Daniel Dayan - Past Work

Past Work

Dayan’s work is characterized by an emphasis on visual forms and mass media. It covers three interrelated areas. (1) the aesthetics of cinema (2) the anthropology of television, (3) the sociology of journalism.

• As a film theorist, Dayan analyzed the modes of construction of the spectator in classical cinema. His first essays deal with film apparatus and the question of « suture ». Often reprinted, « The tutor code of classical cinema »(1974) has exerted a strong influence on British and American traditions in film theory
• As an anthropologist of television, Dayan analyzed the emergence of ritual forms specific to mass society. Conducted in collaboration with Elihu Katz and drawing on Erving Goffman, Victor Turner, Walter Benjamin, his research on ritual processes in the age of electronic transmissions, won the ICA Fellows Award, 2010
• As a media sociologist, Dayan has explored the links between reception studies and the formation of public opinion. Focusing on those publics that deliberately seek attention by staging « expressive events », Dayan discussed the dramatic strategies developed by such « performing Publics », and proposed a general typology of publics in terms of the nature and visibility of their performances.