Constructing the public at the royal wedding

Media events

In their influential discussion of media events, Dayan and Katz (1992) provide a detailed description of a genre that includes a diversity of televised events such as major sporting organizations, visits of political and religious leaders and weddings and funerals of public figures. Media events, they suggest, interrupt television’s routine programming and are often transmitted on more than one channel in real time. They are ritual occasions organized by authorities outside the media with the collaboration of television coverage. They are presented as historical moments which must be viewed and which will become part of collective memory, and they attract large audiences. Media events also have a message, a pre-planned meaning proposed by their organizers and negotiated with the broadcasters and audiences. Often this meaning is unifying, according to the theory, bringing together heterogeneous communities at a national or transnational level, marking a new era and/or re-establishing the status and power of the organizers as social actors.

Dayan and Katz’s (1992) work has led to debate in the last 20 years on how the genre may be best conceptualized to accommodate a diversity of mediated events, to describe the role of organizers, broadcasters and audiences, and to fit the realities of a changing, increasingly globalized, multi-media world. Scannell (1995) suggested that a theory of media events needs to consider them historically and explain how, at a time of global media, such events surpass national boundaries. He also suggested that the initial theory implies a rather unrealistic homogeneity in the way broadcasters and audiences deal with these events, and consequently overestimates their hegemonic power. Scannell (1995) highlights the need for an understanding of media events that applies to the present and the future, and takes into consideration people’s disenchantment with figures of authority and the fragmentation of audiences and identities.

Other scholars have proposed a broadening of the original concept to include other types of mediated events, which are less consensual, pre-organized and controlled by the establishment (Cottle, 2006; Couldry and Rothenbuhler, 2007; Kellner, 2003; Liebes, 1998), and have also debated alternative ways of sub-categorizing them. For instance, the coverage of natural catastrophes, terrorist attacks and scandals has also claimed a position within the category.

The question remains, however, whether media events matter to audiences. The original theory saw media events as powerful, hegemonic and persuasive, but many have questioned the prestige and influence such events enjoy in the eyes of the public. The suggestion that media events are no longer (if they ever were) awe-inspiring, integrative and value-affirming is also found in Dayan and Katz’s later writings (Dayan, 2008; Katz and Liebes, 2007), where they talk of disenchanted, cynical audiences and selective, individualized viewers who reject shared mediated experiences.

When studying the content of media events the analyst cannot presume the power they have over people: much of the research published on media effects over several decades would argue against such presumptions. Couldry (2003) proposes instead that analysis of media event content should explore how the media construct the ‘myth of the mediated centre’, that is how the media present themselves as giving audiences access to the supposed centre of authority and power in society and how they articulate and construct this centre:

media events are closely related to processes of constructing the ‘mediated centre’. As a consequence they are in general power-related and so must be analysed critically, that is, in terms of how they are constructed as centering. (Hepp and Couldry, 2010: 12)

Whether or not ‘centering’ techniques are successful is a topic that can only be explored through research on audiences. What can be explored by analysing media texts though is the form that these techniques take; how the media ‘evoke’ solidarity and integration with a centre (Marriott, 2007: 94).

In this article, I suggest that one such discursive device in the case of the royal wedding was the construction of the public that was present at the celebrations, which gave the event the legitimation of public support as well as confirmation of its significance and power. This was achieved to a great extent through inferences about public opinion and vox-pop interviews throughout the live broadcast on the BBC and ITV.

Constructions of the public

As discussed in the previous section, the public plays a crucial role in the success of media events: public approval of the centrality of the event is necessary if it is to be granted media event status (Dayan and Katz, 1992), while the audience has an active role in the process of reception and interpretation of the event’s meaning. Dayan (2001) argues that major media events are among the few occasions when a public may be formed around a television broadcast, even if temporarily. Moreover, the public and its opinion are significant for events relating to the British monarchy in particular, given that the institution is conscious of its public image and of that of its members in a similar way celebrities are (Blain and O’Donnell, 2003: 60).

Previous studies focusing on print and broadcast news have examined the conditions under which the views of ordinary citizens are represented in the coverage of public issues (Bennett et al., 2004; Feree et al., 2002; Lewis et al., 2005). Lewis et al. (2005), for instance, found that ordinary citizens are under-represented and rarely receive primary definer status (Hall et al., 1978) in news stories. They identified a number of ways in which the viewpoint of the public may be present in a story, including reporting on demonstrations or opinion poll results, making inferences about public opinion in general or parts of public opinion, and vox-pop interviews. This article explores the use of vox-pops and inferences about public opinion in a different type of media output: although news is also ritualistic (Carey, 1989), a media event like the royal wedding involves a much higher level of pre-construction and more focus on ceremony.

Vox-pops, namely short interviews with ordinary members of the public, are commonly used in broadcast and print media and offer citizens the opportunity to express opinions directly, to increase the diversity of voices heard (Bennett et al., 2004) and to open up a mediated event to a wider public (Myers, 2000: 167). However, it is not very common for vox-pops to make substantial contributions to public debate. Ordinary people who give their views on news stories tend to speak about their personal experiences and emotions as consumers of goods, public services and popular culture (Lewis et al., 2005: 79–84). As a result they construct an account of citizenry where the public is passive, does not play an active role in society, but simply consumes and reflects on its experience of products and services.

Although media events are accessible to millions of people through television, viewers at home do not actually witness the event because they are not physically there (Peters, 2001: 718). Therefore vox-pops in the coverage of such events are used to transfer the accounts of first-hand witnesses to the viewers. Myers (2000) analysed televised vox-pop interviews following the death of Princess Diana and found a proliferation of emotional responses from members of the public. In that event, interviewees were aware that their emotions expressed for a public figure they did not know personally might be deemed excessive and they used a variety of discursive techniques to demonstrate their entitlement and sincerity.

Vox-pops, however, are not the only, nor the most common way of representing the public in the media. Unsubstantiated inferences about public opinion are claims made by journalists, experts or politicians about what people think, which are not supported by systematic evidence such as polling data (Lewis et al., 2005). They often function as generalizations about what is a set of complex and diverse views on a subject, and as legitimation of the speaker’s own opinions which are projected onto ‘the public’.

This article will explore how vox-pops and inferences made about the public helped shape the coverage of the royal wedding. I will argue that the employment of the public and its views functioned as a supporting device for the centring role of the broadcasters; that it helped legitimize the media event and gave the broadcasters the ‘seal’ of representing not their own (nor the organizers’) interpretation of its significance and meaning, but that of ‘the public’.

The public at the wedding

For the purposes of this study I analysed the live coverage of the event on the two television channels, between 8.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. on Friday 29 April 2011, excluding the early afternoon news slots. Although several differences can be identified between the coverage of the two broadcasters (some of them are briefly discussed in a later section), the two channels were in many ways similar in their treatment of references to and interviews with the public and the article focuses on these similarities.

An initial content analysis recorded the instances in which the views of the public were represented in the coverage directly, through vox-pop interviews, and indirectly through references made to what the public thinks or does. Given that properly substantiated references to public opinion in the form of official poll results were very scarce (with just one reference on the BBC) the instances counted were actually made-up inferences.

Despite the obvious focus of the day on the royal couple and their families, the public was also one of the main protagonists of both the BBC and ITV coverage. As can be seen in Table 1, 139 members of the public were interviewed on the BBC coverage and 115 on ITV. These numbers exclude major political figures, such as the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London (as they belong to the political elite and are not seen as ordinary members of the public in this case), but include all other people who were interviewed outside the studio, on the streets of London or at the locations of celebrations throughout the UK. The category also includes a small number of messages sent to the studio by viewers and read out by the presenters, mainly in the BBC coverage. Although these electronic messages were not framed by the intervention of an interviewer as were the vox-pops, they were selected to reflect the same mood of celebration and no alternative or dissenting voices were heard.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Representation of members of the public in the coverage

	BBC	ITV
Vox-pops	139	115
References to the public	168	141

Vox-pop interviews vary in length from a few seconds to a couple of minutes and the interviewees represent a diversity of ages, nationalities (in line with the global interest of the event) and roles in the celebrations. The range in the selection of the people interviewed is part of the unifying construction of the event, illustrating that both Brits and foreigners, from a range of backgrounds, share the same views about the event.

Even when individual members of the public did not have an active role in the coverage, the public was still present through references to its views made by the presenters of the event and their studio guests. Such references were often, though not always, accompanied by shots of the crowds gathered in different locations outside the studio to watch or celebrate. As shown in Table 1, the BBC coverage featured 168 references to the public while ITV had 141.

Interestingly, both references to the public and vox-pops on the BBC outnumber those on ITV. In her study of the coverage of Princess Diana’s funeral, Marriott (2007) found that ITN (which produced the ITV coverage) initially focused more on the people lining the route of the funeral than the BBC, a difference which she saw as part of a more popular rhetoric of commercial television. It appears, however, that in the case of the 2011 royal wedding the BBC took the lead in making the public a significant protagonist of its coverage, potentially in an effort to increase its appeal.

The above quantitative overview would suggest that the televised coverage of the royal wedding created multiple opportunities for the public’s views to be represented and to help shape the interpretation of the media event. However a closer qualitative analysis of actual examples of discourse behind the numbers in Table 1 reveals a more complex picture, as will be discussed in what follows.

Talking about an ‘anthropomorphized’ crowd

Both television channels repeatedly referred to the people who gathered in public spaces to watch the celebrations as a collectivity which, despite their different identities, was presented as thinking and acting as one. In fact, the gathered ‘crowds’ seemed to be a consistent actor in the narrative of the event on both channels and they were constructed as supportive, enthusiastic and excited to be part of it.

Such merging of what is probably a very diverse group of people and opinions into a collectivity referred to as ‘the people’, ‘the public’ or ‘the crowd’ is common in news journalism. It allows journalists to ‘create a vision of the public as unified and comprehensible’ (Lewis et al., 2005: 97), to give it characteristics of personality, to individualize it or, in Lewis et al.’s words, to ‘anthropomorphize’ it:

(1) A whole line of policemen controlling what I could say is a very well-natured, well-behaved crowd, that have thoroughly enjoyed themselves so far today. (BBC1 reporter)

(2) The crowds have been waiting so patiently, lining the Mall. (ITV1 presenter)

Examples 1 and 2 illustrate this individualization and anthropomorphization of the gathered ‘crowd’, which is given human characteristics (‘well-natured’, ‘well-behaved’, ‘patient’). The effect here is to simplify but also to evoke feelings of empathy and identification (Fowler, 1991).

In addition to this though, the first excerpt illustrates another practice that was very common in the coverage of both channels: it makes an inference about what members of the public are experiencing (‘have thoroughly enjoyed themselves’).

Inferencing and ventriloquizing

As discussed earlier, making claims about what the public thinks without providing systematic evidence is part of a process of ‘constructing the public as a visible fiction’ (Lewis et al., 2005: 93) at the same time as lending support to positions expressed by journalists, politicians or experts.

This practice was very widespread in the coverage of the royal wedding and took two forms: drawing inferences about what people want to do or will do and what emotions they experience; and ventriloquizing what people think, which – as I will discuss below – is a step further as it puts words into people’s mouths and contributes to a dramatization of the media event.

(3) Just think of these thousands of people lining the Mall, some of them have been here for several days and this is it – this is what they’ve been waiting for. It’s a very special moment. (BBC1 presenter)

(4) I’m wondering really how many people are prepared to stay around; I think lots of them will be, till about 3.30, to get another glimpse of the couple as they make their way over to Clarence House. (BBC1 presenter)

In excerpts 3 and 4, the ‘crowds’ of examples 1 and 2 are again referred to collectively and homogeneously as ‘people’. The presenter here makes a number of inferences about these people: in example 3 he suggests that some of them have camped outside for days before the event and that the moment they were anticipating was the departure of the couple from the Abbey and their brief tour of the streets around it. These inferences function to legitimate his own claim that this ‘is a very special moment’: it is not just the presenter who thinks this is a special moment; people (according to the presenter) have been waiting for it outside for days.

In excerpt 4 the presenter is less categorical than in excerpt 3 about what people think. He uses mitigating expressions that flag what follows as his own thoughts (‘I’m wondering’, ‘I think’). Still, he answers his own question without any reference to evidence, without even handing over to one of the on-site reporters to ask this question in an interview. The inference here (a lot of people will stay until 3.30 to see the couple leave the early afternoon reception) functions to inform the viewer that there is another significant point in the event coming up and that this is worth watching. Again the inference about the public legitimates the presenter’s claim.

It must be noted here of course that both excerpts 3 and 4, like several similar statements in the coverage, are accompanied by visual shots of the gathered crowds. In the case of excerpt 3, screaming is also audible as the car of the newlyweds progresses along the road. The viewer can therefore see the crowd whose views are being inferred and, to a degree, these images may be seen as supporting the inferences. On the other hand though, a shot of gathered people, even in the case where some of them are screaming, is neither a clear nor a representative indication of the very specific claims which are made about their motives in the examples above and in other similar cases. Both channels add a narrative that may seem like it fits the images shown, but it is still an interpretation which may or may not be accurate.

In excerpt 5 on the other hand, inferences are made about what people feel as a result of watching the event:

(5) They’re sharing in that feeling of excitement and joy in having witnessed obviously the wedding we have just seen.… They are obviously anxious to get down to the actual Buckingham Palace and see more of the royal celebration. (ITV1 reporter)

This example is typical of the discourse used about the public on both channels: the construction of the event as significant, exciting and a must-see prevails in all the coverage and here the people in the crowd are invoked to support this interpretation. By contrast to other similar statements in the coverage, which, as I will discuss in a subsequent section, are accompanied by vox-pops illustrating the inference, here the claims made (‘they’re sharing in that feeling of excitement and joy’, ‘they are obviously anxious to get to the Palace’) are accompanied only by a shot of people who walk past the reporter, waving flags or smiling and waving their hands as they notice the TV camera. Still the reporter is rather categorical in her interpretations as evidenced by the emphatic use of ‘obviously’ (twice) and the emphatic connotations of the adjective ‘anxious’ (compared to a less strong alternative, such as ‘keen’ for instance). The deployment of references to public emotion to legitimize journalists’ views has also been established in other types of media coverage, such as that of disasters (Pantti and Wahl-Jorgensen, 2011: 117).

This construction in examples 3–5 of the actions and feelings of ‘the people’ reinforces a preferred interpretation of the event by ‘communicating festivity, enlisting participation and mobilising consensus’ (Dayan and Katz, 1992: 18). At the same time, it stresses the significance and the centrality of the event. This becomes more obvious in the following examples, where the thoughts of the public are openly ventriloquized (Fairclough, 1998: 160; Lauerbach, 2006) by the broadcasters.

Speaking for the public

Ventriloquizing involves speaking for someone else, not summarizing what he/she has said, but making up what he/she would say if they could speak. In ordinary speech it is used to ‘animate’ pets or children who cannot yet speak, but in media discourse it may be used in interviews to introduce propositions for the interviewee to respond to (Lauerbach, 2006). According to Lauerbach (2006), in political interviews the voices that often get ventriloquized are those of the weak, women, political losers and the socially deprived.

(6) The crowd is really beginning to build up, as you can see, people coming in from all over the world, wanting to be able to tell their children and grandchildren, ‘I was there’. (ITV1 reporter)

(7) Just listen to those crowds. They want her, they look forward to having her as a part of the royal family. (ITV1 presenter)

In excerpts 6 and 7, the voice of the public is being ventriloquized. The journalist in each case quotes not what has been said by a member of the public in an interview but what he thinks the public would say if they spoke. In excerpt 6, the reporter imagines the people attending the celebrations telling their descendants ‘I was there’, while in excerpt 7 the incomprehensible shouting of the crowd as Catherine Middleton’s car passes in front of them on the way to the Abbey is interpreted as signifying that ‘they want her … as a member of the royal family’.

As with all inferences discussed so far, ventriloquizing is not only performed by presenters and on-site reporters. Studio guests invited to offer their views as experts also make guesses regarding what the public would say:

(8) They are a very nice couple. Even committed republicans do not object to them as a couple, they seem very decent and trying to do the right thing. (ITV1, Tom Bradby, studio and wedding guest)

(9) This is the kind of triumph of sentiment, it has an innocent quality to it really. Everybody wishing this young married couple, simultaneously Prince and Princess, or Duke and Duchess, but also just two rather beautiful kids, wishing them well into the future. (BBC1, Simon Schama, historian)

The studio guest in excerpt 8 makes a claim about the opinion of a part of the public, namely that of ‘committed republicans’, and suggests that they ‘do not object’ to the royal couple because they ‘seem decent’. As before, this statement does not derive from anything said by any member of the public. Similarly the studio guest in excerpt 9 puts words into the mouths of ‘everybody’, claiming that everyone wishes the couple well.

As Lauerbach (2006: 213) suggests in relation to political interviews, here too the effect of ventriloquizing is ‘one of personalizing and dramatizing … discourse, thereby offering the audience a preferred interpretation of the … process’. By contrast to that study, however, the voices inferred and ventriloquized in the coverage of the royal wedding are not only those of the weak, as will be discussed below.

Inside the mind of the Queen

Although the discussion so far concerned both the coverage of ITV and the BBC, there is a difference between them relating to whose views get inferred or are directly ventriloquized, at least by the channel’s own presenters and reporters. The ITV coverage features several instances where the thoughts of the couple and their families are also inferred.

(10) And Carol, this is her moment, isn’t it? She has wanted this to happen for so long that she has played it perfectly. (ITV1 presenter)

(11) If we think of nerves on the day and someone who may be nervous on the day, I think we should spare a thought for James there. Because he’s going to make a reading, a lot of people involved today are used to big crowds and public speaking, I don’t know how much James is. And this is, it’s a big moment for him. How many times has he read and over-read the reading that he’ll give today. I would have thought that if someone was a bit on the nervous side, it might have been him. (ITV1 presenter)

(12) And what memories a journey like this must evoke for the Queen, who’s made this route so many times on happy occasions and on sad.… This will be a stand-out memory for the Queen and Prince Philip. (ITV1 presenter)

In excerpts 10–12, ITV gives its viewers ‘access’ to the minds of some of the big protagonists of the day. The presenters make inferences about what Carol and James Middleton, but also the Queen of England and Prince Philip think. As was the case in the examples presented in the previous section, here again there is no concrete evidence to suggest that any of what is said is actually in the minds of the persons it is attributed to – there are no interviews and no references to statements made previously.

In excerpt 10, as in example 3 earlier, the inference is made in a categorical manner. There are no modals, nor mitigating words, to make the content of the statement tentative (‘she has wanted this’). The modal verbs (‘may be nervous’, ‘would have thought’, ‘it might have been him’, ‘must evoke’) in excerpts 11 and 12 make the tone less categorical (Hodge and Kress, 1988: 126) but the presenters are still making clear claims about what the actors think.

In excerpt 13 on the other hand, we have an instance of ventriloquization, where the presenter is guessing what Prince William may be thinking:

(13) Like every groom before him he’ll look back to see his bride coming up the aisle and like every groom think ‘how lucky I am’. (ITV1 presenter)

As in example 6 earlier, here the words in the mind of the Prince (‘how lucky I am’) are being made up: ventriloquizing is not reserved just for the powerless public. In this case, Prince William is equated with ‘every groom before him’, which both stresses that members of the royal family are ordinary people like the viewer, and also invokes a familiar situation that viewers may be able to understand and relate to from personal experience (the way a groom feels at his wedding).

This mock-access to the thoughts of the event’s protagonists functions as part of the dramaturgy of the event (Manning, 1996). Viewers do not just watch isolated scenes of the wedding as they happen; the presenters provide a narrative throughout the coverage, which includes accounts of the events that led up to the wedding day, the personalities of the protagonists and their relationships to those around them, the procedures they follow on the day, the food they will have at the reception, but also what they think, what they feel and what the public thinks and feels about them. The royal couple, their families and the gathered crowds are all actors in the drama of the event and, by presenting their imagined thoughts and statements, the broadcasters make the drama more vivid and engaging, while at the same time they construct themselves as the channel through which we gain access to every detail of this drama.

As mentioned, the inferences and ventriloquizing of the thoughts of the royal family are a feature of the ITV coverage, where in general the approach to the day is lighter. Although this article attempts no systematic analysis of this issue, ITV’s tone is in general more ‘conversationalized’ (Fairclough, 1998). There is more talk about celebrity guests, more joking and laughing in the studio, and fewer serious debates on the implications of the event for the British monarchy on ITV compared to the BBC coverage. Both channels tell a story through the eight hours of their coverage, part of which is constructed through narrative devices such as those described so far.

Vox-pop interviews

Inferences, though, were not the only way the views of the public were represented. As seen in Table 1 earlier, members of the public who gathered in the streets in London and other locations were given the opportunity to voice their own comments through vox-pop interviews. In many cases, vox-pops directly accompanied inferences:

Excerpt 14 starts and ends with an inference about what people are experiencing (‘they’ve all been enjoying the whole atmosphere of the service’ and ‘everybody totally embracing this whole moment in history and they cannot wait for the next big event’). The short interviews are used to provide support for these inferences by offering some examples of people on the scene. This is a common technique in vox-pop interviews. The role of the inference at the beginning is to introduce the vox pops and frame them as representative examples of the content of the inference (Lewis et al., 2005: 95).

There are two noteworthy points about the vox-pops in excerpt 14 which are rather characteristic of the way members of the public were treated in these interviews on both channels. First, the questions asked do not require interviewees to offer in-depth analysis of any civic matters. Citizens are asked to comment on the general atmosphere, on whether they are having a good time and on whether they liked the bride or her dress. They are treated as consumers of popular culture, which, as discussed earlier, is the typical way of representing citizenship in the news media (Lewis et al., 2005). Debates about the future of the monarchy and the significance of this event took place at the BBC studio, but the participants in these debates were the presenter and historian Simon Schama. Debates about the benefits the event may bring for the image of the UK abroad and for incoming tourism took place at the ITV studio, again with expert guests. The public was generally not asked about such matters.

The second significant point in excerpt 14 is that, although the interviewees have the opportunity to speak in their own voices, their responses are very strictly guided by the interviewer. A technique followed consistently in the coverage was for the reporter to make an inference about what the public thinks and then turn it into a question, by using a question tag (‘there is a sense it’s been a perfect day, hasn’t it?’, ‘we want to see the kiss, don’t we?’, ‘they cannot wait for the next big event, can you?’). This technique of questioning does not allow the interviewee to give creative, expansive answers and leads the respondent to agree with the interviewer: if the respondent did not agree, he/she would threaten the interviewer’s positive face (Brown and Levinson, 1987) and therefore he/she would not challenge him without having good reason.

It is interesting to note the difference between this leading style of interrogation, which might be seen as ‘manufacturing’ rather than ‘eliciting’ testimony (Peters, 2001: 711), and the vox-pop interviews that followed Diana’s death in 1997. In that case, according to Myers (2000), the interviewers’ voices were heard less than those of the interviewees, who were given space to express their own thoughts and emotions and to defend their authenticity in all the excerpts presented in that analysis.

Excerpt 15, from ITV this time, is very similar to excerpt 14. The vox pop is introduced with inferences made by the presenter and the reporter and it is intended as an example to illustrate them. Everything that Jill says in the excerpt is framed by the inferences made at the beginning and, as in excerpt 14, she is also asked leading questions to ensure that what she says is within the same frame. Apart from the inferences posed as questions (‘it’s really done wonders for the island, hasn’t it?’, ‘people see her out and about shopping … don’t they?’), the reporter also gives a reply to her own question and asks the interviewee to confirm it (‘why did you decide to come here today, Jill, to soak up the atmosphere?’). Again, saving her interlocutor’s positive face (Brown and Levinson, 1987) requires the interviewee to agree, unless she really objects to the content of the utterance. What she does in this case is to paraphrase ‘to soak up the atmosphere’ as ‘to be happy and have a good day’ which still confirms the original proposition, but with less strong overtones.

As in excerpt 14, the interviewee here does not make any statements about the ‘serious’ issues regarding the monarchy and its role in British society, or the significance of the event for Britain’s international position. An exception to this pattern can be found below:

Excerpt 16 is a rather rare example where members of the public are asked to discuss the topics which are generally reserved for the studio expert guests. After some initial questions about the bride’s looks, the interviewees are asked to comment on the role the couple will fulfil within the British monarchy. The discussion is not as extensive as the ones with the experts at the studio, but it offers a rare instance where ordinary citizens talk about Britain’s relationship with the monarchy (‘this country needs a boost and they are it’) and the need for a renewal of the institution (‘fresh young blood will do a lot’). In excerpt 16 it seems that that the interviewer is making an effort to direct the conversation towards these themes, particularly in the interview with the second woman: the respondent’s original reaction to the event (‘just a fairytale, they’re lovely’) is met with a question about the monarchy which forces her to diverge from that frame of reference. At the end of the interview though, the respondent returns to the role of consumer (‘everyone wants her fashion’) which is typical in the vox-pop genre (Lewis et al., 2005).

Conclusion

Arguably, the last major royal media event before the 2011 royal wedding, was Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997 (and perhaps to a lesser extent the funeral of the Queen Mother in 2002), an event that was marked by an outpouring of popular emotion (Marriott, 2007; Myers, 2000). In the coverage of Diana’s funeral, the BBC maintained a rather reserved stance, explaining what was happening with little interference of the presenter and his emotions, while ITV focused on the emotional impact the Princess’s death had had among ordinary people and sought to involve viewers as participants in the mourning through the discourse of the presenters (Marriott, 2007).

In 2011 the occasion was different: the event this time was a happy one and it had been prepared for several months with plenty of media coverage, therefore it lacked the shocked public reaction that characterized Diana’s funeral. Moreover the royal couple arguably have a ‘lower’ celebrity profile compared to Princess Diana, who had been established as a public figure through years of constant media exposure, which often involved controversy (Blain and O’Donnell, 2003). Due to all these circumstances, it might be expected that the event would not generate similar levels of involvement on the part of the public. However, by watching the coverage of the two broadcasters, one is led to think that the public participated in this event with equal enthusiasm.

On both the BBC and ITV, ordinary members of the public, both as a group and individually, were among the key actors of the day. Shots of the gathered crowds and continuous references to them dominated the coverage on both channels, while a large number of vox-pops seemed to illustrate the claims made by the presenters about the ‘surge’ of the crowd or the ‘outpouring of emotion and joy’. All this evidence of public support though was heavily scripted: quite a lot of what was described as the views of the public was inferred or said on their behalf by the presenters and reporters of the two channels, with little systematic supporting evidence. Of course this was not necessarily done as a conscious effort to make up public opinion. It was mainly an effort to contribute to the dramaturgy of the event, to make the narrative more vivid and engaging, and to add more ‘voices’ to its script. In fact, ITV even extended the range of scripted opinions and emotions to make inferences about what members of the royal family thought, felt and would say if they spoke.

When given the opportunity to speak for themselves, members of the public were restricted by the brevity of the vox-pop interviews; the leading questions which offered little space for the respondents to express themselves in their own terms; the framing imposed on the interviews by the inferences used to introduce them; and the limited range of topics they were generally asked to comment on, which put them in the position of commenting as consumers of popular culture rather than as citizens of a civic society. The latter point is common in the way ordinary citizens are constructed in the news as well and not only in the coverage of media events (Lewis et al., 2005).

Overall, as discussed in my analysis, there are similarities between the coverage of the media event presented here and the coverage of news stories (Lewis et al., 2005) in the way citizens are constructed through vox-pops and inferences made about them. However the role of presenters, reporters and interviewers in creating a script for what is being presented is much more prominent in the coverage of media events than it is in news. This is perhaps to be expected due to the ceremonial nature of media events. It seems that, as a result, the role of members of the public in the coverage of the latter is also more heavily scripted.

As discussed at the beginning of this article, one of the key roles the media perform in the coverage of a media event is to construct and offer access to a ‘mediated centre’ (Couldry, 2003) of authority and power. The televised coverage of the royal wedding gave viewers visual access to parts of the event they would otherwise not see; its presenters and studio guests framed the transmission of the wedding with a narration of the love story of the royal couple and an analysis of their personalities and relationships with their families and friends, as well as an explanation of the procedures of the day and a discussion of its significance. All these are narratives viewers would not have access to without the media – the narrative is part of the way broadcasters construct themselves as the gateways of access to the centre of power.

However, the narrative by itself might be seen as lacking significance or ‘centrality’ if there was no evidence that it matters to ordinary people. To a certain extent the lavishness of the ceremony communicates the event’s significance, but it could be argued that this significance is administered by the organizers and, to a degree, by the broadcasters’ attention. The event would truly represent the ‘centre of power’ in society only if ordinary members of society legitimated its significance.

The footage of the physical presence of members of the public in the streets during the ceremony partly fulfils this legitimating role. Arguably though, the greatest part of this legitimation is fulfilled through a discourse which involves: (a) unifying, both visually and verbally, the people present at the event into a homogenized and individualized crowd, (b) inferencing and often ventriloquizing the support of these people, and (c) vox-pop interviews constructed to reinforce a consensus of joy and enthusiasm around the event. At the same time as providing a picture of what people on the scene felt and thought, these discursive techniques functioned to invite the viewer to participate, to integrate themselves with this ‘centre’ of festivity (Dayan and Katz, 1992).

This article has therefore argued that the construction of ordinary citizens in major media events forms part of the ‘centering’ techniques which legitimate and evoke identification with sources of power. It has also demonstrated how such techniques fit into the general dramatization and narrative of the media event. It has attempted to address the calls in the literature for an examination of the ways in which media perform a ‘centering’ role (Hepp and Couldry, 2010; Marriott, 2007) and, additionally, to highlight the similarities in the techniques used in media events and in news coverage, when talking about the views of the public.