Becoming ‘Dayan and Katz’

This article is about two friendships and two books. Elihu Katz and Todd Gitlin, who died at almost the same time in 2022, were both friends of mine, but also resolute opponents in a debate that long divided the sociology of the media. The two books are Personal Influence, by Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, and Media Events, authored almost 40 years later by Elihu Katz and myself. Combining direct testimony and critical analysis, I propose a re-reading of these two books and their respective genealogies, which go back to French post-structuralism and Jewish theology.