The Integrated News Spectacle, Live 8, and the Annihilation of Time

Abstract

In this article, the recent strategic turn by U.S.-based media corporations toward the use of broadband technologies, particularly online video, is assessed as a turning point in how news is being conceptualized, distributed, and consumed. Using the heuristic tool the integrated news spectacle, and its application to political, economic, and technological developments propelled forward by the 2005 Live 8 concerts, the authors analyze contemporary trajectories concerning the news and their more general implications regarding what Innisians refer to as the annihilation of time.