Sociology, Columbia University
"Challenging the corrosive discourse of suspicion, Julia Sonnevend demonstrates the continuing, indeed pivotal presence of the symbolic in contemporary life. Beautifully written, rigorously conceptualized, and deeply researched, Stories without Borders is a brilliant exemplar of cultural sociology."
--Jeffrey C. Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University
"Did the Wall really fall? This book is important for showing how collective memory can construct a media event-retrospectively!"
--Elihu Katz, Emeritus Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
"In a political moment in which the president of the United States campaigned on the building of a wall as a solution to social problems, Julia Sonnevend's Stories without Borders is a welcome read. In a book that is both provocative and convincing, Sonnevend challenges us to question our personal and collective memory, as much as they can be disentangled from one another, about the fall of the Berlin WallELIt is a welcome addition to the collective
memory and media events literature, one that should spur productive debates."
--Matt Carlson, Journalism
"Taken as a whole, Stories Without Borders makes a significant contribution to the literature on media events, and provides important guideposts for future analysis of transnational stories across media and how they are remembered and retold-stories that may or may not be global, may or may not be iconic, and may or may not be about events."
--Karin Becker, Journal of Communication
"In the wake of the momentous political changes of 2016, the role of the media and how they predict and report, analyse and spin the news has become headline material in its own right. Julia Sonnevend's impressively clear and engaging Stories without Borders is therefore a timely publication Arguably, the example of the Berlin Wall provides a particularly telling narrative, but the principal patterns [Sonnevend] proposes are thought-provoking and
translate well to other topics. However, if the way the media create highly symbolic global stories and this process helps us to identify with topics, then it is just as interesting to muse over the obvious lack of
some stories. Tellingly, the European Union, steeped in history, rich in events, has never been afforded this kind of mediated and spellbinding narrative of global relevance."
--Times Higher Education
"...this well-written essay is particularly valuable for researchers, teachers, and students in media studies and journalism, political science, history, memory and cultural studies. Scholars interested in the theorization of events, discussions on globalization, and in the role of the media as mythmakers and institutions of cultural memory will find the first two chapters and conclusion particularly thought-provoking. The book's central five chapters provide a
detailed study of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a persuasive case of 'global iconic event.' By the end of the essay, the book's first sentence, 'There was no Berlin Wall, and it never fell,' is well
proven."--Sandrine Boudana, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
