They take the form of political or diplomatic initiatives aiming at a swift change in public opinion on a given subject. They are attempts at rephrasing a society's history, at redefining the identity of its members. Conquests celebrate the redefinition of norms. Expectably, all three major ceremonial scripts address the question of authority, and of its legitimating principle. This helps us understand the political distribution of media events.
Coronations are to be found everywhere, for there are no societies without traditions.
The charismatic dynamics of conquests is always subversive, making them hardly affordable to those societies that are afraid of change. Compared to the types of public events that used to be prevalent before their emergence, media events introduce at least two major transformations. These transformations affect both the nature of the events and that of ceremonial participation. These events have been remodeled in order not to need a territorial inscription any longer. The scenography of former public events was characterized by the actual encounter, on a specifiable site, of ceremonial actors and their audiences.