Daniel Boorstin’s book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, gives insight into how the media helps create, maintain, and even destroy the importance of places, people, events, and things. In this book, Boorstin coins the term pseudo-events. He defines this as — someone planning, planting or inciting an event for the sole purpose of reporting on it, with an ambiguous relation to the truth of the event, and it intends for the event to be a self-fulfilling prophecy (Boorstin 19).
Boorstin highlights how televised political debates are fabricated piece by piece to make something that people consider a meaningful event. The performances by the candidates are rehearsed and have scripted responses to questions. Audiences are strategically seeing the most important action of the debate via the live television broadcast (Boorstin 30). The planning and advertisement of this debate itself are to create a conversation around the candidates and the topics they endorse.
Additionally, the media helps create tourists’ views of other countries and nations through pseudo-events. Instead of purely exploring a new country they are focused on passively absorbing experiences designed for passive enjoyment and appreciation of the culture of that location. These fabricated experiences are sold through guided tours or curated museums.
After reading Boorstin’s book, I am thinking differently about how I am presenting foreign places through images or videos on various social media platforms. It reminded me of the common internet phrase, “take a picture or it didn’t happen”. I am so caught up in the need to capture what I’m experiencing instead of fully and consciously experiencing it. Throughout our time in Paris, I think we will learn more about the considerations that go into posting photos or videos. Especially what implications it has if you are inaccurately representing your experience or the place whether you mean to or not.