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The handbook of European communication history
 9781119161622, 1119161622

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Title Page......Page 5
Copyright Page......Page 6
Table of Contents......Page 7
List of Contributors......Page 11
Author Biographies......Page 15
Preface......Page 27
A Re-Turn to the History of Mediated Communication?......Page 29
Changing Times-Spaces in Europe – Historical Takes or (Re-)Turns......Page 32
Only Dusty Old Papers or New Insights? Media History and the Internet Age......Page 35
A Rising Field – Research on the History of Mediated Communication in Europe......Page 37
What is Europe? Geographical Mix, CountrySelections and Criteria......Page 39
More About the Scope of this Handbookand Editorial Approach......Page 41
Thematic Introduction to the Sections and Chapters......Page 43
Conclusions......Page 44
References......Page 45
Introduction......Page 51
Historical and Political Background......Page 52
Press Freedom and Its Guiding Principles in the Late Nineteenth Century......Page 53
Resumption of Authoritarian Principles in the Early Twentieth Century......Page 57
Historical and Political Background: The Strength of Absolutism and Catholicism......Page 60
News Markets’ Limitations......Page 61
Censorship and War Subsidies......Page 62
New Media Under Control......Page 63
Historical Background: Censorship in Sweden and Denmark‐Norway Around 1800......Page 64
Access to Information......Page 65
Formation of a Multi‐Party Press......Page 66
References......Page 67
Introduction......Page 71
Britain......Page 74
Portugal......Page 76
Russia......Page 79
Germany......Page 82
Concluding Comments......Page 83
References......Page 85
Introduction: European Global Dominance......Page 89
Transition: The Impact of World War I......Page 92
The Interwar Period – From Film Europe to Filmed Propaganda......Page 94
Post-War Europe – The Struggle to Retain Markets......Page 99
The Rise of the European Co-Production......Page 101
From State Aid to Supranational Regulation......Page 103
References......Page 105
Introduction......Page 107
Inventions, Technical Progress and the Radio Boom in the United States......Page 108
Striving for Independence: The BBC in Great Britain......Page 109
Growing Influence of the State: Radio Broadcasting in Germany......Page 112
Promoting a New State and National Identity: The Case of Czechoslovakia......Page 114
A Dual System Controlled by the State: Radio Broadcasting in Portugal......Page 116
Many Monopolies and Some Alternative Models: The Development in Other European Countries......Page 118
Conclusion: The Dominance of the State in Early Radio Broadcasting......Page 120
References......Page 121
Introduction......Page 125
German War Propaganda: Conflicting Viewson the Use of Traditional and ‘New’ Media......Page 126
British War Propaganda: Adaptability as a Strategy for Success......Page 129
Russian War Propaganda: Using Media to Counter Internal Criticism......Page 133
Resisting the Invader: Belgian and French Propaganda......Page 135
Trench Journals and Soldiers’ Morale......Page 137
Conclusion......Page 138
References......Page 139
Introduction......Page 143
The United Kingdom......Page 144
Germany......Page 147
The Territorial Netherlands......Page 150
Sweden......Page 152
Italy......Page 155
Conclusion......Page 158
References......Page 159
Introduction......Page 163
The Fascist Media System in Italy: Between Imposing Control and Granting Leeway......Page 165
Media in National Socialist Germany. Between “Total Synchronization” and Audience Orientation......Page 168
The Hybrid Media System in Hungary......Page 171
The Spanish Media System During Franco’s Dictatorship: From Totalitarian to Moderate Authoritarianism......Page 173
Conclusion......Page 176
References......Page 178
The Revolution of 1905 and the Emergence of a More Pluralist Media System......Page 181
The Russian Revolution of 1917 – and the Start of the Bolshevik Media System......Page 184
Red and White Propaganda During the “Civil War”......Page 187
Liberalization During the New Economic Policy Period and the Soviet Media System......Page 189
The Media System in Stalin’s Soviet Russia and the Threat of War in the 1930s......Page 194
The Development of the Press......Page 195
Television and Radio Broadcasting......Page 196
Conclusion......Page 197
References......Page 198
“Hier spricht Deutschland!”: Nazi Wireless Propaganda......Page 201
Britain’s Engagement in the War via Radio......Page 203
Cross-Border Broadcasting in an Occupied Country: The Case of Poland......Page 206
Broadcasting in Neutral Countries: The Cases of Portugal and Spain......Page 209
Other Major Players......Page 212
Conclusion......Page 213
References......Page 214
Introduction......Page 217
Boom Years for Print Media......Page 218
Ongoing Radio Times......Page 220
TV Plans and Omnipresent Film......Page 221
Established Orders – New Orders? Media Policy and the Post‐war Media Systems......Page 223
Myths of European Networks......Page 225
New Faces, New Voices? – Women in a Male Dominated Profession......Page 226
How to Survive? – Everyday Problems......Page 227
What Do We Want? – Visions of the Future......Page 228
Who We Are? – Management of National Identity......Page 229
Acknowledgments......Page 230
References......Page 231
Introduction......Page 233
Germany......Page 235
Poland......Page 238
Spain......Page 241
Finland......Page 243
Conclusion......Page 245
References......Page 246
Introduction......Page 249
Spain: From the Press Act to a Democratic Constitution......Page 250
The Construction of the New State: Ramón Serrano Suñer’s Law of 1938......Page 251
Signs of Liberalization: Fraga’s Law of 1966......Page 252
The Media Under Salazar’s Rule: Decades of Legal Uncertainty (1926–1960s)......Page 253
Greece: Propaganda in Disguise of Consumerism, Kitsch, and Greek Christianity......Page 255
After the Coup d’État: The Greek Media Under the New Military Rule......Page 256
A Military Junta Devoid of Ideology......Page 257
The Ulbricht Era (1949–1971): Media as Diplomatic Weapons......Page 258
Hungary: The Media Between Communist Virtues and Libertarian Efforts......Page 260
A New Media Model After De-Stalinization (1956–1989)......Page 261
Conclusion......Page 263
References......Page 264
Introduction......Page 267
Inventing Television in the Nineteenth Century......Page 268
Television’s Technologies, Images, and Spaces in the Interwar Period......Page 269
Launching of Regular Television Broadcastingfrom a Transnational Perspective......Page 270
The Emergence of Television in Post‐War Europe: Patterns and Paths......Page 271
Television’s Transition from Public to Domestic Spaces......Page 273
Early Television Audiences......Page 274
Television Coming of Age......Page 276
European TV Cultures in the Cold War Media Landscape......Page 277
Geographies of Television in Europe......Page 278
Conclusion......Page 279
References......Page 280
Introduction......Page 285
Radio and Television at the Center of the Political Debate: Pressures for Access......Page 286
Private Pressure Groups and the Deregulation of Television......Page 288
First Steps of Commercial Television......Page 290
The Privatization of Radio and Television in Southern Europe: Differences and Similarities......Page 291
European Regions: An Opportunity for Commercial Radio and Television......Page 293
New Technologies for a New Society: VCR, Cable, and Satellite Television......Page 296
Cable and Satellite: Emerging Technologies......Page 297
Transformation in Media Production and Consumption......Page 299
Conclusion......Page 300
References......Page 302
Introduction: Media History and Central and Eastern Europe......Page 305
Bulgaria......Page 306
The Political Transformation of 1989–1997 and its Aftermath......Page 307
The Post-Transformation Period......Page 308
The Political Transformation of 1989–1990 and Its Aftermath......Page 310
The Post-Transformation Period......Page 311
Hungary: Summary and Conclusions......Page 313
Lithuania......Page 314
The Political Transformation of 1989–1990 and Its Aftermath......Page 315
The Post-Transformation Period......Page 316
Poland......Page 318
The Political Transformation of 1989–1991 and Its Aftermath......Page 319
The Post-Transformation Period......Page 320
Poland: Summary and Conclusions......Page 321
References......Page 322
Introduction......Page 327
Legal Deregulation......Page 328
Media Concentration......Page 330
Legal Deregulation......Page 332
Media Concentration......Page 334
Multinational Companies......Page 335
Legal Deregulation......Page 336
Media Concentration......Page 337
Multinational Companies......Page 338
Conclusions......Page 339
References......Page 341
Introduction......Page 343
Constituting the European Project......Page 344
The European Public Sphere: A Condition for a United Europe?......Page 345
… Ridden by a Democratic Deficit?......Page 346
Cultural Dimensions of an (Evolving) European Public Sphere......Page 349
Urban Spaces: European Capitals of Culture......Page 350
Audiovisual Spaces: European Film......Page 351
Communication and Media in the Project Europe......Page 352
Crisis in Europe: Europe in Crisis......Page 353
Note......Page 354
References......Page 355
Introduction......Page 361
From Text and Directories to the World Wide Web......Page 362
Country Specific Trends in Media Development......Page 363
Decline of Newspaper Circulation......Page 364
Liberalization of Audiovisual Markets......Page 365
Democratization and Foreign Investments......Page 366
When Traditional Media Went Online......Page 367
The Game Changer......Page 368
Audiovisual Media Overtaking Print......Page 369
Online Gaining Autonomy......Page 370
Changing Practices and Challenges......Page 371
Conclusion......Page 373
References......Page 374
Introduction......Page 379
A History of Practice......Page 380
A History of Ideals......Page 381
The Weight of a Dominant Narrative......Page 383
The Long Century of European Journalism: Variations of Time and Context......Page 384
The Emerging Profession......Page 385
The Search for Public Interest Journalism......Page 387
The Late High Moment of Professionalism......Page 389
Concluding Remarks......Page 390
References......Page 392
Introduction: National Traditions and Different Ways of Training Aspiring Journalists......Page 395
US Journalism Schools and Their Influence on Some European Countries......Page 396
The Role of the German Zeitungswissenschaft......Page 398
Changes in the European Training Schemes After World War II......Page 400
Spain and Finland as Surprising Exceptions in Southern and Northern Europe......Page 401
Heterogeneity and Ideological Biased Education in Communist Countries......Page 403
First Wave of University‐Based Programs in Journalism in Western Europe......Page 404
A Second Wave in the 1990s......Page 406
After the Fall of the Berlin Wall......Page 407
Note......Page 409
References......Page 410
Introduction......Page 413
Print: The Advent of Newspaper Readers......Page 414
Electrification: Listeners and Viewers......Page 415
Television Revolution and Home Audiences......Page 417
The New “New Media”: Computerization and the Internet......Page 419
Case Study Turkey: Embracing Social Media3......Page 421
Case Study Russia: RuNet and RuTube......Page 422
Case Study Germany: Media Audiences and Motives......Page 423
Case Study Denmark: The “Early Adopters”......Page 424
Conclusion......Page 425
References......Page 427
Introduction......Page 431
Americanization as a Two-Sided Concept......Page 433
Different Styles of Journalism......Page 436
News Values and Active On-the-Spot Reporting......Page 438
The Objectivity Regime......Page 441
Conclusion......Page 443
References......Page 444
Introduction......Page 449
Mid-nineteenth Century to 1914......Page 450
1914 to the 1960s......Page 455
1970s to the Present......Page 459
References......Page 461
Introduction – An Incomplete History of a Fragmented and Moving Target......Page 465
Emergence and Development of Minority Media......Page 467
The Beginning of a Long History of Identity Management: the Representation of the “We” in Disintegrating Empires......Page 469
The 1960s: Broadcasting Debates on Inclusion and Exclusion......Page 472
Migrant Movements and the Extension of the Term “Minority Media”......Page 474
Through the Lens of the Others: Representation of Minorities and Diversity in Mainstream Media......Page 475
Conclusion......Page 476
References......Page 477
Introduction......Page 481
Approach and Outline......Page 482
Classic Liberalism with Limited Democracy: A Dominant Model Under Pressure......Page 483
British Thinkers: Cobden, Spencer, May, Dicey, and Hobson......Page 485
German Theorists: Van Thünen, Marx, Knies, Bücher, Tönnies, and Weber......Page 488
Émile Durkheim on Divisions of Labor – Social and Spatial......Page 492
New Social Movements – Reimagining the Space of Political Organization......Page 494
Social Democrats Get to Parliament: Moderated or Silenced Internationalism?......Page 496
World War I and the Reconstruction (and Embedding) of Modern Nationalism......Page 497
Conclusions and Implications......Page 498
References......Page 500
Author Index......Page 503
Subject Index......Page 513
EULA......Page 523

Citation preview

The Handbook of European Communication History

Handbooks in Communication and Media This series aims to provide theoretically ambitious but accessible volumes devoted to the major fields and subfields within communication and media studies. Each volume sets out to ground and orientate the student through a broad range of specially commissioned chapters, while also providing the more experienced scholar and teacher with a convenient and comprehensive overview of the latest trends and critical directions. The Handbook of Children, Media, and Development, edited by Sandra L. Calvert and Barbara J. Wilson The Handbook of Crisis Communication, edited by W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay The Handbook of Internet Studies, edited by Mia Consalvo and Charles Ess The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address, edited by Shawn J. Parry‐Giles and J. Michael Hogan The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani The Handbook of Global Communication and Media Ethics, edited by Robert S. Fortner and P. Mark Fackler The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility, edited by Øyvind Ihlen, Jennifer Bartlett, and Steve May The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media, edited by Karen Ross The Handbook of Global Health Communication, edited by Rafael Obregon and Silvio Waisbord The Handbook of Global Media Research, edited by Ingrid Volkmer The Handbook of Global Online Journalism, edited by Eugenia Siapera and Andreas Veglis The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation, edited by Craig E. Carroll The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory, edited by Robert S. Fortner and P. Mark Fackler The Handbook of International Advertising Research, edited by Hong Cheng The Handbook of Psychology of Communication Technology, edited by S. Shyam Sundar The Handbook of International Crisis Communication Research, edited by Andreas Schwarz, Matthew W. Seeger, and Claudia Auer The Handbook of Organizational Rhetoric and Communication, edited by Øyvind Ihlen and Robert L. Heath The Handbook of European Communication History, edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock

The Handbook of European Communication History

Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock Editorial Assistance: Mandy Tröger

This edition first published 2020 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. The right of Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Editorial Office 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication data has been applied for Hardback: 9781119161622 Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: © pytyczech / 123RF Set in 10/12pt Galliard by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India

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Table of Contents

List of Contributors ix Author Biographies xiii Preface xxv Introduction: European Communication History: A Challenging if Timely Project Paschal Preston, Klaus Arnold, and Susanne Kinnebrock

1

Part I  Emergence of modern mediated communication institutions and practices

1. Struggles over “Press Freedom” and “Public Spheres”: Competing Conceptualizations, Values, Norms Jürgen Wilke, Jaume Guillamet, Svennik Høyer, and Nils E. Øy

23

2. The “New” Newspapers: The Popular Press in Britain, Portugal, Russia, and Germany, late‐1800s to Early‐1900s Anthony Cawley, Helena Lima, Olga Kruglikova, and Thomas Birkner

43

3. European Film Since the 1890s: A Media Sector in the Shadow of Hollywood 61 Roderick Flynn 4. Organizing a New Medium: The Emergence of Radio Broadcasting in Europe Klaus Arnold, Nelson Ribeiro, Barbara Köpplová, and Jan Cebe 5. World War I and the Emergence of Modern Propaganda Nelson Ribeiro, Anne Schmidt, Sian Nicholas, Olga Kruglikova, and Koenraad Du Pont

79 97

vi

Table of Contents

6. Modernization, Democratization and Politicization: Mass Media in 1920s Europe Jochen Hung, Mark Hampton, Peppino Ortoleva, Joris van Eijnatten, and Lennart Weibull

115

7. Crises, Rise of Fascism and the Establishment of Authoritarian Media Systems Patrick Merziger, Gabriele Balbi, Carlos Barrera, and Balázs Sipos

135

8. The Russian Revolution and the Establishment of the Authoritarian Media System Olga Kruglikova and Konstantin Alexeev

153

9. International Radio Broadcasting During World War II Nelson Ribeiro, Hans‐Ulrich Wagner, and Agnieszka Morriss

173

Part II  Media in “a binary Europe”: the mid‐1940s to late 1980s

10. Media After 1945: Continuities and New Beginnings Hans‐Ulrich Wagner, Hugh Chignell, Marie Cronqvist, Christoph Hilgert, and Kristin Skoog

189

11. Media and the Cold War: The East/West Conflict Michael Meyen, Kaarle Nordenstreng, Carlos Barrera, and Walery Pisarek

205

12. Authoritarian Media Control in Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Greece After World War II Anke Fiedler, Helena Lima, Emmanuel Heretakis, Balázs Sipos, Juan Antonio García Galindo, and Antonio Cuartero

221

13. The Rise of Television: Institutionalization and the Forming of National Audiences 239 Andreas Fickers, Dana Mustata, and Anne‐Katrin Weber 14. The Introduction of Commercial Broadcasting to Europe Rosa Franquet, Giuseppe Richeri, and Matthew Hibberd

257

PART III  Media Developments in Europe after the end of the Cold War

15. History of the Media in Central and Eastern Europe Péter Bajomi‐Lázár, Auksė Balčytienė, Alina Dobreva, and Beata Klimkiewicz

277

16. Media Concentration and the Rise of Multinational Companies Juan Pablo Artero, Roderick Flynn, and Damian Guzek

299

17. EU Democratic Deficits: The EU Project and a European Public Sphere Katharine Sarikakis and Olga Kolokytha

315



Table of Contents

18. The Emergence of the Internet and the End of Journalism? Christian Oggolder, Niels Brügger, Monika Metyková, Ramón Salaverría, and Eugenia Siapera

vii 333

Part IV  Historical Themes and Trends in European Media and Public Communication

19. Professionalisms and Journalism History: Lessons from European Variations Risto Kunelius, Olivier Baisnée, and Sergio Splendore

351

20. The Development of Journalism Education in Europe Carlos Barrera and Michael Harnischmacher

367

21. New Media and Audience Behavior Susanne Eichner, Yeşim Kaptan, Elizabeth Prommer, and Yulia Yurtaeva‐Martens

385

22. Americanization, or: The Rhetoric of Modernity: How European Journalism Adapted US Norms, Practices and Conventions Marcel Broersma 23. Gender, Media, and Modernity Adrian Bingham, Matilde Eiroa, Susanne Kinnebrock, and Claire McCallum

403 421

24. Ethnic Minorities and the Media: A Struggle for Voice, Self, and Community? 437 Christian Schwarzenegger, Gabriele Falböck, Merja Ellefson, Irati Agirreazkuenaga, Alicia Ferrández Ferrer, Heike Graf, and Marina Yanglyaeva 25. Imagined New Spaces of Political Solidarity in the 1880s–1920s: Beyond the National? Paschal Preston

453

Author Index Subject Index

475 485

List of Contributors

Irati Agirreazkuenaga, University of the Basque Country, Spain Konstantin Alexeev, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia Klaus Arnold, deceased Juan Pablo Artero, University of Zaragoza, Spain Olivier Baisnée, Sciences‐Po Toulouse, France Péter Bajomi‐Lázár, Budapest Business School, University of Applied Sciences, Hungary Gabriele Balbi, USI Università della Svizzera italiana, Italy Aukse Balcytiene, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania Carlos Barrera, University of Navarra, Spain Adrian Bingham, University of Sheffield, UK Thomas Birkner, WWU Münster, Germany Marcel Broersma, University of Groningen, the Netherlands Niels Brügger, Aarhus University, Denmark Anthony Cawley, Liverpool Hope University, UK Jan Cebe, Charles University, Czech Republic Hugh Chignell, Bournemouth University, UK Marie Cronqvist, Lund University, Sweden Antonio Cuartero, University of Málaga, Spain Alina Dobreva, Central European University, Hungary

x

List of Contributors

Koenraad Du Pont, Brussels Center for Journalism Studies – KU Leuven, Belgium Susanne Eichner, Aarhus University, Denmark Joris van Eijnatten, Utrecht University, the Netherlands Matilde Eiroa, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain Merja Ellefson, Umeå University, Sweden Gabriele Falböck, University of Vienna, Austria Alicia Ferrández Ferrer, University of Alicante, Spain Andreas Fickers, University of Luxembourg and Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, Luxembourg Anke Fiedler, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany Roderick Flynn, School of Communications, Dublin City University, Ireland Rosa Franquet, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain Juan Antonio García Galindo, University of Málaga, Spain Heike Graf, Södertörn University, Sweden Jaume Guillamet, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain Damian Guzek, University of Silesia, Poland Mark Hampton, Lingnan University, Hong Kong Michael Harnischmacher, University of Passau, Germany Emmanuel Heretakis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece Matthew Hibberd, Università Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland Christoph Hilgert, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany Svennik Høyer, deceased Jochen Hung, Utrecht University, the Netherlands Yeşim Kaptan, Kent State University, USA Susanne Kinnebrock, Augsburg University, Germany Beata Klimkiewicz, Jagiellonian University, Poland Olga Kolokytha, University of Vienna, Austria Barbara Köpplová, Metropolitan University Prague, Czech Republic Olga Kruglikova, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia Risto Kunelius, University of Tampere, Finland Helena Lima, University of Porto, Portugal Claire McCallum, University of Exeter, UK Patrick Merziger, University of Leipzig, Germany



List of Contributors

xi

Monika Metykova, University of Sussex, UK Michael Meyen, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany Agnieszka Morriss, City University London, UK Dana Mustata, University of Groningen, Netherlands Sian Nicholas, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK Kaarle Nordenstreng, University of Tampere, Finland Christian Oggolder, Austrian Academy of Sciences and Alpen‐Adria Universität, Austria Peppino Ortoleva, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy Nils E. Øy, Volda University College, Norway Walery Pisarek, deceased (previously at The Pontifical University of John Paul II, Poland) Paschal Preston, Dublin City University, Ireland Elizabeth Prommer, University of Rostock Institute for Media Research, Germany Nelson Ribeiro, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal Giuseppe Richeri, University of Lugano, Switzerland Ramón Salaverría, University of Navarra, Spain Katharine Sarikakis, University of Vienna, Austria Anne Schmidt, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany Christian Schwarzenegger, Augsburg University, Germany Eugenia Siapera, Dublin City University, Ireland Balázs Sipos, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary Kristin Skoog, Bournemouth University, UK Sergio Splendore, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy Hans‐Ulrich Wagner, Hans‐Bredow‐Institute – Research Centre Media History, Germany Anne‐Katrin Weber, University of Lausanne, Switzerland Lennart Weibull, University of Gothenburg and The SOM Institute, Sweden Jürgen Wilke, University of Mainz, Germany Marina Yanglyaeva, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia Yulia Yurtaeva‐Martens, Filmuniversity “Konrad Wolf,” Germany

Author Biographies

Irati Agirreazkuenaga is an Assistant Professor at the Journalism Department, School of Social Sciences and Communication at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao. Her research interests include public media and citizen engagement in civic and political life, transmedia products in public service media, communication strategies for minority‐language media and the role of the media in empowering minority identities, among others. She is vice‐chair of the Diaspora Migration and the Media Section in the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). Konstantin Alexeev is an Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism History at St. Petersburg State University and a doctoral candidate of Philological Sciences. His research interests and teaching concentrate on the history of Russian journalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the history of sports and leisure‐time journalism in Russia. His key recent publication is, Pre‐revolutionary Sport Journalism in Russia (History and Traditions), St. Petersburg: Nord star. Klaus Arnold (†2017) was Professor of Media Studies at the University of Trier. His main research interests were European media history as well as quality and innovation in journalism. In the years before his untimely death, Klaus was a key driver and Editor of this book project. Juan Pablo Artero is an Associate Professor of Journalism at University of Zaragoza, Spain. He has been an executive board member at the European Media Management Association (2008–2012). His research interests are focused on media economics, ­management and policy. His academic publications account for more than 60 books, book chapters, and journal articles, in both Spanish and English. Olivier Baisnée is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences‐Po Toulouse (University of Toulouse, France). His research interests have focused on European ­correspondence and journalism, international comparison of news production, and the historical sociology of the journalistic field. Péter Bajomi‐Lázár is Professor of Mass Communication at the Budapest Business School  –  University of Applied Sciences, Hungary. His research interests include ­comparative media systems, media policy, and political communication.

xiv

Author Biographies

Gabriele Balbi is Assistant Professor in Media Studies at USI, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland. In the Faculty of Communication Sciences, he is also director of the China Media Observatory. His research interests focus on media history and historiography from the nineteenth to the twenty‐first century. Auksė Balcytiene is Professor of Journalism and Communications at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. Her fields of expertise range from journalism cultures and comparative studies of democratization to changing meanings and boundaries of journalism in contemporary societies. Carlos Barrera is an Associate Professor at the University of Navarra’s School of Communication, where he has also been director of the master’s course in Political and Corporate Communication and editor of the journal Communication & Society. Most of his publications focus on media history, media, and politics, and history of journalism education. Adrian Bingham is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. His main research interests are in the political, social, and cultural history of twentieth‐century Britain. He has worked extensively on the representation of gender, sexuality, and class in national popular press in the decades after 1918. Thomas Birkner is Akademischer Oberrat (Assistant Professor/Lecturer) at the University of Münster, Germany. He is author of books and articles on the history of journalism, the mediatization of politics, and co‐editor of volumes on theories of media change and media diversity. His research interests include journalism, communication theories, communication and sports, and political communication, especially media and political leadership. He was Visiting Professor of Communication and Journalism Research at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich during the winter of 2014/15 and since 2016 he has been Chair of the Communication History Section of the German Communication Association. Marcel Broersma is Full Professor of Journalism Studies and Media and Director of the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has published widely on historical and current changes in journalism. His publications include Form and Style in Journalism (2007), Rethinking Journalism (2013), and Rethinking Journalism Again (2017). Niels Brügger is Professor and Head of the Centre for Internet Studies as well as of the internet research infrastructure NetLab, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research interests are web historiography, web archiving, and media theory. Within these fields he has published monographs and a number of edited books as well as articles and book chapters. He is co‐founder of the Centre for Internet Studies (2000), and of the journal Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society (Taylor & Francis, 2017). Anthony Cawley is a Senior Lecturer in Media in the Department of Media and Communication, Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom. His research interests include media history, media innovation and economics, online journalism, and news‐ media framing of current affairs. His research has been published in international peer‐ reviewed journals. Jan Cebe, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and member of the Departments of Media Studies at the Charles University and Metropolitan University in Prague. His research focuses primarily on the history of twentieth century media both in the world and the



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former Czechoslovak context, with a focus on journalistic organizations. He is a member of international scientific and research organizations involved in the areas of communication (ECREA, IAMCR). Hugh Chignell is Professor of Media History and Director of the Centre for Media History at Bournemouth University, United Kingdom. He is a steering committee ­member of the “Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS)” network. He is mainly a radio historian, currently working on the history of radio drama. Marie Cronqvist is an Associate Professor in Media History and Journalism at the Department of Communication and Media at Lund University, Sweden. She is the main coordinator of the research network “Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS)” and her research deals mainly with Cold War culture, postwar propaganda, and transnational broadcasting. Antonio Cuartero is a PhD student at the Journalism Department of the University of Málaga. He was awarded a scholarship (FPU) from the Spanish Education Ministry. He is a graduate in journalism and holds a Master’s degree in Research and Journalistic Communication. In Fall 2014 he was an Associate Research Student at the University of Roehampton in London. Alina Dobreva is a Researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her research interests are in the area of media freedom and pluralism, public opinion, media effects and political campaigns, and democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. Koenraad Du Pont is an Associate Researcher of the Brussels Centre for Journalism Studies. He holds an MA in International Politics (Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2004) and a PhD in Romance languages (KU Leuven, 2007). His doctoral thesis was on the war diaries (1915–1918) of the Italian avant‐gardist Ardengo Soffici. Koenraad has published articles on World War I testimonial literature, trench journalism, travel journalism, commemorative journalism, and Italian futurism. Susanne Eichner is Associate Professor at the Department of Media Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. In her research, she employs a cross‐media approach focusing on media reception, media sociology, production ecology, and popular serial culture She is the author of the book Agency and Media Reception. Experiencing Video Games, Film, and Television (2014) and editor of Fernsehen: Europäische Perspektiven (2014, with Elizabeth Prommer) and Transnationale Serienkultur (2013, with Lothar Mikos and Rainer Winter). Joris van Eijnatten is a Cultural Historian at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He works on various interrelated fields, including the history of ideas, religion, media and communication. His research involves source material ranging from the eighteenth century to the present. Joris van Eijnatten is an editor of the open‐access journal HCM, the International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity. His current project involves digital humanities research into popular conceptions of Europe and modernity in twentieth‐century newspapers. Matilde Eiroa has a PhD in Contemporary History and is Associate Professor at Carlos III University, Madrid. Her research focuses on twentieth‐century Spanish history, including women’s history. In 2013 her book Isabel de Palencia. Diplomacia, periodismo y ­militancia al servicio de la República won the twenty‐third Victoria Kent Research Award.

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Merja Ellefson is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests include comparative communication and press history with a focus on countries around the Baltic Sea; mediated memories; nationalism and construction of ethnic majorities and minorities; minority media; media, ethnicity, gender and social class. Gabriele Falböck is a Lecturer at the University of Vienna and at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten. Her research interests are migration and ethno media, historical analysis of media for children and their usage, mediated memory and identities, the phenomenon of kitsch, cult, and nostalgia. She is head of the Working Committee for Historical Communication Research (AHK), and editor of the journal Medien&Zeit. Alicia Ferrández Ferrer is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alicante (Spain) who received her PhD in Social Anthropology in 2014 and her MA in Migration and Intercultural Relations in 2006. Her research interests are migration and communication in global cities, especially related to migrants’ political and civil rights. She has carried out fieldwork in Spain and the United Kingdom. Andreas Fickers is Professor of Contemporary and Digital History at Luxembourg University. His research interests are transnational media history, European history of technology, and digital history. He is currently directing the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) and head of a Doctoral Training Unit on digital history and hermeneutics. Anke Fiedler is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Information and Communication of the University of Brussels (ULB). In 2012, she completed her ­doctorate in Communication Science at the University of Munich with a dissertation on media control in the GDR. In the winter term 2015/2016, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Berlin. Roderick Flynn is an Associate Professor at the School of Communications, Dublin City University where he chairs the MA in Film and Television Studies. He has written extensively on Irish media policy and more broadly on questions relating to the regulation of media ownership. He is the co‐author (with John Horgan) of Irish Media History (Four Courts Press 2017) and of The Historical Dictionary of Irish Cinema (Scarecrow 2018) with co‐authors Tony Tracy and Pat Brereton. Rosa Franquet is Professor of Communication, Project Manager of GRISS (Image, Sound and Synthesis Research Group) and Academic Coordinator of doctoral studies in Audiovisual Communication and Advertising at the at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2010–2017). She is also Vice‐president of the Asociación Española de Investigadores de la Comunicación (AE‐IC). She has been a researcher and visiting professor at various universities such as the University of California at Berkeley, University of London (Goldsmiths), and University of Melbourne (Australia). Juan Antonio García Galindo holds a PhD in Contemporary History. He is Professor in Journalism and Vice‐Rector of Institutional Policy at the University of Málaga. His work focuses on the history of journalism and communication in the twentieth century. He was the Dean of the Faculty of Communication Science of the University of Málaga and President of the Spanish Association of Communication Historians (AHC).



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Heike Graf is Associate Professor at the Department of Media‐ and Communication Studies at Soderton University, Sweden. Her research interests include migration studies, especially ethnic diversity and diversity management in media organizations, and lately media use by refugees in the new country with fieldwork in Sweden and Germany. Jaume Guillamet is a Professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and coordinator of the Research Group in Journalism (GRP by its initials in Catalan). He conducts research projects in the fields of history of the press in the Catalan language, and journalism in political transitions. His main published works are La premsa comarcal (1983), Premsa, franquisme i autonomia (1996), Història del periodisme (2003), Els orígens de la premsa a Catalunya, 1641–1833 (2003) and L’arrencada del periodisme liberal, 1833–1874 (2010). Damian Guzek is an Assistant Professor at the Journalism Unit of the Institute of Political Science and Journalism within the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Silesia in Katowice. He is the YECREA Representative in the Temporary Working Group on Media and Religion of the European Communication Research and Education Association. His research interests are focused on media concentration as well as media and religion. Mark Hampton is Associate Professor at Lingnan University. He is the author of Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950 (2004) and Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945– 1997 (2016), and co‐editor of Anglo‐American Media Interactions, 1850–2000 (2007) and The Cultural Construction of the British World (2016). Since 2005, he has been a co‐editor of the journal Media History. He is general editor of the forthcoming six‐­ volume Cultural History of Media in the Bloomsbury “Cultural histories” series. Michael Harnischmacher is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer at the Centre for Media and Communication at the University of Passau, Germany, where he teaches communications and practical journalism. He has received his PhD in 2010 for a study comparing journalism education in Germany and the United States. Emmanuel Heretakis is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies at the Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is a mathematician, with experience in the advertising business for almost two decades. He has published more than 10 books and around 200 articles on the mass media. Matthew Hibberd is Director of the Institute of Media and Journalism (IMeG) and Masters in Media Management at the Università Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland. He is an Honorary Professor at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom. He was Professor of Communications and Head of the Communications, Media and Culture Division, University of Stirling, from 2011 to 2016. He is a Fellow of the UK‐based College of Teachers (FCollT) and the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Christoph Hilgert is a Research Associate in the Department of History at LMU Munich (Germany), where he manages the publications and public relations of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies. He is a steering committee member of the “Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS)” network. His research interests are transnational radio history, twentieth‐century youth culture and media, journalism history, and the field of public history.

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Author Biographies

Svennik Høyer was a Professor, and later Professor Emeritus at the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo. After making his contribution to this book and a very long and distinguished career as a scholar of journalism and media history, Professor Høyer died on 8 January 2017. Jochen Hung is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, focusing on the cultural history of interwar Germany. He has co‐edited Beyond Glitter and Doom. The Contingency of the Weimar Republic (2012) and The Material Culture of Politics (2018). His study on the history of the newspaper Tempo and the change of its conceptions of modernity, A Moderate Modernity. The Newspaper Tempo and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, 1928–1933 is forthcoming with University of Michigan Press. Yeşim Kaptan is an Assistant Professor at Kent State University. She received her PhD in Communication and Culture and Folklore (double major) from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research interests are transnational media, global communication, culture industries, identity politics, and consumer culture. She has published research in  the International Journal of Communication, the Journal of Consumer Culture, The Global Media Journal, and various English and Turkish media journals. Susanne Kinnebrock is Professor of Public Communication at the University of Augsburg, Germany. Her main research interests are Central European media and communication history of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, gender media studies, and narrative journalism. Beata Klimkiewicz is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Journalism, Media, and Social Communication at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Her research interests include media and communication policy, media system change in Central and Eastern Europe, and media pluralism and diversity. Olga Kolokytha, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Researcher with the Media Governance and Media Industries Research Laboratory, at the Department of Communication of the University of Vienna. Her research interests lie in the area of communication and the creative industries and include cultural institutions, cultural policy and politics, creative industries in times of crisis, arts and culture as a political instrument, and cultural “Eurosphering.” Barbara Köpplová is an Associate Professor, media historian, and member of the departments of Media Studies at the Charles University and the Metropolitan University in Prague. She lectures on comparative media history and her research activities are focused on the history of Czech and German journalism and journalists in Bohemia in the ­twentieth century. She is an author of numerous articles and books on media history. In 1990s and early 2000s, she was a member of the Council of Czech Public Radio. Olga Kruglikova is an Associate Professor of the Department of the History of Journalism at St. Petersburg State University. She has researched and lectured on the history of Russian journalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and on the history of the Russian conservative press. One of her key publications is Journalism and Social Activities of Mikhail Katkov: Publicist and Power (Saarbrücken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2011). Risto Kunelius is Professor of Journalism at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland. His work has focused on journalism and political power, professionalism and the public sphere as well as on coverage of global issues (climate



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change, surveillance, and free speech). Recent books include Media and Global Climate Knowledge: Journalism and the IPCC (Palgrave, 2017) and on surveillance and journalism Journalism and the NSA Revelations: Privacy, Security, and the Press (Reuters Institute/I.B.Tauris, 2017). Helena Lima is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto. She is director of the master’s course in Communication Sciences, and has served as advisor to doctoral dissertations in the fields of journalism and political communication. Her PhD was on the history of Porto newspapers. Her main research interests and publishing areas are journalism, media history, and political communication. Claire McCallum is a Lecturer in Twentieth‐Century Russian History at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. Her current research focuses on the representation of idealized masculinity in visual culture in the two decades following the end of World War II. Patrick Merziger is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media History at the University of Leipzig, Germany. His research interests focus on media history, the history of popular culture, and humanitarianism in the twentieth century. Monika Metykova works as Senior Lecturer in Media Communications and Journalism Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on media/ journalism and democracy, migration, and cosmopolitanism as well as European media spaces and policy. Recently she co‐edited the monograph Living in the Digital Age: Self‐ Presentation, Networking, Playing and Participating in Politics (published by Masaryk University) and her book Diversity and the Media was published by Palgrave in 2016. Michael Meyen is Professor of Communication at the University of Munich. His research interests include media freedom, media systems, media discourses, the history of media and communication and the history of communication research. Agnieszka Morriss completed her PhD thesis on the Polish Service of the BBC during World War II in the Journalism Department at City University in 2016. She currently works at CIEE Global Institute in London where she teaches International Journalism. Her publications include: “The BBC Polish Service during the Second World War,” in Nelson Ribeiro and Stephanie Seul (eds.), Revisiting Transnational Broadcasting: The BBC’s Foreign‐language Services during the Second World War (Routledge, 2016), and “Monitoring of the Polish Broadcasting Radio Station ‘Blyskawica’ during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944,” Imperial War Museum website (2016). Dana Mustata is an Assistant Professor in Television and Media Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the history of Romanian television, television histories under communism, and material cultures of television in Cold War contexts. She is co‐founder of the European (Post)Socialist Television History Network. Sian Nicholas is Reader in Modern British History at Aberystwyth University, and co‐founder and co‐Director of the Aberystwyth Centre for Media History. She is the author of The Echo of War: Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC (1996), and has published widely on wartime broadcasting, war reporting, and media culture and national identity. Kaarle Nordenstreng is Professor Emeritus of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Tampere. His research has covered international communication,

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media ethics, and communication theory. Among his recent books are Communication Theories in a Multicultural World (co‐edited with Christians, 2014) and A History of the  International Movement of Journalists: Professionalism Versus Politics (with Björk et al. 2016). Christian Oggolder is Senior Scientist at the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Alpen‐ Adria‐Universität Klagenfurt (AAU). His research focuses on media history, societal challenges, and the role of the media, and digital culture. Peppino Ortoleva is Full Professor of Media History and Theory at the University of Turin. He has been active for more than 40 years as a scholar, critic, and curator, at the crossroads of history, media studies, TV and radio authoring, museums and exhibitions. He has published numerous books and more than 200 scholarly articles on the history of the Italian media system, on the youth movements of the 1960s, on private television in Italy and its cultural and political role, and on cinema and history. He has curated many exhibitions and he is now a curator, at the city museum, Catania, Sicily. Nils E. Øy, (1946) is currently an Associate Professor II at Volda University College. He was the former editor‐in‐chief of two Norwegian dailies, and the former head of the Institute for Journalism, Fredrikstad, and head of the Norwegian Press Association, as well as the Secretary General for the Norwegian Association of Editors (1996–2013). He is member of several government commissions on open access to official meetings and documents. Walery Pisarek, Dr.h.c.mult, was a well-respected linguist and communication researcher who died in 2017 whilst this book was being prepared. He was an Emeritus Professor of the Jagiellonian University and a Professor at the Pontificial University of John Paul II in Kracow. He was also a long time director of the Press Research Centre in Kracow (1970–2000) and vice‐president of the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) (1976–1988). Paschal Preston is Professor Emeritus in School of Communication, Dublin City University He is the author or editor of six books and more than 50 journal articles and book chapters. He is founding Director of the Communication, Technology, Culture (COMTEC) research unit which had a 25‐year record of transnational research, including 20 multi‐country research projects. He has undertaken consultancy for many public sector organizations and acted as advisor/evaluator to several national research funding bodies. Elizabeth Prommer is Professor of Communication Science and Media Studies, and Director of the Institute for Media Research at the University of Rostock. Her research focuses on the “moving picture” on all possible media platforms (cinema, TV, internet, mobile media and new forms in the future) and the changing audiences in converging media environments. Recent books include Gender – Medien – Screens (UVK Konstanz, 2015) and European Perspectives on Television, Fernsehen: Europäische Perspektiven (UVK Konstanz, 2014). Nelson Ribeiro is Associate Professor in Communication Studies at Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon where he is the Dean of the School of Human Sciences. His main research interests are political economy of the media and communication ­history, focusing on transnational communication and on the usage of the media as



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instruments of propaganda and public diplomacy. He is a former Chair (2016–2018) of the Communication History Section at the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). Giuseppe Richeri is Professor Emeritus at Lugano University (Switzerland) where he has been Director of the Media and Journalism Institute (2000–2014) and Dean of the Communication Sciences Faculty (2004–2008). Since 2012 he has been a Visiting Professor at the Communication University of China in Beijing (China) where he is a PhD supervisor. He has been an advisor for the Italian Communication Authority, UNESCO, the European Council, the European Union, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and is a member of UNESCO Chair “Humanisme Numerique” at Université Paris 8. Ramón Salaverría is Associate Dean of Research at the School of Communication, University of Navarra, Spain. He was Chair of the Journalism Studies Section of ECREA during 2010–2012. His research focuses on media convergence, online news storytelling, and digital journalism trends. He has published many research papers, monographs, and book chapters on these topics. His most recent edited book is Ciberperiodismo en Iberoamérica (Cyberjournalism in Iberian America) (2016), a history of online journalism in the 22 countries of that region. Katharine Sarikakis, PhD, holds the Chair of Media Governance, Media Organization, and Media Industries at the Department of Communication, University of Vienna, and, since 2016, the Jean Monnet Chair in European Media Governance and Integration. She is the Chair of the Communication Law and Policy Division of the International Communication Association and the founding editor of the International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics. She has published widely on European and global media and cultural policy issues. Anne Schmidt is a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. Between 2002 and 2008 she worked as an exhibition curator in Germany and Switzerland. Her research interests include cultural and economic history, history of emotions, history of knowledge and media and communication studies. She is currently working on a book that traces processes of subjectification in German advertising culture. Christian Schwarzenegger is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media, Knowledge of Communication at the University of Augsburg, Germany. His research interests include mediatization and media change, communication and memory, communication history, as well as qualitative methods of communication research. He is Vice‐chair of the Communication History Section in the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and the Communication History Division of the German Communication Association (DGPuK). Eugenia Siapera is Professor and Head of the School of Information and Communication Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research interests are social media, journalism, political theory, multiculturalism, cultural diversity, and media. The second edition of her book Understanding New Media was published by Sage in 2018. Balázs Sipos is Associate Professor of History at Loránd Eötvös University (Budapest). His research interests focus on media history, women’s history and new political history. He authored four monographs, the most recent being Modern, Graduate Women in the Horty Era (with a co‐author, 2017).

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Kristin Skoog is a Senior Lecturer in Media History in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University (UK) and a steering committee member of the “Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS)” network. She is interested in the social and cultural history of broadcasting and is currently researching radio and reconstruction in post‐war Britain, and women’s radio and women broadcasters in Britain and Europe. Sergio Splendore is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan (Italy). His research centers on media sociology with a deep interest in journalism studies and media production. He has authored or co‐authored papers in these areas for Journalism, International Journal of Public Opinion Research; New Media & Society; Media, Culture and Society; Journalism Practice; and Sociology Compass. Hans‐Ulrich Wagner is a Senior Researcher at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research and Director of the Research Centre for Media History (Forschungsstelle Mediengeschichte) in Hamburg. He is principal researcher in several research projects and co‐founder of the research network “Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS)” and the collaborative project Transnational Media Histories, a joint program with the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University. His publications deal with the various issues of mediated public communication in the past, the main focus being the investigation of long‐term media effects, and especially of mediated memory‐building. Anne‐Katrin Weber is a Lecturer at the Department for Film History and Aesthetics at the University of Lausanne. Her research focuses on the history of early television and media archaeology. She is the editor of La télévision du téléphonoscope à YouTube, La télévision du téléphonoscope à YouTube: pour une archéologie de laudiovision, Lausanne: Antipodes, coll. Médias et histoire, 2009). She is also editor of an issue of View. Journal of European Television History and Culture, entitled “Archaeologies of Tele‐Visions and ‐Realities” (with Andreas Fickers, 2015). Lennart Weibull, holds PhD in Political Science and is Senior Professor at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication and at the SOM Institute, University of Gothenburg. He has carried out research and published in areas such as media structure, the history of the newspaper, radio and television, media ethics and media use. He is co‐founder of the national SOM‐surveys, which study public opinion and media use in Sweden since 1986. Jürgen Wilke is Professor Emeritus of Communication Research at the Institut für Publizistik, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz (Germany). He has published numerous books and articles, particularly on media history and media structure, news selection and news agencies, international communication, and political communication. He was appointed to a personal chair at the Lomonossow University (Moscow) in 2004, and has been a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna since 2005. Marina Yanglyaeva teaches at the Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University and is Head of the Centre for Media and Communication Studies in Finland and Scandinavia. Her research interests include media and political communication, political mediametry, media geography, mass media and communication in northern Europe, and image studies.



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Yulia Yurtaeva‐Martens is a Research Fellow at Film University “Konrad Wolf,” Babelsberg. Her research focuses on (East‐)European communication history during the Cold War, and media archives. Her recent publications include Song Contests in Europe during the Cold War (with Lothar Mikos), New Patterns in Global Television Formats (Intellect, Chicago 2016), and “Jetzt festivalt auch die Television – Television Festivals of the 1960s,” in Moine and Kötzing (eds.), Cultural Transfer and Political Conflicts. Film Festivals in the Cold War, edited by Caroline Moine and Andreas Kötzing (V&R unipress, 2017).

Preface

It takes time, an international array of scholars and, last but not least, a creative vision to compile a handbook on Europe’s Communication History. The plan for this Handbook developed shortly after the foundation of the Communication History Section within the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) in 2009. And right from the beginning, it was the founding chair of the ECREA Communication History Section, Klaus Arnold, who pushed forward the Handbook as the section’s first joint project. The Handbook was driven by a firm belief in the value and benefits of a common European communication history despite Europe’s diversity. Consequently, significant themes of common interest were identified and diverse teams worked together to author the chapters which follow in this Handbook. In the end, almost 80 authors from the fields of communication, history, media and journalism studies volunteered and contributed to its production. The resulting text delivers on the original vision and aim: to illuminate important moments and aspects in European communication history from different national and cultural perspectives. The planning and authoring work on the Handbook took almost seven years as the original starting point can be dated back to a workshop in Dublin in September 2011. Thus, the editors regard the successful outcome and final completion of this major collaborative effort with great pleasure. At the same time, however, our hearts are saddened because three of  our contributors will not be able to see the results of their efforts: Svennik Høyer (1931–2017), the Norwegian‐born and highly‐regarded international expert on political communication, press history, and journalism, passed away shortly after completing his contribution; so too did Walery Pisarek (1931–2017), a pioneer and mentor of media studies in Poland who has been fondly remembered for his significant academic achievements in media research in Poland and other countries. Third, we note and mourn the death of Klaus Arnold (1968–2017), the original initiator and highly active editor of this Handbook until he became seriously ill. Being aware of his fatal illness and imminent death, Klaus made very brave and diligent plans to smooth the hand over of relevant roles and tasks to his two fellow editors. Indeed, Klaus came to regard the Handbook as his academic and professional legacy. The two remaining editors readily concur that this pioneering Handbook be treated as an i­mportant part

xxvi Preface of Klaus’s legacy, especially with respect to the community of those s­ cholars who include a historical perspective as central to their analyses of communication in Europe. The remaining editors are confident that the Handbook will make a significant contribution toward internationalizing communication history. We extend a big “thank you” to all our contributors for their crucial roles in furthering the exciting project of a distinctive “European” Communication History Handbook. And, last but not least, our special thanks go to Mandy Tröger for her truly excellent work in sub‐editing, and generally assisting the editors, in finalizing the text of all the chapters which follow. Susanne Kinnebrock and Paschal Preston, October 2018

Introduction

European Communication History: A Challenging if Timely Project Paschal Preston, Klaus Arnold, and Susanne Kinnebrock

­A Re‐Turn to the History of Mediated Communication? Historical approaches to communication and media matters have become quite fashionable as we proceed through the second decade of the twenty‐first century. Indeed, we are currently witnessing a surprising “turn,” or rather re‐turn, to historical analyses after a long phase of neglect within the mainstream of academic studies of communication and media. There has long been an interest in historical approaches and understandings of mediated communication among members of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), the oldest and most genuinely international ­professional association in this field. A similar interest has rapidly grown within the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), the much younger association for communication scholars in Europe. But recent years have also witnessed a dynamic new interest group focused on historical themes and issues within the largely USA‐based International Communication Association (ICA) – a body previously marked by tendencies toward social scientific and somewhat a‐historical approaches to research. In sum, we can point to a real surge and intensification of interest in historical aspects of mediated communication in more recent years. Of course, both history and European perspectives had been central to many of the pioneering attempts to theorize and make sense of the rise of the distinctly “modern” social, economic, and political transformations in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries. For example, David Hume’s (1741) political essays, including that on “The Liberty of The Press,” were animated by a historical and distinctly European imaginary – in keeping with the fact that a substantial share of his royalty earnings were derived from readers based on the continent. At the same time, we observe that Hume’s accounts of the distinctive forms and role of political “liberties,” press freedom and

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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­ ublic opinion in different societies prove to be no less ethno‐centric and celebratory of p the British model than many later efforts at comparative communication research: Nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner, than the extreme liberty, which we enjoy in this country, of communicating whatever we please to the public, and of openly censuring every measure, entered into by the king or his ministers [….]. As this liberty is not indulged in any other government, either republican or monarchial; in Holland and Venice, more than in France or Spain; it may very naturally give occasion to the question, How it happens that Great Britain alone enjoys this privilege? […][In Britain] the republican part of government prevails, although with a great mixture of monarchy, it is obliged to maintain a watchful jealousy over the magistrates, to remove all discretionary powers, and to secure everyone’s life and fortune by general and inflexible laws. […]. There is as much liberty, and even perhaps, licentiousness in Britain, as there were formerly slavery and tyranny in Rome (David Hume, 1994[1741] “On the Liberty of the Press,” p. 1).

In keeping with the rather restricted notions of democracy prevailing among his readers in the “polite society” of Europe during his own lifetime, Hume was wary of any absolute principle of a free press. Indeed, in the same essay, he declared that “the unbounded liberty of the press” comprised a potential threat, indeed “one of the evils” facing precisely “those mixt forms of government” which combined both republican and more traditional, monarchical elements – the blend which he favored so much along with most of his readers in the merchant, manufacturing, professional, and other middle‐class elites of western and northern Europe in the period prior to the French Revolution. Yet rather similar historical and European orientations can be found in several subsequent nineteenth‐century studies engaging with cross‐national and comparative analyses of the evolving forms and practices of “democracy,” “public opinion” and the press or (print) media. Among those, we may briefly consider the example of Sir Thomas Erskine May’s (1878) two‐volume work on Democracy in Europe  –  A History. In typical fashion, Sir Thomas Erskine May underlines how the scientific discoveries and technological innovations and inventions of late nineteenth‐century Europe should be seen as closely linked to the rise of distinctly “modern” and more liberal political institutions, including the (­limited) forms of political democracy and “public opinion” then prevailing. Indeed, May’s (1878) multi‐country study also declared that no prior period of European history can be compared to the last half century, “for scientific discoveries and inventions, for bold speculations in philosophy, for historical research, and original thought”; he further argued that most of Europe had by then “attained that degree of advancement, that a large measure of political freedom” had become essential to its well‐ being (May’s 1878, pp. lii and liv). May’s work sets out to survey and map the historical development of tendencies and trends toward “democracy” and related issues of public opinion and the role of the press across much of Europe. Much like Hume more than a century before, May’s (1878) survey of the European scene emphasized the virtues of gradual political change, as he clearly favored the “re‐casting” rather than abolition of old medieval institutions. Indeed, May (1878, p. lvii) cites Comte to the effect that “the English aristocracy is ablest patriciate the world has seen since the Roman Senate.” A marked orientation toward historical perspectives had been central to several subsequent pioneering attempts to systemically theorize and make sense of the rise of truly mass media from the end of the nineteenth century and the diffusion of the first multimedia wave in the early decades of the twentieth century (e.g. as noted in prior surveys by Hardt 1992, 2001; Williams 1965, 1983). For example, Karl Bücher (1901), an institutional economist and one of the founding fathers of media and journalism studies,

Introduction 3 as well as the sociologist Robert E. Park (1923) both analyzed the historical tendencies of newspapers to shift from organs of enlightenment and political debates oriented toward the public to become more like commodities and vehicles for the delivery of advertising during the era of the second industrial revolution, the decades immediately before and after 1900. Furthermore, Max Weber’s plan for a major study about the new mass press, which he presented at the founding congress of German Sociological Society 1910, included a historical diachronic perspective. For example, he proposed to explore how the role of newspapers had developed and changed over the previous few decades (Weber 1924). Historical dimensions also formed an essential part in Walter Benjamin’s (1936) reflections about the fundamental changes new media like photography and film brought to art and its reception. Indeed a historical reflection on the role of the media with respect to public opinion, political institutions and military affairs formed a core component of the agenda addressed in Harold Lasswell’s seminal text, first published in 1927 (Lasswell 1927). However, as the new field of “communication studies” became institutionalized in USA‐based universities during the early decades after the Second World War, it lost many of its prior connections with history. As the new field sought to establish itself within USA university settings, most of the influential figures tended to privilege positivistic methodologies and present‐time orientations. This reflected the wider cultural and political currents evident in the USA at the same time. Indeed this turn from history was defined in the mid‐1950s as a “postmodern” bias by one former junior associate of Paul Lazarsfeld, the sociologist C. Wright Mills (Preston 2001). This conception of communication studies had a strong influence on scholars in European countries. In Germany, for example, the once influential, if not predominant, historical research tradition became rather marginal in the 1960s and 1970s (Löblich 2010). Notably the most influential historically based communication theory published in these years was not written by a communication scholar but by a sociologist: Jürgen Habermas (1992[1962]) described the bourgeois public sphere in the late Enlightenment period as some kind of ideal type, where emancipated citizens discussed political affairs in an autonomous arena free from economic interests and government influences. Habermas constructed this ideal type to show how the public sphere decayed since the late nineteenth century: an emerging mass culture was portrayed as being a‐political and concentrated on satisfying entertainment needs. The public sphere degenerated in his view to an arena dominated by individual and partial interests which impedes consensus decisions based on rational argument. Indeed, accelerated processes of media change as well as the increasingly pervasive role of mediated communication focused the interest of communication and media scholars on current phenomena such as successive new media technologies or the wave of ­commercialization in the 1980s/1990s. But it simultaneously raised some attention to historical modes of explanation. This is especially true for the last two decades, when historical perspectives on mediated communication once again gained relevance in ­communication studies. This (re‐)turn to history seems to have been stimulated by efforts to make sense of the most direct and fundamental changes in media landscapes over recent decades, i.e. the expanding array of “new” digital media and technologies and their deeper cultural and social implications. For example, we observe that in the field of cultural studies some of the most influential texts dealing with new media theories and practices place a clear emphasis on the importance of historical perspectives. In brief, such texts recognize that

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if teachers and students are to properly grasp and engage with the role, significance, or specificities of new digital media developments, then they have to know something about the prior history of mediated communication and its complex interplays with social and cultural change (e.g. Chun and Keenan 2006; Lister et al. 2003; Manovich 2001). Another reason for the current growth of interest in historical perspectives relates to the international growth, spread, and diversification of communication and media ­studies. There is a wider recognition that many of the prevailing theories tend to reflect specific historical settings and socio‐cultural experiences which ill‐match those of scholars situated outside the core Western (and especially, Anglophone) cultural, political, and historical contexts. There is a growing awareness of the need for much more cross‐ national, comparative, and international histories of mediated communication to better identify, map and understand the multiple patterns and variations across differing cultural or political and socio‐economic settings. Indeed, this may be seen as an essential and preliminary step if communication theories and concepts are to be refined in ways that improve their salience – and any claims to “European” or even “universal” reach in the twenty‐first century. Furthermore, this Handbook has been (reflexively) informed by recent internationalization tendencies in the media and communication studies field, including calls to ­construct more cosmopolitan theories and orientations (Curran 2002, pp. 180–183). In  this respect, the Handbook resonates with the field’s gradual (if still early‐stage) ­evolution  –  from an initial orientation toward British and north American historical experience toward one which embraces the much greater diversity of (hi‐)stories from other geo‐cultural and socio‐economic settings as well as the differing political regions of Europe and the wider world. Further reasons for the growing interest in communication history include the sheer impact of the ever‐increasing role and influence of mediated communication in most areas of political, socio‐economic as well as cultural affairs. The deepening and still‐ evolving “mediatization of everything,” including the growing ubiquity of media devices and systems as factors (or actants), are now more visible and pervasive features of late‐ modern social interactions and everyday life. These developments pose questions of how we should now consider “communication @ the centre” of every major area of social, political, and cultural life (to quote the theme of the ICA conference in 2011). They also serve to raise interest in questions of how our contemporary “ubiquitous and ambient” media relate to the role and operations of prior generations of media.

­Changing Times‐Spaces in Europe – Historical Takes or (Re‐)Turns The late Enlightenment period was informed and marked by intensified exchanges between the leading intellectuals across Europe. With respect to the leading intellectuals, merchants, and other elites, we may note semblances of a shared cultural and political public sphere from the eighteenth century, especially in the decades leading up to the French Revolution. Indeed, by then, the different nations and peoples were made aware of significant developments and historical moments unfolding in other parts of Europe. At first, this may have been enabled by symbolism and rituals associated inter‐marriage between the European royal families and of course of wars. But by the nineteenth ­century, the developing links and exchanges were further amplified as a result of more dense settlement and population patterns, the expansion of trade, finance, and other economic exchanges and novel political arrangements such as the Concert of Europe.

Introduction 5 It is now more than a century since the French sociologist, Durkheim, observed a tendency for the formation of common identities in Europe arising from increasingly common experiences of working and living conditions associated with the extensive forms of industrialization, urbanization, divisions of labor, and secularization associated with the onward march of modern capitalism. Durkheim’s ideas closely resonate with unfolding concepts and imaginaries of change in the spatial scales of political and economic interdependencies (or in the social divisions of labor and interrelations) proposed more than a century ago by other European social and political theorists such as Tönnies (2001[1887]) and Hobson (2005[1902]). Taking account of more popular ideas and forms of knowledge, we may note that people have long had some awareness of key developments in other European countries (or at least more than the happenings in more distant continents or world regions). In this sense, European (communication) history can be seen as much more intensively entangled and transnational than global (communication) history. And so, it is timely and relevant to make efforts at writing European communication history – indeed there is a lot to be analyzed and discovered in terms of communication history. It is now almost three decades since the Wall dividing East and West Berlin was pulled down and the system of state socialism prevailing in much of Eastern and Central Europe collapsed. These and related events promoted a new wave of optimism in the late 1980s, not merely about the future unfolding of an increasingly united and integrated world‐ region within Europe. The political initiative to unify Germany was paralleled by moves within the sub‐region now known as the European Union to deepen the integration of economic relations by creating a much‐heralded “single market” for services industries (the largest part of most modern economies) by 1992. The new political and regulatory regimes supporting this push for a “single market” also extended to the communication, media, and cultural services sectors, as exemplified by new EU‐wide governance regime favoring “trans‐frontier broadcasting” as well as enhanced roles for commercial television services (Papathanassopoulos and Negrine 2011, pp. 63–83). Nevertheless, despite such intensified modes of economic, political, and regulatory integration within the EU region, the discourses and journalistic practices in the mediated communication sector remain rooted in banal nationalism and are widely recognized as contributing to the much‐discussed “democratic deficit” with respect to the structures and processes of the EU project (see below). The end of the Cold War and the intensified integration of Europe also prompted much optimistic talk about the universal and evolutionary superiority of the liberal capitalist system, the intensified globalization of markets and the extended sway of the liberal political system of electoral democracy. For the majority of the populations in many of the less developed countries, including some in Europe, the practical manifestation of such ideals were the one‐size‐fits‐all dogmas of the so‐called Washington Consensus and the structural adjustment policies implemented by bodies such as IMF, World Bank, and what became the WTO. The prevailing moves and moods (or structure of feelings) of the political and economic elites were perhaps best symbolized and given concentrated expression in the much‐cited proclamation of “the end of history” (Fukuyama 1998). During the 1990s, academic theorists also imagined and advanced some distinctively optimistic, if not entirely new ideas about shifts and changes in forms, co‐ordinates and meanings of time and space parameters. In some cases, these tendencies were often amplified by techno‐centric readings of the rapid rise and diffusion of the Internet/ World Wide Web as a radically novel communication network, frequently conceptualized (described and prescribed) as inherently “global” in its form, scope and reach (Giddens et al. 2006; Preston 2001; Siapera 2011).

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Ideas and arguments typically associated with concepts such as globalization and (diminishing) “space‐time‐distanciation” (e.g. Giddens 2002) certainly privileged space over time. But the analysis of many such proponents was marked by a rather impoverished historical understanding of earlier phases and forms of more or less intensified political and economic integration and exchanges, at both European and world levels. Furthermore, as Harvey and other critics have argued, many also tended to veil the ­specifically neo‐liberal political (economic) forms and content of the prevailing modes of spatial integration that mark and stamp the contemporary processes of “globalization” (Crouch 2011; Harvey 2005). Nevertheless, from the late 1980s, we also observe an expansion of intellectual efforts to imagine and construct more cosmopolitan theories or complementary frames of ­political thinking, concern, and social analysis which transcend the national. Some are motivated by political ideals and socio‐cultural visions to devise new identities and ­discourses which transcend the national and better align with the deepening forms of economic and social integration, and/or environmental interdependencies unfolding across Europe and indeed, the world. They aimed to reach beyond the comfort zones of established research or unthinking nationalism that have operated as “crucial containers” in shaping so much social science and humanities work, not to mention everyday politics and journalistic discourses, since the rise of “mass media” in the nineteenth century (e.g. Beck and Grande 2007; Habermas 2001, 2003). In the contemporary setting of Europe in the second decade of the twenty‐first century, however, there are much fewer grounds for confident optimism about the dynamism and universal virtues of the neo‐liberal capitalist order or about the ever‐onward deepening of economic and political integration at the European and world scales. For one thing, the political‐economic setting in much of Europe over the past decade has been strongly marked by fall‐out from the deepest and most sustained financial crisis and economic depression since the 1930s (Crouch 2011). The subsequent economic crisis and neo‐liberal austerity regimes led to levels of unemployment, declining economic activity, and economic insecurities not seen in quite a few European countries since the 1930s and the ensuing period surrounding World War II. It is also manifest in a feeble banking system and financial sectors in many European countries that have only survived thanks to huge inputs of public sector funding. The economic and financial policy challenges of post‐crisis years (especially 2010– 2014 period) witnessed several crucial threats to the viability and sustainability of the decades‐old project of increasing EU integration, together with its flagship, the euro currency and the Eurozone sub‐region. Indeed, the project of increasing EU integration was called into question and brought to the edge of collapse in ways that would have been unimaginable, say 50 or 25 or even 10 years previously. The latter years of the post‐crisis decade witnessed gradual but distinct shifts from financial and economic‐policy focused challenges toward more political and culturally (identity) based threats to the deepening integration across the European Union region which has been unfolding since the end of World War II. Indeed, the past five years have seen a significant rise in widespread manifestations of new and “populist” forms of right‐ leaning nationalism, xenophobia, and racism in many European countries – of a sort and on a scale that has resonated with the growth of fascism and protectionism in the 1930s. This contemporary right‐leaning nationalism, xenophobia, and racism is often animated by an explicit intent to reject and undermine the now 60‐year‐old project of deepening integration across the European Union region.

Introduction 7 In this contemporary socio‐economic and political setting, it is perhaps not surprising to find a much‐diminished salience of assertions concerning the onward march of ­globalization and (especially of) “the end of history” (Fukuyama 1998) – at least compared to a quarter century ago. There is now much less confidence in the universality or sustainability of the capitalist market and the hegemonic neo‐liberal regulatory regime compared to the situation in the 1980s or 1990s. On the other hand, new transnational anti‐capitalist movements such as Occupy Wall Street or Attac emerged and drew support from mass protests, rather like those, such as Syriza and Podemos, which later manifested in Southern Europe during the 2010–2015 period. Such ground‐up developments seemed to clearly signal, in certain subaltern European public spheres at least, that a (re) turn to thinking and debating the meaning of “Europe” along the dimension of time and history was gaining in importance once more. Seemingly new concepts and ideas such as “another Europe is possible” do not merely seek to maintain, but aim to radically reform the inherited path of deeper economic, financial, and political integration within the EU region. They also seek to reach back, appropriate, and re‐mobilize key aspects of the strongly European and internationalist spirit that animated the two most significant social movements of the late nineteenth century: the labor movement (with its trade union and socialist political currents) and the women’s liberation and rights movement (“first wave” modern feminism). Thus, we observe amidst the past decade of a “great western” economic crisis, a marked turn toward history in the search for the sources and solutions to the pressing practical political, economic, and financial problems in contemporary Europe. It appears that, in many respects, the broader political‐economic settings in Europe today are once again prompting and favoring a (re‐)turn toward historical analysis.

­Only Dusty Old Papers or New Insights? Media History and the Internet Age Not unlike in the larger economical‐political realm we observed in the last decades a still enduring crisis of mass media and journalism. As new media, mainly the internet/World Wide Web, began to spread all over the world in the 1990s, they were greeted by certain high‐profile if techno‐centric theorists such as Toffler (1983), Toffler and Toffler (1995) and Negroponte (1995) who painted a very optimistic and partly naïve picture. In brief, they proclaimed that the new ICTs would introduce a fundamentally new economic and social system, change the character of work, create a more egalitarian society with diminished class, race, or gender conflicts and a decentralized system of consumption, including the end of the old mass media systems (Preston 2001) and a “way new ­journalism” (Quittner 1995, cited in Quandt 2013, p. 737). We can observe that digital media (or “new ICTs”) did not alter the economic and social system in fundamental ways despite many of the robust claims and “digital deliria” of the techno‐centric theorists since the 1990s. At the same time, we observe that the old mass media still exist and play a major if not dominant role in internet/World Wide Web domains. Of course, journalism responded to the internet by becoming more multimedia based, hypertextual, and making it much easier for the audience to give feedback and comment on articles than in old media times. But the modes and ways of doing journalism, its core values and its self‐conception did not change very much. Practitioners still deem it important to give accurate and objective reports of relevant events/themes or to

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c­ omment on them. And this is still mostly done not by amateur bloggers or prosumers, but by journalists and other professional newsmakers (Chadwick 2014; Preston 2009a; Siapera 2011). However, the rise of the internet/World Wide Web and digital media has been accompanied by some significant changes in the established mass media system, especially the news media (Preston 2009a, b). For example, as newspaper circulation and revenues decreased, it proved difficult to produce quality news via the internet where people are not willing to pay for such journalistic content, and meanwhile concentration in media markets continued. Aspects of these recent developments are explored more fully in the following chapters, especially in the latter part of this book. Moreover, developments such as “free” content on the internet, together with many commercial TV‐channels that were established in Europe under neo‐liberal regulation in the 1980s/1990s, seem to pose questions about the future viability of public broadcasting (PSB). Despite of its rich tradition in many European countries, some now ask if PSB is still necessary or whether it is justified to finance these programs with state subsidies (Bardoel and d’Haenens 2008). It would be too much to expect that historical analysis can explain the various and complex aspects of current media change or give even a prognosis about future developments. However, historical analysis studying former media change and media innovations can give important insights, what is really “new” in new media and where we can find, often quite surprising, continuities, or mere variations. For example, audience participation and the production of user generated content reached a new level in the age of the internet/World Wide Web. But that does not mean that these ideas or modes of communication are something completely new: Letters‐to‐the‐editor have a long tradition (Mlitz 2008), social movements produced their own grass‐roots magazines (Atton and Hamilton 2008), and in totalitarian settings, e.g. in communist Eastern Europe, underground publications, the samizdat, played an important role especially among intellectuals (Skilling 1989). When studying relations between old and new media a historical perspective is indispensable (Williams 1974). What kind of features did new media adopt from old media? What is imitation and what is innovation? Are there certain continuities or patterns ­concerning the forming and spreading of new media we can find at different historical periods? And what happens to old media? According to Riepl’s law, formulated by the German newspaper editor and historian Wolfgang Riepl (1913), old media do not disappear but change their function. Although this “law” might on this very general level not withstand empirical testing, it stirs curiosity, how the old mass media survived the challenges put forward by new competition. Usually they not only changed their function, but also their contents or modes of presentation. Historical analyses can give here at least some hints, how newspapers, television, or professional journalism can cope with the internet age and the current crisis, e.g. with more local news, more background stories, higher quality presentation and content, etc. When it comes to media innovations and their relation to socio‐cultural changes, historical case studies and historical comparisons are essential to provide insights concerning the role and the relevance of the various and usually intertwined factors involved. The technology centered perspective is prominently represented by McLuhan (1964) and became fashionable in the postmodern culture and celebratory perspectives that accompanied the rise of the internet from the early 1990s (Preston 2001). In contrast, social shaping approaches tend to stress the relevance of cultural and social‐economic factors, that influence and form the whole innovation process from the development up to application and consumption. In this perspective, economic and political interests, consumer behavior, etc., are more relevant for the innovation process than the purely

Introduction 9 technological features. A pioneering and well‐known advocate of this approach is Williams (1974, 1983), one of the most central figures in the field of cultural studies. According to Williams, new technologies are not simply developed and then set the conditions for social change and progress. Instead, he stresses that media innovations are the outcome of political and economic intentions and audience needs that were generated by more general changes in society (Williams 1974). Other historically oriented analyses suggest that the complex innovations in the communication and media sector are the result of the interplay between many factors and although some scientific knowledge and creative ideas are needed the process is mainly driven by the social sphere (Winston 1998). But, we suggest, historical analyses are valuable and essential, not only because they enable grounded understandings of technical innovations. Indeed, a long‐term perspective is also needed if we are to understand the factors that shape the structures of the media system and media organizations, the practices of producers, audiences, and recipients, or indeed, key aspects of the functioning of the public sphere: How important was political influence and how did it change? What about economic interests and the cultural and societal backgrounds? What affected the public sphere? Is the commercialization of media a linear and still ongoing trend? Why are media companies and newsrooms differently organized today from 50 years ago? Did professional values of journalists and audience expectations change? Etc. And the other way around: how did mass media change politics, culture, and society?

­A Rising Field – Research on the History of Mediated Communication in Europe Cross‐national studies have provided valuable findings about commonalities and differences in European media structures, public communication, or journalism, but usually they lack historical depth. Variations and convergence cannot be fully understood without looking at longer periods of time in a diachronic perspective and without more structured historical analyses of the emergence and institutionalization of specific moments of mediated communication in Europe. We observe that since the early years of this century, many communication scholars have recognized or proposed more transnational approaches to media history (e.g. Dahl 2002; Jensen 2002; Scannell 2002). The lack of interest in transnational media historiography prior to the twenty‐first century in some countries can be linked to the mainly nation‐centered structure of mass media (e.g. Fickers 2011). Indeed, for some writers, television was closely “tied up with the national project” and no other media institution was more central to the modernist project of “engineering a national identity” (Chalaby 2005a, p. 1). But taking longer time periods into account the national perspective becomes questionable: Many nation‐states only have short histories and old kingdoms or empires frequently changed shape several times (Ellefson 2011). Moreover, a predominantly nation‐centered approach misses out not only common developments and convergence processes but also transnational transfers and the “complex trajectories” of media forms and contents as they go through processes of “adaption, resistance, inertia, and modification in their circulation between and across different cultural frames and contents” (Fickers 2011, p. 17). We also observe that several introductions into transnational mass media history have been published in recent years, with some focusing on news media and journalism (e.g. Chapman and Nuttall 2011; Høyer and Pöttker 2005). We find that some, such as the books by Chapman (2005), Briggs and Burke (2005), Bösch (2017) cover large time

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periods, comprise different types of mass media and consider a number of key countries. Some of these tend to emphasize certain factors, ideas, or events that influenced the development of mass media in often quite similar ways. The newly established ICA Communication History interest group recently published a Handbook of communication history (Simonson et al. 2013) that encompasses various modes of communication, media, social practices and institutions as they have developed across diverse cultures and different world regions. Kinnebrock et al. (2011) edited two special issues of the journal “Medien and Zeit” which engaged with diverse aspects of a specific European communication history. We also observe a growth of cross‐national and historical studies of editorial cultures and news making practices as well as parallel studies of the development of communication studies fields – some of which have been EU‐funded multi‐country research programs (e.g. Preston 2009a). Besides these introductions and overviews, more specialized transnational (European) studies can be found (see Arnold 2011). For reasons of space we cannot aim to provide a complete overview here, rather we limit ourselves to a small, indicative sampling of the growing corpus of major works or larger studies that focus on developments since the late nineteenth century, the time period most relevant to this Handbook. Many transnational approaches focus on comparisons. For example, Requate (1995) analyzes the professionalization of journalists at the turn of the century working out the differences between the United States, the UK, France, and Germany. Bösch (2009) concentrates on press scandals in the UK and Germany around 1900. Owing to the rise of the popular mass press in both countries the publication of previously tabooed norm violations, such as homosexuality or corruption, was a common phenomenon in both countries. The period of fascism is analyzed by Zimmermann (2007). He is comparing media systems in Nazi‐Germany, Italy, and Spain. Similarities and differences are explained by using concepts such as modernization, mediatization, and totalitarianism. A number of studies compare the development of media systems in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century (Gripsrud and Weibull 2010; Humphreys 1996; Weymouth and Lamizet 1996; Williams 2005). Despite national variations due to specific political and cultural factors, the authors find convergent processes especially since the 1980s concerning structures, content, practices, or performances. Bignell and Fickers (2008) edited a book, where scholars from many European countries forming transnational teams worked together on a wider approach to television history, revealing rather surprising insights or unconventional findings, for example about the role and forms of state control in France, Greece, and Romania. Cross‐national studies concentrating on the social implications, or the diffusion and use of new media technologies or professional practices and new media formats in Europe date back to the early 1990s (see for example the collection edited by Latzer and Thomas 1994). However, in face of the ever‐increasing diversity and role of new ICTs and digital media, such studies have been relatively rare in more recent times. Nevertheless, some research has been done in journalism studies concerning innovations and the diffusion of styles in news reporting (Broersma 2007; Høyer and Pöttker 2005). Case studies show how the fact‐­centered news model, an “Anglo‐American invention” (Chalaby 1996), spread across Europe and has been adopted in varying degrees in rather long‐term processes. Regarding the transfer of TV programs and the influence of different sociopolitical contexts some ­examples can be found in the already mentioned reader edited by Bignell and Fickers (2008). Another sub‐set of studies focuses on trans‐border broadcasting. Quite often these studies just describe the institutions or characterize their programs. Relatively seldom the reception of these programs by target audiences and therefore the actual transfer or

Introduction 11 influence process is analyzed. In contrast, a publication edited by Johnson and Parta (2010) about American foreign radio services provides novel insights in the reception of Western programs in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Another study (Ribeiro 2011) about the BBC programs for Portugal in World War II is not only considering programs and reception but the historical, political, and societal contexts. Both studies show the relative success of the American channels and the BBC. But not only listening to radio stations from other countries played an important role in European media ­history, especially since the introduction of satellite television and neo‐liberal regulatory regimes in the 1980s, trans‐border and international television began to spread (Chalaby 2005b, 2009). Other studies are not primarily oriented toward comparisons or transfer but aim to analyze the emergence and development of transnational institutions. These kind of studies can be focused, e.g. on transnational media companies (Chalaby 2009; Fickers 2011), transnational networks like the International Broadcasting Union or the European Broadcasting Union (Degenhardt 2002; Lommers 2012; Zeller 1999), transnational legislation (Papathanassopoulos and Negrine 2011, pp. 63–83), institutionalized social practices like journalism (Barnhurst and Nerone 2009; Nerone 2013), or shared public spheres. The development of a European public sphere was a rather prominent topic in historical research. For example, in an anthology published by Kaelble et al. (2002), various authors trace early forms of the European public sphere since the 1900s. Congresses and meetings are seen as the first examples for a transnational public sphere and social movements in the 1960s/1970s are regarded as one kind  of “catalyst” for the emergence of a European identity. In another anthology (Requate and Schulze‐Wessel 2002), the European public sphere is not conceptualized as something that existed in reality but as a normative idea, one to which ethnic minorities in national settings could appeal. After 1945, Europe and its public sphere was strongly influenced by the Cold War and the bipolar world order. Drawing on a European research project, Triandafyllidou et al. (2009) demonstrated that Europe as a community of values did not exist in mass media until the beginning of the twenty‐first century. Before that, values were perceived as national, universal, or Western values rather than as European. In contrast, Meyer (2010) found traces of a development pointing toward a European public sphere already in the two decades before the Maastricht Treaty (1969–1991). For instance, European integration and European polity increasingly became a point of reference in newspapers. Summing up, we might say that historical studies of media and communication across different European countries, societal, and cultural settings still remain a young but ­growing field of studies. However, we are confident that analyses of how mass media, ­journalism, and public spheres operate as both agents and products of various and complex modernization processes and how these developed in a certain geographical and cultural settings are likely to grow and become increasingly important in the coming years.

­What is Europe? Geographical Mix, Country Selections and Criteria “Europe” is more than just a geographical region and, as indicated above, it connotates ideas about specific and shared values or realities characterized increasingly by ­transnational experiences, multiple links, converging (if not truly common) life‐styles, institutions, and problems. However, like most entities, Europe is also divided into ­different nations, social classes, regions, ethnic groups, cultures, religions as well as genders.

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In a historical perspective, we must remember not only controversies and contrasts, but hostilities that led to two major World Wars involving industrial‐scale death and destruction, over the last century. After 1945, certain unification processes took place, but Europe was divided into a Western and an Eastern bloc and strongly dominated by two powers, namely the United States and the Soviet Union. The unification project now known as the European Union, was motivated, in part at least, by the spirit and rhetoric of “war‐no‐more” which was still quite powerful in the early post‐war decades. It has since evolved and became a supranational body encompassing more and more countries and more and more competences. Despite the manifold harmonizing processes that the European Union has initiated, the EU Member States continue to be characterized by an amazing degree of diversity. This is also true for European countries outside the European Union. This complex of diversities, but also of similarities in the European setting, comprises the major challenge that must be recognized and taken into account in historical analyses. As a result, one of the most difficult tasks facing cross‐country research projects in Europe concerns how best to identify suitable criteria and classification systems to cluster European countries. The challenges are considerable when it comes to coherent and operational categories relevant for comparative communication and media research. However, clustering is a necessary task if researchers seek to pick out countries for a more detailed analysis that are typical in some way or another. Most researchers agree that the much‐cited Hallin and Mancini (2004) typology is rather crude and inadequate, even in the case of its intended applications in the realm of political communication. Looking at prior cross‐national studies, we note that several potential categories can be identified and mobilized to form typologies for communication structures or cultures in Europe, for example: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

Social class structures and evolving roles/forms of “publics” and public opinion Forms and extent of the separation of politics from media processes Development of media markets and/or journalistic professionalism State control and state interventions Innovators, adopters, or active appropriations of new (media) technologies, capabilities, or media practices Forms, extent and practices of electoral democracy Imperial/hegemonic versus subaltern polities/cultures Varieties of capitalism typologies Egalitarianism vs. stratification, the role of social reform and welfare Large and small cultures/societies/nations Density of population, rural vs. urban, agrarian vs. industrialized regions Extent of individualism vs. communitarianism Secularization versus religious belief systems: extent and forms Protestant versus Catholic or Orthodox cultural traditions Northern vs. Southern Europe: environmentally shaped cultures, ways of life Western vs. Eastern Europe: (former) communist and west/liberal countries Extent and traditions of multiculturalism, migration, and colonial heritage Successive hegemonic cities and their core‐regions etc.

In identifying all these potential criteria and categories, there is no easy solution to the selection problem. However, as Hallin and Mancini (2004) demonstrated, it is possible

Introduction 13 to combine many of these categories, e.g. geographical entities, characteristics of media and political systems, and cultural traditions. The major aim of this Handbook is to recognize and reflect the complexity of the ­historical experience as well as the contemporary diversity of institutions, professional practices, and consumption cultures related to the domain of mediated communication. As far as is practical, the editors have sought to reflect the typical experiences and practices of different regions (North/South–West/East), cultural traditions, and media systems (separation of politics and media, development of media markets, state control/­ interventions). From the outset, we have also been mindful of the important distinction between large and influential national, linguistic, or cultural (or even once imperialist) entities on the one hand, and the rather different experiences, opportunities, and challenges facing smaller countries and subaltern cultures on the other. Owing to material resource considerations, the latter find it much more difficult to construct and maintain national media systems, distinctive cultural productions, or repertoires, as well as challenges in designing and appropriating new media infrastructures and techniques to express distinctive cultural story‐telling and independence. For such reasons, media politics and state subsidies often play a more visible and important role in the case of smaller countries and subaltern cultures. Furthermore, in reflexive mode, the editorial selections were also aware that the histories and experiences of smaller countries and subaltern cultures have tended to be rather neglected, marginalized, or accorded more lowly status within the mainstream canon of academic communication and media studies research literature. Thus, at an early stage, the editors decided that a flexible‐but‐structured approach was optimal for the selection of countries and case studies informing the various chapters in this Handbook. Flexibility is necessary given the variation in the concrete topics treated in the Handbook. When it comes to treating media change or media innovations, appropriation, adaptation or diffusion processes, a selection of case study countries with diverse developmental trajectories was deemed optimal or highly desirable. As a general rule, a minimum of four countries are addressed and analyzed in detail as case studies or examples in each of the following chapters. The criteria outlined in this section served as guidelines and informed the selection process, although not all of them can be applied to each topic and historical period. But we were also attentive to the need for some flexibility in some cases, so that the precise selection of countries covered depends on the chapters’ specific topic. One editorial red‐line throughout the book, however, is that all chapters deal with topics that are deemed relevant to students and readers across the whole of Europe. Furthermore, the editors aimed to ensure that most chapters analyze or examine at least briefly: a) four or more large European countries from different geographical or cultural regions (e.g. France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom) b) a relevant sample and mix of smaller, subaltern, peripheral, or minor countries/ cultures/regions.

­More About the Scope of this Handbook and Editorial Approach The original motivation and core aim of this Handbook was to fill a gap in the existing literature. As communication, media, and journalism studies were (and are) becoming much more international, we perceived a growing need for research literature that goes

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beyond national perspectives and provides a basis for more transnational treatments of historical developments in the field of mediated communication. Therefore, it is not intended to analyze European countries separately or to present a compilation of national media histories. Instead, the chapters in this Handbook aim to deal with media industry and professional or policy innovations, important counter developments, audience, and consumption trends and policy issues in the field of mass media, public discourse, and journalism that were important for all or at least many European countries. One of the first (and easiest) decisions made by the editors concerned the time period covered. We decided that this Handbook should concentrate on the development of modern mass media over the last 120 years or so. The starting point comprised the emergence of the popular press (paralleled by the changing profile of public opinion and development of increasingly politicized mass audiences), the professionalization of ­journalists and the first wave of multimedia around 1900, maybe the most important intersection in media history. The book will end with the emergence of the internet in the late twentieth century, another major intersection. Following a number of consultative discussions at early meetings of the ECREA communication history section, the editors agreed to adopt a rather innovative approach to the authoring process, in line with the key aim and goal of ensuring a transnational approach and treatment of each major topic. Thus, the editors arranged that most of the chapters would not be written by single authors but by international teams with a good geographical mix and spread of knowledge formed around one lead author. Such multinational authoring teams were deemed to facilitate the core goal and challenge of this “European” focused book project: that the treatment of all topics goes beyond specific national experiences and perspectives. Moreover, the mix and composition of the authoring teams involved in producing most of the chapters has also served to enhance the coverage of research literature published in languages other than English. The lead‐author was thus deemed to play an important role, including responsibility for the mix, coherence and overall quality of case studies in the chapter as a whole. They were asked to plan the structure of the chapter, ensuring coherence in terms of content and style and write larger parts of the chapter (especially the introductory sections and  the conclusion). The lead‐authors’ role also included decisions concerning the co‐authors and their contributions to the chapters (although some authoring teams were self‐selecting and, in some cases, the editors made suggestions as to the composition of authoring teams). In some cases, the lead‐authors were chosen because of their prior record in multi‐country or transnational research and analysis. As far as possible, the authoring teams were chosen in terms of their capacity to embrace the relevant research literature from selected countries, including work that is not readily available in English, but only in national languages. As a result, this Handbook also serves to make some ­currently nationally‐specific research literature and findings more readily available for a wider and international audience. The editors also asked the lead‐authors of each chapter to include an introduction section to outline and explain the precise selection of case study countries. The concrete aims of the chapter and the relevance or the topic are also outlined at the outset of the chapters. The editors also asked for a short conclusion at the end of each chapter, highlighting the major findings, alongside considerations of the similarities and ­differences between the countries, and potential reasons for these. Thus, although it should be obvious by now, the editors would now formally wish to draw attention to the major, indeed crucial role played by the lead‐authors with regard to the production and overall quality of the chapters contained in this Handbook. Quite

Introduction 15 simply, without their knowledge, expertise, and efforts, neither the transnational story‐ telling that informs the following chapters, nor the production of the overall Handbook, would have been possible.

­Thematic Introduction to the Sections and Chapters At this point, the editors believe that, thanks to the significant contributions of multiple authoring teams responsible for every chapter, they have been largely successful in meeting the original aims and goals set out for this particular Handbook: to cover key features of the diverse histories, practices, experiences, and ideas surrounding modern mediated communication institutions and practices across Europe. As the contents pages indicate, chapter topics range from the emergence and spread of print media and subsequent “new media” developments, press freedom, media in wartime, the East/West divide, commercialization and professionalization, gender and migration issues, outside influences and internationalization processes among many other themes. The book is organized in four main parts. Although it was never intended to produce a strictly chronological history of mass media, public communication, and journalism in Europe, the first three sections follow a roughly chronological order. These parts deal with media innovations, major changes, and developments in the media systems that affected public communication, societies, and culture in certain time periods. Part I is centered around the institutionalization of modern mediated communication in the European context. Its nine chapters address and cover key media related developments unfolding during the period from the closing decades of the nineteenth century to World War II (approximately 1880–1945). By way of example, this first section of the Handbook, commences with the chapter dealing with the struggles over “press freedom” and “public spheres” and competing conceptualizations, values, norms. Chapter 2 moves on to address the rise and growth of the popular press in different national settings in Europe. The next chapter engages with the emergence of film whilst the fourth chapter addresses radio broadcasting, both of which comprise important new media and cultural forms to emerge in this period. The significant role and lasting impact of World War I as a sort of hot house for the development of distinctively modern propaganda, public relations, and mediated political and marketing communication techniques comprise the theme of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 is concerned with 1920s and the wider context of expanding mass media, tabloidization, and political polarization. The emergence and rise of fascism amid economic and political crises in a number of European countries forms the focus of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 moves on to address the significant features and ramifications of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent establishment of the Soviet media system. The novel role, features, and forms of international radio broadcasting comprise the topics addressed in Chapter 9. Part II addresses certain key moments in the evolving history of mediated communication “in a binary Europe” during the period between the mid‐1940s and the late 1980s. This part includes chapters dealing with topics ranging from the extent of continuities and new beginnings at this time, media, and the Cold War including East/West conflict, to the rise of television as the “dominant” medium during this period. This section also includes chapters focused on authoritarian media control in Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Greece as well as on the introduction of commercial broadcasting in Europe.

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Part III of this Handbook is focused around the theme of media development in Europe after the end of the Cold War. Specific chapter topics range from “media change in Central and Eastern Europe,” to the issues of media concentration and the rise of multinational companies. Chapter 17 addresses the issues surrounding “democratic deficits” in relation to the EU project and the role of media as well as any emergent European public sphere. Chapter 18 concludes this section by addressing the emergence of the internet as well as its impacts and implications for news services or even “the end of journalism.” The fourth and final part is centered around several major or long‐running themes treated together under the broadly pitched title “Historical Trends in European Media and Public Communication.” It commences with Chapter 19 which addresses the “professionalization of journalism” in the European setting whilst Chapter 20 moves on to examine the history and development of journalism education in Europe. In Chapter 21, the focus shifts to audiences and audience practices and behavior in relation to new media developments. Chapter 22 returns to journalism related issues, addressing questions related to the “Americanization” of journalistic practices and norms in Europe. The theme of “gender, media and modernity” comprises the focus of Chapter 23, whilst the following chapter engages with the topic of migration and its relation to the media. The final chapter examines the scope and role of “imagined new spaces of political ­solidarity” during the 1880s–1920s, including the ideas and practices of theorists and movements transcending the national frame and scale.

­Conclusions Some significant and unexpected changes have unfolded across the political and communicational landscape of Europe, especially the EU sub‐region, since planning for this Handbook first commenced several years ago. The most striking and unexpected change has been the rise and spread of movements favoring extremist nationalism, xenophobia, racism, and authoritarian “populism” on a scale not seen since the rise of fascist and related other right‐wing nationalist/reactionary movements in the 1930s and the period surrounding World War I. These developments threaten to derail or terminate not only the overall trajectory of deepening political integration, particularly within the EU region of Europe. If such trends continue, they are also likely to pose significant implications of  these for the cross‐country collaborations and exchanges in the areas of research, learning, and other academic activities, including communication studies and other social science and humanities fields. All of the latter have grown and deepened across the successive decades from the 1950s till now. Indeed, in the relatively few short years since this Handbook project first emerged as a mere idea to its final sub‐editing and publication stages, it is quite striking how the seemingly ever‐onward march of deepening globalization and internationalization (and its regional expression “Europeanization”) have run into very stormy waters. The financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent regimes of “austerity” and growing economic inequality and insecurity have been accompanied by unprecedented questioning, criticism, and challenges to deeper political and economic integration. We observe a new wave of extreme nationalism, xenophobia, more open racism and populist movements all seemingly opposed to supranational policies and institutions favoring flows of trade, capital investment, and people (at European and global‐level scales). These comprise serious moves or threats to reverse many of the internationalization trends, developments, and trajectories that had been presumed as typically modern and “normal” dating back to the World War II period, at the very least.

Introduction 17 It is no exaggeration to say that the overall EU project, as a currently existing form of supranational political governance (covering most but not all of the world‐region that is Europe) has come close to crashing or total collapse on several occasions since this Handbook project was first devised. Indeed, as we make the final edits on this introductory chapter, the EU is being threatened by new forms of extreme or fundamentalist nationalism and xenophobia, an appalling prospect for anyone who is vaguely familiar with the history of Europe from the early modern period. Nor is it an exaggeration to suggest that the vista of a fatal crisis of the whole EU unification project has now become manifest as the UK moves to implement its Brexit decision – to withdraw from the EU. Ironically, this threat emerges from the country that once led or brought about the first‐ stage of modern globalization, approximately two centuries ago. This threat is amplified as that UK decision has given confidence to extreme right‐wing or xenophobic forces in other countries – e.g. Italy, Hungary, France, Poland. This cascade of recent developments raises significant if still uncertain consequences for future of EU – as well as for the kinds of international scholarly collaboration manifest in the ECREA. The threat of the break‐up of the limited supranational forms of political integration achieved by the EU and the return of radical forms of nationalism are hardly welcome developments in the light of European history, even if they serve to underline the relevance of the specific theme of the current chapter. The very idea and possibility of this Handbook were inspired and strongly facilitated by the kinds of European‐level academic collaborations that have grown and expanded alongside the overall EU‐wide economic and political integration project over recent decades, sometimes as a direct result of EU‐funding for multi‐country research studies and collaborations. The creation and continued existence of the ECREA as a key platform for academic research collaborations and exchanges owes much to those wider forms of deepening economic and political exchanges, as well as related policy coordination and convergences. In sum, without ECREA, we would not have an ECREA History Section, nor meetings of it where the idea of this Handbook was first discussed and planned. As editors, we certainly feel confident that this Handbook has delivered a strong and distinctive contribution in terms of its original academic mission and agenda as described above. We also believe that it amply serves to demonstrate the added value and distinctive benefits of multi‐country research collaborations, not least in the sub‐fields of communication, media, and journalism studies. Further than that, we can only hope that, in some modest respects, this Handbook also demonstrates the real benefits and distinctive “added value” to the knowledge base offered by cross‐national historical perspectives on key developments in mediated communication in the European setting. The future or further development of such knowledge productions will be strongly influenced by the continuation of coordinated and integrated multi‐country educational and research collaborations which have been supported and promoted as part of the overall project of deepening economic and policy collaboration at EU‐wide level since the 1950s – and by the spin‐off or imitation effects such as the creation and support for organizations such as ECREA.

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1

Struggles over “Press Freedom” and “Public Spheres”

Competing Conceptualizations, Values, Norms Jürgen Wilke, Jaume Guillamet, Svennik Høyer*, and Nils E. Øy

­Introduction At the beginning of this Handbook stands a chapter on the struggles over press freedom and changes in the guiding principles of public communication in Europe between around 1880 and 1945. This serves as a basis for the following chapters that focus on specific forms of mediated communication during this period. What was the legal framework at the time, and what concepts and values can be regarded as having shaped the press at the end of the nineteenth century? And how have they changed in the face of transformative processes both political and through the media during the first decades of the twentieth century? Describing these developments is, of course, challenging given the limitations of a short single chapter, especially when considering that these decades were rather turbulent, and the historic events of the time left deep marks across Europe: the emergence of new nation states with their internal and external conflicts, World War I and the establishment of authoritarian political systems, if not dictatorships, and, finally, the catastrophe of World War II. Other revolutionary developments of the early twentieth century came with newly shaped media (film and radio) that also required a normative framework. To develop a coherent picture is rather difficult considering the sheer number of European countries involved. Around 1880, several independent states existed in the European continent, which in some cases incorporated various peoples and languages. This is particularly true for the Habsburg Empire with all its crownlands. The number

*This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Svennik Høyer who died on 8 January 2017, aged 86. Having been a pioneering and significant scholar of journalism and media history in the European setting, we are privileged to have had Svennik Høyer as one of the co‐authors of the present chapter. The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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of nation states further increased in the course of the twentieth century through territorial dissociation and independence movements; several of them were a direct result of World War I. Norway, on the other hand, had achieved independence from Sweden already in 1905. To describe the very complex situation of press freedom and the norms of mediated communication in Europe, this chapter is divided into three parts. At first, the focus is directed at the central territorial states and great powers (Austria‐Hungary, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia). Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium are only mentioned briefly. In order to expand the scope and to include other states, the situation of the northern European (Scandinavian) countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) as well as the situation of southern European (Romanic) countries (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) are examined separately. In comparing these countries, common features as well as differences are identified, and when appropriate, particularities in certain countries are outlined.

­The Central European Countries and Great Britain Historical and Political Background At first, necessity dictates to look back into the older history of the struggle over press freedom, which has raged within Europe for many centuries. Only a few decades after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century, first steps were taken toward controlling the production of printed matter. Germany was at the helm of this development (Eisenhardt 1970). Initially, these attempts at controlling print were undertaken by clerical institutions with occasional support of the Pope. Governing bodies, however, soon followed. While the church was mainly preoccupied with moral values and with keeping the faith “pure,” the state focused on maintaining public order, keeping governmental secrets, and on ensuring external security. In the long term, these goals turned into guiding principles. The primary means of control was (pre‐)censorship accompanied by further measures and punishments in the course of the sixteenth century. Since printing quickly spread to other parts of Europe, controlling the new technology also became a central issue in these regions (for France, see Bibliothèque Nationale de France 2015). National and regional particularities emerged early on during this process. This can be seen in the example of England, where the Stationers’ Company functioned as a self‐regulating body for the printers’ guild (Siebert 1965, pp. 64–87). This control system comprised all kinds of printed matter, including early forms of newsprints that had been published since the early sixteenth century, and it was fully developed when the first periodicals began to appear, first in Germany (1605/09), then in the Netherlands (1618/1620), in France (1631), in Spain (1641), in Italy (1643), in Sweden (1645), and in England (1665). Russia only followed decades later (1703). Surveillance of the press, at first, was not questioned but justified by the absolutist state with its monopoly of power. The gradual reduction of censorship initially took place in England where the legal and political situation had developed differently from that on the continent since the Middle Ages. The English press experienced a first (albeit short) period of freedom as early as 1640 during the Puritan Revolution (Siebert 1965, pp. 165–201). With the Press Act of 1662 (renewed in 1685 but not renewed in 1695), England had factually achieved press freedom. Therefore, England became



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the “motherland” of freedom of the press, and the press could rise to become the “fourth estate” on a par with the executive, judicial, and legislative branches (Conboy 2004, pp. 109–127). In other countries, the establishment of press freedom took much longer: in France, it occurred during the revolution of 1789, and in the unified German Empire, after all, almost one century later. However, in these latter cases, censorship had not been enforced as strictly as intended. The Netherlands adopted a constitution as early as 1815 that legally established press freedom. A comparatively high level of tolerance resulting from its Protestantism allowed for the release of publications that would have been banned elsewhere. Freedom of the press was also included in the constitution of the newly formed Belgium in 1831. The role of the press has always been closely connected to the respective political system. As long as absolutism dominated all of Europe, the press was under strict control of the state authorities or, at best, enjoyed very limited independence. Only in countries that had managed to restrict the absolute power of the ruling class and that were, thus, able to boast, at least in part, a system of checks and balances (as in England) could the press claim some level of independence. Even in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, Europe was mainly composed of kingdoms (i.e. monarchies as the predominant form of government). However, these were mostly constitutional monarchies in which the ruler could no longer exert absolute power but was bound by a constitution and the law. Nonetheless, the intensity of this bond varied depending on the guarantees and rights of participation that were included in the constitutions that had been formed during the nineteenth century (Lehnert 2014). Up until the 1850s, the Habsburg Empire was characterized by a “relapse to neo‐absolutism” (Olechowski 2004, pp. 333–446). Leaving Switzerland and its earlier established republican tradition aside, only France, after its failed attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy, can be considered a ­republic (the so‐called Third Republic) during the period in question.

Press Freedom and Its Guiding Principles in the Late Nineteenth Century Decontrol and Liberalization: Latitude and Limits

With regard to press freedom, the late nineteenth century in Europe, seen as a whole, was an epoch of decontrol and liberalization. A first push into this direction occurred in the revolutionary wave of 1848 that spread across a number of countries. Press freedom was one of its foremost goals, and it seemed to be within reach, at first, in Germany and Austria as well as in France where the hitherto existing forms of censorship were abandoned. The newly formed pan‐German parliament agreed upon a constitution in 1849 that was the first to proclaim a guaranteed freedom of the press. This constitution was never implemented, however, since counter‐revolutionary forces managed to regain the upper hand. Only in Switzerland, in its Federal Constitution of 1848 (Art. 45), did press freedom remain in place, and it was included, for the most part left unchanged, in the new constitution of 1874 (Art. 55). In the German federal states, on the other hand, the press faced new forms of regulation. This included the levying of deposits, the ban of colportage, stamp duty and taxation of advertisements, as well as legal barriers (Kohnen 1995). In the Habsburg Monarchy, the same occurred with the print‐order of May 1852 (Melischek and Seethaler 2006, p. 1554; Olechowski 2004, pp. 350–357). A wave of liberalization set in at the beginning of the 1860s. Its reason lay in the Austrian constitution of 1861 that was followed by a general press law one year later

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(Olechowski 2004, pp. 450–468; 2006). This new law did away with such obstacles as  pre‐censorship while also limiting obligatory concessions, reprimands, and forced deposits. The Basic State Law of 1867 was the final step toward constitutionalism and guaranteed press freedom among basic rights of state citizens (Olechowski 2004, pp. 469–472). Nevertheless, the legal situation in the Habsburg Empire was difficult as the empire had been split into two parts after the Austro‐Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which had created a dual‐monarchy with both halves divided by the river Leitha. But not only Hungary possessed special rights from that point on; the press in the Austrian crown countries also required specific adaptions (Rumpler and Urbanitsch 2006, pp. 1895–2365). Regulations in the other member states of the German Confederation differed widely (Kohnen 1995), and pressures toward standardization only occurred after the creation of the German Empire (excluding Austria) in 1871 resulting from the Franco‐Prussian War. This long‐expected German nation‐state obtained a constitution that initially did not include press freedom; this changed three years later with the launching of the Reichspressegesetz (imperial press law). It formally established press freedom in all of the German Empire. In France, the Third Republic established a liberal press law. In 1875, a new constitution was put into place that was followed by the Press Law of 1881; a freedom law that had previously not existed in the country (Bellanger et  al. III 1969–1972, pp. 7–22; Feyel 2007, pp. 82–85). Censorship had been abolished as early as 1871, but only now, all forms of preventive control, except administrative formalities, were abolished (Bellanger et al. III 1969–1972). These aforementioned laws can be seen as temporary victories in the struggle for press freedom in the central European states, which led to the establishment of liberal guiding principles. In this regard, England could pride itself with the longest standing tradition going back all the way to John Milton who had drafted the first substantial pamphlet championing the freedom of the press entitled Areopagitica in 1643. Liberalism in England was advanced further by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill over the course of the nineteenth century. With On Liberty (1859), the latter created the manifesto of British liberalism in the nineteenth century. A congeneric tradition of liberal thinking was missing on the continent although liberal ideas had been unfurled since the French Revolution (De Ruggiero 1964 [1930]; Leonhard 2001). Liberalism, which shaped the nineteenth century as a political movement, developed in Europe in somewhat different forms (Langewiesche 1988). The formal implementation of press freedom in the European central countries did not necessarily mean that the press was acknowledged as an instrument of democratization or, in modern terms, for aggregating the interests and needs of specific social groups. Governmental bodies did not view the press as a legitimate representative of the public sphere. They rather tolerated than welcomed it while actively seeking to employ and exhaust it. This attitude found its manifestation in the boundaries and constraints that were put in place to limit press freedom. These boundaries even existed in the United Kingdom that has no (written) constitution or press law (up until this day). This, of course, did not mean that the press could publish completely without limitation. In order to avoid offenses, a rather complex, if not coded, law of libel was put into place by common jurisdiction in the eighteenth century. This law mainly consisted of decisions on the protection of personality rights against libel, treason, and betrayal, and other harmful coverage. A single judge decided what lay in the “interest of the public.” Up until the 1930s, it was maintained that the law of libel



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was “an extremely flexible and efficient instrument in the hands of the executive to prevent the publication of matter which it does not desire to see the light,” even that it operated “as a very strict censorship upon the publication of anything damaging the Government or the existing state of affairs in general” (Soames 1936, pp. 47–48). In the German Empire, the press and journalists were persecuted with the help of the penal code. This resulted in many accusations of lèse‐majesty, offenses against the state and public order, offenses against religion, as well as slander (Wetzel 1982, p. 135). During the “cultural war” in the 1880s, Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck frequently relied upon those sections of the imperial press law that were geared toward “internal unrest” and “upheaval” (Art. 30 Reichspressegesetz) when advancing against the Catholic Church or the Social Democrats and their respective printed press (Wetzel 1982). Bismarck regarded the oppositional press as an enemy and a threat to public order. This, of course, did not prevent him and his successors from implementing a (hidden) system of influence on the press, or from fostering and supporting semi‐official press organs with the help of secret “reptile funds.” This term was coined for the clandestine employment of financial means from the confiscated property of the former king of Hanover. In France, despite repressive initiatives in the 1880s, the liberal press law remained in place until 1914. It was modified by lois scélérates, meaning two laws in 1893 and 1894, in the wake of anarchist assassinations (Bellanger et al. III 1969–1972, pp. 25–26; Feyel 2007, p. 85). In Austria, press offenses and the provision of penal accountability had already been part of the Press Law of 1862 (Olechowski 2004, pp. 461–462). In the Russian tsarist empire, the press had been dependent on the state since its beginnings in the eighteenth century, even if obligatory preventive measures were not put into place until 1783 (Bljum 1999, pp. 21–22). After the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855, a certain degree of liberalization set in. This trend continued in result of the revolution of 1905 when substantial changes began to take hold. While pre‐censorship was lifted, a fact that mostly benefited the Bolsheviks, the state now employed different means to prevent undesired publications, such as the seizure of property, and monetary fines. In the European countries examined here, the liberalization of formal frameworks in combination with economic forces led to an expansion of the press (newspapers as well as magazines) up until World War I. While the freedom of speech or of the press was already known in the United Kingdom since the eighteenth century, it could now be established and eventually grow in continental Europe. Political parties depending on newspapers as a means of political participation employed them to recruit new members and to influence the public. The press became a forum for the democratic decision‐ making process. Journalism and the public sphere improved the access of segments of society that had long been excluded from the latter such as women and workers (Conboy 2004).

Commercialization and the Concerns for the “Public Sphere”

Liberalization in the second half of the nineteenth century did not only include the freedom of publication, which meant the freedom of journalists, their coverage, and comments. It also extended to the economic side of the press business that had long been hampered by governmental measures. The most notorious one was the so‐called stamp duty. First introduced in England in 1712, not long after the abolition of pre‐censorship, it put a tax on printing paper. Later, this measure was adopted in other countries not only because of its profit‐making potential, but also because it allowed for the increase of newspapers and magazines prices, thus, making their distribution harder. The political

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press was affected negatively also by the levying of taxes on advertisements or by the limiting of their use to a certain genre of publications. In England, they were called “Advertiser,” in France “Feuilles du Bureau d’Adresse” or “Affiches” (Feyel 2007, pp. 17–18; 2000), in Germany, “Frag‐ und Anzeigungsnachrichten” or, later, “Intelligenzblätter” (Wilke 2008, pp. 115–127). The freedom of trade and commerce was another important part of the liberalization agenda. Its implementation in the wake of industrialization in the late nineteenth century also had a tremendous impact on the press. In the United Kingdom, fiscal control of the press was relaxed during the 1830s, and the government gradually lifted the “taxes on knowledge”: in 1853, the advertisement duties were abolished, in 1855, the newspaper stamp duty, in 1861, the paper duties (Lee 1978, p. 117). This was the prerequisite for discovering how to use the newspaper as a means of maximizing profit, which eventually led to its commercialization. In this context, large capitalist press enterprises like Harmsworth/Northcliffe, Newnes, and Pearson were created. From the 1850s, the popular daily press took hold in the United Kingdom with papers such as the Daily Telegraph (1855), Daily Mail (1896), Daily Express (1900), and the Daily Mirror (1903) (Bingham and Conboy 2015; Engel 1996; Griffiths 1992). This came along with a general popularization of journalism. Two different concepts were competing with one another: “the one of a Fourth Estate, with proprietorship a form of public service and journalists a species of public philosopher; the other of the press as an industry, with proprietors as businessmen and journalism a trade or craft” (Lee 1978, p. 118). Nevertheless, there were apologists of commercial newspapers who defended, on their part, “the sensational presentation of news and views … as a necessary public service in these days of mass readership and democratic responsibility” (cited in Bingham and Conboy 2015, p. 15). In France, commercialization began in the 1830s. In 1836, two publications of the so‐called presse à bon marché were founded: La Presse, and Le Siècle. Both relied on advertising as a principal source of revenue. This made it possible to lower the price and to reach a profit margin. Another type of journalist was required: not one who ultimately strove to obtain a political position, as was the case in the traditional press, but one who catered to the demands of the readers. The most successful newspaper in France by the end of the nineteenth century was Le Petit Journal (since 1862). It was inexpensive, at only half the cost of La Presse (Palmer 1983). In Germany, the state monopoly on advertisements in Prussia was lifted in 1850; only then did the opportunity of financing newspapers largely based on advertisements present itself. The special type of newspaper that emerged in consequence was dubbed “General‐Anzeiger” (general advertiser) (Wilke 2008, pp. 265–270). It strove to reach a large readership, mainly through regional coverage, the omission of political and religious controversy, and an expansion of the entertainment section. “General‐Anzeiger” were published in Berlin (Berliner Lokal‐Anzeiger) and other large cities in the empire. They managed to achieve large, yet unknown numbers of sales in Germany, which also resulted in the creation of large publishing houses, such as Mosse, Scherl, and Ullstein. In the Austro‐Hungarian monarchy, popular newspapers came into being in the 1890s. They did not carry a similar type of title, as was the case in Germany. The first newspaper to attain a wide circulation was the Neues Wiener Journal (Ehrenpreis 2004, pp. 1779–1784). Other publications also managed to reach high levels of circulation, even though this type of newspaper did not achieve the same importance as in England, Germany, or France due to the economic conditions and a general lack of urban environments.



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Previous efforts geared toward a commercialization of the press had been undertaken as early as the 1830s in the United States. Its influence on the European press was not welcomed unanimously but, quite to the contrary, were met by criticism and reservations. Even in the United Kingdom, where the transatlantic role model was likely to be followed, a large‐scale debate erupted in the 1880s that was fueled by a fear of a possible “Americanization” (Wiener 2011, pp. 10–27). Critics saw a possible decline in the high standards of the country’s press whose goals it was “to enlighten the minds, and to elevate the character of mankind in general” (Wiener 2011, p. 16). The increasing commercialization of the press was even more controversial in Germany. Here, an opinion, and partisan press had emerged recently that sought to attract readers and to make them follow their own points of view. Therefore, the “General‐Anzeiger” were accused of “oversimplification,” and the “lackluster press” was vilified (Wilke 1991). Also, in consequence of these arguments, Jürgen Habermas (1989) considered the commercialization of the press a danger to the civic rational public sphere (p. 185).

Resumption of Authoritarian Principles in the Early Twentieth Century During the long struggle over press freedom in Europe, some progress was made in the respective countries while there were, of course, also setbacks. However, after the advancements of the (late) nineteenth century, their revisions during the first half of the twentieth century must have been hard to imagine. The setbacks were caused by political and military conflicts on a global and historical scale and the resurgence of authoritarian principles rooted in anti‐liberal ideologies, such as fascism, and communism.

Press Control and Instrumentalization of the Press in World War I

The first reoccurrence of press control was a direct result of World War I that erupted at the beginning of August 1914 and lasted for four years. Since it threatened individual national existence, the press could not operate independently and was subject to higher‐ ranking national aims. The press laws of most countries included a suspension of press freedom in the case of war. Not only was sensitive information to be kept from the enemy but it also became of paramount importance to strengthen the public’s morale and to boost the will to fight for, and defend one’s own country. The press (once again) mutated into an instrument for propaganda. In the German Empire, press freedom was suspended as early as 31 August 1914. A rather extensive list was issued that contained those topics that could no longer be covered, and a comprehensive military censorship was put into place (Koszyk 1968). Its purpose was to direct the press through information as well as instructions (Wilke 2007, pp. 16–107). Foreign propaganda that employed the use of newspapers was coordinated by the Zentralstelle für Auslandsdienst (Central Office of the Foreign Service) (Wilke 1998). The case was similar for France. Press freedom was also suspended, and a military censorship was implemented and executed by the Bureau de la Presse (press office) (Bellanger et al. III 1969–1972, pp. 412–423; Feyel 2007, pp. 145–148). The 21 military regions of the provinces had their own control commissions. The large headquarters brought forth an information service (Service d’Information). Additional organizations of governmental influence were the Bureau d’Information Militaire (BIM) (Bureau of Military Information) as well as, in 1916, the Maison de la Presse (House of the Press) for international reporting.

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In Vienna, the government ordered the suspension of numerous basic rights including the freedom of the press, as soon as the ultimatum posed to Serbia on 25 July 1914, had expired (Olechowski 2004, pp. 511–514, 548). The military censorship was directed by the Kriegsüberwachungsamt (KÜA) (wartime surveillance department), which did not limit itself to military aspects but also included political content. This was amended by a “positive press policy,” that is the supply of journalists with information, both actively and passively, and the encouragement to produce certain pieces. Hungary had managed to uphold its independence and was, therefore, given its own surveillance department. Things were somewhat different in the United Kingdom. Institutionally sanctioned censorship would have been in direct violation of the country’s longstanding tradition of press freedom. Therefore, there was no censorship law passed during World War I (Lovelace 1978). After the experiences of previous wars (the Crimean War, and the Boer War), in 1912, the representatives of the organized British press had promised not to publish military secrets and to ask permission before releasing any information possibly relevant to the country’s security. Thus, a factual self‐censorship was in place during the war. What “made British press management during the war so effective … [was] personal intimacy between government officials and press representatives” (Schramm 2008, p. 57). After the outbreak of the war, the British government seized control of the technical means of news transmission, upgraded the Press Bureau, and turned it into an agency for official information policy (Sanders and Taylor 1982, pp. 18–33). The parliament, furthermore, decided upon a number of decrees that prohibited the release of “hoaxes,” the publication of military secrets and any publications that would foster discontent among the population. A special code of conduct and a Press Bureau Book of Instructions were issued (Schramm 2008, p. 63). Cases in which newspapers were prosecuted and temporarily shut down for any such trespasses were not out of the ordinary. However, this situation did not last for long, with the result that the British press could still cling to the myth (or appearance) of independence in formal legal terms over the course of the war, and it even expressed criticism toward the military and government. By willingly cooperating with the Press Bureau, they could circumvent preventive measures.

Implementation and Collapse of Democratic Values Between the World Wars

World War I resulted in the creation of a new political order in Europe after 1918 that seemed to introduce a progressive wave of democratization on the continent (Kaelble 2001, pp. 49–60). England and France, the victorious powers, were already democracies, while Germany and Austria, who had been defeated, were transforming  –  under enormous strain – into republics. From the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, a number of new states emerged: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic States. This democratization only extended to about a third of the European population, and it was not long lasting in many of these countries. In Russia, the Bolsheviks had seized power during the war after the October Revolution of 1917 and implemented a one‐party system. As a consequence of the communist dictatorship, in 1922, censorship became institutionalized with the creation of Glavlit, an organization that was founded by the new political authorities and would stay in charge of controlling the Soviet media for decades to come (Bljum 1999; Hopkins 1970). Glavlit not only had to eliminate preventively all material that was not permitted but had to supervise printing shops and to tie up the import of what was considered to be subversive. The concept was spurred by revolutionary leader Lenin himself. He rejected the “bourgeois” notion of press freedom and assigned to the press the tasks of collective propaganda, agitation, and organization (Hopkins 1970).



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In Italy, the Fascists began to rise to power in 1921, and the Nazis in Germany in the 1920s (until their definitive seizure of power in 1933). Numerous other countries also had to witness the failure of democracy: Poland, and Lithuania in 1926, Yugoslavia in 1929, Portugal in 1932, Austria in 1933/34, Latvia, and Spain in 1936, and Estonia in 1937. The fact that after the end of the war some democratic values were re‐instated was also an aspect of press freedom. In most cases, the institutions of (military) censorship were abolished after the war as were most kinds of state control over media content. Germany obtained a republican constitution that ensured freedom of speech (without explicitly mentioning press freedom, however). The Press Law of 1874 was re‐implemented. Since the political and social conflicts between extremists from the right and left sides of the political spectrum were also carried out via the press, poisoning the social sphere, the government soon decided to create new laws to protect the republic. These included the  temporary ban of newspapers. With the aid of an emergency decree (Weimar Constitution Article 48), the President of the Reich could intermittently suspend basic rights (such as press freedom). The end of the free press in Germany came with the seizure of power by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) on January 30, 1933, and media were molded gradually according to the principles of a racial dictatorship. Though the new government did not formally install any kind of censorship institution, new legislation and organizations worked toward this very goal. The so‐called Schriftleitergesetz (editor law) regulated the access to any journalistic profession, and the creation of courts of professional conduct, and it bound journalists to certain political norms. Additionally, a system of press instructions was re‐introduced (Wilke 2007, pp. 115–255). In (German) Austria, after the end of the Habsburg Empire, the first Provisional National Assembly re‐instated press freedom in 1918 and did away with the restrictions of the emergency decree of 1869 (Olechowski 2004, p. 672). In France, censorship and supervisory bodies were only abandoned at the end of October 1919, three months after the Treaty of Versailles. The liberal Press Law of 1881 was re‐instated; a rather controversial issue, especially during the massive political conflicts the country faced in the 1920s. Of all European countries, the United Kingdom had to sacrifice very little of its traditional freedom of the press. Governmental influence over the press declined after the end of the war, also in part due to its increasing commercialization (Seymour‐Ure 1975). In a historical phase shaped by the disastrous results of World War I, during which a European public sphere was extremely limited, Europe was lacking a communal effort toward the expansion of press freedom. This is one of the reasons why a resolution on censorship, introduced by a conference of press experts created in 1927 by the League of Nations (precursor of the United Nations), was met with very little enthusiasm (Lange 1991, pp. 71–87). This organization for international cooperation was founded in 1919 and took an initiative on media policies. The conference established that censorship should be abandoned in peacetime. However, since the participants did not aim to meddle with internal affairs of other states, they conceded that there might be arguments to justify censorship in some cases. At the same time, censorship was seen as a possible obstacle in the understanding among nations, and, therefore, its abolition was regarded as necessary. As long as the concept of press freedom was not universally accepted, however, certain basic guarantees for journalists remained in demand but could not be reached, especially since the League of Nations fell apart because of rising international tensions.

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­The Extension of Mediated Communication by New Media While the press remained the only means of mass communication for centuries, two new media of mass communication emerged during the period investigated: film, during the 1890s, and radio, in the 1920s. Both were in need of a normative framework, and, in principle, the regulations of press freedom could have been adapted to these new media. This did not occur, however, since there were too many objections against unregulated freedom. In both cases, similar to the press a few centuries earlier, in all countries control measures were put into place. In the case of film, censorship was similar to that of the theater, and official guidelines for the public screening of films were created. The first local censorship decree was issued in Berlin in 1906, and preliminary screenings by the police became the norm. Municipal authorities in France did the same. In the United Kingdom, a self‐monitoring film censorship institution, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC), was created as early as 1913 (Robertson 1989). The first legal basis for film censorship was established in Germany with the help of the Reichslichtspielgesetz (federal movie theater law) of 1920. It legitimized the banning of films for the same reasons the press had been censored centuries earlier. In addition to that, there were prohibitive fiscal measures (i.e. entertainment tax). Censorship of radio broadcasting started directly at its beginnings in the 1920s and was facilitated by the fact that broadcast technology was organized and controlled by the state. Special committees were in charge of radio censorship in Germany, with situations in France and other European countries. A different course was taken in Britain where British and US‐American electrical companies founded the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in 1922 as an independent private organization. It was transformed by Royal Charter in 1927, turning it into a public service organization with a right to self‐ administration (Briggs 1995 [1961]).

­The Southern European Countries Historical and Political Background: The Strength of Absolutism and Catholicism The absolutist power of the Spanish monarchy and the influence of the Catholic Church ‐ strengthened by means of the Inquisition – limited the early development of the press in both Iberia and Italy. This applied to a lesser extent to the dependencies of the Crown of Aragon (Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Sardinia, Naples, and Sicily), until the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1714) when they submitted to the stricter laws of the Kingdom of Castile. After that, the Habsburg authority over those Italian territories that had formerly been ruled by Spain postponed the establishment of press freedom until the Kingdom of Italy was constituted (1861). In the meantime, Portugal and Spain had enjoyed press freedom since 1834, and 1837 respectively. On the Iberian Peninsula, the two first weekly gazettes, Gazeta and Novas Ordinarias, both appeared in Barcelona in 1641, after 60 years of Portuguese‐Spanish Union (1580– 1640). Here, the French model of absolutist official newspapers was not established as such until the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1791, in addition to the control systems in place that regulated the authorization and censorship of newspapers, the Spanish monarchy prohibited non‐official newspapers to prevent the spread of the ideas



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of the French Revolution (Guinard 1973, pp. 25–37). With the Napoleonic invasions, however, their influence grew and allowed for the first attempts to establish press freedom and political newspapers in some cities. This occurred during the triennio rivoluzionario, a period that followed the entry of Napoleon into Milan in 1796, as well as into Genoa and Naples, and that was followed by the French imposing strict control and censorship (Pizarroso Quintero 1994, pp. 57–58). Between 1807 and 1814, Lisbon, Seville, and Cádiz were the temporary capitals of liberal journalism in the non‐occupied areas while, during the war, the French took control of Diario de Barcelona, the daily newspaper that existed already (Guillamet 2003, pp. 79–82). The triumph of the liberal regime and the freedom of the press, amid the tensions existing toward the end of the old regime, showed parallelisms between the Portuguese (1820– 1828) and the Spanish (1820–1823) political movements. Both, like contemporary developments in Italy, were inspired by the Cádiz Constitution of 1812 that established freedom of the press except for religious matters. Its ultimate and full recognition, once the Catholic Inquisition ended in 1834, happened almost simultaneously in the Iberian monarchies and, some time later, in Italy. In the first two cases, however, it continued to be subject to constitutional reforms and frequent interferences from the various governments.

Newspapers as Political Actors The political instability of liberal regimes in the Iberian Peninsula brought along numerous legal and governmental restrictions to the formally recognized freedom of the press. This was due to the instrumental role played by newspapers in political power struggles. The limitations affected in particular the advanced liberal sectors and less so the more conservative and moderate ones. Otherwise, in Spain the educational function of the press was acknowledged in an 1871 decree that explicitly spoke of the newspaper as the “book of the worker” (Fuentes and Fernández Sebastián 1997, p. 131). The influence of the short‐lived Republic of 1873 contributed to the expansion of the republican movement in neighboring Portugal, which culminated in the fall of the monarchy in 1910. However, since 1890, the growing labor, socialist, and anarchist press was subject to persecution and suspensions under an extremely repressive Portuguese press law promulgated in 1896. Meanwhile, in Spain, a liberal press law established in 1883 allowed for a long period of legislative stability until 1936, although it was altered by frequent suspensions of constitutional guarantees and states of war that enabled governments to temporarily restore censorship, control, and sanctions. After the constitutional recognition of press freedom in the Kingdom of Piedmont‐ Sardinia in 1848, thanks to the so‐called Albertine Statute (named after King Charles Albert, it became a forerunner of the Italian Constitution of 1861), newspapers enjoyed great levels of freedom and played a key role in the construction of the political unity of the new Kingdom of Italy (Murialdi 1986, p. 43). With Italy entering the war in 1915, notwithstanding the validity of the constitution until 1946, the press had to face significant difficulties, especially with Mussolini’s seizure of power in 1922.

News Markets’ Limitations Political tensions and changes during the second half of the nineteenth century could no longer help the deployment of a political journalism with a strong news component, nor continue limiting newspaper access to lower social classes. Special financial requirements

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to obtain authorization to publish periodicals – editors’ income levels had to be similar to those needed to enjoy voting rights, something affordable to only 2% of the population  –  were diminished and finally abolished. This included the obligation to allocate monetary deposits against possible sanctions and fines. The formation of national newspaper markets benefited from the interest in political participation of growing sectors of the population, supported by universal improvements in communication infrastructures, and the advancements of a new industrial and urban society. On the other hand, it was limited by generally low income, and literacy levels. The Gazzetta del Popolo (1848) in Turin, Las Novedades (1850) in Madrid, and Diário de Notícias (1865) in Lisbon first of all reduced its price by 50% to make newspapers accessible to a wider readership. In the following decades, the second price decrease experienced by the first popular newspapers and tabloids was less likely in those countries that did not enjoy high rates of literacy until well into the twentieth century. Commercialization was not a positive aim in the public debate about the social role of the press (Álvarez 1981). A daily and weekly press rapidly spread throughout small and big cities, but the large number of newspapers in each of the three countries produced only short print runs. In 1888, the 200 newspapers in Portugal and its colonies only totaled 100,000 daily copies (Tengarrinha 1989, p. 231). But this did not keep the republican press, whose main organ, the Lisboan O Século (1881) ranked second in circulation, from growing in importance. The Italian and Spanish periodical press had developed more steadily, despite the small size of their news markets. In Italy, the financial paper Il Sole (1865), the Corriere della Sera (1876) in Milan, and La Stampa (1896) in Turin marked the beginning of journalism as a business activity while keeping their political commitments. A similar phenomenon was observed in Spain, and it was led by El Imparcial (1867) and El Liberal (1879) in Madrid, and La Vanguardia (1881) in Barcelona. In addition, other publications can be highlighted within the large number of small party newspapers, such as the socialist Avanti! (1896) in Rome, and El Socialista (1886) in Madrid, and the Catalan La Veu de Catalunya (1899), and the anarcho‐syndicalist Solidaridad Obrera (1907) in Barcelona. These papers grew as the result of new and influential parties that appeared in these years marked by a high politicization of the public sphere.

Censorship and War Subsidies The different positions of the three southern European countries during World War I also conditioned the behavior of the press. Only Italy was directly involved in the conflict, first on the side of Germany and Austria‐Hungary and then (1917) on the Allied side, and Benito Mussolini (Il Duce) played an important role in promoting press intervention by founding Il Popolo d’Italia, a newspaper financed by prominent industrialists. Like other great powers, Italy established official propaganda services, military censorship and control of war correspondents. The banning of socialist newspapers anticipated increasing restrictions following Mussolini’s Fascist Party’s rise to power, whose intimidatory acts and propaganda were very powerful from 1919 onwards. The Portuguese Republic, established in 1910 and already characterized by chronic instability and a very politicized press, sent 40 000 soldiers to the Western Front and imposed strict wartime censorship. Spanish neutrality gave newspapers a helping hand with the opportunity to benefit from subsidies from either side, depending on their editorial orientation.



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Dictatorships and the Spanish Civil War In the 1920s, the press in all three countries suffered under the onslaught of their respective dictatorships, in contrast to the interwar golden age of political, and general information newspapers elsewhere. In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera’s coup d’état established in Spain a regime inspired by Mussolini’s Italian fascism, including censorship and the suppression of newspapers. This regime, however, fell  –  like the monarchy – soon after and in consequence of the 1931 local elections. The 1926 military coup in Portugal gave way to a dictatorship that lasted for half‐century. It promulgated a new Constitution in 1933 that restricted the freedom of the press and extended a minuscule control of the state (Franco 1993, p. 109). Since 1923, Italian prefects had almost discretionary power over newspapers. They started an action that would serve as an example for other regimes which bore traces of Napoleon and Metternich (Weill 1934, pp. 348–351). Il Duce endowed his regime with an apparatus of control and propaganda that dismantled the independence of newspapers and journalists, forced changes of ownership, allocated generous “reptile funds,” imposed codes of conduct, and enforced the compulsory membership of journalists of the Fascist Party. At the same time, both the Italian and the Spanish governments recognized a number of journalists’ labor rights demanded by trade unions in free countries. These included, among others, work contracts, weekly rest periods, and paid holidays, and came at the cost of the regulation of journalists’ professional activity via an official work permit. The strong political commitment of the press, however, decisively contributed to the arrival of the Second Spanish Republic, often described as a “republic of intellectuals,” in 1931. Despite continuous sanctions on the opposition press, which were supported by legislation approved that same year, the press enjoyed a five‐year expansion period. Some newspapers, such as La Vanguardia, and the monarchist ABC (1905), produced more than 100 000 daily copies for a total circulation of 3 million copies (Saiz and Seoane 1996, p. 32). Political parallels between the three countries eventually led to the support from the Portuguese and Italian dictatorships to Spain’s military uprising in July 1936. The Spanish press suffered a traumatic transformation during the Civil War that included the closure and expropriation of newspapers, as well as the persecution of editors and journalists, both on the government and on the rebel side (Núñez Díaz‐Balart 1989). In March 1938, a year before Franco’s victory, a new press law, echoing Mussolini’s concepts, defined the press as an institution in the service of the state. This wartime measure outlived the armed conflict for more than a quarter of a century, and it was not until 1966 that new press legislation introduced a certain degree of supervised freedom (Barrera 1995).

New Media Under Control The emergence and expansion of new media such as cinema and radio during the interwar period were conditioned by authoritarian tendencies in force in all three countries. The earliest radio broadcasts in Italy (1924), Spain (1924), and Portugal (1925) came into being under dictatorial regimes. Italian radio, managed by an official authority based in Turin and submitted to the Ministry for Press and Propaganda, became a great promoter for the fascist regime. Also, cinema became a propaganda tool for Mussolini who not only created an official organization for its promotion but who also gave the

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order for the building of the impressive Cinecittà Studios. The fascist regime also set up  official news bulletins similar to those in other totalitarian countries. The Spanish Republican government, in spite of not having developed a powerful film industry, also produced its own newsreel during the war (Guillamet 2003, pp. 156–157). Radio programs in Spanish and Catalan in support of the Spanish rebels or Nationalist faction were broadcast from Rome, while Portuguese radio stations owned by the state and the Catholic Church supported Franco. Nazi technical and economic support was essential in the creation of Radio Nacional de España (1937) that continued to be Spain’s official radio station after the war. However, Franco also maintained Unión Radio, a formerly Republican radio network partially funded by US capital, while changing its name to Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión (SER). On the eve of World War II, journalism in the three main southern European countries faced a paradoxical situation. The resumption of centuries‐old provisions of control and censorship combined with the technological possibilities of the industrialized press transformed newspapers and the emerging radio broadcasting system into powerful instruments to mold public opinion. In 1945, Italy returned to the fold of freedom and the renewal of European journalism. Meanwhile, Portugal and Spain had to wait 48, and 36 years until the fall of their dictatorships, in 1974, and 1975 to establish press freedom again.

­The Nordic Countries Historical Background: Censorship in Sweden and Denmark‐Norway Around 1800 The development of press freedom and transparency in governmental affairs was uneven in the Nordic countries. Still, the Swedish ideals during the so‐called “time of freedom” (1718–1772), when the nobility and the parliament were strong, had a great impact on what later came to the whole region. The Swedish laws, forbidding censorship as early as 1766, became the first known pronouncements on transparency in public administration and in the political process. However, in 1774, and in 1792, Gustav III (1772–1792) revised these freedoms so effectively that he extinguished all independent media. In 1809, an assembly of the estates in Örebro approved a constitution that reinstalled freedom of the press with the exception that it allowed the king to forbid newspapers, a right repealed in 1812. In contrast to Sweden, the Danish king and his council ruled in an authoritarian manner and almost uninterrupted between 1660 and 1848. Comprehensive laws on censorship prohibited the free use of all printed matter, periodicals and books, in Danish or in any other language. Planned public meetings consisting of three or more people were forbidden. While newspapers were allowed in 1666, their publisher had to be the king. After 1721, private printers could obtain a printing privilege to publish newspapers, but they were subject to continuous control. In 1848, overwhelmed by the liberal revolutions in central Europe, Denmark became a democracy with a constituted freedom of the press (Rian 2014). The end of the Napoleonic Wars also redrew the borders in Scandinavia. By agreements with Russia and Great Britain, Sweden was ceded to Norway by Denmark in compensation for the loss of Finland to Russia in 1809. During the winter and summer



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of 1814, however, Sweden was engaged in battles on the continent. During this time, a constitutional assembly was organized in Norway, which declared the country independent. After a short war won by the Swedes, the constitution was slightly altered with the effect that Norway entered a union with Sweden consisting of a common king and a common foreign policy. However, Norway kept its own parliament and government, a separate budget, and an army. Since then, the Nordic countries have not been at war with each other. Article 100 of Norway’s Constitution of 1814 – still in place with some minor revisions  –  declared press freedom, and the freedom of speech. According to the article, everyone has the right to speak his or her mind on government affairs and any other matter, except if he or she asks people to disobey the laws or attack the (Christian) religion. Since the mid‐nineteenth century, the Nordic countries, except Finland, had laws that guaranteed the freedom of speech and of the press.

Censorship in Times of War During World War I, all Nordic countries were neutral with the exception of Finland that was part of Russia. The press and governments agreed voluntarily and informally not to publish sensitive information. During World War II, Denmark and Norway were occupied and were, thus, subject to detailed and organized censorship by the German and Nazi authorities. Finland was at war, first with the Soviet Union, and then with Nazi Germany. War news was either restricted or carefully edited. Surrounded by war, the Swedish government became subject to repeated pressures from German authorities in Berlin on the content of its press. In 1942, after a hot debate in the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen), the government decided to stop the distribution of 17 issues of newspapers that contained articles on German torture in Norwegian prisons. During World War II, altogether 319 issues of newspapers were confiscated, and a few journals, mainly communist, were withheld from distribution. In 1944, an official Swedish government committee was issued to change the laws on press freedom, and, in 1949, new legislation was enforced that prohibited censorship even during war time.

Access to Information Transparency of the law‐making process is essential for news media to control or criticize the government. Access to the parliament and the courts has long been an established custom in Scandinavia, formalized in Swedish law in 1766, and in Norway in 1814. The internal affairs of civil service institutions, and governments, however, remained a closed domain in the rest of Scandinavia until the 1970s. Also, while in Sweden the access to government documents, and documents of local administrations was established in 1766, this access remained unavailable in the rest of Scandinavia. These new possibilities for investigative journalism did not yet solve all problems. The right of being anonymous as an author or as a source of information for the news media was long in coming. Today, all Scandinavian countries have, as a rule, given the right of anonymity to authors and sources of information. These rights have for the most part been established by law, in Sweden in 1766, in Norway in 1814, in Denmark in 1916, in Finland in 1966, and in Iceland in 1936 (Øy 2013, 2015).

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Formation of a Multi‐Party Press In the age of mass media, public debate is to a large extent an edited debate that depends on the number and the distinct qualities of available channels of communication. In Scandinavia, for long, newspapers committed to political parties have dominated these channels. The multi‐party press in Scandinavia was based on a steady and reliable loyalty of newspapers to their respective parties, regardless whether these parties were in or out of government. While, generally, only Labor (Arbeiterpartei) newspapers were party owned, steady loyalties existed for decades and faded only with the vanishing of a party or with the closing of a newspaper. This system clearly influenced news coverage, and the ways, public debate was conducted. For more than a century, from around 1860 until about 1980, these forms of a party press could be found in all the Scandinavian countries. The politically uncommitted press, generally, was small in numbers and circulation, and often consisted of community‐based papers. In the national Nordic parliaments during the 1860s and 1870s so‐called informal caucus groups existed, along a left–right axis. From these groups political parties were formed in the 1880s. Finland followed a different road. It had its own Diet, but under Russian control from 1809. The most dividing issue was the use of the Finnish versus Swedish language in school and public administration. So‐called “Fennoman” (patriotically Finish) newspapers were started in the 1870s and 1880s as forerunners of regular party papers, when Finland became independent in 1917. The 1880s saw the start of a long boom in international newspaper publishing fostered by a century‐long series of technological innovations. One invention was ­ cheap newsprint on pulp paper that could easily be produced in forest rich Scandinavia. Re‐constructed data for Scandinavia and some other European countries shows a period of strong expansion of the newspaper industry, and in the circulation of newspapers between 1880 and 1920. These years also saw many reforms and great increases in the numbers voters in elections. With a growing middle class as a common feature of society, newspapers became the main medium for discussing politics. Politics, and even culture, were mainly discussed in party terms while commercialization, implying a type of ­journalism that was carefully planned for a broader public with simplified language and short stories, was rarely seen in the Scandinavian press at that time. However, during the post‐World War II period a politically uncommitted tabloid press appeared, and in periods made up for half of the national circulation. To overcome the obstacles of a competitive newspaper market, local branches of the Social Democrats initiated regularly in collective enterprise the establishment of social‐ democratic newspapers. Labor parties, on the other hand, were initially excluded from publicity, both in the electorate and in the press. Exclusions were sometimes obtained by the closing of newspapers, and the arrests of editors who agitated against the ruling parliamentary system with revolutionary terminology. In a party press system that mirrored different political inclinations, the number of newspapers increased whenever new parties were formed, but even more papers were economically viable in a competitive market. When the market collapsed in advertising revenue and the number of readers, as it did in 1920, the party press was threatened with severe limitations regarding its numbers. Different measures were taken by different parties to save “their own,” also privately owned, newspapers, which included direct subsidies, unpaid and voluntary work, and the acquisition of advertising from sympathetic firms. In consequence, the number of newspapers remained stable during the mid‐war years.



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New Media The problem of media control resurged in the Nordic countries (as elsewhere in Europe) with the emergence of new media in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Particularly in Denmark and Sweden, a national film production and local screenings of films developed already before World War I and entailed arrangements for inspection. Three decades later, radio technology was introduced gradually. In Denmark, private companies initially used state‐owned radio transmitters to broadcast their programs. But in 1926, a state monopoly was established that was formally independent but controlled by representatives of the government and by civic organizations. In Sweden, radio was organized as a public monopoly in 1925. In Norway, where radio had initially been a private enterprise, it took until 1933 to create a similar institution. In all countries, regulation was regarded necessary due to technical, financial, and social reasons, and yielded solutions that were specific for welfare states.

­Conclusion This chapter provides an overview of the multifaceted pattern of press freedom in Europe in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. These developments in the different countries were dependent on long‐term traditions (i.e. absolutism, Catholicism, nationalism), as well as the status of the respective political systems and their upheavals where such arose. Besides national particularities and disparities, there were similarities and parallels. These resulted from transnational movements such as liberalism, democratization, and civil emancipation, and from technical, economic, and social modernization. We furthermore observe that the workers’, and women’s movements also attempted to exert public influence. While the Nordic countries partially followed or foreshadowed aspects of the British model, the central and southern European countries had to overcome longstanding limitations of censorship. In the later nineteenth century, progress was made and control relaxed. But this trend was not linear or sustainable all‐round as it was reversed by setbacks in the twentieth century. Particular events affected the role of the press, resulting again in resumptions of measures of control. This was true during the two world wars and, then, in fascist or authoritarian countries such as Italy, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. Communism was the other ideology that again led to the suppression of a free press. In accordance with the European tradition of surveillance of the public sphere, new media in the twentieth century (film, and radio) also became subjected to control. Only in Great Britain, first steps to a public service model were taken. The dark age of press freedom ended in central Europe only after World War II, in Portugal, Spain, and in Eastern Europe even later, in the 1970s and 1990s.

­References Álvarez, J.T. (1981). Restauración y prensa de masas. Los engranajes de un sistema, 1875–1883. Pamplona: Eunsa. Barrera, C. (1995). Periodismo y franquismo. De la censura a la apertura. Barcelona: Eiunsa. Bellanger, C., Godechot, J., Guiral, P., and Terrou, F. (1969–1972). Histoire Générale de la Presse Française. Vol. II: De 1815 à 1871. Vol. III. De 1871 à 1940. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

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Bibliothèque Nationale de France (2015). Livre et censure. www.univnancy2.fr/medial/pdf/ livresetcensurebnf2007.pdf (accessed 20 June 2015). Bingham, A. and Conboy, M. (eds.) (2015). Tabloid Century: The Popular Press in Britain 1896 to the Present. Oxford: Peter Lang. Bljum, A. (1999). Zensur in der UdSSR: Hinter den Kulissen des Wahrheitsministeriums 1917–1929. Bochum: Projekt‐Verlag. Briggs, A. (1995 [1961]). The Birth of Broadcasting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Conboy, M. (2004). Journalism. A Critical History. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. De Ruggiero, G. (1964 [1930]). Geschichte des Liberalismus in Europa. Aalen: Scientia. Ehrenpreis, P. (2004). Die reichsweite Presse in der Habsburgermonarchie. In: Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. VIII/2 (ed. H. Rumpler and P. Urbanitsch), 1715– 1818. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Eisenhardt, U. (1970). Die kaiserliche Aufsicht über Buchdruck, Buchhandel und Presse im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation (1496–1806): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Bücher‐ und Pressezensur. Karlsruhe: Verlag C.F. Müller. Engel, M. (1996). Ticket the Public: One Hundred Years of the Popular Press. London: Gollancz. Feyel, G. (2000). L’Annonce et la nouvelle: La presse d’information en France sous l’ancien régime (1633–1788). Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Feyel, G. (2007). La Presse en France des Origines à 1944: Histoire Politique et Matérielle, 2e. Paris: Ellipses Editions Marketing. Franco, G. (1993). A censura à imprensa (1820–1974). Lisbon: Colecção Symbolon. Fuentes, J.F. and Fernández Sebastián, J. (1997). Historia del periodismo español. Madrid: Síntesis. Griffiths, D. (ed.) (1992). The Encyclopedia of the British Press. 1422–1992. Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press. Guillamet, J. (2003). Història del periodisme. Barcelona: Aldea Global. Guinard, P.J. (1973). La presse espagnole de 1737 a 1791. Formation et signification d’un genre. París: Centre des Recherches Hispaniques. Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hopkins, M.W. (1970). Mass Media in the Soviet Union. New York: Pegasus. Kaelble, H. (2001). Wege zur Demokratie: Von der Französischen Revolution zur Europäischen Union. Stuttgart, Munich: Deutsche Verlags‐Anstalt. Kohnen, R. (1995). Pressepolitik des Deutschen Bundes: Methoden staatlicher Pressepolitik nach der Revolution von 1848. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Koszyk, K. (1968). Deutsche Pressepolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg. Düsseldorf: Droste. Lange, B. (1991). Medienpolitik des Völkerbunds. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag. Langewiesche, D. (ed.) (1988). Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandehoeck & Ruprecht. Lee, A. (1978). The structure, ownership and control of the press, 1855–1914. In: Newspaper History: From the 17th Century to the Present Day (ed. G. Boyce, J. Curran and P. Wingate), 117–129. London: Sage. Lehnert, D. (ed.) (2014). Konstitutionalismus in Europa. Entwicklung und Interpretation. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau. Leonhard, J. (2001). Liberalismus. Zur historischen Semantik eines europäischen Deutungsmusters. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag. Lovelace, C. (1978). British press censorship during the First World War. In: Newspaper History from the 17th Century to the Present Day (ed. G. Boyce, J. Curran and P. Wingate), 307–319. London: Constable; Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Melischek, G. and Seethaler, J. (2006). Presse und Modernisierung in der Habsburgermonarchie. In: Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. VIII/2 (ed. H. Rumpler and P. Urbanitsch), 1535–1714. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Murialdi, P. (1986). Storia del giornalismo italiano. Turin: Gutenberg 2000. Núñez Díaz‐Balart, M. (1989). Las palabras como armas: la propaganda en la Guerra Civil. In: Historia de los medios de comunicación en España. Periodismo, imagen y publicidad (1900–1990) (ed. J.T. Álvarez), 178–188. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel.



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Olechowski, T. (2004). Die Entwicklung des Preßrechts in Österreich bis 1918. Vienna: Manzsche Verlags und Universitätsbuchhandlung. Olechowski, T. (2006). Das Preßrecht der Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918. In: Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. VIII/2 (ed. H. Rumpler and P. Urbanitsch), 1493– 1533. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Øy, N.E. (2013). Medierett for Journalister. Oslo: Cappelen Damm. Øy, N.E. (2015). Kommentarbok til offentleglova. Oslo: Cappelen Damm. Palmer, M.B. (1983). Des petits journaux aux grandes agences: naissance du journalisme moderne 1863–1914. Paris: Aubier. Pizarroso Quintero, A. (1994). Historia de la prensa. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces. Präntare, B. (1978). Presstöd och Presspolitik. Stockholm: Pb‐aktuellt. Rian, Ø. (2014). Sensuren i Danmark‐Norge. Vilkårene for offentlig yttringer 1536–1814. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Robertson, J.C. (1989). The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action, 1913–1972. London, New York: Routledge. Rumpler, H. and Urbanitsch, P. (eds.) (2006). Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. VIII/2. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Saiz, M.D. and Seoane, M.C. (1996). Cuatro siglos de periodismo en España. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Sanders, M.L. and Taylor, P.M. (1982). British Propaganda during the First World War, 1914–1918. London, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Schramm, M. (2008). British journalism in the great war. In: Journalists as Political Actors. Transfers and Interactions between Britain and Germany since the late 19 th Century (ed. F. Bösch and D. Geppert), 56–72. Augsburg: Wißner‐Verlag. Seymour‐Ure, C. (1975). The press and the party system between the wars. In: The Politics of Reappraisal 1918–1933 (ed. G. Peele and C. Cook), 232–257. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Siebert, F.S. (1965). Freedom of the Press in England 1476–1776. The Rise and Decline of Government Control. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Soames, J. (1936). The English Press. Newspapers and News. London: Stanley Nott. Tengarrinha, J. (1989). Historia da imprensa periódica portuguesa. Lisbon: Edições Caminho. Tommila, P. and Salokangas, R. (2000). Tidningar för alla. Den finländska pressens historia. Göteborg: Nordicom. Weill, G. (1934). Le journal. Paris: Editions Alba Michel. Wetzel, H.‐W. (1982). Kulturkampf‐Gesetzgebung und Sozialistengesetz (1871/743–1890). In: Deutsche Kommunikationskontrolle des 15. Bis 20. Jahrhunderts (ed. H.‐D. Fischer), 131–152. Munich: K.G. Saur. Wiener, J.H. (2011). The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s‐1914. Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism. Basinsgtoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilke, J. (1991). Auf dem Weg zur Grossmacht. Die Presse im 19. Jahrhundert. In: Das 19. Jahrhundert. Sprachgeschichtliche Wurzeln des heutigen Deutsch (ed. R. Wimmer), 73–94. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Wilke, J. (1998). German foreign propaganda during World War I: The Central Office for Foreign Services. In: Propaganda in the 20th Century. Contributions to Its History (ed. J. Wilke), 7–23. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Wilke, J. (2007). Presseanweisungen im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert. Erster Weltkrieg  –  Drittes Reich – DDR. Cologne: Böhlau. Wilke, J. (2008). Grundzüge der Medien‐ und Kommunikationsgeschichte, 2e. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau.

2

The “New” Newspapers

The Popular Press in Britain, Portugal, Russia, and Germany, late‐1800s to Early‐1900s Anthony Cawley, Helena Lima, Olga Kruglikova, and Thomas Birkner

­Introduction This introductory section sets out, at a macro level, the political, technological, and socio‐economic underpinnings to the emergence of Europe’s popular press. There is, of course, a high risk of generalization when drawing a narrative across “Europe,” as any such singular label suggests consistency across a myriad of national, regional, and local contexts. The intention of this chapter is not to smooth out differences. Rather, in seeking to acknowledge the diversity of press cultures on the continent, it outlines the ­development of the popular press in four distinct case‐study countries: Britain, Portugal, Russia, and Germany. These countries represent West/East and large/small nations’ perspectives, as well as diverse political, economic, technological, social, cultural, and linguistic contexts. Trying to gain a deeper understanding of the nuances and complexities of the popular press lineage in Europe, the concluding section of the chapter considers commonalities and variances across these case‐study countries. While elements of these accounts may resonate with popular press histories in other European nations, the  four countries, either individually or collectively, should not be interpreted as ­representing a common continental experience. Print publications began to circulate around Europe from the mid‐1400s, following the development of the Gutenberg press in Germany. But more than four centuries would pass before print could be considered a mass medium on the continent. It achieved mass medium status in particular through a form of publication that had first emerged in Europe in the sixteenth century: the newspaper. In the centuries that followed, newspaper publishing and readership took hold at an uneven rate across, and within, European societies. The budding newspaper culture tended to be strongest in wealthier countries and regions, and among elite institutions and social strata. It was more likely to flourish in urban and trade centers than in rural areas. Its patchy growth across Europe was rooted, also, in the specificities of local political, technological, and socio‐economic contexts. The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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In some countries, such as Britain, newspaper publishing had established a relatively stable industrial foundation as early as the eighteenth century, and for the privileged and middle classes, newspapers had become a routine backdrop to daily life (Briggs and Burke 2009). Even so, newspapers’ significant developments in Europe, from the commercial and technological frameworks of production to the widening of readership across social classes, tended to be scattered as incremental advances across a long historical timeline. That was until a concentrated period around the late‐1800s and early‐1900s, when a popular press emerged in varying forms across European countries. This marked the beginning of the newspaper as a true mass medium. It was affordable, accessible, and appealing to broad cross‐sections of European societies including the working class and less affluent socio‐economic groups. Longer‐term political, technological, and socio‐economic processes laid the basis for the popular press to emerge toward the end of the nineteenth century. Government and state repression of the press had been a significant check on its development in Europe. In Portugal, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Germany, it remained a constraint on newspaper publishers even with the emergence of the popular press. But in Britain, formal government repression of the press had ended by the mid‐1800s with the reframing of strict laws on seditious libel along with the abolition of stamp duty taxes on newspapers. Legal and economic measures had been employed to smother critical commentary on the state and to restrict readership to the respectable affluent classes by inflating newspaper prices (Chalaby 1996; Curran and Seaton 2010). Reforms of these formal repressive measures paved the way for British newspapers to follow a more commercially focused path (Chalaby 1996). As Curran and Seaton (2010) suggest, however, the parliament’s repeal of press taxes may have been grounded in the conviction that market competition (including an ability to attract advertisers) would be a stronger control mechanism than direct state restraints. The legislative frameworks within which the press operated did not always evolve smoothly toward greater press freedom. In Portugal, legislation was approved in 1866 that removed all of the sanctions that had previously impeded newspapers and their ­owners (Franco 1993). In a regressive move, however, the parliamentary monarchy introduced laws to restrict the press in the late‐1800s, including an 1896 decree that condemned all of those found guilty of incitement to rebellion, journalists included, to six months in prison. Legislation in 1899 made clear that writings critical of the royal family and political rulers would trigger harsh punishments as acts of defamation (Franco 1993). Overall, however, economic processes and social conditions as well as the political climate across Europe were growing more favorable toward the emergence of commercial, mass market newspapers, as was the technological basis of production and distribution. By the early‐1900s, rotary printing presses had been adopted by newspaper publishers in Britain, Portugal, Russia, and Germany. Rotary presses were more powerful than their predecessors, steam presses, and could sustain the faster and longer print runs necessary for daily mass publication. Paper production, from the mid‐1800s, shifted from textile fibers to cheaper wood pulp materials, which helped to reduce the cost at which newspapers could be sold. The introduction of linotype machines in the 1880s made typesetting and page composition more efficient and less labor intensive (Engel 1996; Silberstein‐Loeb 2013). The cumulative benefits of these technologies significantly advanced production processes, as in Russia where rotary printing presses along with illustrative technologies allowed publishers to increase publication frequency and to improve the design and the appearance of popular newspapers (Kiselev 1990). However,



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the social context into which the new technologies were introduced could dull their impact. As Tengarrinha (2013) highlights, a lack of literacy skills among Portuguese compositors presented a major difficulty in the printing process. The information gathering range of newspapers was extended greatly by the development of the telegraph in the mid‐1800s. It allowed for instant communication over long distances, as well as the associated growth of news agencies such as Reuters, Wolff and Havas (Boyd‐Barrett and Rantanen 1998; Nerone 2012; Stanage 2003). In addition, the extension of railway infrastructures across Britain, Russia, and other European ­countries facilitated publishers in reaching mass markets by providing a swift and commercially viable means of distributing newspapers regionally and nationally (Engel 1996; Silberstein‐Loeb 2013). Also favorable to a nascent popular press was a changing socio‐economic context. The level of industrialization was far from uniform across the continent, but a broad shift from agricultural to manufacturing economies led to a rise in urban populations and in factory working. Concentrated populations made newspaper distribution easier and cheaper. In 1871, some 60% of Germany’s population lived in rural areas, whereas by 1910, the urban population stood at 60% (Wehler 1995). Russia experienced rapid urbanization following the abolition of serfdom in the mid‐1800s and the ensuing migration of former peasants to the cities (Mazur 2009). Education reforms toward the end of the nineteenth century increased the population of potential newspaper readers, with Germany having achieved a literacy rate of 99% in 1899 while Britain’s literacy rate stood at 97% by 1900 (Curran and Seaton 2010; Engelsing 1973; McNair 2003). In Russia, the development of a primary schools network from the mid‐nineteenth century raised the literacy levels of the lower stratum of society (Rashin 1956). This overall trend toward an improvement in literacy rates among Europe’s poorer peoples happened at varying rates across countries. In Portugal, a high rate of illiteracy among a predominantly poor population lacking formal education presented a significant barrier to the development of the popular press and restricted readership mainly to the wealthier classes or politicians (Candeias and Simões 1999; Ramos 1988). Improvements in factory working conditions, including reduced average working hours and rises in the real value of wages, converged with falling newspaper selling prices to swell the market for the popular press (Curran and Seaton 2010; McNair 2003). In  addition, rapid population growth was expanding mass market opportunities for ­popular newspapers. Britain’s population was more than 40 million by the end of the nineteenth century, whereas Germany’s population grew from 41 million in 1871 to 64 million in 1910 (Engel 1996; Wehler 1995). By the late‐1800s, capitalism’s heightened productive capacity was evident in the wider availability of consumer commodities and branded goods. The market competition around these goods propelled significant rises in advertising expenditure, which funded newspaper publishing as a profitable mass market enterprise despite the low cover prices necessary to maintain popular appeal. In such commercial conditions, supported by more efficient production technologies, newspaper publishers were incentivized to  grow larger to benefit from the economies of scale attainable from mass printing, distribution and sales, and also to squeeze out smaller competitors to protect market positions (Nerone 2012). But such rapid expansion by increasingly capitalistic newspaper publishers also resulted in the increase of the financial resources required to fund start‐up and operational costs (McNair 2003). As such, publishing on a mass scale became not only an opportunity to generate significant profits but also a necessary

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c­ondition to remain commercially viable, which reinforced capitalism’s tendencies toward consolidation of markets and concentration of ownership among popular newspaper publishers (Chapman 2005; Conboy 2004; Nerone 2012). For instance, chain ownership of national and regional newspapers had already emerged in Britain by the early‐1900s, exemplified by the prominence of press barons such as Lord Northcliffe and his brother Lord Rothermere (Curran and Seaton 2010). However, market success enabled the popular press to operate independently of the partisan political sponsorship that had characterized much of Europe’s earlier newspaper publishing (Chalaby 1996).

­Britain “The football craze in Yorkshire,” The Pall Mall Gazette informed its readers on 4 April 1885, involved sporting contests that were “decidedly rough” (p. 4). Despite this, or perhaps because of it, matches attracted thousands of spectators, and gate receipts could be “as much as £300” (p. 4). The article was accompanied by an illustration playfully purporting to show the effects of the game on players: a man of respectable appearance “before the fray” was transformed to a thuggish state “after the fray” (p. 4). The Pall Mall Gazette and its editor for most of the 1880s, W.T. Stead, were not breaking new ground in carrying a commentary on sport. Indeed, the Yorkshire piece had stated that after important matches, local newspapers printed “special football editions” which “sold by the thousand” (p. 4). But the article was an example of how, compared to traditional conservative, elite orientated newspapers, The Pall Mall Gazette was c­ utting a sharper human‐interest angle through reports and commentaries on social, cultural, economic, and political issues of the day. In pushing the boundaries of British newspaper publishing, it drew on the relatively new journalistic practice of interviewing to weave first‐hand accounts and details into articles. It employed illustrations, lines, and cross headings to invigorate design, innovations that, along with interviewing, drew inspiration from American journalism (Conboy 2004; Engel 1996). Such practices were seen as veering newspapers toward the sensational, and were among what poet Matthew Arnold, from a literary perspective, scorned as “new journalism” in 1887 (Engel 1996, p. 44). Along with his contemporary T.P. O’Connor, who was founding editor of The Star in 1888, Stead strove to develop a dynamic form of journalism but with a strong sense of social responsibility. He was, as Bromley and O’Malley (1997) suggest, a “prototype campaigning journalist” (p. 57). Reinforcing his ambition was a steadfast belief in journalism’s capacity to expose corruption and represent the public interest. In his May 1886 essay for The Contemporary Review, entitled, “Government by Journalism,” Stead argued forcibly that politicians “elected once in six years, may easily cease to be in touch with the people” (p. 654). The press, however, gained strength from “their direct and living contact with the people” and were “the most immediate and most unmistakable exponents of the national mind” (Stead 1886). In a November 1886 essay for the same journal, he addressed the tension between ­journalism’s public interest potential and the commercial motivations of wealthy proprietors. Stead (1997 [1886]) argued that he had “not yet lost faith” that at least some proprietors might “devote the surplus of [their] gigantic profits” to support their newspapers “as an engine of social reform” (p. 53). Stead was serving a three‐month prison term when he wrote The Contemporary Review essays. True to his campaigning style of journalism, he ran a series of articles in The Pall Mall Gazette in July 1885, exposing the “inexpiable wrong” of child prostitution in London (p. 1). But during his investigations, he employed a young girl as part of a sting



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operation and was later imprisoned for her “technical abduction” (Bromley and O’Malley 1997, p. 57; Conboy 2002; Engel 1996). Stead was an innovator in extending the production and journalistic horizons of The Pall Mall Gazette, but there were commercial consequences. In particular, advertisers began to withdraw support from the newspaper to avoid being, as Conboy (2004) highlights, “associated with the scandalous reputation it had acquired” (p. 169). This underscored, also, the importance that advertising had assumed for the commercial health of British newspapers. By this time, The Pall Mall Gazette was among a number of newspapers being sold for one penny. The price point was necessary to make the publications affordable and attractive to middle‐class readers, but was too low to absorb increases in the capital and operational costs of publishing. Ever more, publishers relied on advertising revenues to bridge the gap to profitability. In parallel, and reflecting wider developments in industrial and consumer capitalism, advertising spending in Britain rose rapidly in the early twentieth century to an estimated £20 million in 1907 (Curran and Seaton 2010). Harnessing advertising revenues was crucial to the commercial success of the mass‐­ circulation newspapers that were established in the late‐1800s and early‐1900s, ­including the Daily Mail (1896), the Daily Express (1900), and the Daily Mirror (1903). While The Pall Mall Gazette and The Star may have been associated with the “new journalism,” it was the launch of the Daily Mail that marked “the real beginning of British popular journalism” (Engel 1996, p. 16). A lower price point was an important factor in the Daily Mail’s appeal, with the newspaper promoting itself beneath the masthead as “a penny newspaper for one half penny” (Engel 1996, pp. 59–60). Under the guidance of Alfred Harmsworth (later to become Lord Northcliffe, the most influential of the early British press barons), the Daily Mail carried articles aimed specifically at female readers as well as sensationalized reports on murders and tragedies. The newspaper launched regular campaigns on social issues, for example, on fire safety standards following the death of 10 teenagers in a workshop blaze in London in 1902, or it raised money for the welfare of children whose fathers had died in the Titanic ­sinking in 1912. By the turn of the century, the Daily Mail had gained a circulation of about 600 000 rising close to 700 000 copies by 1914 (Engel 1996). The Daily Mail case indicates how mass circulation became increasingly central to the financial model required to establish and operate a national newspaper (McNair 2003). Northcliffe estimated the start‐up costs of the Daily Mail to be approximately half a ­million pounds; by contrast, the start‐up costs of a London daily newspaper in the 1850s were estimated to be closer to 20 000 pounds (Curran and Seaton 2010). C. Arthur Pearson established the Daily Express in 1900 as a rival to the Daily Mail, but stiffer competition for popular appeal would come from another newspaper founded by Northcliffe, the Daily Mirror. When launched in 1903, at the price of one penny, the Daily Mirror promoted itself as “the first daily newspaper for gentlewomen,” and was the first British national newspaper to appoint a female editor, Mary Howarth (Hagerty 2003, p. 10). Poor sales and declining readership forced a rethinking of the editorial strategy. By 1904, the newspaper was reborn as “a paper for men and women,” and, in line with the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, had reduced its price to half a penny (Engel 1996; Hagerty 2003). For a few months following the relaunch, the newspaper was published as the Daily “Illustrated” Mirror to better promote its photographic content (Hagerty 2003). It was among the first newspapers to move beyond illustrations in the visual presentation of news by being able to reproduce photographs at a fast enough speed to accommodate daily publishing cycles. This enabled the Daily Mirror to implement its principal design

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innovation of publishing full front‐page photographs. As the first British newspaper to do so, photography shaped the character of the early Daily Mirror and gave it a valuable advantage over competitors in appealing to mass audiences (Engel 1996). One of newspaper’s most controversial photographs was published in May 1910, when, in cooperation with the bereaved Queen, it published a front‐page image of King Edward VII’s dead body lying at rest (Engel 1996; Hagerty 2003). Following the outbreak of World War I, photographs from the frontlines bolstered public demand for the newspaper’s photography (Engel 1996). Lord Northcliffe took a stronger interest in the editorial direction of the Daily Mail than of The Daily Mirror, believing the former to wield greater political influence (Engel 1996). Northcliffe sold the Daily Mirror to his brother, Lord Rothermere, in 1914. That year, the Daily Mirror achieved a mass market circulation of about 1 million copies daily (Hagerty 2003). By the early‐1900s, the professionalization of British journalism was occurring on a significant scale, as earlier informal journalistic values and ethical norms (such as those at the heart of Stead’s Contemporary Review essays) were being defined more clearly as frameworks for professional practice. Grounded in principles such as objectivity and the primacy of facts/truth, journalism’s role was to maintain an informed citizenry and to act as a watchdog on power (Nerone 2012; Ward 2014). Normative professional frameworks emerged to enable journalists, who were employed by for‐profit enterprises, to claim editorial independence, representing the public interest above owners’ commercial imperatives, and to seek improved employment conditions (Nerone 2012; Ward 2014). The momentum to the professionalization of British journalism was signaled by the establishment of the National Union of Journalists in 1907, and by its adoption of a formal code of journalistic conduct by the mid‐1930s (Keeble 2007; NUJ 2017). However, in the early‐1900s, the emerging normative ideal of journalistic editorial independence did not always chime with day‐to‐day reality. The political, economic, and social views of the British press barons tended to be channeled through the editorial lines of the popular press (Temple 2008).

­Portugal The final years of the Portuguese monarchy in the late‐1800s and early‐1900s were marked by the appearance of many new periodical publications reaching beyond elite audiences, despite the introduction of legislation to restrict critical press comment on the royal family and on political leaders. Silva Pereira, in 1895, provided a detailed list of the new publications, and characterized them as “scientific and literary,” “literary and news,” “news and political”, or “other.” Prior to this, according to Tengarrinha (2013), a popular press emerged after the mid‐1800s, but the term popular had the meaning of  being written for the people or with an attractively low price, but always with an ­educational intention. Portuguese journalism in the nineteenth century maintained a strong resistance to a popular press (Lima 2012; Sousa 2010). The adoption of a high cultural model as a bulwark against low culture (Zelizer 1999) by journalists and newspaper owners stemmed from the traditional view of journalism as being a form of literary expression or as holding a partisan political mission and that these ambitions were often entangled. This was reflected in the fact that politicians were often given the opportunity to write for newspapers, which enhanced their public profile (Lima 2016; Sousa 2010).



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In addition, journalism rarely was regarded a full‐time profession. Journalists were paid poorly and often held other jobs in public administration, as typographers, salesmen, or at other newspapers. Gaspar Baltar (1934) highlighted that his father’s house was a place where journalists sought shelter and food when working for Primeiro de Janeiro, the newspaper his family owned. Further illustrating the difficult working conditions of Portuguese journalists, Rafael Ferreira (1945) described how, in the early years of his career, he worked for several morning and evening newspapers at the same time. “I was an administrative worker, proof reader, even theatre and bullfighting columnist … I felt so weak that I thought I was lighter than the air, imagining that I could walk over clouds. It had to be. I needed to work hard to get the necessary payment” (Ferreira 1945, p. 41). The profession was held in low esteem, and journalists, often seen as ­bohemian, tended to fight among themselves over politics, or opinion columns. Rafael Ferreira (1945), sketching his early years as a journalist at the newspaper Dia, describes his colleagues according to the characteristics of their fights and other confrontational episodes in the newsroom with journalists from competing newspapers. However, Sousa (2013) argues that journalists shared a professional camaraderie but one that was ­commonly shaped by competition with the bigger newspapers, such as Diário de Notícias and O Século. The lack of a professional ethos was rooted in the general economic difficulties ­experienced by newspapers, the ways journalistic work was carried out, and in a training system based on apprenticeships with senior colleagues. Sousa (2013) identifies the emergence of different organizational structures in newsrooms, in which the editor traditionally was central but ceded an increasing role to the news reporter that emerged with the industrialization of the press. Tengarrinha (2013) highlights the greater complexity of the newsroom in the late nineteenth century that had resulted from greater division of labor. Journalists translated accounts from foreign newspapers and compiled informational news. Several journalists of this period, some of whom were important writers of the Portuguese Romantic period, documented in their memoirs their start in journalism as feature writers or feuilletonists (Sousa 2010). The break with the traditional press model in Portugal came with Diário de Notícias. From its launch in 1864, the paper had an innovative business approach based on an informational news model. It promoted itself as a newspaper for all classes, rich and poor, and sought to appeal to both men and women. In spite of all the criticism this prompted, Notícias achieved a level of success that, despite a few imitators, remained unmatched for at least two decades (Cunha 1904). The initial launch of Notícias involved a considerable risk, however, partly because it needed to maintain a steady circulation at a time when newspaper sales tended to be low. Deeply marked by poverty, the purchase and reading of newspapers in Portugal was limited mainly to wealthy people or politicians. Potential circulation numbers were further restricted by the country’s relatively small population and its high levels of illiteracy. Depending on the source, between 75% and 80% of the Portuguese population was illiterate by the end of the nineteenth century (Candeias and Simões 1999; Ramos 1988). The common solution to the problem of meeting publishing costs on low circulations had been to find a political or otherwise influential sponsor to support the enterprise at least for a short period of time (Lima 2012). As the nineteenth century progressed, and in spite of low circulation rates, the most important newspapers tried to keep up with industrial innovations, for example, by importing up‐to‐date machinery such as the famous Marinoni rotary press. Gradually, these investments and innovations in production technologies manifested themselves in  the improvement of graphics, the use of engravings, and enhanced print quality.

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Some political newspapers had a small format, similar to a tabloid, while the broadsheet format continued to be used by informative newspapers, and even the first dailies adopted a more popular approach (Lima 2012). On special occasions news was ­highlighted by engravings that caught readers’ attention, such as the news of a shipwreck, the announcement of the opening of a new public building, or a crime report. But illustrations were also used for lighter subjects such as fashion, humor, or dance lessons. Around 1900, the Sunday edition of Jornal de Notícias was filled with engravings, and on special occasions, such as Christmas, those were augmented by print color headlines. Along with the use of engravings came the launch of illustrated publications, such as the important dailies Ilustração Portuguesa and Comércio Ilustrado (Lima 2012; Sousa and Lima 2013). More appealing newspapers attracted more readers. By the end of the nineteenth ­century, the major Portuguese dailies had a circulation of between 20 000 and 30 000 copies. Diário de Notícias achieved 26 000 copies in 1885 (Cunha 1904), and Jornal de Notícas, by the end of the century, achieved its highest circulation of 28 000 copies in Porto. In the last decade of the century, the daily O Século achieved a circulation of 80 000 copies, compared to 70 000 copies of Diário de Notícias (Alves 2014). The price of newspapers remained high; only Diário de Notícias was sold at a low price. And while a single copy could be read by several people, Alberto Bessa, in 1904, drew his own connection between the ideological identity of the press as one reason for its low circulation and its high selling price. He underlined that “none of the newspapers that I previously mentioned, was exactly what we call popular because the high sale prices did not allow them to spread among the people. Thus, the circulation was limited to those who shared the political ideas of its writers” (Bessa 1904, p. 170). Portuguese cities tended to be small in size, had weak industrial bases, and retained a provincial character, and, thus, were slow in acquiring the routines that would provide for more engaging and entertaining forms of news. This late social and economic industrialization had generally inhibited the development of Portugal’s news publishing model of daily newspapers giving the latest updates with each edition supported by advertisement revenue. It also influenced retail sale. Only by the end of the nineteenth century were sales regarded an important commercial strategy (Lima 2012). The degree of foreign influence on the Portuguese press can roughly be measured by the amount of news adapted from international newspapers. During the second half of the nineteenth century, daily editions carried translations from French, Spanish and Italian publications, and less frequently from other European countries (Quintero 1994). Similarly, the first news agency to establish contracts in Portugal was the French agency Havas. While initially employed by several dailies, its influence slowly gave way to other sources. Primeiro de Janeiro, for example, had a contract with the German Wolff agency while, with a general increase of translations of foreign newspapers, the Jornal de Notícias published news from British, and even from US newspapers (Lima 2012). The French influence found its manifestation in the launch of Diário de Notícias. Alfredo da Cunha (1904) identified Correspondencia de España and Le Petit Journal as the main inspiration for journalist Eduardo Coelho when he initiated the Notícias project. After having lived in France, Coelho had had the idea of creating a newspaper that broke with the traditional political editorial profile. Another indication of influence of the French tradition is the friendship between Eduardo Coelho and Hippolyte de Villemessant, the owner of Le Figaro (Cunha 1904). Diário de Notícias tried to attract readers through a “decent and urban language,” and by following its motto: “A newspaper of all and for all – for rich and poor of both sexes



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and all classes, conditions and parties” (p. 1). Its price was low, and it opted for street sales rather than the traditional subscription model. Its rapid success attracted advertisers but its editorial line was heavily criticized by journalists. Still, its success prompted the launch of several other newspapers with similar titles in Lisbon. Notícias’s success remained unmatched. Alberto Bessa (1904) highlighted a change in readers’ expectations regarding newspapers around this time: “The public wants the newspaper to both enlighten and interest, and it is not satisfied until its favourite title gives the most exciting event of the day, the article that gives a thrill, the detailed description of the latest ­scandal, a comic note that brings a smile; all that makes the ten reais spent worthwhile” (p. 184). Bessa’s description matched the penny press model of the nineteenth century: compelling content, low prices, and the latest news that could be sold to growing ­newspaper audiences as literacy levels improved. During the last decade of the nineteenth century, and following general trends in the popular press, some of the major political newspapers changed their front pages. They now included big headlines, creative illustrations, and launched campaigns on particular issues (Campbell 2001). Another popular item on the front page was the French‐inspired serial, a sequential narrative of dramatic adventures or crimes that unfolded and captivated the readers (Jeanneney 1996). Along with a greater use of illustrations, human interest articles were more likely to run on front pages. Covering news of a new popular fashion or tragedies, such as the sinking of a ship, human‐interest stories increased at the expense of the political agenda. Also toward the end of the nineteenth century, illustrated magazines evolved to cover more popular topics and used caricature with great success to ­criticize the monarchy and politicians. Images had a significant impact in widening the audience reach of publications in a country which still had low literacy rates (Candeias and Simões 1999; Ramos 1988). An example for an emerging popular press in Portugal by the end of the nineteenth century was Jornal de Notícias. It came along with a clear change in content and news writing, with international news generally being drawn from dramatic events such as murders, or suicides of European royalty or other public personalities. This journalistic approach was also present in the Portuguese news reports. Murders, suicides, and other passionate events were described with a profusion of details and adjectives that increased the emotional tone and often showed a morbidity that was a clear editorial strategy to attract readers (Lima 2012).

­Russia For much of its historical development, publishing in Russia was an adjunct of governmental administration. As a result, for the first half a century of its existence, Russian journalism was subject to rigorous state regulation. The first privately‐run periodicals were elitist and, consequently, addressed a narrow audience. And while from about 1870 until 1900, the press remained mostly the preserve of intellectuals, the social, ­economic, and educational advances following the Great Reforms in the mid‐nineteenth century triggered a growth in the number of periodicals, some of which sought to reach wider audiences (Esin 2000). Also, from the mid‐nineteenth century, following educational reforms, literacy rates increased, going along with a rapid urbanization as peasants moved to the cities after the abolition of serfdom. This allowed for the emergence of a large poor but literate urban population that was attracted less to the existing elitist press but more to inexpensive

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infotainment periodicals. Moreover, the development of capitalism in Russia contributed to the emergence of a middle‐ and upper‐class bourgeoisie. More so than approaching reading as an intellectual and cultural activity, the bourgeoisie required a diet of regular information (Sonina 2005). The tightening of the censorship regime during the reign of Alexander III shifted the focus of the Russian system of media control. Publications that aimed to achieve a critical understanding of political issues were forced out of the market, leaving more space for informative and entertainment orientated publications. These broad political and socio‐ economic developments in Russia, along with the growth of advertising, meant that publishing had a firmer basis on which to be run as a profitable business rather than as a form of state‐sponsored public service (Sonina 2005). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Russia’s most popular publications were the weekly illustrated magazine Niva and the mass‐circulation political ­newspaper Novoye Vremya. Novoye Vremya’s became a success under the direction of Alexei Suvorin between 1876 and 1912. Suvorin was a brilliant manager of the production process, a talented journalist and editor, and a pioneer in many aspects of the ­publishing business. Through his skillful editorial guidance, Novoye Vremya became the most widely read periodical in Russia in the 1880s (Dinershtein 1998). From the outset, Suvorin was keen to develop his own design style. In 1877, he decided to introduce a more readable font to the newspaper while also enlarging its ­format. Later, he established his own printing plant and ordered a rotary press with the best design of the time from Paris. Among Russian newspapers, Novoye Vremya was the leader regarding design innovation. In the early‐1880s, it generally appeared in a four‐column page format, and by the end of the decade the number of pages had grown to six. Demonstrating the extent of Novoye Vremya’s technological progress at the time, originals of photographs, illustrations, and paintings could be delivered to Suvorin’s office just 30 hours before they were due for publication (Sonina 2005). By the end of 1880, Suvorin asked the state authority with responsibility for the press, the General Directorate for the Press, for permission to publish Novoye Vremya in morning and evening editions. The early edition appeared in print at 6 a.m. The late edition, which began to circulate on 1 January 1881, was intended mainly for subscribers who lived in the provincial cities. They were serviced by postal trains that left the capital at 3 p.m., and Suvorin used this gap to prepare the late edition of Novoye Vremya for a deadline between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. It consisted mainly of reprints of early edition material with the addition of news and telegrams received between 6 and 11 a.m. It was put on sale only after the early edition had sold out. Suvorin’s editorial and typography teams assembled the late edition in about two and a half hours, placing it at the leading‐edge of newspaper production at the time. To increase sales, Suvorin acquired the right to distribute his newspaper and book publications at railway stations, establishing about 50 retail stands (Dinershtein 1998). In 1888, Novoye Vremya’s circulation reached 40 000, and by 1897 had increased to 50 000 copies. The market dominance of Novoye Vremya lay in its wide audience appeal across all social strata, from the emperor and senators and intellectuals, to representatives of the middle class and the lower strata of the population. As highlighted in memoirs of contemporary public figures and politicians, Novoye Vremya was also the main source of information for foreigners and foreign governments about current events in Russia (Doroshevitch 2008). Suvorin, as the owner of a large company, acted in a socially responsible manner, ­especially toward his employees. He provided them with free apartments, medical care, savings, and loans, library facilities and other financial aid. He established a



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t­ radition of organizing a holiday and celebrations for his employees and their children (Glinskij 1912). Suvorin used his publishing business to make books more affordable for the ­public. By 1900, sales of the series The Cheap Library had reached a total of 4 million copies. He also published a Cheap Scientific Library and New Suvorin’s Library as well as cheap editions of the classics of Russian and foreign literature. In addition, he published the informational directories and city guidebooks of the late nineteenth century, including Russian Calendar, All Russia, All Petersburg and All Moscow (Glinskij 1912). Traditionally, Russian mass magazines in the late nineteenth century were characterized by an abundance of illustrative material and fiction, as well as a review of weekly events. To these general features, the publisher of Niva magazine, Adolph Marx, added a clear focus on traditional family values, a diversity of fiction designed for the casual reader, principled political apathy, and a low subscription price. His editorial approach created the most popular magazine in Russia (Dinershtein 1986). The magazine provided a form of escapism amid the increasing politicization and rapid reform of Russian society in the middle of the nineteenth century. Niva was an apolitical magazine, focusing its attention on the peaceful family sphere and claiming as its guiding principle “no political problems and crimes on our agenda” (Dinershtein 1986). Niva was to provide entertaining and educational reading for the ordinary family. The magazine reported on the latest achievements of modern science and technology, and the geographic and ethnographic section published illustrated articles on archaeology, natural science, astronomy, and medicine (Dinershtein 1986). Niva was a pioneer in using photographic illustrations, being the first in Russian journalism to begin printing photographic reports ranging from theater plays to the Russian‐ Japanese war. As a supplement to the magazine, Adolph Marx also began to publish paintings by Aivazovsky, Repin, Orlovsky, and others. This allowed subscribers, particularly in the Russian provinces, to see the works of the greatest Russian painters for the first time. Niva also enjoyed profitable business from advertising supplements on oleographs, fashion patterns, calendars, and art galleries. In September and October 1888, Marx increased the price of the magazine’s subscription from four to five roubles (Dinershtein 1986). With a circulation of the magazine close to 100 000 copies, Marx launched a new edition with special issues on, for example, Faust by Goethe (translated by Afanasyi Fet) and the famous Brothers Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Marx successfully implemented the idea of an edition of the complete works of the most significant Russian writers as a free supplement to Niva. In 1892, he published the complete works of Griboyedov and Kozlov, Koltsov, and Polezhaev. They were all produced according to the same outline: first, the main text, then a biographical sketch of the writer, and eventually his portrait. In 1893, Marx outbid Dostoevsky’s heirs for the copyright to his work. He paid 75 000 roubles on condition that the complete works of the famous writer had to be published in an appendix to Niva over the next three years. Printing Dostoevsky’s completed works brought Niva an additional 50 000 subscribers, and in 1904, Niva had 275 000 subscribers (Dinershtein 1998). Novoe Vremia and Niva were closed almost immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. Both had adopted a moderate monarchist political position, were closely associated with the process of building capitalism and the formation of the bourgeoisie. Family weekly magazines were regarded as incompatible with Bolshevik ideology, and socio‐political newspapers with bourgeois‐monarchist views were perceived by the new government as a threat. The new authoritarian media system, geared toward the systematic production of political propaganda, would bring to a close the short but ­successful era of the popular press in Russia.

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­Germany Hale (1973) claims that “since the invention of printing with moveable type by Gutenberg and the development of the mechanical power press by Friedrich König, Germany ­appropriately has been the world’s leading producer and consumer of the printed word” (p. 1). Nevertheless, a popular press emerged comparatively slowly in Germany. The foundation of the nation state in 1871 can be regarded as the popular press’s starting point. A first version of the so‐called “General‐anzeiger Presse” (the German version of the penny press) (see Chapter 25) had started in Leipzig in 1845 but had proven unsuccessful (Renger 2000; Stöber 2005). Among the barriers to the development of a popular press was a German tradition of state media control (censorship) in addition to Germany having been subdivided into several smaller states and kingdoms until the latter part of the nineteenth century. During these years, partisanship dominated journalism, and Ulf Jonas Bjork (2007) observes a “German style that favoured opinion” with German journalists having had “no interest in active news‐gathering” (p. 129). The party press was the dominant type of newspaper in Germany throughout the nineteenth century. Following the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the later revolutions in 1830 and 1848/49, French influences on the German press became evident. German journalism, at this time, was shaped by writers and literature as well as by ­politicians and party programs. Following the formation of a unified German state, Joseph La Ruelle founded a “Generalanzeiger Presse”‐type of newspaper in the city of Aachen. His Aachener Anzeiger was a success, and in 1875 he brought his new newspaper concept to the larger city of Cologne where he began publishing the General‐Anzeiger der Stadt Köln (Wolter 1981). Cologne was the hometown of one of the biggest German publishing houses, DuMont‐ Schauberg, whose publications included the Kölnische Zeitung. Even though Cologne accounted for only one fifth of the paper’s circulation, the publishing house fought against the new competitor by publishing its own penny press paper, the Stadt‐Anzeiger der Kölnischen Zeitung, in 1876. Within three days of the launch of Stadt‐Anzeiger der Kölnischen Zeitung, the General‐Anzeiger der Stadt Köln ceased publication (Dovifat 1928; Wilke 2000). This can be regarded as the breakthrough of the German version of the penny press that became successful in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Several factors fostered its formation and differentiation (Birkner 2011). The new nation state p ­ rovided a stable domestic market. A new press law, introduced in 1874, though not necessarily liberal in the sense of press freedom, did abolish most barriers to the economic growth of the popular press, including press taxes and obligations relating to press licenses and security bonds (Birkner 2012). The new popular newspapers widened their audience appeal by selling for low prices. They also relied heavily on advertising as a source of income, to the point that advertising emerged as the new financial power to German journalism (Birkner 2015). Advertising revenues grew from about 30% of a newspaper’s income at the beginning of the German Empire to more than 60% in 1914, before the outbreak of the First World War (Reumann 1968). By the time the German popular press had fully developed, it applied economic and intellectual pressures on the established party press. The popular press drew less influence from France but more from Britain and the United States, where modern forms and styles of journalism were invented (Chalaby 1996). Bjork (2007) sums this up as follows: “The largest group of newspapers that labeled themselves liberal could not be said to ­constitute a segment of the party press, as their ties to party groupings were loose at best. The organs of



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other political parties, more akin to partisan newspapers in other countries, were never able to challenge the independent liberal press in strength and numbers” (p. 131).

The new newspapers were offering not a party program, but a commercial vision of the form and role of mass media journalism. Several of the newspapers founded in the 1880s and 1890s promised unbiased news, investigative reporting and local news (Wolter 1981). For example, in 1893 the General‐Anzeiger für Hamburg‐Altona stated that from a journalistic point of view the party press was now on a lower level. Before the emergence of the popular press, readers had to sift laboriously through the pages to find the most important news as it was not highlighted by headlines or design. In contrast, popular newspapers employed more innovative means of news presentation and page design, and one glance at the first page of a “General‐Anzeiger” made it possible to get the latest news of the day (Wolter 1981). Subscription was the dominant model for the sale of newspapers until the beginning of the twentieth century, when street sales began to overtake subscriptions. The first real tabloid newspaper in Germany was the BZ am Mittag in Berlin. This newspaper incorporated modern journalistic developments, such as headlines to catch the reader’s attention. Reflecting wider societal changes to employment and mobility patterns, the newspaper was designed to be read on the way to work, not at home. Starting in 1904, it presented the latest news from the Berlin stock exchange on its front page. The newspaper proudly told the public that it took only 8 minutes for the latest news from the stock exchange to be reproduced in print, while even American newspapers needed at least 12 minutes (Mendelssohn 1982 [1959]). By the early twentieth century, Berlin had, like New York and London, developed into a powerful metropolis for journalism (Mendelssohn 1982 [1959]). The innovative design of newspapers was reflected in the modern buildings, constructed to accommodate publishing houses not only in Berlin but also in Frankfurt, Cologne, and Munich, where the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten had editorial offices dedicated to the production of sections on politics, the economy, and culture (Wilke 2003). Journalistic handbooks of the time reveal that editorial departments for sports and local news were fairly common in newsrooms (Birkner 2016). The German popular press strongly reflected Anglo‐American journalistic practices with regard to design, headline layouts, and writing style. A content analysis of newspapers published in 1914 suggests that the inverted pyramid model of news writing, in which the most important piece of information appeared at the top of the news‐story, was widely practiced in German journalism (Birkner 2016). The stronger economic and commercial basis of newspaper publishing had freed German journalists from party politics and allowed them to organize along professional lines. Reflecting this, in 1910 the Reichsverband Deutscher Presse (Imperial Association of the German Press) was founded as the first national union exclusively for journalists (Brückmann 1977).

­Concluding Comments The popular press’s emergence in Britain, Portugal, Russia, and Germany suggests that the four countries were experiencing broadly similar technological, commercial, and journalistic advances within relatively concurrent timeframes, despite the geographical distances between them. Gutenberg’s printing press technology may have taken decades to spread across Europe in the fifteenth century (Briggs and Burke 2009). In the late nineteenth century, however, rotary printing presses were adopted at a much swifter and

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consistent rate by commercially‐minded publishers in the case‐study countries to create the first truly “mass” medium in the form of the popular newspapers. Similarly, design innovations such as illustrations, lines, and more dynamic display of headlines had become markers of a new popular press in the countries as the nineteenth century was drawing to a close. The period also witnessed significant shifts away from traditional partisan political publications toward newspapers focused more on human interest, entertainment and, in some cases, sensationalism. The popular press was emerging into a world absorbing intensified levels of internationalization. This was reflected in the fluid mobility not only of information (via the telegraph and, later, the telephone) but also of media technologies, processes, and practices. It was further evident in the shared experience across the case‐study countries of the popular press emerging, in large part, as capitalist, advertising supported publications. Despite evidence of commonalities and internationalization, the case‐study countries highlighted also the importance of local political, technological, and socio‐economic contexts. For instance, the commercial basis of Britain’s popular newspapers strengthened through the twentieth century, while the emerging capitalistic popular press in Russia was brought to a sudden halt by the Bolshevik Revolution. The German press, meanwhile, was drained of advertising as a financial resource during World War I (Reumann 1968). Difference was manifest, too, in the models of journalism that emerged alongside the popular press. Russian and Portuguese popular newspapers tended to follow literary traditions, with practices in French journalism being a potent influence on Portuguese publishers. But British and German newspapers had closer connections to techniques shaping American journalism. The emerging Anglo‐American model of journalism was “fact” centered, whereas French journalists tended to write from a “subjective” and “interpretative” literary perspective (Chalaby 1996, p. 312). But even in this respect, transfers of journalistic practices occurred as French journalists, despite resistance from traditionalists, “progressively imported and adapted the methods of Anglo‐American journalism” (Chalaby 1996, p. 303). Indeed, the Anglo‐American model laid the basis of the dominant paradigm of Western journalism even if it was “modeled in different ways in different nations” (Nerone 2012, p. 447). Here, however, the emerging popular press crystalized a tension that remains embedded in the heart of Western journalism today: despite a strengthened professional attachment to notions of serving the public interest, popular newspaper journalism in the early twentieth century was practiced predominantly within for‐profit companies through which private interests (such as the British press barons) could seek to exert ideological influence over newly formed mass audiences. The popular press marked a significant breakthrough in Europe’s media history. It contributed to the transformation of the professional and discursive practices and ethical norms underpinning journalism, certainly Western models thereof. Through the popular press, the newspaper, as a media form that had existed for centuries, was reconstituted for socio‐economic groups that historically had been neglected or ignored. Further, popular newspapers represented a new variety of informational commodity (and as such an extension of media capitalism), and demonstrated that mass circulation not only was possible but also profitable (or, at least, held the potential to be so). As such, popular newspapers signaled, clearly, the potential commercial rewards of attracting mass audiences, and thereby established a precedent for the mass market positioning of other media forms later in the twentieth century.



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Temple, M. (2008). The British Press. London: Open University Press. Tengarrinha, J. (2013). Nova história da imprensa portuguesa. Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores. The Pall Mall Gazette (1885). We bid you be of hope (6 July 1885), p. 1. The Pall Mall Gazette (1885). The football craze in Yorkshire (4 April 1885), pp. 4–5. Ward, S. (2014). Radical media ethics: ethics for a global digital world. Digital Journalism 2: 455–471. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.952985. Wehler, H.‐U. (1995). Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Band 3: Von der “Deutschen Doppelrevolution” Bis Zum Beginn Des Ersten Weltkrieges 1849–1914. Munich: Beck. Wilke, J. (2000). Grundzüge Der Medien Und Kommunikationsgeschichte. Von Den Anfängen Bis Ins 20. Jahrhundert. Cologne: Böhlau. Wilke, J. (2003). The history and culture of the newsroom in Germany. Journalism Studies 4: 465–477. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670032000136569. Wolter, H.‐W. (1981). Generalanzeiger – Das Pragmatische Prinzip. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte Und Typologie Des Pressewesens Im Späten 19. Jahrhundert Mit Einer Studie über Die  Zeitungsunternehmungen Wilhelm Girardets (1838–1918). Bochum: Studienverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer. Zelizer, B. (1999). Foreword. In: Tabloid Tales: Global Debates Over Media Standards (ed. C. Sparks and J. Tulloch), ix–xii. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

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European Film Since the 1890s

A Media Sector in the Shadow of Hollywood Roderick Flynn

­Introduction: European Global Dominance This chapter presents a long view of the last 130 years of the film sector in Europe and asks whether it makes sense to posit a “European cinema” as a singular entity. European states have both adopted unilateral strategies to develop national screen industries whilst actively seeking to create pan‐European structures to exploit production and distribution economies of scale. This chapter examines these policy oscillations suggesting that by the twenty‐first century, it is possible to identify the co‐existence of a collaboration‐ oriented supranational European film policy and more self‐interested national strategies in the context of an overarching international division of cultural labor. Given that almost from its inception cinema operated as an international industry, understanding European cinema must take account of its relationship with the United States. US dominance of global cinema distribution (and thus, indirectly, of global ­theatrical markets) is so entrenched as to appear “normal.” Yet, not only was such ­dominance not pre‐ordained, it simply did not obtain during the first 25 years of the industry. The early success of European cinema owed much to how European  –  and in the 1890s primarily French  –  innovators re‐appropriated the new medium in ways never envisaged by Thomas Edison – the figure often identified as the inventor of film. Like most technological innovations, cinema emerged through an iterative process: the combination of requisite developments in biology, chemistry, and precision‐instrument occurred in a multiplicity of locations across Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century. The main French contender for the status of the progenitor of ­cinema – Louis Lumière – was motivated to improve upon Edison’s technology, while Edison (in collaboration with Scottish‐American employee, William Kennedy Dickson) was in turn influenced by an 1889 trip to Paris to witness French physiologist Étienne Jules Marey’s photographic “gun” (Spehr 2008). Individuals in other European nations – notably William Friese‐Green in the United Kingdom – were also conducting research into capturing motion on film, but there was an undeniable focus on this field within France. Peter Hall (1998) points to a concern with the visual as characteristic of late nineteenth‐century Paris where a generation of painters were “examining the effects

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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of light” and “questioning the very nature of representation” (p. 201). With the increasing pace of life, a fact of late nineteenth‐century existence, this painterly focus was paralleled by explorations of technology that could capture and scrutinize speed. Thus Marey’s work on capturing light in motion was mirrored by that of Émile Reynaud (inventor of the Praxinscope) and August Le Prince who devised a working motion ­picture camera in the late 1880s. Louis Lumière and his brother Auguste employed several hundred workers at their Lyons photographic plates factory. Louis’s refinement of Edison’s film camera to create a device which doubled as a projector, transformed cinema from a solo experience – as per Edison’s Kinetoscope  –  into a communal one. Having patented their camera in February 1895, the Lumières spent 10 months manufacturing cameras, training operators, and building a small stock of films. Following the initial Paris public screening in December 1895, they sent operators across the planet to both film new actualities (short non‐fiction strips) and to screen existing films. Before 1896 was over, Lumière films had been shot and watched in every continent. Yet, the professional interest of the family in cinema proved short‐lived: by 1900, the Lumière family had sold the right to exploit their camera design to another Frenchman. Charles Pathé would lead French and European dominance of the global industry in the first decade of the twentieth century (Hayward 2005, p. 19). Pathé had acquired the French sales rights to Edison’s phonograph in 1894, establishing Société Pathé Frères as a sales vehicle in 1896. A year later, he added Edison’s Kinetoscope to the company’s roster along with some Edison films, the latter he copied and sold on to fairground showmen. The short‐term profits provided by cinema began to wane by 1897, but a substantial private finance/Credit Lyonnais bank cash injection transformed Pathés‐Frères into well‐capitalized joint stock company. The subsequent expansion of the company saw it move into film production from 1901 onwards. Though nationally (and later globally) dominant, Pathé was not alone. Leon Gaumont moved from managing a Parisian camera manufacturer, the Comptoir General de la Photographie, to owning the company outright by 1895. In March 1895, the Lumière Brothers, from whom the Comptoir regularly purchased photographic supplies, invited Gaumont and his secretary Alice Guy to a private screening of their “Workers Leaving a Factory” series. Within 18 months, the company, now renamed L. Gaumont et Cie, was producing both actualities and narrative films for Lumière screenings overseen by head of production, Alice Guy (Abel 1994, p. 10). Both, Pathé and Gaumont (along with the Lumières) also supplied camera equipment to the magician Georges Melies, the third significant force in early French cinema. Melies first incorporated filmed material into his stage shows before concentrating on the production of internationally successful “trick” films (involving fantastic effects achieved through careful editing) in 1900. Established as the major producers and distributors in France, Pathé and Gaumont began to look for markets elsewhere, establishing distribution arms, equipment manufacturing factories, and studios in the United States between 1904 and 1907. In the decade following their 1904 establishment in New York, Pathé opened a further 40 offices across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Hayward (2005) notes that by 1908, Pathé alone was selling twice as many films into the United States as the entire US ­industry. This pattern was repeated worldwide: by 1910 upwards of 70% of global film exports were accounted for by Parisian studios (Hayward 2005, p. 19).



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France was not the only European industry to play a prominent role in early cinema: the United Kingdom, Italy, and Denmark were also significant players. In the United Kingdom, precision‐instrument maker Robert W. Paul was approached to make copies of Edison’s Kinetograph in 1894. Finding that Edison had not patented his technology outside the United States, Paul sold copies of the camera outright to other filmmakers before introducing his own camera in February 1896. Although Paul’s company also made films, early production was led by figures like Cecil Hepworth and other members of the Brighton School, a loosely affiliated group of filmmakers active in southeast England from the late 1890s until the 1900s. Though lacking the agglomerations of precision‐instrument makers found in France and the United Kingdom, the Italian industry also expanded from 1905. By 1910, it had pioneered multiple‐reel productions appropriate to the epic scale that characterized its most successful output. Denmark also embraced multiple‐reel films from 1910. Led by Ole Olsen’s Nordisk, a production company founded in 1906, it quickly moved into distribution both within Denmark and overseas. Other Danish companies followed but rarely survived as Olsen either “managed to buy them or drive them out of business” (Thompson and Bordwell 1994, p. 30). Outside the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Denmark, indigenous production in other European countries was either on a much smaller scale or effectively absent, leaving many European markets open to foreign competition. Much of this came from within Europe. In a snapshot survey of new films screened in Germany in 1912 and 1913, Thompson (1985) notes how local films accounted for just 10% of the total, as opposed to the 27% from Italy and 17% from France. Notably, however, by the early 1910s, the United States was already the single largest supplier of films to the German market, providing 30% of new titles. Distributors of US films, initially relying on London‐ based agents to reach the wider European market, found it much harder to access those European countries with a strong indigenous production sector. Bakker (2005) finds that between 1908 and 1911, European‐sourced films accounted for more 80% of the French market, while French films alone regularly accounted for 40–70% (p. 313). This was echoed in European cinemas’ prominence in the United States. When the US trade journal The Moving Picture News reported the first official figures for the level of overseas films imports in March 1911, France dominated, accounting for 2 800 000 m of imported footage in the year to June 1910. Great Britain lay in second place with 380 000 m, followed by Italy with 360 000 and Denmark with 330,000, whilst Germany exported only 31,000 m (Jeanval 1911, p. 13). Thompson (1985) accounts for early European success in the United States by suggesting that indigenous firms were simply unable to meet the enormous initial demand for content. This both created a gap that European companies moved to fill, but also delayed the US industry’s engagement with export markets until the 1910s. As late as 1907, only two US firms, Edison and Vitagraph, had established direct representation (i.e. wholly‐owned subsidiaries) outside the US. By contrast, the relatively small scale of European markets (especially Denmark with a population of just 2 million in 1900) made it relatively easy for European companies to satisfy domestic demand. Even the larger European countries, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy, had populations of less than 40 million by 1900, as compared with the estimated 74 million ­resident in the United States. Other factors endogenous to the US industry also facilitated European expansion. US firms were distracted by an extensive legal battle over control over the key patents required for film production. European firms, but again in particular Pathé, took

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a­ dvantage and exploited “first‐mover” advantage, saturating overseas markets especially in smaller countries. By the start of the 1910s, as Bakker (2005) notes the European film industry was in good shape. European film companies pioneered both technological innovations such as projection, colour processes, and talking pictures, and content innovations such as the weekly newsreel, the cartoon, the serial and the feature film. They held a large share of the US market, which at times reached 60 per cent (p. 312).

­Transition: The Impact of World War I Yet such dominance proved relatively short‐lived. Within a decade, European firms had not only surrendered their share of the US market but, in many cases, became subordinate players within their domestic markets. The exigencies of the First World War are often cited as “explaining” this decline (Danan 2002). However, although French production was temporarily shut down in 1914, this only lasted for a few months (Bakker 2005). Furthermore, lying outside the main theater of the war, the United Kingdom or Italy were even less affected while Denmark’s neutrality potentially offered its film industry an opportunity to expand into markets previously served by the belligerents. It might also be argued that the war cut European players off from overseas export markets beyond the United States and Europe, yet such markets accounted for less than 10% of world film sales (Bakker 2005). And though some companies, notably Pathé, lost access to elements of their pre‐war European and US markets, other territories remained accessible. Nor can the frequently cited large‐scale of the US market account for rapid decline of the European industry during and after the war: the United States already enjoyed a significant population advantage in 1910. Bakker (2005), instead, advances a multi‐factorial explanation within which World War I did play a role but so did the rise of the feature‐length film. All European industries had begun to make at least tentative shifts toward longer films by 1910, but some US companies dramatically increased their outlay on features between 1913 and 1919. In this, US companies were encouraged by the manifest success of Italian and Danish multiple‐reel productions such as The Last Days of Pompeii (1908) and Quo Vadis (1913). Although the dominance of the Motion Picture Patents Company cartel (largely constituted by single‐reel production companies) between 1908 and 1912 delayed the US industry’s shift toward multiple‐reel production, when it finally occurred, both its ­manner and timing opened a hard‐to‐bridge gap between US and European output. The advent of percentage‐based (as opposed to flat‐fee) producer‐distributor contracts in the 1910s meant US producers could directly benefit from the box‐office performance of hit films (Bakker 2005). This new financial relationship and the supernormal profits earned by epic Italian spectaculars encouraged US producers such as Adolph Zukor to significantly increase their expenditure. The budgets of both individual films and capital investment on the construction of large‐scale studios and acquiring film‐­ making equipment soared from the early 1910s. Furthermore, by the 1920s, Hollywood invested heavily in securing access to scarce human resources, creating the contract ­system to bind stars (before and behind the camera) to particular studios. By contrast, the heretofore dominant French industry simply “failed to renew its equipment and continued to follow old established practices, believing that it could maintain



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its international monopoly with cheaply produced films” (Hayward 2005, p. 20). For Bakker (2005) wartime conditions meant that European producers found it difficult to access the capital required to escalate production investment to US levels. Furthermore, the cumulative escalation in US expenditure over the 1914–1918 period (and beyond) was such that, even when the war ended (and European producers could consider ­borrowing such capital), the gap in sunk costs was further widened by the “first‐mover economies of scale in film production and distribution” (p. 343) already enjoyed by Hollywood. The war impacted negatively on European producers in other ways. Although European production levels (in terms of numbers of films produced) were broadly sustained throughout the war, access to enemy markets dried up: Germany had been a key element of the European “home” market for France, the United Kingdom, and Italy. For its part, Nordisk, based in neutral Denmark, managed to maintain access to the German market, but the perception among the Entente powers that Nordisk was dallying with the enemy undermined its market share in the United Kingdom and Russia. Furthermore, as the gap between per‐film investment in Hollywood and European films widened, US films were increasingly characterized by higher production values and, more broadly, came to be regarded as quality productions. By contrast, European films came to look increasingly cheap. The cumulative impact of these factors was a near collapse in the European industry. By the 1920s, most large European companies gave up film production altogether. Pathé and Gaumont sold their US and international business, left film‐making, and focused on distribution in France. Éclair, their major competitor went bankrupt. Nordisk continued as an insignificant Danish film company and eventually collapsed into receivership. The 11 largest Italian film producers formed a trust, which failed terribly, and one by one, they fell into financial disaster. The famous British producer Cecil Hepworth went bankrupt. By late 1924, hardly any films were being made in the United Kingdom. US‐American films were being shown everywhere (Bakker 2005, p. 344). Nordisk in Denmark had seemed poised to avoid this. In 1915, Ole Olsen had confidently predicted that by trading on Denmark’s wartime neutrality it would become the biggest film company in the world, a European bulwark against increased US competition. By 1917, Nordisk had established distribution and exhibition operations across central Europe (including Austria, Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and in particular in Germany). Yet, its gradual exclusion from the United Kingdom, France, and, following the February 1917 revolution, Russia affected its access to other markets. Having been added to a French import blacklist in 1917, Nordisk also lost the South American market hitherto accessed via their Paris‐based agent. The company’s access to North America, via its Great Northern subsidiary, lasted only a little longer (Mottram 1988). Furthermore, Nordisk’s access to the German, and central European markets did not survive the war. In 1917, seeking to develop its capacity for producing and distributing filmed propaganda, the German government effectively forced Nordisk to sell‐off its German, Austro‐Hungarian, Swiss, and Dutch holdings. The deal saw Nordisk receive a cash lump sum but also one‐third of the shares in a new company formed to acquire Nordisk’s former holdings: Universum Film Aktiengeselleschaft or UFA. As Thorsen (2010) notes, Nordisk was “not in a bad situation when the war ended” (p. 476). Nonetheless, compared to other European film companies, Nordisk’s pre‐war access to a near‐global market disappeared, largely surrendered to US dominance of markets beyond Europe and, increasingly, within the continent.

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­The Interwar Period – From Film Europe to Filmed Propaganda The post‐war decline of French cinema was calamitous. The collapse in the popularity of French cinema during the war years prompted Charles Pathé to sell‐off his entire industrial complex, limiting his investment to distribution after 1918. The future of French cinematic industrial development was left to Germany and the United States, which both began to infiltrate French production and distribution lines. Gaumont merged with Metro‐Goldwyn‐Mayer (MGM) in 1924 and effectively retreated to its Paris office. When, four years later, Gaumont attempted to revive itself by developing its own sound‐ on‐film system, it could not compete with the technologies provided by German and US competitors. By the mid‐1920s, French companies had not only lost their grasp on the US market but their domestic market share was less than 10%, with the United States accounting for up to 85% of all releases in individual years. The failure through the 1920s to create larger vertically‐integrated firms (as occurred in both the United Kingdom and Germany) further hampered growth: French cinema remained dominated by a plethora of small and often short‐lived firms (Thompson and Bordwell 1994, p. 86). Although this setting may have hindered the development of the French film industry, Thompson and Bordwell (1994) argue that the latter’s “decentralized structure” combined with the absence of an “elaborate production bureaucracy” (p. 324) offered French directors a degree of freedom to experiment that was unavailable to the counterparts elsewhere. Thus, even if French cinema in the 1930s was not widely available to global audiences, it punched above its weight in creative and critical terms, and filmmakers such as Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné produced a wave of Realist drama. Faced with a wave of US imports, those western European nations with industries worth defending contemplated protectionist measures, including quotas and taxes on US film imports. The success or failure of these measures varied. In France, the absence of vertical integration saw producers pitched against distributors and exhibitors. Calls from producers for import quotas on foreign films were opposed by the distributors and exhibitors who relied on precisely those imports. Thus, the quotas introduced by the 1928 Hays‐Herriot agreement between the United States and France were weak, permitting seven US imports for every French domestic release. As Ulff‐Moller (1998) notes, this was “so generous that the American film imports never reached the limit” (p. 176). Nevertheless from the perspective of producers, matters somewhat improved from the mid‐1930s following the strengthening of quota protections. Between 1935 and 1939, only 75 US films received a French release and although the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the lobby group for Hollywood, seemed satisfied with such access, the quota allowed the French production sector to achieve a 50% domestic market share by the mid‐1930s (Thompson 1999, p. 77). In the United Kingdom, by contrast, British productions accounted for less than 5% of the all films released in 1926 and 1927 while US releases accounted for more than 80% (Thompson 1999). In response, the UK government passed the 1927 Cinematographic Films Act which imposed domestic release quotas on distributors and exhibitors, reaching 20% by 1936 (Sedgewick 1994, p. 15). Output immediately increased from 40 releases in 1927 to 150 in 1932 (Thompson 1999) but the quantitative improvement was not matched by quality. Distributors funded low budget “quota quickies” of varying quality: the best constituted second features, while the worst were almost unreleasable, although such films did act as a training ground for key figures in mid‐twentieth‐century British cinema, such as Carol Reed and Michael Powell.



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Recognizing this unintended consequence, the 1938 Cinematograph Act introduced a budget threshold allowing films with higher production values to count as two for quota purposes, leading to a noticeable improvement in quality as the Second World War loomed (Thompson and Bordwell 1994, p. 270). The level of production activity prompted by the British quota generated a remarkable variety of companies. London Films, headed by Hungarian émigré Alexandra Korda, moved from producing quickies for Paramount to much larger budget “heritage” films aimed at the US market. The box‐office success of the first of these films, The Private Life of Henry VIII, in both the United Kingdom and United States prompted a wave of investment in the UK industry. Much of this was associated with the flour magnate J. Arthur Rank who built a vertically‐integrated cinema empire that not only owned half of UK studio space but that also funded half the films made in the United Kingdom between 1941 and 1947 (Thompson and Bordwell 1994, p. 270). In Germany, the maintenance of the near‐total block on film imports between 1916 and 1920 allowed the domestic production sector to become the leading European industry of the 1920s. Also, the calamitous state of the post‐war German economy worked in the interests of the German film industry. With little incentive to save in a high‐inflation economy, audiences spent freely on, among other things, cinema attendance. At the same time, as the value of the German mark collapsed against other ­currencies, local distributors suddenly found it very expensive to import films. Conversely, foreign distributors were attracted to German film exports because they were relatively cheap to rent. In this context, as Thompson and Bordwell (1994) note, the three most prominent genres of interwar German film – large‐scale spectacles, Kammerspiel (chamber dramas), and perhaps most importantly, Expressionism – all found audiences both within and beyond Germany. Expressionist cinema in particular, exemplified by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari won audiences even in recent adversary nations such as France. Indeed, such was the emphasis on production for export to international audiences that some German films of the mid‐1920s were overtly set in France and the United Kingdom (Thompson and Bordwell 1994). The inflationary context also encouraged investment in large‐scale facilities. By the mid‐1920s, UFA, by now the core of the German industry, expanded its Tempelhof and Neubabelsberg operations to the extent that UK and French filmmakers sought to hire them for their own large‐scale productions. In the short‐term, this facilitated production for the international market as German infrastructure and craft skills permitted production values on a par with Hollywood. However, with the stabilization of the mark from 1924 and the end of inflation, German distributors once again looked to film imports, a move encouraged by the 1925 state decision to further relax import quotas. As Thompson and Bordwell (1994) note, this had an immediate impact: in 1925 the number of US releases in Germany outstripped domestic releases for the first time since 1915. In the same year, only a loan of US$ 4 million from Paramount and MGM prevented UFA bankruptcy. The establishment of Paraufamet, a German distribution co‐owned by all three companies, allowed Paramount and MGM to circumvent the remaining German  import quota, increasing the number of films each could annually release by 20 (Thompson and Bordwell 1994). The introduction of import quotas was not the only strategy considered. The structural advantages of Hollywood’s large domestic market (allowing US films to earn more than 60% of their production costs from North America alone) were well understood in interwar Europe. Equally, there was a recognition that the pre‐World War I status quo, whereby European film industries had enjoyed relatively open access to other European

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markets, had underwritten European market success beyond the continent. The post‐ war thaw in the relations between former combatant nations presaged an embrace of the economies of scale resulting from the free circulation of European cinema across European borders. Increased revenues meant higher budgets, increasing the likelihood of European productions that could compete against their Hollywood counterparts in terms of the quality of their production values. In the summer of 1924, UFA and the French firm Établissements Aubert signed a mutual distribution pact whereby each agreed to distribute the other’s film output within its own territory. As Thompson (1999) notes, this explicit “attempt to create a European market” (p. 60) was welcomed in the industry press across the major European film‐ producing nations. Thompson (1999) points to a number of similar mutual distribution alliances, typically led by Germany’s UFA, which manifested the notion of “Film Europe:” L’Alliance Cinematographique Europeen in 1926 (formed by UFA and the Swedish film Svenska funded with French money); a UFA‐Gaumont‐British agreement signed in 1927; British International Pictures and Pathé in 1928; and UFA and Luce (Italy) also in 1928. These agreements appeared to bear fruit and Hollywood’s share of European markets declined in the latter half of the 1920s and early 1930s. This shift was dramatic at times. US shares of the French market fell from 85% in 1924 to 49% in 1931 while French films’ share of their own market rose from 10% to 31% in the same period (Thompson 1999, p. 64). And yet, the Film Europe movement proved short‐lived. The expectation that sound would create a language barrier behind which non‐Anglophone nations might develop their own industries appeared to reduce the need for international cooperation. In practice, sound did not constitute such a barrier. However, the depression and the global shift toward economic protectionism, erecting tariff barriers against all imports, further undermined the spirit of cooperation. So did the rise of virulently nationalistic regimes in Germany and Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Cinema would play a key propaganda role in the Nazi state. This was largely directed toward a domestic audience, and the new government was significantly less concerned with maintaining international collaborations (Thompson 1999). The brief experiment with cinematic internationalism had, however, included a nation that in the pre‐war period had possessed only a very small industry, namely Russia. The leading private film companies departed the Russian scene within 18 months of the first revolution in February 1917. The resulting void in production was left to the People’s Commissariat of Education (the Narkompros) to fill. However, the overall weakness of the immediate post‐revolution economy meant few films were made between 1918 and 1920. Nonetheless, the civil war between the Bolsheviks and the White forces over control of Russia between 1917 and 1922 was both, a shooting war and a propaganda war. Agit‐vehicles including trains brought pro‐Bolshevik propaganda material to rural areas, including newsreels shot by a young Dziga Vertov. In August 1919, Lenin formally nationalized the film industry, and Narkompros established a State Film School whose faculty included Lev Kuleshov. The latter’s experiments developed the principles of montage (i.e. creating meaning through the interrelationship of images rather than regarding meaning as immanent to a single shot). This informed the internationally acclaimed work of Sergei Eisenstein and other Russian filmmakers from the mid‐1920s (Thompson and Bordwell 1994). Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 reintroduced market‐principles to the Russian economy, prompting the emergence of some private film groups alongside government‐supported work. A year later, he proclaimed the Lenin Proportion demanding



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that “film programs should balance entertainment and education” (Thompson and Bordwell 1994, p. 132) and identifying film as a key propaganda tool for politically ­educating an illiterate population. In the early period of the NEP, the Soviet film industry depended on imports: in 1923, 99% of all films in distribution were foreign. However, domestic production in Russia and other Soviet republics gradually expanded, especially after the 1925 establishment of Sovkino, a vertically‐integrated state firm charged with bringing propaganda films to every region of the Soviet Union (USSR). Such activity could be subsidized by profits from distributing Western imports, but these were considered ideologically suspect. The need to replace them with – ideologically and financially – successful domestic productions that might win audiences both at home and overseas, ushered in a wave of Kuleshov‐influenced montage work. Notable among these were Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Pudovkin’s Mother both of which were acclaimed by western audiences. Ironically, the perceived complexity of the montage movement would prove its undoing. Although the avantgardism associated with Soviet montage appealed to proto‐­ arthouse audiences outside Russia, by the 1930s, Lenin’s successors (most notably Stalin) began to criticize such work on the grounds of “formalism,” suggesting that the concern with film form de‐emphasized pro‐revolutionary content. A new emphasis on entertainment and readily comprehensible material followed the reorganization of the entire Soviet film industry under Soyuzkino as part of the first five‐year plan (1928–1932). At the All‐Union Creative Conference of Works in Soviet Cinema in January 1935, Socialist Realism was adopted as official policy  –  works centered around positive role models embodying communist ideals and offering an “optimistic, idealized image of Soviet society” (far removed from actual life under Stalin) were championed (Thompson and Bordwell 1994, p. 294). In consequence, Soviet Montage principles were effectively banned, not least because, under Stalin, scripts were subjected to intense pre‐production scrutiny to ensure required ideological standard. By then, Russia was not the only European country to have embraced cinema for propaganda purposes. Though decrying communism, the fascist regimes in both Germany and Italy were profoundly impressed by the impact of Soviet cinema. With Hitler’s rise to power, the state came to play a much more prominent role in the German industry. It gradually nationalized the industry over the course of the 1930s by secretly acquiring majority shares in the leading film production companies (including UFA). By 1939, these state‐owned companies accounted for two‐thirds of all German production. The process of nationalization was completed in 1942 when the entire production sector was re‐organized under UFA Film GmbH (UFI). Even before gaining control of production, the Nazi administration was able to exert significant influence over what German audiences could see. The existing certification system, designed to regulate foreign access to the German theatrical market, was amended so that even German films needed to be certified as “appropriate.” Although the majority of films produced between 1933 and 1945 were not overtly propagandistic (cinema primarily served as an escape from wartime existence), they could not challenge the state’s official ideologies. Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebels actively exhorted German producers to emphasize German nationality in their output, and his ministry directly funded large‐scale productions of that nature. Although prior to the outbreak of war, Germany sought to maintain its position as Europe’s most successful exporter of films, the nature of the Nazi regime, which was at least partially reflected in its cinematic output, unsurprisingly led to a fall‐ off in international consumption of German films. That many of the leading lights of the

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Weimar era industry were Jewish (or simply opposed to Nazi ideology) accelerated this decline as such personnel fled to the United Kingdom and the United States. There is scholarly disagreement as to extent to which in Italy the fascist government under Benito Mussolini (whose movement seized power in 1922) exploited the propaganda potential of cinema. Thompson and Bordwell (1994) suggest that although the Italian state played a significant role in the domestic film industry, this was markedly less interventionist than in Germany (pp. 313–315). Nonetheless, Caprotti (2005) insists that the production of propaganda‐oriented newsreels by the state‐backed Educational Film Union, Instituto Luce (created in 1925), was “significant in the production of fascist identity” (p. 182). Moreover, although Italian audiences in the 1920s were mainly drawn to theaters by imported content, a 1926 decree compelling cinemas to screen newsreels ensured extensive exposure to propaganda content. Beyond newsreels, however, state involvement in cinema was slower to manifest. Despite the efforts of private enterprise, Italian production waned throughout the 1920s: one source suggests that having produced over 1,000 films in 1914, the Italian industry produced only two in 1931 (Caprotti 2005, p. 180). As in the United Kingdom and France, this prompted the government to introduce exhibition quotas for domestic films, taxes on receipts from foreign films, and subsidies (tied to box‐office performance) to domestic releases. The establishment of the Direzione Generale de la Cinematografica within the Ministry for Press and Propaganda in 1934 was in 1935 followed by the establishment of the production‐focused Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografice (ENIC, the National Office for the Cinema Industry) as a subsidiary of the Instituto Luce. As Thompson and Bordwell (1994, p. 314) note, ENIC took over Cines, the leading private production company of the 1920s. Coupled with Cinecittà, a state‐funded and state‐of‐the‐art studio complex, the state began to play a more active role in film production from the late 1930s. Notably, however, there was a reluctance to produce overtly propagandistic works. Having witnessed the instrumentalization of cinema for ideological purposes in Germany, the Head of the Direzione Generale de la Cinematografica Luigi Freddi concluded that such an approach was counter‐productive, emphasizing instead cinema’s role in providing distraction (Thompson and Bordwell 1994). Nonetheless, as the 1930s progressed, state intervention increased. The Monopoly Law of 1938, allowing ENIC to regulate the importation of all foreign films, prompted four Hollywood majors to entirely cease supplying their films to the Italian market. This created a market opportunity for Italian producers and domestic production doubled within three years. Overall, however, Thompson and Bordwell (1994) conclude that under fascism “Italian cinema never became a state‐based political cinema like that of Germany or the USSR … In general the regime subsidized a fragile business while leaving it largely in private hands” (p. 315). Remarkably, the German occupation of France that had started in June 1940 did not mean the end of film production there. Domestic film production did cease for a period, and imports from the United Kingdom and the United States were blocked, but French audiences were, unsurprisingly, less than enamored by the influx of films from their conquerors, and cinema attendances decreased. By 1941, the Germans – seeking to at least partially recreate the logic of Film Europe  –  permitted French filmmakers to re‐ commence production for a German‐controlled European cinema that would notionally compete with the United States for global markets once the war was over. This was accompanied by the establishment of UFA’s French subsidiary Continental that not only operated its own studios and laboratory but also owned the largest French cinema chain (Kreimeier 1999, p. 335).



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­Post‐War Europe – The Struggle to Retain Markets The European economy had been profoundly damaged by six years of conflict. As various European nations sought to rebuild their economies – with the support of the US Marshall Aid program – conserving dollar reserves to fund the import of key commodities became a key objective. Film represented a challenge in this regard as the earnings of US distributors from European releases were funneled back to the United States. As Guback (1969) put it: “European nations, in debt and with little or no dollar reserves, could not afford the questionable luxury of importing American pictures when their people and businesses demanded more essential commodities” (p. 17). However, in the half decade following the war, the scale of US dominance of European theatrical markets was truly startling, especially in countries with smaller production bases. In Ireland, for example, entirely lacking a domestic industry, US imports accounted for 87% of all films released in 1951. The figures for Denmark and the Netherlands in the same year amounted to 71%, and 64% respectively. Even in countries with relatively large production sectors (the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and West Germany) US films accounted for anything from 48% to 72% of total releases in 1951 (Guback, pp. 44–47). By contrast, cinemas to the east of the Iron Curtain were shielded against the influx of US imports due to a near‐total ban on US imports after 1948. In this context, European nations had three options. The first was to reduce the flood of post‐war Hollywood imports with quotas. This was a particularly acute threat for the former Axis powers where US material, blocked during the war, might have been dumped into their markets. A second option was taxing US film earnings, as the United Kingdom attempted in August 1947, imposing a 75% customs duty on imported film (the MPEA, Hollywood’s overseas lobbying body, responded to this attempt by completely suspending film exports to the United Kingdom for seven months). A third option was to partially freeze the funds earned by US films in Europe, thus, slowing the outward flow of dollars. This had the added benefit of incentivizing US majors to spend those funds on production within Europe thus generating some much‐needed economic activity there. All three options raised difficulties, however. Quotas were not viable options to those European countries still rebuilding production capacity and unable to replace imports with domestic films. Meanwhile, a recourse to the imposition of taxes or freezes on US films was made politically difficult by European dependence on US ­largesse via Marshall Aid. In France, the 1946 Blum‐Byrnes agreement with the United States replaced the pre‐ war quota on imports with a screen quota, setting aside four out of every 13 weeks (31% of screen time) for domestic productions. This prompted protests from the French industry and a second Franco‐US agreement was signed in September 1948. It increased both the domestic screen quota (to 38%) while introducing a still generous import quota of 186 films per year (of which 121 were licensed to US producers). Italy lacked any import controls immediately after the war: 600 US films were distributed in 1946. In 1949, however, the Andreotti Act introduced a scheme, funded by taxes on film imports, whereby Italian producers could borrow capital cheaply for domestic production. The same year, a domestic screen quota (equivalent to 22% of screen time) reduced US imports to 400 per annum. This figure remained high compared to about 100 Italian films released domestically in 1950, and in May 1951, the Italian government signed a further agreement with the MPEA (Motion Picture Export Association) limiting US imports to 225 annually.

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In Spain, the Franco government adopted a particularly robust stance in negotiations with the MPEA. In 1955, the government sought to reduce the number of US imports from 100 to 80 films per year. However, in return for US access to the Spanish market, the Spanish government also insisted the US majors distribute eight Spanish films annually in the North American market. Furthermore, within Spain, the US majors would have been required to distribute one Spanish film for every five US imports. The MPEA refused and, adopting a strategy already successful in the United Kingdom, withdrew from the Spanish market. Unlike the United Kingdom, however, the Spanish government stayed firm. In March 1958, after three years, the MPEA relented and sought to re‐establish a position in the market. By then, however, Spanish distributors had established a firm hold on their domestic market and the MPEA faced even tougher terms than before. A key component was the baremo mechanism, “a system of calculation by which distribution companies are awarded points according to certain standards … upon which the government allocates import and dubbing permits” (Guback 1969, p. 29). These criteria included the number of Spanish‐made films handled by distributors within Spain. Given the historically low level of distribution of such films by US companies, the local offices of MPEA members could distribute only a handful of Hollywood productions within the Spanish market. Thus, although US films remained popular with Spanish audiences, they were distributed mainly by local companies. Guback (1969) calculates that of 394 US films distributed in Spain between 1958 and 1962, only 66 were handled by MPEA members. Despite the wartime partnership with the United States, the UK government found itself with far less leverage over MPEA members. In 1942, wartime exigencies limiting domestic film production had forced the government to abandon the pre‐war domestic screen quota, which opened the market to US firms. When the 1948 Film Act re‐ established the quota at 45%, the US market share had surpassed 75%. US distributors protested against the quota, but in practice the UK production sector was unable to reach output levels sufficient to meet the 45% figure. Although the quota was subsequently reduced to 40%, the domestic industry remained unable to meet quota levels until they were reduced again to 30% (Guback 1969, p. 34). Nonetheless, quotas led to a noticeable improvement in the performance of European cinemas both in their national and in other European markets throughout the 1950s. By 1960, French releases in France outnumbered US releases 113 to 78 (Guback 1969, p. 66) while in the same year, West German distributors accounted for 31.3% of all domestic box‐office revenues, compared to 23.2% earned by their US counterparts (Guback 1969, p. 57). By the end of the 1950s, the impact of the Paramount Decree upon Hollywood’s industrial structure and the simultaneous decline in US cinema attendances prompted by demographic change saw US output levels decline dramatically from 383 pictures in 1950 to 153 in 1965 (Guback 1969, p. 35). A similar audience decline saw European production fall too but at a far slower rate. In consequence, by the 1960s, domestic films faced a declining threat from US competition. Writing in 1969, Guback concluded that the screen quotas outlined above were becoming “superfluous” (p. 36). Indeed, not only were larger Western European industries winning back their domestic markets but they made inroads into the post‐Paramount Decree US market. As US exhibitors disengaged from the vertically‐integrated studios, their allegiance to their former film production arms waned. The mid‐1950s saw the United Kingdom, Italian, and French industries devising long‐term strategies to access the US market. Even if these



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did not see European films achieve quite the same level access enjoyed by US films in Europe, “foreign films” had become “a fairly consistent offering in [US] theatres” by the end of the 1960s (ibid., p. 83).

­The Rise of the European Co‐Production That category “foreign films” became increasingly complicated in the post‐war European context. British films accounted for nearly 50 million of the 71 million US dollars earned by European productions in the US market in 1964. However, this apparent success relied on a handful of films that, though nominally British, were largely US‐financed, such as the James Bond franchise. Faced with the reality of frozen funds in European markets, many Hollywood distributors opted to spend them on European productions. Ironically, as production in the United States declined, US distributors became ­increasingly dependent on “runaway” US productions shot in Europe to maintain a throughput of content into cinemas. In any case, the national identity of all films was increasingly complicated by a further European response to the post‐war malaise: the introduction of multi‐national co‐productions. Jackel (2003) dates the inception of the co‐production from a 1946 French‐Italian experiment, which was formalized in a full‐ scale co‐production agreement in February 1949. The defensive measures that various European countries adopted to counter post‐war US competition were predicated on the capacity to clearly define the nationality of films: only indigenous films counted toward domestic screen quotas and tax rebate. The French‐Italian co‐production agreement allowed films, certified as co‐productions, to both access screen subsidies and qualify for screen quotas in both countries. This appeared to have the desired effect: renewals of the 1949 agreement saw 230 French‐Italian co‐productions completed in the following 8 years (Jackel 2003, p. 233), and both countries saw production levels significantly increase “greatly contributing to the rebuilding of the two industries” (Jackel 2003, p. 233). A pan‐national star system emerged as French and Italian actors became increasingly familiar to audiences outside their domestic markets. To avoid quota quickies, the French‐Italian scheme initially targeted support on the production of films of “quality,” which, in the absence of other objective criteria, tended to be interpreted as meaning films with large budgets. Jackel (2003) notes the consequent prevalence of “safe” films based on well‐known literary works, biopics, and ­historical events. As the system matured, an initial insistence on equal contributions from both countries was relaxed. The relative contribution of co‐production partners was instead driven by the intrinsic nature of the film narrative, even if this meant emphasizing the creative contribution of one co‐production partner over the other. By the early 1950s, the success of the French‐Italian experience encouraged other countries to enter into bilateral agreements. Between 1951 and 1956, France signed agreements with West Germany, Spain, Argentina, Austria, Yugoslavia, Australia, and the Soviet Union. Yet although Italy also signed agreements with West Germany, Spain, and Argentina, French‐Italian co‐productions continued to account for the majority of such activity, and by the early 1960s, French co‐productions outnumbered purely domestic films. By the end of the 1950s, the Netherlands, Hungary, Sweden, and Denmark joined the countries listed above (Jackel 2003, p. 239). The expansion of co‐production networks within Europe anticipated the broader sphere of cooperation inaugurated by the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Jackel (2003, p. 239)

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cites the director of the Italian Producers Federation who suggested in 1957 that co‐productions were a step toward the creation of a single European cinema. The positive cultural externalities that emerged from French‐Italian collaborations seemed to support such thinking: they were far less conservative than the prevailing tone of, for example, French cinema and avoided the “overtones of ‘Bourgeois taste’ and ‘an elitist (high) culture’ usually associated with European culture” (Jackel 2003, p. 240). Furthermore, French and Italian creative staff developed ongoing relationships that forged lasting connections between the two industries. Although more numerous than generally understood, co‐productions across the Iron Curtain were far from common. Russian production had declined during the Second World War as the key production centers of Moscow and Leningrad had come under prolonged attack. Furthermore, as strictures associated with Soviet Realism increased in the post‐war period, the pioneers of the 1920s essentially ceased production: Eisenstein’s projected trilogy on Ivan the Terrible saw its second part suppressed and the director died (in 1948) before he could commence the third part. Overall production declined and those films made operated within tight strictures and were characterized by a repetitive uniformity of style. By the early 1950s, even the party leadership began to complain about the blandness of Soviet film output. Stalin’s death in 1953 led to some relaxation of strictures. Though still characterized by an emphasis on patriotism and faith in ­charismatic leaders, the films of the mid to late 1950s “moved beyond the stern puritanism of earlier party dogma” (Thompson and Bordwell 1994, p. 471). Iordanova (2003) notes that although in the broader Soviet sphere of influence, post‐ war development in the Eastern bloc was largely “dictated by Soviet Policies in the spheres of economics and culture” (p. 20), filmmakers within client states enjoyed greater liberty than might have been anticipated. For the most part, directors in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia were able to evade the textual dictates of Soviet Realism with its emphasis on depictions of the inevitability of a perfect communist state (Iordanova 2003, p. 38) and to concentrate, instead, on producing works of social realism. In some respects, Eastern European directors enjoyed freedoms unavailable to their western counterparts. In a system within which the state monopolized production, distribution and exhibition, filmmakers did not have to think whether or not a script was commercially viable. This is not to suggest that populist film‐making was unknown to filmmakers in these three states. Iordanova (2003) points to the existence of a thriving but understudied popular culture within the Eastern bloc. Still, there was greater emphasis on auteur‐led work, based around the film units associated with the major production centers, such as Deutsche Film‐Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) in East Berlin or the Barrandov facility in Prague. If relatively unconcerned with mammon, Eastern European filmmakers under communism were nonetheless acutely aware of the guiding hand of politicians who, on occasion, took a direct interest in production. Iordanova (2003) (citing Haraszty) points out that “under state socialism there was nothing beyond the state. Thus, if the artist rejected the socialist state, he would not have access to any other creative possibilities” (p. 34). Though this encouraged the production of politically safe work, criticism of the state was not out of the question. Iordanova (2003) argues that only “doubts of the pure and genuinely humane intentions of the socialist enterprise” (p. 34) were completely off limits. Until the collapse of the Eastern bloc in the late 1980s, filmmakers there could at least rely on a fairly predictable source of state funding. The same was less true for the rest of Europe where, the emergence of some post‐war state aid schemes notwithstanding, box‐office revenues still played a key role as a source of finance. However, as in the



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United States, increased suburbanization and private home ownership led to increased consumption of domestic media (notably television), undermining cinema attendance. Between 1960 and 1992, attendances in the European Union (EU) 12 (except Luxembourg) fell by an average of 80%. Inevitably, cinemas began to close: there were 40% fewer screens across western Europe in 1992 than in 1960. The metric for cinema closures, in fact, was far higher because the trends were disguised by the advent of ­multiple screen cinemas (MEDIA Salles 1994, p. 8).

­From State Aid to Supranational Regulation Although by the 1980s, television became a source of funding for film production (­perhaps most notably in France where new commercial players such as Canal Plus were mandated by the state to invest in film production), other measures were necessary to maintain production levels in the interim. In the United Kingdom, the Eady levy a tax on cinema tickets was introduced in 1950. However it did not directly support ­production. Although 50% of it went to UK producers in proportion to their domestic box‐office takings, they were not obliged to re‐invest these monies in further productions. The same was not true of France where then Minister for Culture André Malraux introduced two parallel support schemes for film production (again funded by a box‐ office levy) in 1959. The first scheme was “automatic” in that it paid French producers a bonus directly related to the performance of their films in national cinemas in the previous year. The second was the Avances Sur Recettes selective mechanism. Avance Sur Recettes saw “colleges” made up of prominent cultural figures identify projects considered worthy of support. These projects were then offered “soft” loans (i.e. where the prospect of repayment was, especially after the 1960s, distant). Other countries also adopted automatic mechanisms, even if selective schemes became far more prevalent. Spain introduced both automatic and selective schemes in the 1960s, followed by Germany where Projekt (selective) aid commenced in 1974. In Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland, selective schemes administered by their national film institutes were introduced in the 1960s and 1970s (Denmark and Sweden also adopted smaller automatic schemes). By the late 1970s, state support mechanisms were so common as to convince the Irish state, then taking its first tentative steps in supporting film production, that such schemes were prerequisites for a sustainable audiovisual sector. Having long been used as a location for international feature productions, in 1981, Ireland would establish a Film Board that initially concentrated on supporting indigenous productions (Flynn and Tracy 2016). The net effect of such schemes was to stem the decline in production levels, even if it was asserted that the “cultural czars” who populated selection committees tended to favor texts reflecting a more rarified cultural air, and that such schemes reduced the incentive for producers to concentrate on more crowd‐pleasing (i.e. market‐driven) texts (Dale 1997). Starting in the 1990s, state‐funded support schemes became harder to sustain as the regulatory purview of the EU, formerly the European Economic Community (EEC), expanded. Although the initial structure of the EEC limited the European Commission’s scope for intervention in the cultural field, a series of treaty expansions and European Court of Justice rulings in the 1980s gradually brought the audiovisual sector under the Commission’s purview. Article 151 of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty enjoined the EU to contribute to the “flowering” of cultures with the member states. Conversely, EU competition law, as applied to the selective schemes referred to

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above, sought to curtail public funding of private cultural production on the grounds that it interfered with the operation of the free market. This ambivalence toward cultural commodities within the EU was tested by the remarkable dispute between the EU (led by France) and the United States in the closing weeks of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) talks in 1993. Having spent seven years teasing out an agreement, largely focused on agricultural subsidies, the entire negotiation was nearly derailed by a dispute over audiovisual markets. Specifically, the United States and EU disagreed over whether such industries should be made subject to the agreement’s anti‐protectionism provisions. If they were, established content production powerhouses in the United States would enjoy even greater access to global audiovisual markets. The apparent willingness on both sides of the dispute to abandon the entire agreement rather than concede reflected the increasing economic significance of the media content industries, including film. As the head of the French film marketing body, Daniel Toscan du Plantier, noted, cinema was no longer the side salad in world commerce: “Now, it’s the beef” (cited by Miller 1996, p. 74). The European refusal to apply the same principles to cinema as to manufactured goods, was based on the invocation of the French idea of the “L’Exception Culturelle,” the notion that as a repository of national culture, cinema could not be treated as a “normal” commodity (Buchsbaum 2006). Eventually, both the United States and Europe agreed to disagree, and withdrew any audiovisual‐related commitments from the final text of the agreement. Nonetheless, it was understood that this battle would be rejoined under the auspices of the GATT successor, the World Trade Organization (Miller 1996, p. 80). Although, in practice, this largely failed to occur, there were other significant developments within European cinema in the interim. On the one hand, the EU and the Council of Europe sought to address the structural difficulties of the European film industry by incentivizing the networking of European production, exhibition and, in particular, distribution through their MEDIA/Creative Europe and Eurimages schemes. In the decade after 2007, Eurimages spent over €200 million to encourage European co‐production. For its part, the 2014–2020 budget for the Creative Europe program was just shy of €1.5 billion. This clearly pointed to an intent to construct a European content industry capable of challenging US dominance. Doyle (2014) demonstrates how “dominance” is the appropriate term noting that by 2012, the EU’s audiovisual trade deficit (including film and television) amounted to six to seven billion US dollars per annum, while up to 70% of cinema tickets sold in EU member states were for US films. At the same time, the ongoing quest for production efficiencies, facilitated by Castells’ (1996) network economy, has ensured that European production has become a key location for Hollywood‐funded production activity. While national schemes seek to sustain local production through state subsidy, European states also actively compete to attract “runaway” productions, especially those from Hollywood, by ensuring that local production incentives operate in the interests of large‐scale, overseas projects. Thus Star Wars VIII (The Last Jedi) could use Pinewood Studios outside London and shoot in European locations as far flung as Dubrovnik in Croatia and the west coast of Ireland. This peculiar form of integration, with European nations locked in a dependent relationship with US studios, reduces the likelihood of a repeat of the 1993 audiovisual trade conflict between the United States and Europe. For a latecomer to the sector like Ireland, to adopt a defensive stance against a US industry that has brought Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, Reign of Fire, and The Tudors (along with associated expenditures and employment) to its shores, would be self‐defeating. The question is whether such interrelationships leave intact the idea of European cinema as a discreet entity in the twenty‐ first century.



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­References Abel, R. (1994). The Cinema Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896–1914. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Bakker, G. (2005). The decline and fall of the European film industry: sunk costs, market size and market structure, 1890–1927. Economic History Review 58: 310–351. Accessed 19 January 2019. www.jstor.org.dcu.idm.oclc.org/stable/3698694. Buchsbaum, J. (2006). “The exception culturelle is dead” long live diversity: French cinema and the new resistance. Framework 47: 5–21. Accessed 19 January 2019. www.jstor.org.dcu.idm. oclc.org/stable/41552445. Caprotti, F. (2005). Information management and fascist identity: newsreels in fascist Italy. Media History 11: 177–191. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688800500323899. Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Dale, M. (1997). The Movie Game: The Film Business in Britain, Europe and America. London: Cassell. Danan, M. (2002). From a ‘Prenational’ to a ‘Postnational’ French cinema. In: The European Cinema Reader (ed. C. Fowler), 232–245. London: Routledge. Doyle, G. (2014). Audiovisual trade and policy. In: Trade Policy in Asia: Higher Education and Media Service (ed. C. Findlay, H.K. Nordas and G. Pasadillo), 201–333. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Flynn, R. and Tracy, T. (2016). Quantifying national cinema: a case study of the Irish film board 1993–2013. Film Studies 14: 32–53. https://doi.org/10.7227/FS.14.0003. Guback, T. (1969). The International Film Industry: Western Europe and America Since 1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hall, P. (1998). Cities in Civilization. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Hayward, S. (2005). French National Cinema, 2e. London: Routledge. Iordanova, D. (2003). Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film. London: Wallflower Press. Jackel, A. (2003). Dual nationality film productions in Europe after 1945. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 23: 231–242. Jeanval, H. (1911). Watching the pictures. The Moving Picture News (18 March 1911), p. 13. Kreimeier, K. (1999). The UFA Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company 1918–1945. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. MEDIA Salles (1992). The White Book of the European Exhibition Industry, vol. 1. Milan: Mediasalles. Miller, T. (1996). The crime of Monsieur Lang: GATT, the screen and the new international division of cultural labour. In: Film Policy (ed. A. Moran). London: Routledge. Mottram, R. (1988). The great northern film company: Nordisk film in the American motion picture market. Film History 2: 71–86. Accessed 19 January 2019. www.jstor.org.dcu.idm. oclc.org/stable/3814950. Sedgewick, J. (1994). The market for feature films in Britain, 1934: a viable national cinema. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 14: 15–36. Spehr, P. (2008). The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Thompson, K. (1985). Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market 1907–1934. London: BFI. Thompson, K. (1999). The rise and fall of film Europe. In: “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange 1920–1939 (ed. A. Higson and R. Maltby). Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Thompson, K. and Bordwell, D. (1994). Film History: An Introduction. New York: McGraw‐Hill. Thorsen, I. (2010). Nordisk films Kompagni will now become the biggest in the world. Film History 22: 463–478. Accessed 19 January 2019. www.jstor.org.dcu.idm.oclc.org/stable/ 10.2979/filmhistory.2010.22.4.463. Ulff‐Moller, J. (1998). The origin of the French film quota policy controlling the import of American films. Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television 18: 167–182.

4

Organizing a New Medium

The Emergence of Radio Broadcasting in Europe Klaus Arnold, Nelson Ribeiro, Barbara Köpplová, and Jan Cebe

­Introduction Dance music and operas, sketches and radio plays, educational talks and news reports: Radio was the first medium that brought such a sweeping mixture of content in a continuous stream directly into the listeners’ living rooms. After a hard day’s work, it was not necessary anymore to pull oneself together to go to a dance hall or a theater, to read a book or a newspaper, one could just put on the radio, sit in one’s favorite armchair, listen to the program and enjoy an imaginary “theater in one’s head.” Radio was an attractive medium in its early years, and due to it changing function to a background‐medium in later years, it survived the age of television and is still successful in the internet era. This chapter looks at the emergence of radio broadcasting in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. The aim is to show what main factors influenced the institutionalization of broadcast radio and to analyze commonalities and differences in this process. Questions are as follows. How relevant were powerful actors like state bureaucracies, governments or economic groups? What were their objectives? What did the different audiences expect? Were there influences from other countries? Another aim is to compare the results of this process. How was radio broadcasting organized? What about state control and financing? What characterized the early programs? Here, we follow roughly the idea of the pragmatic difference‐approach (Blum 2014, pp. 294–397) that includes factors such as political systems, state control, media ownership, media financing, and journalism culture to differentiate media systems over an extended period of time. Of course, we only included factors that were relevant in their specific historical contexts. Another important point in differentiating developments in different countries is based on the ideas of Brecht (1967, pp. 119–134). In 1927 and 1932, he criticized the undemocratic character of radio broadcasting and urged for a more controversial, political, and diverse program, which culminated in the famous claim: “Change the apparatus from distribution to communication” (Brecht 1967, p. 129). This was a utopian or revolutionary idea but The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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an important one pointing to the question whether political programs were to some extent critical of state elites or the government, or mainly their instrument. Four countries, namely Great Britain, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Portugal were selected as case studies, while other countries are discussed in brief. Since state authorities played a prominent role in the establishment of broadcast radio in Europe, countries that underwent different political developments during this time period were chosen. Other criteria were geography, country size, the relevance of the national radio industry, and the time when the first regular radio broadcast went on air. Britain is maybe the most important country in European Radio History. The BBC was the first broadcaster, and it served as a model for other countries. Britain enjoyed a relatively stable democracy in those years, and, like Germany, it was home to a powerful radio industry. After its defeat in World War I, Germany went through an economic and political crisis, and in 1933 the National Socialists came to power. Radio broadcasting was introduced early but later than in Britain. The smaller countries of Czechoslovakia and Portugal had no large radio industry, and radio, especially in Portugal, started rather late. After the war Czechoslovakia was a newly formed state without a long democratic or national tradition, and in Portugal democracy was eroded in the 1920s and in 1933 when António de Oliveira Salazar founded the Estado Novo (New State), a conservative‐authoritarian dictatorship.

­Inventions, Technical Progress and the Radio Boom in the United States The process leading to the emergence of a new medium, usually begins with a diffuse field of discoveries in the natural sciences, and with technological inventions. Inventions are then being spread via personal contacts and professional journals; they can be combined and developed further. Often, already existing media and their usage give ideas on what to do with the new technology. However, technological developments also have to meet with economic interests, while public discussions about possible applications, and political and societal support are other decisive factors (Hickethier 2003). Important discoveries and inventions for the development of wireless transmissions were made in the nineteenth century, most prominently the discovery of electromagnetic waves that were described in theory by James Clerk Maxwell in 1865 and demonstrated experimentally by Heinrich Hertz 1888. In the years to follow, technology advanced rapidly due to the communication network of the European science community. Around 1900, Guglielmo Marconi combined and improved existing devices and was able to build an applicable apparatus. Since a wireless transmission of signals was especially useful at sea, Marconi’s Britain‐based company was successful in building a communication system for steamship companies, and for navies. Because Britain already had an international submarine cable monopoly, other countries like Germany were afraid of a worldwide British monopoly and started to build their own systems mostly for military services (Douglas 1987; Lerg 1980, pp. 31–37; Winston 1998, pp. 67–74). Early wireless systems only could transfer discrete signals like the Morse code. But during World War I and in the following years, the technology needed for transmitting and receiving continuous signals, like sound or music, developed rapidly and wireless telephony, and then radio broadcasting became possible. During the war, the military took control over the wireless that quickly became an important instrument in warfare (Briggs 1995a, pp. 33–36; Douglas 1987; Lerg 1980, p. 37). Many soldiers became



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familiar with radio telegraphy or even telephony and were enthusiastic radio amateurs in the years after the war. Amateurs generally played an important role in broadcasting history: when more and more amateurs showed interest in receiving or transmitting sound and music, large wireless companies began to realize the full potential of wireless communication. Not only did it allow for point‐to‐point communication but more so, many people could receive the signals of one sender. After the start of the first regular radio program on 2 November 1920 in Pittsburgh, a radio boom started in the United States that reached its peak in 1922. Large companies such as General Electric, AT&T, or the successor of the US branch of Marconi, Radio Corporation of America, set up broadcasting stations, and produced transmitters and receivers (Briggs 1995a, pp. 23–63; Douglas 1987; Lerg 1980, p. 37).

­Striving for Independence: The BBC in Great Britain In Britain, as in many other countries, cable and wireless communication was controlled by the Post Office, a governmental body headed by the postmaster general, a government minister. In 1920, the Post Office allowed the Marconi Company to run experimental telephony transmissions. While Marconi aimed to broadcast programs, governmental authorities primarily thought of radio telephony. The first broadcasts were criticized as frivolous interferences to important communication. Protests from military forces soon led to a ban of these first experiments but due to responding protests of radio amateurs, the pressure of Marconi, and the US radio boom, the Post Office acknowledged that radio broadcasting differed from telephony. In 1922, Marconi and other companies launched regular experimental programs (Briggs 1995a, pp. 40–82; Crisell 1997, pp. 12–13; Pegg 1983, pp. 70–72). Since the number of wavelengths was limited, and officials were afraid of a “chaos in the ether” (Briggs 1995a, p. 59) similar to that in the United States caused by insufficient regulations, the Post Office invited British wireless manufacturers to form a broadcasting syndicate. The manufacturers were to provide broadcasts to boost their sales of receivers, and the government was to protect them from outside competition. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) started to broadcast in November 1922 and was led by a non‐affiliated chairman and a board of eight directors who represented the six leading British manufacturers and smaller companies. The BBC was financed by a royalty on the sale of radio receivers, and a share of the license fee collected by the Post Office. The engineer John Reith was appointed general manager, and he became the domineering figure in early British broadcasting. Although the original BBC was a company, Reith regarded it a public institution and wanted it to be as free as possible from interference by both business and government. However, controversial political programs were declared undesirable by the postmaster general, and since newspapers and news agencies feared competition, the BBC was only allowed to broadcast one daily news summary provided by the agencies (Briggs 1995a, pp. 83–180; Crisell 1997, pp. 12–15; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 24–31). During the first years, one station was established in London accompanied by several regional and smaller relay stations across the country. While the regional stations produced more extensive local programs, the relay stations were directly linked to London and offered only very limited local content. To reach less populated areas, a high‐power longwave broadcasting station was established in 1925 (Briggs 1995a, pp. 180–205; Crisell 1997, p. 15; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 304–318).

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An official inquiry into broadcasting by the so‐called Sykes Committee at the end of the first licensing period brought some changes in the financing modus in 1924. Because many amateurs built their own sets without paying royalties, and because of a press campaign that contested the monopolistic system, the financing scheme via royalties was abandoned, and the BBC received a larger share of the license fees. Moreover, the market was opened for the import of receiving sets (Briggs 1995a, pp. 131–180). Since the Sykes report recommended the extension of the broadcasting license for only two years, another committee was set up in 1925. By then, there was a broad consensus that broadcasting should be run by a single authority subject to public control. Post Office officials envisioned the BBC an independent corporation with a representative governing body, and the recommendations of the committee followed this idea. Reith, on the other hand, aimed for more freedom to cover political issues. But before the government could decide upon the recommendations, a major crisis arose that turned into a serious trial for the BBC (Briggs 1995a, pp. 131–180; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 31–32). In May 1926, the trade unions called a general strike. Since most of the press was affected, restrictions concerning BBC news were lifted, and it now informed the public with several news bulletins a day. With its strike reports, the BBC faced a dilemma. If perceived as supporting the strikers, the government would tighten its control over radio broadcasting; if perceived as being too much in favor of the government position, it might lose its credibility among strikers and workers. The BBC generally supported the government and suppressed information that would encourage a spread of the strike: “It explained what was happening and what citizens could do, but not why the strike came about” (Crisell 1997, p. 19). The BBC went on to define itself as an independent public institution demonstrating the power of radio as a fast news medium (Briggs 1995a, pp. 329–351; Crisell 1997, pp. 18–19; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 32–34). In January 1927, the BBC became the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was established by Royal Charter, that gave it a somewhat independent status. The BBC was controlled by a board of governors and led by Director General Reith who answered to the board. It was obliged to inform, educate, and entertain, and to provide political balance. Though financed by license fees, the BBC was not completely independent from the government: The state appointed the governors, determined the cost of the license fee, and it granted the broadcasting license only for a limited period of time. While the charter recognized the right of the BBC to disseminate its own news, the Corporation was not allowed to send editorial comments. Initially there was also a ban on controversial programs that was eventually lifted two years later (Briggs 1995a, pp. 318–329; Crisell 1997, p. 22; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 34–38). The following years were characterized by the expansion and centralization of BBC programs. By 1930, a national program was transmitted from London, and, gradually, a second regional program broadcasting from five centers across Britain was launched. The regional programs were partly provided by London, partly produced by regional stations. Aside from regional aspects and differences, both programs offered more or less the same program mix (Briggs 1995b, pp. 25–53; Crisell 1997, pp. 15–16; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 318–332). In 1927, the BBC started experimental transmissions to countries of the British Empire, and in 1932, it launched a regular Empire Service (Briggs 1995b, pp. 342–380). Concerning its reception among the general population, radio broadcasting soon became popular. While in 1922 there had been only 35,000 licensed receivers, by 1924 this number had jumped to more than 1 million, by 1926 to 2 million, and in 1932, there were 4.7 million license‐holders. Weighted against population size, the diffusion of



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radio in Britain was second in Europe, next to Denmark (Briggs 1995a, p. 17; Lerg 1980, p. 526). Since it was possible to receive radio programs with a cheap and simple receiver if in close reach of a transmitter (otherwise it required a more expensive device), radio listening was more common in urban areas and among people with higher incomes (Pegg 1983, pp. 6–48). Prices for wireless sets decreased sharply in the 1930s, and by the end of the decade, three‐quarters of British households owned a radio. Non‐listeners were either very poor or lived in remote areas (Briggs 1995b, pp. 235–237; Scannell and Cardiff, 1991, pp. 362–365). Since the BBC was a non‐commercial institution, audience research had no priority and did not start until 1936. Early surveys suggested that listeners preferred variety and light entertaining music, while classical music was rather unpopular (Briggs 1995b, pp. 238–260; Pegg 1983, pp. 100–146; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 375–380). In contrast to audience preferences, radio managers aimed to produce sophisticated ­programs that were to bring “high culture” to listeners integrating British society socially and geographically (Briggs 1995b, pp. 36–37). According to Hajkowski (2010), the BBC promoted the empire and the monarchy as decisive elements of British identity. In 1929, entertainment had a share of about 45%, classical music and literary programs made up about 25% of the programs, while news and other spoken‐word programs made up about 30% of the broadcasting time. With two programs in 1930, national programs consisted more of the spoken word than music compared to regional programs (Briggs 1995b, pp. 34–35). Thus, in spite of the cultural aims, large parts of the program ­consisted of light popular and dance music, revues, and vaudeville programs. Outside broadcasting was used mostly for sports transmissions; later, also state rituals or royal ceremonies were broadcast (Briggs 1995b, pp. 71–113; Crisell 1997, pp. 31–35; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 282–286). The BBC overcame the restrictions concerning news broadcasting only gradually. From 1930 onwards, the BBC edited news independently, and in 1935, a news section was established. It was not until the outbreak of World War II that the BBC was allowed to broadcast news before 6:00 p.m. (Briggs 1995b, pp. 142–149; Crisell 1997, pp.  26–27). Controversial talks and scripted discussions had been broadcast since 1928, and later, the BBC also experimented with live discussions. By the mid‐1930s, however, talks became increasingly controversial touching upon topical political or social questions, which led again to a reduction of these kinds of talks (Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 153–178). Talks by politicians during and outside of election times were also part of the schedule. A fixed rota ensured balanced political programs. Additionally, the prime minister could talk about matters of national interest at any time, and the ministers of state could explain government policies or talk about newly enacted state legislation. In many cases, the government and party leaders decided about the speakers or even the topics. These arrangements, thus, gave the government the best position in political broadcasting, and, especially in times of crises, the government manipulated the news to its own advantage (Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 39–56). The BBC, furthermore, offered an increasingly wide repertoire of plays, and in the late 1920s, a new form, the feature, was developed. Combining different elements such as news, outside broadcasts, and drama, it blended fact and fiction (Briggs 1995b, pp. 149–158; Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 134–152). Mainly in reaction to the competition of commercial broadcasters from continental Europe, especially from Radio Luxembourg, programming became more popular in the second half of the 1930s. The BBC began to invest more in variety programs and light drama, and reduced the expenditure for classical music and serious drama (Scannell and Cardiff 1991, pp. 179–273).

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­Growing Influence of the State: Radio Broadcasting in Germany Similar to Britain, cable and wireless communication in Germany was controlled by the Reichspost, the National Post Office. The key person in the early years of German radio was the engineer and former Telefunken manager Hans Bredow. In 1919, he became an assistant secretary of state responsible for the wireless within the postal administration. In 1922, two groups applied for a broadcasting license at the Reichspost. The first group, the two wireless companies Telefunken and Lorenz, aimed to install and operate radio transmitters and receivers. Following the US model, the reception of programs was to be free of charge. The funds were to be raised by the sale of receivers. The competitor, Deutsche Stunde, was a subsidiary company of a news agency that was closely connected to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Reichspost was later to become a shareholder of this company guaranteeing the influence of the state. Deutsche Stunde aimed to produce a radio program that was to be transmitted to audiences in cinemas and theaters (Saalfunk), and was financed by entrance fees (Dussel 2004, pp. 26–29; Lerg 1980, pp. 45–67). Since revolutionary uprisings in Germany after the war had shown that the wireless could be used as a communication instrument by extremist groups, and because the situation in the United States was perceived as chaotic, the Reichspost was skeptical about the Telefunken‐Lorenz plan. Fearing the loss of state influence, the plan of Deutsche Stunde was more attractive to the Reichspost because of its central role in it. However, due to technical problems, the Saalfunk‐concept was given up, and Deutsche Stunde, as a kind of holding company, began to establish regional stations in joint venture with private investors (Dussel 2004, pp. 22–25; Lerg 1980, pp. 38–81). Realizing that radio could transmit political programs, Bredow became concerned with the responsibility of broadcasting newscasts and contacted the Ministry of Interior at the end of 1922. Since the Weimar Republic was a somewhat unstable state, the Ministry of the Interior was highly interested in having influence on news programs. In 1923, liberal politicians, mostly social democrats, and an officer from the Ministry of the Interior founded a corporation for the promotion of democratic values. Later, this company was renamed Dradag (Drahtloser Dienst AG), and despite its pluralistic board of directors, it was mainly controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. In the years that followed, this corporation was exclusively responsible for political news broadcasts that had to be neutral and unbiased (Halefeldt 1997, pp. 114–123; Lerg 1980, pp. 82–93, 289–303). In October 1923, the first regional broadcaster started to put out a regular program in Berlin. In 1924, other regional broadcasters followed, and in 1926, Deutsche Welle, as a joint enterprise of regional broadcasters, began to send a nationwide program with a focus on education. In 1925, the Post Office established the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG) as a parent company for regional broadcasters. The Post Office held 51% of the shares, and the RRG had the majority of voting rights in the nine regional companies. Bredow became the chairman of the board of directors representing the Post Office in shareholder meetings. Deutsche Stunde had lost its function and was dissolved. The share of private investors in regional companies was limited to 49% (Führer 1997, pp. 17–23; Lerg 1980, pp. 148–270). Since also the claims of the German substates had to be taken into account, they were allocated seats on the board of Dradag and had the majority of seats in the Überwachungssauschüsse and Kulturausschüsse, two committees that supervised the political and cultural programs (but not the news that was produced by Dradag) (Halefeldt 1997, pp. 102–245; Wittenbrink 1997, pp. 246–277).



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When the broadcasting companies were officially licensed in 1926, the technical, organizational, and economical aspects of radio broadcasting was controlled by the Reichspost, political programming by the Ministry of the Interior, and the German provinces. Programs were mainly financed by license fees. In an unstable political situation with fast changing administrations, the establishment of radio broadcasting lay mainly in the hands of the state bureaucracy (Lerg 1980, pp. 67–70, 267). During the last years of the Weimar Republic, the government, having lost the support of parliament, could only govern with the help of the President of the Reich, and mobilizing support via mass media became more important. This might have been the main reason why the administration of Franz von Papen, who came into power in 1932, tightened the grip on broadcasting. First came the introduction of a regular program that allowed the members of the administration to speak directly to the audience. Soon, however, the whole system was reorganized. Private shareholders were driven out, and radio was completely controlled by the Reich and its provinces (Dussel 2004, pp. 74–79; Lerg 1980, pp. 438–524). When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the already nationalized broadcast radio system was an easy prey. The Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, became responsible for radio broadcasting. Under the National Socialist regime, educational and high culture programs decreased in number, and stations offered a mix of popular entertainment and political propaganda. International broadcasting was expanded and became a propaganda instrument (Diller 1980; Dussel 2004, pp. 81–119). After the launch of broadcast radio, radio receivers sold very well, and Germany became the world’s largest manufacturer of radio equipment after the United States (Führer 1997, pp. 35–45). In 1924, there were 1,580 registered radio receivers, by 1926 1 million, and by 1932, 4 million. In Europe, Germany came in second place after Britain. However, if compared to population size, Germany only ranked sixth (Führer 1997, pp. 95–99; Lerg 1980, pp. 524–527). Most of the early radio listeners lived in urban areas and had a higher income (Führer 1997, pp. 55–60). During the first years after the war, amateur listening was also quite common. However, state officials were suspicious of the amateurs and were afraid that they might incite revolution. Thus, regulations were harsh and included serious threats of punishment for unregistered radio amateurs (Lerg 1980, pp. 93–107; Pohle 1955, pp. 25–26). Findings of early audience research in the 1920s and 1930s show that listeners preferred popular music, entertaining evening programs, radio drama, and news and service information. Educational programs and classical music were not among the favorites (Bessler 1980, pp. 17–33). In contrast to this, officials and radio directors envisioned radio as a cultural and educational tool to help integrate a war‐torn nation. It had not been foreseen that large parts of the audience wanted entertainment programming (Dussel 2004, pp. 51–53). Early programs consisted of a few hours only but airtime was soon extended. Based on a statistical analysis of four regional programs, in 1929, entertainment content had a share of 35–40%. Talks and educational programs were somewhat important during the first years; they comprised around 15% in 1929, but their share declined over time. At the same time, news, sports, and service programs made up 20%, while target programs, for example for children or women, had a share of 10%, and classical music or literary programs accounted for 15–20% (Schumacher 1997a, p. 383). During prime time in the evenings, however, talks and classical music were quite prominent especially in the earlier years (Dussel 2002, pp. 133–175). According to Dussel (2002) radio programming became more entertaining but also more political over the years (pp. 173–175).

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The Dradag newscasts in the late 1920s were broadcast three times a day. Additionally, radio stations provided business, agricultural, and local news. Outside broadcasts were mostly concerned with sporting events, national commemorations, or celebrations. While political talks or comments had been rather rare in the early years, this changed around 1927 and 1928, when the Deutsche Welle launched a series of controversial talks. Other stations aired similar programs. Members of the state or the provincial governments could speak on the radio whenever they thought necessary as it was assumed that they represented national non‐partisan interests. During elections, speeches of party politicians were broadcasted sometimes, and sometimes not, a decision that was up to the governments. Government speeches and announcements had been rare in the first years, but this changed in the late 1920s with an increasingly complicated political situation (Halefeldt 1997, pp. 203–212; Schumacher 1997b).

­Promoting a New State and National Identity: The Case of Czechoslovakia In 1918, one of the problems faced by the new state of Czechoslovakia was the serious damage caused by the war partly to telegraph lines that connected the state with the outside world. Radiotelegraphy was seen as a possible solution. Its development and administration were entrusted to the Ministry of Defense, and great efforts were made to catch up with those countries that were technologically most advanced in the field of the wireless. State authorities soon realized the civilian potential of the new communication technology. Thus, in 1920, the remit of the Defense Ministry was restricted to military purposes only, and the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs started to build new transmitters. A music program was broadcast twice a day for the first time in 1922 from the agricultural exhibition in Prague (Maršík 2003b). A telegraph law, passed in March 1923, imposed a state monopoly on radio broadcasting. To transmit or receive radio signals, individuals and private corporations needed a license granted jointly by the Board of Trade, and the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs ̌ (Cábelová 2003, p. 34). The only organization that obtained a broadcasting license was Radiojournal, a private company formed by two individuals (film producer Eduard ̌ Svoboda, and Miloš Ctrnáctý, an official of the Union of Czech journalists) in joint venture with the private company Radioslavia (a trust of radio vendors and manufacturers) ̌ (Cábelová 2003, pp. 36–45, 130). Radiojournal launched regular public broadcastings on 18 May 1923, using a re‐adjusted radiotelegraphic transmitter at Prague‐Kbely airport. The initial growth of the radio audience was hampered by bureaucracy, the high cost of licenses (about six weeks of average wages), and the limited range of the transmitter (Maršík 2003a). Radio broadcasts could only be received around Prague and in some parts of Central Bohemia. Radiojournal tried to overcome these obstacles by broadcasting several hours a day, publishing a radio magazine, and by installing loudspeakers at exhibitions and on public premises to promote the new medium. Radio programming was limited and consisted mainly of short blocks of classical music (chamber concerts or opera pieces), and the spoken word. The first radio reports in 1923 included weather, sports, and stock exchange news. The aim was to win new subscribers to Radiojournal mainly from business circles. In November 1923, Radiojournal violated reporting conventions by broadcasting the transcript of a radio speech by the French President Millerand before any newspapers, and in particular the state news agency Czechoslovak Press Agency (ČTK).



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The incident caused a bitter row, and the Radiojournal concession to broadcast radiotelegraphic news was withdrawn (Maršík 2003a). An agreement between Radiojournal and the press agency was reached in 1924, according to which radio news was to be provided exclusively by ČTK in future, since the latter was not willing to “give up its right to be the sole source of political and economic news within the republic” (Čábelová 2003, p. 49). Radiojournal was left with reporting on cultural news and press reviews (Maršík 2003a). Although the number of license‐holders had grown to 1,500 in 1924, the revenues of Radiojournal were low, and with the operator’s license fee having been rather high, Radiojournal struggled with severe financial problems by the end of 1924 (Čábelová 2003, p. 71; Maršík 2003a). State officials and politicians had originally little regard for the new technology and saw radio broadcasting as a mere technological curiosity. This changed as early as in 1924, when political parties started to realize the information potential of the new medium and demanded more state control over broadcasting. Some of them wanted to nationalize radio broadcasting. At the same time, Radiojournal was interested in forming a partnership with the Czechoslovak state to solve its financial problems. In 1925, the state‐owned Czech Post Office became a majority shareholder of Radiojournal and gained control of the company (Čábelová 2003, p. 51). The entry of the state into broadcast radio brought much needed funding for the construction of new transmitters not only in Prague but also in other major cities, and it allowed for a gradual decrease in license fees (Pištora 2012, p. 6; Potůček 1935). The new structure of ownership had an impact on programming as well. Besides public education, state authorities were primarily interested in promoting an independent Czechoslovakia abroad, and in forming a national identity. The advisory board of Radiojournal was to supervise the implementation of these goals but otherwise gave the broadcaster a free rein (Maršík 2003a). Radiojournal was quite inventive in introducing new formats, such as short plays, ­thematic literary, and music evenings, and live relays from theaters, concert halls, or churches. In addition to news reports, Radiojournal also transmitted readings of Czech classics or excerpts from the latest books (Maršík 2003c). Starting in 1925, Radiojournal broadcast a regular German program three times a week, which was expanded later. Broadcasters shared with state authorities a bias for “highbrow” culture, and public education but concessions to more popular tastes included concerts of dance music, vaudeville, or jazz, and, from 1926, onwards live soccer coverage (Maršík 2003c). Radio audiences grew fast in the second half of the 1920s but not as much as in the most advanced western countries. The number of license‐holders increased from 1,500 in 1924 to 174 000 in 1926, and to 472 000 in 1932. In 1933, more than 14% of the households had radio sets. The economic crises of the 1930s slowed down the speed of development, but, by 1936, there were 1 million license holders in a state with a population of 9 million people. Although radio sets became more accessible in the 1930s, their distribution among the population was uneven. Typically, members of the more educated urban middle class were most likely to own a radio set. In 1933, more than half of the radio license‐holders lived in the Prague metropolitan area, as compared to about 11% in Slovakia and only 1% in Sub‐Carpathia (Pištora 2012, p. 12). Radiojournal adapted its program schedules to the growth in audiences and strove for more diversity with specific programs targeted at women, farmers, workers, schools, and children. Pressure from listeners led to an increase in entertainment programs, such as light popular and dance music, cabarets and sports. The program of Radiojournal came to resemble the programs of countries like Germany, Denmark, or Great Britain.

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The share of music was 55%, literature 4.3%, lectures/courses 14.8%, news 12.3%, and other programs 13.4% (Potůček 1935), while audiences would likely have preferred even more light entertainment. From 1926 onwards, Radiojournal news bulletins were broadcast twice a day and included meteorological, domestic and foreign news, information on theaters and sports. The news bulletins were produced in close cooperation with the official news agency and were broadcast directly from ČTK. Separate reports on the stock exchange and the pricing of commodities were broadcast three times a day. Throughout the interwar period, radio was regarded a public service in Czechoslovakia; thus, state intervention in the service and support of the state were considered normal (Burda 1935) and not questioned by broadcasters. Their broadcasting was moderate, cultured, perhaps even high‐ minded, but rather ineffective. This proved to be a fatal flaw by the end of the 1930s, when Radiojournal had to compete with the power of radio in the service of totalitarian propaganda. Besides reaching the smaller Hungarian and Ukrainian minorities, it was crucial for Czechoslovakia to reach out to the large German ethnic group of about 3.5 million people. Resulting from technical and program limitations and the growing influence of the German nationalist movement in the 1930s, the German population preferred to tune into radio programs from Nazi Germany. Czechoslovak radio made some late attempts to enhance German‐language broadcasting and to put up a new transmitter for the border regions where most Germans lived in 1938. This transmitter aired a day‐long program in the German language, but its impact on the German minority was minimal (Čábelová 2003).

­A Dual System Controlled by the State: Radio Broadcasting in Portugal The first broadcasting stations in Portugal emerged in the 1920s due to the work of a few radio enthusiasts for whom radio was a hobby. These stations broadcasted for only a few hours per week. They were owned either by military personnel interested in wireless transmissions or by owners of appliance stores who aimed to boost the sales of radio sets by offering broadcasts produced in the neighborhood (Santos 2005). At this point, programming was not a real concern as the main aim was to improve the technical quality of transmissions. Even though a few stations started to offer regular programming during the second half of the 1920s, it took until the following decade for the first professional projects to appear on the scene. It was only in January 1930 that the Portuguese government introduced a first law intended to regulate the sector that, as in most European countries, was placed under the scrutiny of the official body also responsible for the post and telegraph. The legislative text stipulated a mixed model system in which a state broadcaster coexisted with private stations. It was the first time that the concept of a public station was formulated in an official document. However, it took another five years until this idea materialized (Ribeiro 2005). Owing to the state’s late interest in radio, the first professional broadcaster to be established was privately owned. Even though it had initially operated as an amateur station under the name Rádio Parede, in 1931, its two proprietors, Captain Jorge Botelho Moniz and Alberto Lima Basto, decided to organize a club that would allow the station to have a stable source of revenue as all members were required to pay a monthly fee.



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In November 1931, the station was renamed Rádio Clube Português (Portuguese Radio Club) at a time when the club had 800 members. In the following year, it started operating with a more powerful transmitter, and broadcasts were aired every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. On Sundays there was an additional transmission in the afternoon from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. (Ribeiro 2005). After the establishment of Salazar’s Estado Novo in 1933, Rádio Clube Português (RCP) continued to thrive. In February 1934, the Head of State General Óscar Carmona presided over a ceremony during which a new transmitter was put into operation demonstrating the regime’s support for the station that was then ruled by Captain Jorge Botelho Moniz (RCP 1965a). Moniz had been a soldier involved in the coup d’état in 1926 that had established a military dictatorship that ultimately opened the way for the establishment of the Estado Novo. In December 1934, RCP became the first Portuguese broadcaster to install a shortwave transmitter targeted at the Portuguese colonies. The project was applauded by the regime that had allocated a subsidy for RCP to develop its colonial transmissions at a time when the state broadcaster had not even initiated its regular broadcasts in mainland Portugal. Furthermore, also demonstrating the collaboration between RCP and state authorities, in 1936, RCP became the only broadcaster in the country to be given special permission to air commercials and to, therefore, initiate commercial broadcasting (RCP 1965b). During its early days, RCP aired mostly music programs, including live performances. Talks were also a common feature on the programming schedule, namely those dedicated to cinema, literature, and other arts. The station’s management envisioned radio as having a strong cultural mission and, therefore, also produced educational children’s programs along with talks and classical music. From 1935 onwards, concessions to popular taste became more frequent when RCP started to air interviews with well‐known popular artists, mostly singers, demonstrating its interest in reaching a broader audience. In the meantime, the official broadcaster Emissora Nacional had finally initiated its regular transmissions (Ribeiro 2005). This official station was inaugurated in August 1935. While this represented a direct involvement of Salazar’s regime in broadcasting, the dictator himself never showed particular interest in the new medium, and throughout the years, he rejected several requests for more significant investment in the station. Faced with the need to function on a modest budget, the first years of Emissora Nacional were marked by severe coverage problems. Even in the country’s second largest city, Porto, it was forced to establish a partnership with a local station that partially relayed its programming. Although this problem was solved in the following years, throughout the 1930s, the Head of Government and the station’s president, Captain Henrique Galvão, had different opinions on the role of the state broadcaster. Galvão, having occupied many posts in the colonies, could not conceive the idea of having an official state broadcaster that did not reach the empire. He, therefore, sketched several proposals for investments in shortwave transmitters. Salazar rejected everything as he did not understand the benefits of reaching the colonies via radio and perceived all proposals as costs, not as investments. Consequently, experimental broadcasts to the colonies only started in 1936 when a low power transmitter was set up by the station’s technicians with money saved from the Emissora Nacional’s operational budget. The reception in Africa was then very poor, which frustrated the Portuguese living in the colonies (Ribeiro 2014a). The main aims of the state broadcaster were the promotion of the Estado Novo’s ideology and the education of the masses, which implied very few concessions to popular tastes. Programming schedules mainly comprised classical music, a third of which was

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played live by the station’s orchestras and chamber ensembles. Besides making erudite music available to the masses, the educational mission also translated into pedagogical programming for children, and into talks that addressed topics ranging from hygiene to literature, religion, and history. “Feminine talks” were also frequent. Here, the role of women was portrayed in accordance to the regime’s ideology, with women having the mission to take care of the home and the children while pleasing their husbands. Other frequent topics were politics, the economy, and colonial issues. These talks presented the Estado Novo as having brought political stability and economic prosperity to Portugal and its empire, paving the way for the country’s return to glory such as the age of maritime discoveries. Although Salazar, contrary to other contemporary dictators, did not deliver speeches on the radio with the exception of very few rare occasions, Emissora Nacional reported on all official events, namely those that were designed to exalt the regime’s ideology (Ribeiro 2005). During the initial years of state broadcasting, news bulletins did not take up much airtime. They were mostly composed of information about ministers’ activities, and news stories that had been published in the press. The same can be said about RCP, and radio newscasts, in fact, only became relevant in the Portuguese context during the Spanish Civil War. Following Franco’s insurrection against the Spanish Republic, RCP became particularly involved in the transmission of news on the military events taking place in the neighboring country. Reports were aired from the front lines as the owner of the station, Captain Jorge Botelho Moniz, took part in the war as a volunteer fighting alongside the Francoist forces (Ribeiro 2014b). Emissora Nacional, being the official station, took a more discreet role due to British pressure on Portugal to remain officially neutral in the war. As well as the two major stations, other, smaller broadcasters emerged in Lisbon and Porto during the 1930s. Contrary to the former, these were popular stations that mostly gave visibility to popular culture. The third major player, Radio Renascença, only emerged in 1938. Established by a Catholic priest, its main mission was to promote Catholic values. Along with RCP and Emissora Nacional, the station became one of only three radio stations to achieve national coverage before the end of the dictatorship in 1974 (Maia 1995). Despite the lack of audience research, it can be stipulated that the number of listeners remained low in Portugal during the 1930s due to the small amount of receivers available. Radio was mostly an urban phenomenon with the district of Lisbon accounting for more than half of the receivers that existed in the whole country. In the rural areas, there were only very few possibilities for people to listen to the radio. In 1935, when only 40,409 sets were registered in the whole country, Emissora Nacional launched a campaign that enabled low‐income families to acquire radio receivers for a low price. Nevertheless, the number of sets remained low, reaching 53,656 in 1936, and 89,300 in 1939 (Ribeiro 2005). Although there certainly were a few thousand non‐registered receivers allowing their owners to avoid paying the radio license that had been established in 1933, radio listening only became a mass phenomenon after the outbreak of World War II.

­ any Monopolies and Some Alternative Models: M The Development in Other European Countries In most European countries, private capital, the radio equipment manufacturers, and amateurs were important factors in the establishment of radio broadcasting. Owing to the scarcity of wavelengths, and the relatively high initial investments required, first, to



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establish and operate a transmission system and, second, to finance attractive radio programs in a time of continuous economic crises in many countries, there was a trend to establish radio stations that held national or regional monopolies. Once state officials recognized the relevance of the new medium, the influence of the state became stronger either by a complete takeover of radio broadcasting or by the setting up of a public control system. It was expected that radio would serve the national interests, meaning that it was not to disturb the social order but was to strengthen national identity and culture. In a paternalistic way, radio was generally seen as an instrument for enlightenment and education, and, in many cases, as an instrument for state propaganda (Syvertsen 1992, pp. 35–51). Popular tastes, however, also had to be included to some extent. Especially in western and northern European countries, public broadcasters or private monopolistic broadcasters that functioned as quasi‐public radio stations were established. Usually, the government was given some leeway in influencing the program. News reports were often provided by the press or a central news agency. Controversial programs that served as a platform for oppositional political or ideological views, were, if at all, introduced carefully and rather late. Generally, the centralized BBC model served as a kind of blueprint, while the US system, with its many competing commercial stations, was regarded as chaotic and a bad example. For instance, after the Norwegian government started granting licenses to private companies in the mid‐1920s, in 1933, the parliament passed a law that established a relatively autonomous monopolistic public cooperation. There existed formal and informal ways for the government to influence broadcasting, and politically controversial programs were rather limited (Syvertsen 1992). Despite all differences, we find similar trajectory paths in Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, and Ireland (Ala‐Fossi 2005; Hanretty 2009; O’Neill 2012). In other countries, such as Sweden and Switzerland, monopolistic radio broadcasters remained in private hands. Here, the privately‐owned company was usually to some extent controlled by state officials. For example, in Switzerland, the Swiss Broadcasting Cooperation was founded in 1931 as a confederation of regional cooperatives. Transmitters were owned by the state, and state control on impartiality and neutrality in political matters was rather tight (Drack 2000; Schade 2000). A special case is Luxembourg, a small country in the center of Europe. Here, a private company with shareholders mainly from France and Luxembourg, the Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Radiodiffusion (CLR), was licensed by state authorities. Starting in 1933, this commercial broadcaster aired an entertaining multilingual program with high‐power transmitters to large parts of Western Europe (Domínguez Muller 2014a, b). In many countries, mostly in central, eastern, or southern Europe, with authoritarian governments or dictatorships, the control of radio broadcasting was stricter and exercised more directly, and, usually, a state or state‐controlled monopoly was established. For example, in Austria, radio was founded under democratic conditions in 1924, as a company governed by public shareholders. Complicated control structures were to ensure a politically neutral program. But as of 1933, Austria was governed by an authoritarian regime that used radio mainly as a propaganda tool (Ergert 1974). In other countries, the state played an important role right from the beginning: In the Soviet Union, radio broadcasting, in the context of communist propaganda, was seen as an instrument for general and political education of the working masses. After some experiments in the first half of the 1920s, broadcast radio was integrated into a system of party and state institutions that controlled and steered media content (Lovell 2015; Roth 1974). In Italy, a coordinating private company with a supervisory body was established. At first, music prevailed but as soon as the fascist regime realized the potential of

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radio broadcasting, the program became more political, speeches of fascist politicians were transmitted, and the news came from a government bureau. Later, the radio company was directly controlled by the Ministry of Propaganda (Emery 1969; Zimmermann 2007, pp. 147–152). Other countries with authoritarian structures and a rather strict control of radio broadcasting were Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, the Baltic States, and Germany (Brikše 1993; Hargitai et al. 2012; Kaszuba 2014; Katsoudas 1985; Lauk and Kaalep 1993; Simi 2010). Only in France, and with some limitations in Spain and Portugal, a dual system with private and state‐controlled broadcasters emerged. Owing to fast changes of governments in France, however, broadcasting politics were inconsistent. Commercial radio stations had aired radio programs, often without an official license, since 1922. The administration of posts and telegraphs, however, founded its own stations, and in 1933, the state system became more dominant. The state broadcasters and their information programs were supervised rather strictly by the government. Private stations were also depending on the government that handled concessions at discretion, and in some cases, private stations were owned by politicians (Schade 2000, pp. 59–67). In Spain, after an initial period of commercial broadcasting, General Franco launched a National Broadcasting Service at the height of the Civil War in 1937 to spread fascist propaganda. After the war, a system was put into place that consisted of a state broadcaster, of broadcasters controlled by the fascist movement, of institutions that supported the regime, and of several private radio stations. The news output and political information, however, were controlled by the government (Bonet 2012; Zimmermann 2007, pp. 154–158). In two countries with rather deep socio‐cultural or ethnic divides, a pluralistic broadcasting system came into existence. In the Netherlands, society was segmented vertically in religious‐ideological “pillars” (Verzuiling), that had their own social institutions. Thus, the attempt to establish a national program failed, and by 1928, five broadcasting associations were founded – four of them represented the different pillars, and only one was somewhat neutral. The technical infrastructure was, at first, financed privately but was open to the different associations. Later, the state took over the transmitters. Concerning the programming content, the associations were to a large extent independent from the state and followed the agenda of their particular “pillar” (Schade 2000, pp. 67–71). A comparable system existed also in Belgium (Noam 1991, pp. 175–176).

­Conclusion: The Dominance of the State in Early Radio Broadcasting Despite all differences, the development of early radio broadcasting followed similar patterns in many European countries. Initially, private interest groups and radio amateurs were the most important actors. They often exerted pressure on state bureaucracies to establish the technical or legal frameworks needed for radio broadcasting. Owing to technical, financial, and political reasons, broadcasting monopolies were installed in most European countries. These companies were privately owned or they were supported by private groups and state agencies. In some cases, the states took over eventually and created public monopolies. Only very few countries had a dual or pluralistic system. However, in almost all countries, state institutions played a dominant role: The state exercised influence or control via license fees, the financial basis of radio broadcasting, and often was responsible for technical facilities. It also had some impact on the programs.



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State officials and also many radio managers saw radio broadcasting as an instrument that was to serve national interests. It was to help form or strengthen a national identity, to educate the public, and to support the government and the existing political and societal system. This last point was of central importance in authoritarian states or dictatorships, where radio often became a political propaganda tool. Early radio programs in Europe bundled similar elements, such as classical music, drama, talks and educational programs, and news. Despite cultural and educational aims, popular tastes could not be ignored, and popular or dance music, and variety also became part of the programs. It seems, however, that light entertainment became more important in later years. In liberal and democratic countries, newscasts were deemed to be unbiased, and the contents of news programming were often provided by a central or official news agency. Controversial political programs and editorial comments were an issue, and only in some countries careful steps were taken for their implementation. Members of the government generally possessed the power to directly address audiences as it was assumed they worked on the basis of national interest. These restrictions and the prominent role of governments must be seen in the light of deep ideological divides, the rise of radical political movements, and international conflicts in the unruly interwar years. In consequence, the realization of the utopian ideas expressed by Brecht had little chance. It seems that all governments were afraid of radical movements. They all aimed to control radio for it to contribute to the stability of the status quo. Following Blum (2014, p. 295), we find the regulated or middle line of what he defines as being typical for totalitarian or authoritarian political systems also in democratic countries. A more liberal line in radio broadcasting in Europe did not emerge before the post‐ World War II years.

­References Ala‐Fossi, M. (2005). Saleable compromises. Quality cultures in Finnish and US commercial radio. Doctoral dissertation. University of Tampere. http://uta32‐kk.lib.helsinki.fi/bitstream/ handle/10024/67458/951‐44‐6213‐0.pdf?sequence=1 (accessed 6 February 2019). Bessler, H. (1980). Hörer‐ und Zuschauerforschung. Munich: dtv. Blum, R. (2014). Lautsprecher & Widersprecher. Ein Ansatz zum Vergleich der Mediensysteme. Cologne: von Halem. Bonet, M. (2012). Spanish radio: when digitalization meets an analog business model. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Global Radio (ed. J.A. Hendricks), 176–192. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Brecht, B. (1967). Gesammelte Werke. Bd. 18: Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst I. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Briggs, A. (1995a). The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume I: The Birth of Broadcasting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Briggs, A. (1995b). The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume II: The Golden Age of Wireless. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brikše, I. (1993). Journalism in independent Latvia during the 1920s and 1930s. In: Towards a Civic Society. The Baltic Media’s Long Road to Freedom. Perspectives on History, Ethnicity and Journalism (ed. S. Høyer, E. Lauk and P. Vihalemm), 142–154. Tartu: Nota Baltica. Burda, A. (1935). Československý rozhlas ve veřejné službě. In: Prvních deset let československého rozhlasu (ed. A. Patzaková‐Jandová), 707–719. Prague: Radiojournal. Čábelová, L. (2003). Radiojournal: rozhlasové vysílání v Čechách a na Moravě v letech 1923–1939. Prague: Karolinum.

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World War I and the Emergence of Modern Propaganda Nelson Ribeiro, Anne Schmidt, Sian Nicholas, Olga Kruglikova, and Koenraad Du Pont

­Introduction The word “propaganda” was first used in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV when establishing the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith) and was later applied to activities related to the dissemination of religious and political doctrines (Marlin 2002). Even though the word took on a negative connotation in nineteenth‐century Germany where it became associated with the terrors of the French Revolution, in most other countries, it was not until after 1918 that propaganda was first described as something negative (Dipper 1984). From then on, the term was associated with “the management of opinions and attitudes by the direct manipulation of social suggestion” (Lasswell 1927, p. 9). This connotation was a result of the communication strategies employed by the Central and Entente powers during the Great War, when propaganda was used in an organized and systematic fashion for the first time. To get a comprehensive understanding of how propaganda became a significant factor in the Great War, we have to keep in mind several interconnected developments that took place at the dawn of the twentieth century. The rise of mass society was accompanied by a spectacular increase in the flow of information, which came in the wake of technological advances in land and sea communications, the invention of the telegraph, and the birth of news agencies (Mattelart 1996). Thanks to the introduction of these new means of communication, it became possible to reach large groups of people with the same message. The press, a well‐established medium in many European countries and in North America, assumed a central role in the dissemination of war news, as did photography and film. The importance of communicating information to large numbers of people was a consequence of the fact that the military conflict between 1914 and 1918 was the first modern “total war” for which entire populations were mobilized. In the warring nations, citizens were involved in one way or another, either on the front lines or behind them. They fought in the trenches, raised money, and worked in the factories that produced The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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supplies for the troops. This created a significant demand for news and led governments to reach out and mobilize their citizens to act in order to ensure that morale remained high. As a consequence, propaganda became a widespread phenomenon that reached “both the man in the street and the man in the study” (Lasswell 1938, p. v). In most countries, the concept of propaganda was used for most of the war without the negative connotation it acquired after 1918. Hence, in this chapter the term is used to refer to the communication strategies employed by the belligerent powers to mold people’s perceptions of the war. The chapter focuses on the production and distribution of propaganda throughout the war, targeted at both domestic and foreign audiences. It takes a special look at the coordinating bodies set up in the different countries to ensure that propaganda remained uniform. Since it is impossible to cover the whole range of propaganda activities that took place during the war, the chapter primarily focuses on the Central power Germany and the Allied power Great Britain. However, it also addresses the Russian, French, and Belgian propaganda efforts, their various shortcomings, and the phenomenon of trench journals, a new form of print media developed during the Great War.

­ erman War Propaganda: Conflicting Views G on the Use of Traditional and ‘New’ Media On the eve of the Great War, the German Empire already had multiple communications bureaus (Nachrichtenbüros) responsible for coordinating strategic political communications. New civilian and military communications bureaus were established during the first months of the war. Their task was to coordinate the state’s efforts to influence and guide the press, which primarily consisted of recommending content to a select group of newspaper journalists. Simultaneously, the official bodies sought to control and guide the countless semi‐official and private efforts to influence public opinion. These included, among other things, commercial advertising, postcard publishing, trinket manufacturing, donation campaigns, lecture cycles and film viewings, theatrical productions and war‐themed exhibitions, war novels and poems, and the publication of exhortations and brochures. Lastly, several censorship offices were established. Officially, only military – as opposed to political – censorship existed in Germany during the war. Nevertheless, civilian and military decision‐makers often made liberal use of their new powers to suppress unwanted debate (Koszyk 1968; Deist 1991; Ther 2014). After it became clear that the war was going to last longer than expected, new central military institutions were established in Berlin. These had the twofold purpose of coordinating the strategic political communication efforts of the plethora of involved institutions and of ensuring an efficient execution of official censorship and media policies. Strategic political communications were intensified in the wake of the transfer of power to the Third High Command in the summer of 1916, which involved a drastic shift of governmental authority to the German military. New institutions run by the military were founded, some of which received exceptional resources. These new institutions were no longer primarily focused on conventional press and censorship policies. Instead, they went on the offensive, deploying more aggressive methods to mold public opinion and making heavier use of new, primarily visual forms of mass media (Deist 1991; Welch 2000; Schmidt 2006). The organizing of German strategic political communications outside the Empire was just as opaque as its domestic counterpart. At first, they focused less on enemy and more



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on neutral states. They were preferably to be won over as allies, and if not, at least kept from joining the war on the side of the Allies. Concrete measures included the dissemination of books, brochures, pamphlets, photographs, and films, the organization of art exhibitions, theatrical and revue productions, and concerts, as well as the establishment of press agencies and the funding and founding of newspapers in various countries. In order to compensate for the loss of the transatlantic cable that had been cut by the British in August 1914, the Empire expanded a transmitter station in Nauen, Germany for strategic political communication. At the time, it was the most powerful transmitter station in the world, sending reports 24 hours a day that reached as far as Mexico and Persia. German strategic political communication efforts abroad propagated the Empire’s military superiority and its economic, cultural, and scientific capacities, and sought to justify Germany’s actions, in particular the invasion of neutral Belgium. Above all, they sought to discredit enemy states by e.g. spreading false reports and stories of horror. However, because the Empire was a belligerent power and occupying force, it quickly had to go on the defensive on moral matters (Albes 1996; Bremm 2008). During the first half of the war, the contents of the state’s strategic political communications directed at the German civilian population were primarily determined by conservative ministers and military officers. They considered themselves to be the representatives of the authoritarian state, transcending party interests. This self‐understanding informed their concrete decisions at all levels. Because they believed that the war had helped “unify” the otherwise deeply divided German people, their communications policies were aimed at preserving this very “unity” (Verhey 2000). They believed that the nation’s cohesiveness and unconditional loyalty to the monarchic state and its leadership were decisive, both for sustaining the “confident mood” of August 1914 and for achieving victory at war. These conservative policy‐makers relied on censorship to suppress all forms of undesirable communication. They frequently used drastic measures to counteract any statements perceived as endangering this unity, including any criticism of the authoritarian monarchic state and its military leadership, protests against the increasing shortages of basic goods, (party‐)political controversies, and demands to end the war. Furthermore, they aimed to shape citizens’ opinions by instructing persons of influence on how to “educate” and “inform” the population: among them were journalists, local officials like district councilors, government ministers, judges, teachers, Protestant and Catholic priests and pastors, and representatives of various political and cultural organizations. High‐ ranking state officials generally avoided making direct statements, whether in the form of speeches or official publications in newspapers and posters, because they feared this would force state representatives to address the emotions and interests of the general population. Such appeals were seen as promoting processes of democratization that would, in the long run, undermine and endanger the monarchic system of government. The conservative leadership stuck to its agenda even after social tensions broke out, and protests against material shortages, demands to end the war, and calls for political reform and increased transparency could no longer be silenced. Still, the leadership rejected the use of modern forms of strategic political communication, claiming that the German monarchy would not disseminate propaganda that followed the Allied model (Schmidt 2006). The transfer of the military command to General Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff in the summer of 1916 changed the aims of the state’s political communications significantly. These changes were not only related to the establishment of new institutions. Representatives who had long pressed for modernizing the state’s strategic political communication efforts and who were now gaining in influence succeeded,

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at least partially, in setting new standards. Direct statements by state representatives and attempts at influencing the opinions of the general population now became more common. New, primarily visual forms of mass media were used in “propaganda,” a concept that was increasingly being used for the state’s attempts to “educate” the public (Aufklärungsarbeit). The old approach of bringing “calm” and “optimism” to the population by evoking the “unity” of the Germans, underlining the superiority of the monarchic system and the cultural, social and economic capacities and military strength of the Empire, were being replaced by mobilizing the forces of anxiety, terror, and hate. Attempts were made to actively incite these emotions by deploying propaganda more aggressively. Official propaganda began depicting threatening scenarios and representations of enemy atrocities, both real and alleged, and used racist representations of soldiers and citizens of enemy states and racially idealized representations of Germans. But this new tendency in the production of official propaganda was by no means uncontroversial and became a serious matter of political debate in the German Empire during the second half of the war (Welch 2000; Schmidt 2006; Ther 2014). For example, there were heated discussions on the use of new forms of visual mass media, a controversy that demonstrates how attempts at deploying media innovations can meet strong resistance. A large number of leading conservative state officials were against the use of graphic and visual mass media in the state’s strategic political communications. They welcomed photography as a means of disseminating information because of its supposed objectivity, while the use of posters and other popular forms of advertising art was, in general, held to be just as inappropriate for the German state as the use of film. These mass media were associated with advertising and commercialization, socialist agitation, political revolution and democratic mobilization. Thus, the use of new popular media for purposes of official propaganda did not meet the approval of conservative representatives of the authoritarian state, who considered themselves to be the guardians of the nation’s culture. Concerns about the effects of certain media and anxieties over the loss of control played a role as well. In contrast to oral and written communications, which supposedly calmed recipients and appealed to their understanding, it was believed that images would rile up the uneducated. And in the long run, riled‐up masses were difficult to govern and control (Schmidt 2006). Those in favor of modernizing the use of media for official propaganda purposes thought that images had a more forceful effect than the spoken or written word. Among the proponents of such modernization, high‐ranking younger military officers like Erich Ludendorff were, relatively speaking, overrepresented, though civilian authorities could be counted among their ranks too. They placed a high premium on efficiency and efficacy and often had more affinity with radical nationalism than with conservative ideologies. They emphasized that images were more effective in catching people’s attention, were easier to comprehend, and more capable of mobilizing people’s feelings. Factual information and education were hardly sufficient to make the population “persevere” (durchhalten) in the face of the demands made by the war. If the war was to be won, propaganda needed to unleash strong emotional forces, which was seen as the precondition for bringing forth and sustaining the unconditional will to victory and the total commitment to one’s country. Thus, proponents of the kind of propaganda that was, in their opinion, more adequate for the era, claimed that using more realistic images of the war’s brutality was the most efficient way to bring about perseverance and an “iron will.” They also made arguments against the reluctance to print abominating depictions of the enemy for purposes of domestic propaganda. They claimed that such images would not



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tax the nerves and sensibilities of the Germans, dampen their spirits, or undermine their self‐confidence. Brutal images would certainly evoke anxiety, terror, and hate, but, as the proponents of such propaganda argued, these powerful emotions would generate a sort of “resilience out of spite” and thus bolster the “will to victory,” common turns of phrase in the war‐charged ideology of the era. “Only strong emotions, hot blood, intense feelings and passions would be capable of making the people tough it out under such conditions.”1 Even though the proponents of modern propaganda were not always successful in their efforts during the second half of the war, the general trend of German domestic propaganda shifted to more shocking images. To give more urgency to their claims, proponents of modern propaganda pointed to the successes of propaganda employed by the Western Allies. They were convinced that much could be learned about propaganda from the efforts of enemy states, and they tried to keep up with it as much as they could. Allied propaganda that came to Germany via various channels, including neutral states, was discussed in small working groups and at large conferences (Schmidt 2006). It was not just high‐ranking officials and military officers who played a part in the controversies sketched out here, and transformations in strategic political communication were not a simple top‐down process. Countless citizens engaged in these debates, often without being asked. They discussed government agencies’ strategic political communication efforts in newspapers and periodicals. Journalists, advertising professionals, artists, professors, businessmen and many others made their opinions known through countless letters to the official press agencies. They criticized what they thought was an ineffective use of mass media and pushed for fundamental changes by making concrete suggestions. As the “mood” of the general population gave more reason for concern during the second half of the war, such proposals were taken on more frequently and officials tried to recruit outside experts on media and communications to serve as advisers (Schmidt 2006; Ther 2014). Statements about the recipients’ actual and concrete reactions to and interpretations of media messages and their use of various media are not easy to make because the source material is lacking. Though local government agencies and those responsible for disseminating the state’s media contents were asked to record the reactions observed during the war, the extant sources and records containing such observations are mostly sporadic and unsystematic. They often take the form of short reports and notes that tell us more about the intentions of those who gave the orders and the hopes of those who carried them out than they do about the recipients themselves. Occasionally, however, we find hints that the state’s propaganda efforts were not always interpreted in the desired way. There were misunderstandings and confusion. Ideas were rejected by those targeted and official war posters were vandalized or used to promote the ideas of the opposition. Though such instances do not allow us to make generalized claims about the ways the state’s propaganda efforts were received by the general population, they do show that the reception of media productions can vary drastically, and may be opposite to the intended meaning of the producers.

­British War Propaganda: Adaptability as a Strategy for Success The British propaganda effort in World War I would subsequently achieve the status of myth. It was typically regarded as having been superbly efficient, well managed, and successful. The British wartime propaganda machine, however, evolved piecemeal and in

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ways not originally expected. The reason for its success lay in its adaptability to events and technological innovations, in its broad variety of messages, media and actors involved, and in a working consensus over the role and limits of official interference. The British wartime propaganda effort evolved in three phases. During the first (1914–1915), institutional and independent agents of propaganda operated with the common goal of rallying public support for the war. They demonized the German enemy and sought to encourage volunteer recruitment to Field Marshal Lord Kitchener’s New Army (Marquis 1978). Right after the outbreak of the war, the British government established the Press Bureau, tasked with the distribution and censorship of war news (Lovelace 1978), and the War Propaganda Bureau (Wellington House). The latter recruited a team of Britain’s leading writers, including Rudyard Kipling, John Galsworthy, and H.G. Wells, to “mobilise the written word” at home and overseas (especially to the neutral USA), via pamphlets, newspaper articles, topical fiction and suitably patriotic eye‐witness accounts from the front lines (Wright 1978; Buitenhuis 1989). Meanwhile, politicians rallied the nation to the defense of “poor little Belgium,” and army recruiters targeted young men with pamphlets, posters, and public rallies. However, most propaganda appears to have been independently inspired: once war was declared, newspapers did not need government instructions to print stories of German atrocities in Belgium; nor churchmen to preach the righteousness of the British cause; nor popular songwriters to invoke British martial pride. The second phase, 1916 until 1917, came with new challenges. With the introduction of military conscription in January 1916, propaganda increasingly focused on the home front. While seeking to present the war more effectively, it also highlighted the contribution of the workers at home to the front line war effort. With the War Office’s new willingness to embed journalists, news photographers, and film cameramen near the front lines, the government took an increasingly deliberative approach to propaganda and established its first Department of Information, and its domestic adjunct the National War Aims Committee (Sanders and Taylor 1982; Messinger 1992). Led by a cohort of leading newspaper proprietors and editors, state propaganda was now in the charge of men experienced in popular persuasion. The third phase, covering the last year of the war, saw the consolidation of a distinctly modern propaganda machine run by experts in their field (Sanders and Taylor 1982; Messinger 1992; Badsey 2005). The Department of Information was promoted to a Ministry (MoI) in March 1918, and operated under the leadership of press barons Lords Beaverbrook and Northcliffe. New media replaced the mobilization of poets. The new message was a simple one: stay strong, and make our endurance and sacrifice worthwhile. Over the course of the war, war propaganda would seep into all aspects of British life, embracing various cultural spheres. Music halls, for instance, always a repository of patriotic engagement, took a leading role in army recruitment with the help of such popular stars as Vesta Tilley, Marie Lloyd, Harry Lauder and George Robey, who encouraged young men in their audiences to join the troops, and later entertained British troops in Britain and in France (Fuller 1990; Robb 2002). Classical composers such as Edward Elgar and Hubert Parry sought to provide music suitable for a nation at war (Thacker 2014). Theater provided patriotic entertainment for home audiences and for troops on leave. Newspapers, as the nation’s principal information media, played a central role in framing British perceptions of the war. Newspaper war reporting was constrained initially by the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) that criminalized the publication of news considered



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likely to aid the enemy, the Press Bureau’s use of Defense Notices (“D‐Notices”) discouraging particular lines of reporting, and the British army’s banning of journalists from the front line. Later constraints included military censorship, newspaper editors’ reluctance to print “bad” war news, and the war correspondents’ personal identification with the troops (Lovelace 1978; Farrar 1998). However, the British press embodied too diverse a collection of national, regional, and local publications and was too powerful an institution on its own account for the government to impose meaningful repressive controls. Its self‐appointed wartime role, to support the successful waging of the war while holding government and military leadership to account, continued throughout the war – with sometimes devastating results, notably the “Shell Scandal” of 1915 that forced the creation of the first war coalition government (Lovelace 1978; McEwan 1978). But newspapers offered more than filtered war news and editorial comments. Editorial cartoonists found interested readers for recruitment propaganda, such as J.M. Staniforth’s work in the Western Mail and News of the World, for satirical portrayals of the Kaiser, such as W.D. Haselden’s “Big Willie and Little Willie” in the Daily Mirror, or for mordant depictions of life on the front line, such as Bruce Bairnsfather’s “Old Bill” in The Bystander. These were often then reproduced for publication in cheap collected editions. Popular poets such as Jessie Pope likewise found wartime fame first in the newspapers. However, it was the new national illustrated press that communicated the war to the British public most vividly in print. By 1914, every major British newspaper had at least one dedicated picture page, while the Daily Mirror (founded 1903, with a daily circulation of over one million copies in 1914) and the Daily Sketch (founded 1909) typically printed six or more pages of photographs in each edition. These publications, along with weekly pictorials, such as the venerable Illustrated London News and the newly‐launched War Illustrated, visualized the war through a compelling assembly of pictures from home and overseas. Press photographers, such as Ernest Brooks, David McLellan, and Henry, George and Harold Grant, toured the front lines from Belgium to Serbia, first independently, and later for the British army (Carmichael 1989). Provincial newspapers printed photographs taken by local men serving overseas. Meanwhile, the British illustrated press enthusiastically reprinted pictures from foreign newspapers and news magazines to provide the British readership with a world‐wide graphic panorama of the war. The pictures were accompanied by pointed (and often fabricated) captions to help readers interpret what they were being shown. Just as important were the stories and pictures from the home front. Photographs of eager army recruits, pitiful refugees, and once‐picturesque Belgian towns and villages laid waste by “Germ‐Hun” troops (as the pictorial press called them) were important reminders of what was at stake during the first months of the war, validated in May 1915 by the findings of the Bryce Report on Alleged German Outrages. However, in British newspapers these stories increasingly made way for pictures of homes in Scarborough, Great Yarmouth and, later, London destroyed by German naval bombardment (1915), Zeppelin raids (1915–1916), and Gotha bomber sorties (1917–1918). As a result, war heroes were identified at every level of society: poet and aesthete Rupert Brooke whose posthumously published poems were a sensation in 1915 (Miller 2010); nurse Edith Cavell whose “martyrdom” by the Germans was the subject of national outrage and mourning (Souhami 2010); 16‐year old seaman Jack Cornwall, posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross after the Battle of Jutland; and ordinary people who had suffered from the outrages of the Kaiser’s “Baby‐Killers.”2 Most of the war propaganda produced at the time followed traditional conventions. Examples included the novels of John Buchan, the poetry of John MacCrae, and the war

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art of John Singer Sargent. But other, more disturbing and controversial trends could be seen in, for instance, C.R.W. Nevinson’s vorticist‐influenced battlefield depictions, or Wilfred Owen’s viscerally anti‐heroic poetry, published posthumously in 1920 (Hynes 1990; Robb 2002; Thacker 2014). The most innovative propaganda medium of the war, however, was film. A technology not yet 20 years old, over the course of the war, film became an essential source of information, inspiration and escapism to an increasingly weary nation. This was especially the case for urban industrial workers, including women, many in factory work for the first time, on whom the war effort now depended (Hiley 1985; Reeves 1986). While at the beginning of the war, film was limited to brief staged newsreel stories “from the front”, by the second half, the British cinema audience (which by 1918 consisted of 20 million viewers a week, or half the British population) was watching feature‐length battle films, documentaries on women war workers, and informational short clips promoting the domestic economy, as well as the usual program of features, comedies, and serials. In particular, the 80‐minute newsreel Battle of the Somme (1916) was conceived by the War Office as part of a strikingly modern new media strategy. Its aim was to bring the hoped‐for breakthrough moment of the war to the British people in as realistic a manner and as close to real time as possible. Released in August 1916, an estimated half of the population saw the newsreel within the next six months. Significantly, this included a new middle‐class audience that had until then considered the cinema to be an exclusively working class form of entertainment (Badsey 1983; Reeves 1986). Films were also assigned unintended propaganda roles. D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, for instance, was advertised to British viewers with the topical appeal: “See … when … your American sisters and brothers lived for four years the soul‐racking lives you are living today.”3 Myths still abound about the success of British First World War propaganda, which is still typically personified for most people by Alfred Leete’s iconic image of Lord Kitchener (“… Needs YOU”) or the insidious “Daddy, What Did YOU Do in the Great War?” Yet, it is unlikely, for instance, that many people in Britain in August 1914 genuinely believed that the war would be, in the popular contemporary phrase, “over by Christmas.” In fact, from the start, much of British wartime propaganda emphasized the hardship of a war that was likely to be of long duration (Gregory 2008; Pennell 2012). But the rate of volunteering, which Kitchener himself called “one of the wonders of the age,” never faltered, and indeed appears to have risen with bad war news, such as after the Battle of Mons or the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. The imposition of conscription in 1916 was due less to a shortage of volunteers than to the recognition that the remaining manpower needed to be managed more efficiently. Meanwhile, propaganda aimed at women to volunteer for war work reassured concerned families that this was suitable work for a woman and helped persuade some 1.6 million women to substitute for men over the course of the war. Anti‐German propaganda also played a significant role. Already primed by the popular press and fin de siècle “invasion literature” to regard the Germans as enemies, the wartime British public showed itself to be enthusiastically Germanophobic (Gregory 2008). In the early weeks of the war, German‐owned shops across the country were vandalized and citizens of German origin found themselves persecuted or even driven out of town. In May 1915, the so‐called “Lusitania riots” again targeted German immigrants, and in July 1917 the British royal family gave up their dynastic name Saxe‐Coburg and Gotha for the more Anglophone Windsor. The Kaiser was hanged in effigy on Armistice night, and calls for his trial for war crimes were a running feature of the December 1918 general election. One of the Ministry of Information’s last propaganda films had the unambiguous title Once a Hun, Always a Hun.



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Above all, British wartime propaganda successfully presented the war as a challenge to be overcome. This ranged from recruiting enough men to fight the war, to sending Christmas presents to the front lines; from encouraging women to wear uniform, to giving advice on how to make the most of food rations. It succeeded because it was inclusive, persuasive, and often of direct practical value. Its success rested, first, on a common national culture in which patriotism was largely taken for granted, combined with a kind of sentimental militarism that shaped popular attitudes toward war and warfare (Wilkinson 2002). Second, neither air raids nor German economic warfare nor the news coming from the front made things so bad at home as to really test the propaganda messages. Voices opposing war (an influential if small minority) found themselves challenged by organized counter‐demonstrations, shouted down by angry crowds, and subjected to police harassment. Although some newspapers were prosecuted under DORA, and a few briefly ceased publication, the state’s targets were inconsistent. These ranged from the anti‐war Labour Leader and the pacifist Tribunal, to the suffragette Britannia and the “clubland” Globe – which was briefly suspended in 1915 for sensationally (and falsely) reporting the resignation of Lord Kitchener. Such prosecutions, however, were unpopular and typically unsuccessful (Hopkin 1970; Hiley 1992). The government reluctantly accepted that freedom of speech was something to fight for in practice as well as in principle. The strength of the British propaganda machine itself rested, on the one hand, on the formal structures that evolved over the course of the war, as communications professionals were progressively co‐opted into the machinery of government, and, on the other, on the common purpose shared by the government, the majority of opinion leaders and the general public. Simple messages were adapted to different phases of the war, from slogans such as “the war to end war” and “poor little Belgium” to “do your bit” and “make the sacrifice worthwhile” to “Once a Hun …”. Furthermore, the British people generally trusted their government, their community leaders, and their information media, and, at the time, they had no compelling reasons to doubt what they were being told. The success of British propaganda was widely recognized once the war was over. Lord Northcliffe, for instance, was created a viscount in 1918 for services to overseas propaganda, while Harry Lauder became the first music‐hall star to receive a knighthood for services to wartime recruitment and morale. During the 1920s and 1930s, when the public mood turned against the war, it was propaganda that was singled out for blame, precisely because of its perceived success.

­Russian War Propaganda: Using Media to Counter Internal Criticism When the World War I broke out, propaganda had already acquired considerable significance in Russia. The political crisis and economic instability that marked the early twentieth century, along with the country’s transition to capitalism and its rapid industrial development, mounted to a pre‐revolutionary situation. The government was well aware that the outbreak of a war would likely herald a domestic revolution and thus sought to delay the start of the war, despite numerous provocations in the international arena. Since the opposition, especially the Bolshevik Party, was likely to take advantage of the hardship brought on by a war, the tasks of unifying the nation and maintaining the morale of the army became governmental priorities.

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From the beginning of the war until mid‐1915, the press united behind a patriotic sentiment that aimed to bring together the nation, ignoring political differences. At this time, a growing interest for war news among the population led to an unprecedented increase in press readership. The Russian World (Русский мир), one of the most popular Russian newspapers throughout the war, increased its circulation from 600,000 copies in 1914 to 1.2 million in 1917. The Russian government actively took over the organization of propaganda and exercised strict control over the press. New publications comprising magazines such as The Army and Navy (Армия и флот) and newspapers such as Military Chronicle (Военная летопись) were founded, adding to the already existing government publications. Like the other nations at war, the Russian government considered communicating with the civilian population just as important as communicating with the military. The People’s Publications Committee was created in 1914. It was responsible for producing popular patriotic publications and for arranging their free ­distribution to the population (Zhirkov 2012). As well as the press, the Russian government also used new means of communication for disseminating its propaganda. The Military Cinematic Department of the Skobelev Committee, a state organization responsible for film production, was established in 1914. It held the exclusive rights to shoot newsreels on the front lines, which highlighted the patriotism and virtues of the Russian military. The profits made from showing these films were given to charity, many to benefit the families of soldiers wounded or killed in combat, which in turn helped enhance the propagandistic value of the newsreels. Besides promoting nationalism on the screen, these newsreels furthermore helped to create a sense of solidarity among soldiers, their families and the Russian nation. Visual print propaganda also played a significant role in Russia during the war. Russia’s high level of illiteracy limited the press’ effectiveness and heightened the importance of pictures. The press, still a long way from reaching mass audiences, frequently resorted to using photographs and illustrations. New illustrated magazines emerged, some of the most important being Niva (Нива), Ogonyok (Огонек), and Sun of Russia (Солнце России). They published dozens of photos, many of which were part of news stories about the heroic deeds of Russian soldiers in battle and everyday life in the military. Photographs shot by amateur and professional military photographers from the front lines were an essential part of these stories, and photographer Karl Bulla became particularly influential (Zhirkov 2012). Posters were also part of Russian propaganda. Aggressive illustrations frequently helped inculcate the idea that the nation was at war against the barbarism and slavery brought by the Germans and the other Central Powers. This type of propaganda appeared particularly useful for the illiterate and for soldiers, who were one of the main targets of propaganda. Most posters depicted the Russian soldier as a heroic giant, while his opponents were depicted as miserable cowards. A popular series of propaganda posters featured Kozma Kryuchkov, a Cossack soldier who was promoted to sergeant in 1917 and was known for having killed 11 German soldiers in a single battle. Portrayed as a war hero, his picture was shown everywhere, from posters to cigarette labels. Besides individual feats, portrayals of battle scenes were important for propaganda purposes, and in 1915, a special artisan command unit composed of graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts was established. Caricatures also played a central role, and Russian artists sought to create not just negative, but also humorous depictions of the German nation as a whole and its head Kaiser Wilhelm II in particular. One satirical greeting card depicted “the typical German” as a butcher who resembled the German Emperor, complete with mustache and snout. Representations of the Kaiser generally demonized him, portraying him



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as the Devil or Antichrist riding a wild boar or as the mad dog wearing the German spiked helmet (Pickelhaube) (Tsikalov 2012). Even though the content of Russian propaganda changed throughout the war, several ideas remained consistent. It sought to emphasize the defensive nature of the war fought by Russia and its allies and to make clear that the aggressive aspirations of Germany were the main cause of the war. Another consistent theme was the brutality of the enemy troops. The German soldier was portrayed as a brutal creature who tortured his adversaries, and particularly his prisoners; the poster series “German Atrocities” published by Ivan Sythin is an excellent example of this. Propaganda also reported that enemies were destroying cultural monuments in the occupied territories. The family magazine Niva (Нива), for example, published photographs of such destroyed monuments with German soldiers shooting at the iconostasis in an Orthodox Church.4 In order to convince the public of the legitimacy of the Russian cause, Russian publications sought to popularize the idea that Russia and Germany represented two inherently different cultures and sets of values. Church publications, such as the Journal of Military and Naval Clergy (Вестник военного и морского духовенства) and diocesan pamphlets, were particularly active in making this claim. They emphasized the antagonism between the Orthodox spiritual culture of the Slavic peoples and Catholic‐Protestant Germany. Another prevalent theme in Russian propaganda was the union of all social classes against the enemy. Russian soldiers were not the only ones glorified for giving their lives to the mother country; those who worked at home in factories were also depicted as playing a patriotic role. And the royal family was involved, too. As well as being in charge of administrative tasks, the charity work of the Tsarina and Grand Duchesses was covered widely in the press and other propaganda publications (Astashov 2012). Despite the significant number of personnel engaged in various propaganda activities, it is unlikely that Russian military propaganda achieved great success in selling the war to its population. Next to German counter‐propaganda, it also had to deal with internal anti‐war and anti‐government agitation from opposing groups. The two were closely connected, as many revolutionary organizations in Russia received financial support from the German government, who viewed the destabilization of the Czarist regime as part of the war effort (Zvonarev 2003). Furthermore, Russian defeats on the battlefield during the first period of the war, along with the economic crisis caused by a prolonged military campaign, soon led Russian elites to curb their expectations of the benefits of the war for the Russian nation. As early as mid‐1915, intellectuals became critical of the military and political leadership, while soldiers started showing signs of demoralization. Thus, the government attempted to expand its influence over public opinion by setting up new media outlets disguised as independent and private enterprises. This did not alter the situation, and the propaganda did little to improve the morale of the military and the people. The collapse of the Tsarist regime eventually opened the way for the Bolsheviks’ rise to power in October 1917. Under the leadership of Lenin, the new regime soon decided to negotiate peace with Germany and reorganize its propaganda apparatus, which was refitted to spread the message of the new regime to domestic and foreign audiences.

­Resisting the Invader: Belgian and French Propaganda The steady advancement of the German Army toward northeast Belgium radically transformed the country’s press. In the occupied territories of the country, many of the most prominent newspapers voluntarily ceased operations rather than accept German censorship

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(Van Eeno et al. 1998; De Bens and Raeymaeckers 2010). However, new actors quickly filled the void left by traditional print media. Especially in Flanders, a significant number of so‐called “activist” publications were launched (Van Eeno et al. 1998). These publications were condoned and even sponsored by the German authorities because they criticized the way Flemish cultural and linguistic demands had been treated by the Belgian state and government. It was hoped that this would help undermine the consensus among the civilian population that condemned the German attack and subsequent occupation of the country. The occupation deeply transformed the Belgian cultural landscape because many of its most prominent representatives had fled to Allied or neutral countries or were serving in the army. As a result, an array of new Belgian print media emerged in France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. They represented and defended the interests of the Belgian government in exile as well as of the various factions of Flemish and francophone intelligentsia (Leroy 1971). Soldiers’ communities also developed a rich variety of improvised publications (Bulthe 1971; Bertrand 1971). In occupied Belgium, a clandestine press quickly emerged. Apart from providing moral resistance to enemy propaganda, its main goal was to keep alive the hope of a free Belgium; an example is the Flemish publication with the telling name Het Nachtlichtje. Heimelijk voorlopertje van het Vrije Daglicht (The Night Lamp: Secretive Precursor of the Free Daylight). According to De Schaepdrijver and Debruyne (2013), “[n]owhere else in occupied Europe during the First World War was the clandestine discourse so intense” (p. 24). The underground press involved the self‐mobilization of “networks of editors, authors, typesetters, printers, couriers, and distributors, as well as purveyors of paper, ink, machinery, storage space, safe houses and documentation,” resulting in a total of 80 publications (De Schaepdrijver and Debruyne 2013, p. 24), a large majority of which were published in French (Debruyne 2016). Frequent references by other clandestine publications to the vicissitudes of the Catholic opinion paper La Libre Belgique (Free Belgium), one of Belgium’s most regular and long‐lived forbidden print outlets, indicates that the underground press shared the characteristics of an alternative public space. The means of production (handwritten or typewritten, printed or stenciled), regularity and print runs differed widely among clandestine publications, but their contents were relatively similar. References to other newspapers or printed texts constituted the hallmark of the clandestine press. Allied news was discussed to expose the weakness of the enemy, German texts were parodied or otherwise criticized, and so were the censored Belgian newspapers. King Albert, other authoritative Belgians and, to a lesser extent, the free Belgian press from behind the front lines were quoted. An example of a newspaper that limited itself to citing other media was La Soupe. En vente au profit de la soupe communale (The Soup: Sold for the Benefit of the Municipal Soup). Some publications developed a more autonomous, patriotic content that used mostly argumentative texts, but they also expressed their message in verse, anecdotes, and puns. News on the situation in Belgian cities and villages was surprisingly rare, as were recommendations on how to deal with the hardship of the occupation. Together with the near absence of caricatures and more visual forms, the choice of pseudonyms, titles and style all suggest that the underground press was largely an enterprise of the Belgian cultural elites rather than of the broader public. The ventures of the clandestine press, the repression its representatives had to endure, and the doggedness with which some of the projects were pursued until the end of the war quickly bestowed heroic status on the Belgian underground press (Massart 1918; Thomas 1924). This was especially true for La Libre Belgique, which published 170 issues throughout the war with print runs of 20 000 copies (De Schaepdrijver and



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Debruyne 2013) and stated that “Bruxelles – Kommandantur,” the German headquarters in the capital, was its telegraphic address. In France, severe restrictions were imposed on the circulation of information. Censorship of the press was introduced a few days before the outbreak of the war. With the creation of the “Bureau de Presse” (press office), the military was given the right to suspend or forbid any publication considered to be acting against the country’s best interests. This led Pierre Albert (1972) to conclude that the French press was subjected to stricter control than the German newspapers. During the first phase of the war, the Bureau’s task was simple. Most newspapers were aligned with the government’s efforts and were thus willing to contribute to maintaining the civic morale. This changed over the course of the war with the emergence of newspapers that criticized the government’s course of action. As a consequence, several papers were closed down, including L’Homme Libre (The Free Man), edited by Georges Clemenceau, who would later become prime minister. Despite these restrictions, satirical papers were founded during the war in reaction to the so‐called “bourrage de crâne” (literally “skull stuffing” or “brainwashing”) by the mainstream press. One example was Le Canard Enchaîné (The Chained Duck) (Douglas 2002). Its title was a clear reference to both censorship and self‐censorship of the press (“canard” is slang for both “newspaper” and “false news”). The paper committed itself to only publishing false news “… for a change” (“pour changer”).5 Later, after Clemenceau took office in 1917, he imposed stricter restrictions on the press and on telegrams sent from the front by the Havas news agency, thus limiting the amount of war news made available for publication (Albert 1972). With censorship at the center of French media policy during the Great War, propaganda efforts also aimed to convince the population that the country was fighting a battle for freedom and civilization and against German barbarism. However, French propaganda was probably not very effective. Most soldiers (Audoin‐Rouzeau 1992) and the population (Le Naour 2001) did not believe much of what was being published in the press, and American films had more success among French audiences than did domestic productions (Thompson and Bordwell 2010). Furthermore, French propaganda aimed at targets abroad achieved little compared to that of other powers, especially Great Britain. Despite several subsidized publications and film productions in neutral countries, the efforts to win the hearts and minds of foreign audiences were likely rather unsuccessful. Jacques Ellul (1969) attributes this to the fact that French propaganda activities during the war were mostly “paralyzed by administrative routines and political intentions” (p. 107).

­Trench Journals and Soldiers’ Morale Newspapers published in the trenches claimed a key role in helping maintain troops’ morale during the war. This new genre of publication emerged as a consequence of men spending long periods in the trenches defending their positions. These improvised papers became popular especially among the British and French battalions in Europe. Many ridiculed the official press back home, which they claimed published accounts of the war that did not correspond to the soldiers’ lived reality. These papers were “instigated by officers, censored by them and even edited by them” (Seal 2013, p. 4). Many created a sense of authenticity by speaking in the voice of a common soldier, and they used humor to help men bear their miserable living conditions in the trenches.

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As early as August 1914, the French military command had introduced the daily Bulletin des Armées de la République (Bulletin of the Armies of the Republic), the only publication available to soldiers at the time. The publications soon multiplied, so that throughout the war, more than 400 trench journals were published by the French and more than 100 by the British. While some consisted of nothing more than a single sheet of paper reproduced with carbon paper, others were composed of several pages produced with printing presses. Though their level of sophistication varied significantly, all papers helped those in the trenches face the harsh realities of a war that was marked by “petty regulations, physical discomfort, mental exhaustion and the ever‐present threat of death” (Taylor 1990, p. 24). By using mainly humor and satire, these papers gave soldiers a chance to relieve the frustrations of war. In the words of historian Graham Seal (2013), trench journals echoed “the danger, unpleasantness and frequent insanity of the war, filtered through the humour, camaraderie, and earthy humanity of trench culture” (p. 46). While most of these publications had originated as spontaneous endeavors undertaken by soldiers, there were also papers launched by military officials. A prominent example was the wave of trench journals started in Italy during the last year of the war, which were part of an all‐encompassing propaganda strategy launched by the Italian Supreme Command after the army’s crushing defeat at Caporetto in October 1917. Before this campaign, however, trench journals were part of a “microgiornalismo di trincea” (trench microjournalism) (Isnenghi 1977, p. 40). They were small‐scale initiatives run with improvised means by soldiers and officers within small units. When the newly created Italian military propaganda office “Servizio P” began promoting the creation of new publications, it aimed at larger units and printed using more professional means. This new approach was likely inspired by French military propaganda, which interpreted the dynamism of its trench press as an indicator of the army’s fighting spirit (Charpentier 1935). It may also have been inspired by Germany, where existing trench journals had been brought under the control of the “Feldpressestelle” (field press office), a centralized office that encouraged diversity among the trench press while ensuring that its contents conformed to the goals and strategy of the High Command (Lipp 2003). The newly created Italian trench journals were part of a carefully orchestrated, yet not entirely centralized strategy in which officers and ordinary soldiers were encouraged to contribute to the publications to make them appear as authentic manifestations of trench culture. The Italian trench journals of 1918 thus illustrate the growing sophistication of war propaganda that, apart from manipulating an existing media, tried to turn readers into active collaborators of propaganda.

­Conclusion World War I was the first war in which maintaining the morale of civilians was equally important as maintaining that of the military and during which established and new forms of media were used for propaganda purposes. Both the Allied and the Central Powers struggled to convince national and international audiences of their cause, demonized the enemy through atrocity propaganda, and reported real and alleged war events. Though the level of organization differed among the countries analyzed in this chapter, all of them developed propaganda structures that underwent adaptations and changes throughout the war. The press, the main information medium in Britain and Germany, played a central role in disseminating the respective states’ official views on the war. In Belgium, clandestine



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newspapers were of particular relevance in keeping alive the hope of defeating the Central Powers. Visual propaganda like film and illustrations was used extensively in all the warring nations, as it was perceived to be effective in mobilizing people’s emotions. Newsreels, feature films, and documentaries, still novelties at the time, were used to spread the nations’ views on the war and prop up the legitimacy of their particular position. The diversity of the means of communication used for propaganda purposes was unprecedented, in that all media were called upon to play their part. Among the belligerents, Great Britain developed the most multi‐facetted approach to propaganda. It was defined by a consistency of the messages produced, on the one hand, and a continuous adaptation of their content to the different phases of the war, on the other. Propaganda permeated all aspects of life and became visible in many cultural productions, from advertising to poetry, which helped bolster the large consensus about Britain’s just role in the war. Contrary to Britain, high‐ranking state officials in Germany remained reluctant to use more visual propaganda to reach the general population. The monarchic and authoritarian state was perceived as a powerful entity that should not lower its standards by addressing the emotions and interests of the masses. For this reason, the conservative representatives of the state criticized the use of new media like film to connect with the public. In Russia, propaganda efforts were significantly criticized by the internal opposition, whose anti‐war and anti‐government agitation received support from the Germans, who for their part wanted to destabilize their enemy’s political structures.

Notes 1 Dr. Gütermann, “Denkschrift betr. Stimmung im Volke,” vom 20.8.1918. Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch), R 1501/alt R 18/114440, Bl. 135–140. 2 For instance Daily Mirror, 12 September 1914 and 15 April 1916. 3 Displayed advertisement in the Midland Daily Telegraph, 17 June 1916. 4 Niva, October 1914, № 42. 5 Coin! Coin! Coin! 10 September 1915, Le canard enchaîné, 1(1): 1.

­References Albert, P. (1972). La presse française de 1871 à 1940. In: Histoire Générale de La Presse Française, vol. 3 (ed. C. Bellanger et al.), 135–622. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Albes, J. (1996). Worte wie Waffen: Die deutsche Propaganda in Spanien während des Ersten Weltkriegs. Essen: Klartext Verlag. Astashov, A. (2012). Propganda na Russkom fronte v godi Pervoi mirovoi voini. Moscow: Spetskniga. Audoin‐Rouzeau, S. (1992). Men at War, 1914–1918. National Sentiment and Trench Journalism in France during the First World War. Providence: Berg. Badsey, S. (1983). Battle of the Somme: British war propaganda. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 2: 99–115. Badsey, S. (2005). ‘The missing Western front’: British politics, strategy, and propaganda in 1918. In: War and the Media: Reportage and Propaganda, 1900–2003 (ed. M. Connelly and D. Welch), 47–64. London: I.B. Tauris. Bertrand, F. (1971). La Presse Francophone de Tranchée au Front Belge, 1914–1918. Bruxelles: Musée royal de l’Armée et d’Histoire militaire. Bremm, K.‐J. (2008). ‘Staatszeitung’ und ‘Leichenfabrik’. Die In‐ und Auslandspropaganda Deutschlands und Großbritanniens während des Ersten Weltkrieges im Vergleich. Österreichische militärische Zeitschrift 46 (1): 11–17.

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Buitenhuis, P. (1989). The Great War of Words: Literature as Propaganda 1914–18 and After. London: Batsford. Bulthe, G. (1971). De Vlaamse loopgravenpers tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Brussels: Koninklijk Museum van het Leger en van Krijgsgeschiedenis. Carmichael, J. (1989). First World War Photographers. London: Routledge. Charpentier, A. (1935). Feuilles Bleu Horizon: Le Livre d’or des journaux du front. Paris: Ed. des Journaux du Front. De Bens, E. and Raeymaeckers, K. (2010). De Pers in België. Het verhaal van de Belgische Dagbladpers gisteren, vandaag en morgen. Leuven: LannooCampus. Debruyne, E. (2016). The clandestine press in the Great War. https://warpress.cegesoma.be/en/ node/12 (accessed 29 February 2016). Deist, W. (1991). Zensur und Propaganda in Deutschland während des Ersten Weltkrieges. In: Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft. Studien zur preußisch‐deutschen Militärgeschichte, 153–163. Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. De Schaepdrijver, S. and Debruyne, E. (2013). Sursum corda: the underground press in occupied Belgium, 1914–19. First World War Studies 4 (1): 23–38. Dipper, C. (1984). Propaganda. In: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch‐ sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol. 5 (ed. O. Brunner, W. Conze and R. Koselleck), 69–112. Stuttgart: Klett‐Cotta. Douglas, A. (2002). War, Memory and the Politics of Humor: The Canard Enchaîné and World War I. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ellul, J. (1969). Histoire de la Propagande. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Farrar, M.J. (1998). News from the Front: War Correspondents on the Western Front 1914–18. Stroud: Sutton. Fuller, J.G. (1990). Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies 1914–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gregory, A. (2008). The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gütermann, Dr. (1918). Denkschrift betr. Stimmung im Volke (20 August 1915). Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch), R 1501/alt R 18/114440, Bl. 135–140. Hiley, N. (1985). The British cinema auditorium. In: Film and the First World War (ed. K. Dibbets and B. Hogenkamp), 160–170. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Hiley, N. (1992). Lord Kitchener resigns’: the suppression of the Globe in 1915. Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History 9: 27–41. Hopkin, D. (1970). Domestic censorship in the First World War. Journal of Contemporary History 5: 151–169. Hynes, S. (1990). A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture. London: The Bodley Head. Isnenghi, M. (1977). Giornali di Trincea. Turin: Einaudi. Koszyk, K. (1968). Deutsche Pressepolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag. Lasswell, H. (1927). Propaganda Technique in the World War. New York: Alfred Knopf. Lasswell, H. (1938). Foreword. In: Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German Empire in 1918 (ed. G. Bruntz), v–viii. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Le Naour, J.‐Y. (2001). Laughter and tears in the Great War: the need for laughter/the guilt of humour. Journal of European Studies 31 (3–4): 265–275. Leroy, M. (1971). La Presse Belge en Belgique Libre et à L’étranger en 1918. Leuven and Paris: Nauwelaerts‐Béatrice‐Nauwelaerts. Lipp, A. (2003). Meinungslenkung im Krieg: Kriegserfahrungen deutscher Soldaten und ihre Deutung 1914–1918. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Lovelace, C. (1978). British press censorship during the First World War. In: Newspaper History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day (ed. G. Boyce, J. Curran and P. Wingate), 307–319. London: Sage. Marlin, R. (2002). Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion. New York: Broadview Books.



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Marquis, A.G. (1978). Words as weapons: propaganda in Britain and Germany during the First World War. Journal of Contemporary History 13: 467–498. Massart, J. (1918). The Secret Press in Belgium. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Mattelart, A. (1996). The Invention of Communication. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McEwan, J.M. (1978). The press and the fall of Asquith. Historical Journal 21: 863–883. Messinger, G.S. (1992). British Propaganda and the State in the First World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Miller, A. (2010). Rupert Brooke and commercial patriotism in Great Britain, 1914–1918. Twentieth Century British History 21: 141–162. Pennell, C. (2012). A Kingdom United: Popular Reponses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reeves, N. (1986). Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War. London: Croom Helm. Robb, G. (2002). British Culture and the First World War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sanders, M.L. and Taylor, P. (1982). British Propaganda During the First World War, 1914–1918. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Schmidt, A. (2006). Belehrung  –  Propaganda  –  Vertrauensarbeit: Zum Wandel amtlicher Kommunikationspolitik in Deutschland 1914–1918. Essen: Klartext Verlag. Seal, G. (2013). The Soldiers’ Press: Trench Journals in the First World War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Souhami, D. (2010). Edith Cavell: Nurse, Martyr, Heroine. London: Quercus. Taylor, M. (1990). The open exhaust and some other trench journals of the first world war. Imperial War Museum Review 5: 18–27. Thacker, T. (2014). British Culture and the First World War: Experience, Representation and Memory. London: Bloomsbury. Ther, V. (2014). Propaganda at Home (Germany). 1914–1918. In: Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War (ed. U. Daniel et  al.). Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin. Accessed 28 March 2017. https://encyclopedia.1914‐1918‐online.net/article/propaganda_ at_home_germany. doi: 10.15463/ie1418.10488. Thomas, A. (1924). La presse belge pendant lapresse belge pendant la guerre. L’Illustration (août), pp. 144–145. Thompson, K. and Bordwell, D. (2010). Film History: An Introduction. New York: McGraw Hill. Tsikalov, D. (2012). Karikatura kak orudie propagandi v period pervoi mirovoi voini. Vestnik VolGU 4: 85–90. Van Eeno, R., Luykx, T., Van Hees, P., and Durnez, G. (1998). Pers. In: Nieuwe Encyclopedie van de Vlaamse Beweging (ed. R. De Schrijver, B. De Wever and G. Durnez), 2428–2459. Tielt: Lannoo. Verhey, J. (2000). The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Welch, D. (2000). Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914–1918: The Sins of Omission. New Brunswick. NJ: Rutgers University Press. Wilkinson, G. (2002). Depictions and Images of War in Edwardian Newspapers, 1899–1914. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wright, D.G. (1978). The great war, government propaganda and English ‘men of letters’ 1914–16. Literature and History 7: 70–100. Zhirkov, G. (2012). Ot “narodnoy” voyny k narodnoy tragedii: istoriya russkoy zhurnalistiki 1914–1917 godov. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University, School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Zvonarev, K. (2003). Germanskaya Agenturnaia Razvedka do i vo vremia voini 1914–1918. Moscow: BDC‐press.

6

Modernization, Democratization and Politicization Mass Media in 1920s Europe

Jochen Hung, Mark Hampton, Peppino Ortoleva, Joris van Eijnatten, and Lennart Weibull

­Introduction Post‐World War I Europe witnessed some fundamental changes in its media landscape, namely the development of radio as a mass medium and the introduction of sound film. But the predominant medium of mass communication was still the press which continued its pre‐war growth. The experience of a dramatic expansion in circulation numbers was something that united many countries – victors, vanquished, and neutrals – after the war: In Britain, only two newspapers had a circulation of 1 million or more at the beginning of the 1920s, while five did by 1930 (Cox and Mowatt 2014). In Germany, over 3,000 newspapers with a total daily circulation of over 20 million copies were published during the 1920s (Dussel 2004; Fulda 2009). In Sweden, 235 papers were published more than once a week in 1919, meaning 881 issues each week in total – in 1927, there already were 946. It has been calculated that the total circulation in the mid‐1920s was about 2 million copies, in a country with around 6 million inhabitants (Holmberg et al. 1983; Rydén 2001). However, outside of northwestern Europe the situation was quite different: in Italy, the cumulative circulation of the five main newspapers in the 1920s remained under 2 million copies with a population of 41 million (Murialdi 2006). This uneven growth was undergirded by a technological and structural modernization of the press and print journalism, namely a rationalization of production and an increasing visualization of design and layout. However, the growth in circulation often masked the ongoing concentration of media ownership in many European countries, a development that made the 1920s the “era of the press barons” (Gorman and McLean 2009) at least in places such as the United Kingdom and Germany. The medium that seemed to embody all of these changes was the tabloid newspaper: although already established before the war, this newspaper format thrived during the 1920s, making use of eye‐ catching design and photographs to entice its readers. National journalistic cultures had to grapple with these trends under often intense economic pressure during the various post‐war economic crises and the increasing competition by cinema and radio. The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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This included the party press, which was modernized in order to appeal to an expanded ­electorate, after women had gained the right to vote in many European countries after 1918. The democratization and expansion of leisure time, through the introduction of the eight‐hour day and the gradual establishment of “the weekend,” also boosted media use in many European countries as people increasingly filled their free time with reading the newspaper, going to the cinema, or listening to the radio. These developments were often observed critically by political and cultural elites. The popularity of cinema in general and the increasing dominance of US film in particular led many contemporary observers to warn of the corrosive effects of “mass culture.” Throughout Europe, censorship measures were implemented to save the population from the supposedly corrosive influence of popular entertainment. While press and film could only be controlled more or less indirectly with such steps, the new medium of radio was held on a tighter leash from the start. In most European countries, the state played a central role in the establishment and operation of the national broadcasting service, in contrast – and often in response – to the commercial model practiced in the United States. However, despite the concerns of intellectuals and politicians about the pervasive influence of mass media, media consumption in 1920s Europe was still largely shaped by existing social structures. While media use generally increased and diversified, it did so within traditional social milieus particularly in countries that had not experienced a major social collapse during the war, such as the Netherlands and Sweden. Cultural traditions, such as Italy’s popular music culture, also played an important role in the development of the media landscape during the 1920s. Arguably the greatest divide regarding the patterns of media consumption existed between the countryside and metropolitan areas: even if their media consumption was structured by cultural and social traditions, European city dwellers at least had the opportunity to read tabloid newspapers, listen to the radio, and experience the introduction of sound film. With the exception of highly urbanized countries like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the rural population in Europe often did not even have access to these new forms of entertainment and communication.

­The United Kingdom In many ways, developments in British journalism in the 1920s were an extension of those over the previous four decades, particularly with respect to entrepreneurial efforts to address emerging audiences and make use of new technologies. Well before World War I, critics had observed a sharp bifurcation between a “serious” elite press that served the educated classes, and an emerging “mass” press that entertained a much larger and newer readership, particularly women and the working classes (Hampton 2004). Although the 1920s would see continuing efforts by the largest papers to attract these readers, culminating in fierce circulation wars in the 1930s, the basic shift toward targeting these new audiences had occurred earlier, particularly with the establishing of the Daily Mail (1896) and the Daily Mirror (1903) by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe). Innovations aimed at cultivating working‐class audiences included a more reader‐friendly type‐face, an emphasis on simple language and short paragraphs rather than larger columns, and a downplaying of parliamentary politics in favor of “features” concerning everyday life. At the same time, female audiences were targeted not only by the inclusion of material thought to interest women (i.e. fashion, domestic topics) but by presenting some not specifically “female” topics from a woman’s perspective (Bingham 2004).



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The targeting of new readerships was occasioned by and depended upon a major restructuring of the newspaper industry. Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, the industrialization of newspaper production, including more expensive and sophisticated printing equipment, both enabled and, by the outbreak of the war, required mass production and mass circulation. The expense of the new technologies increased the barriers to entry, gave impetus to horizontal integration of the industry, and helped create a business model that depended (particularly at the lower end of the market) upon advertising revenue more than on newspaper sales. This in turn required newspapers to attract advertisers by boasting either enormous or prestige circulations. Although these trends were disrupted by the war, the 1920s saw their heightening (Bingham 2004; Bingham and Conboy 2015; Williams 2010). Moreover, both ownership consolidation and technological innovations affecting newsgathering led to national newspapers (mostly based in London) decisively overtaking local or provincial papers in the 1920s (Cox and Mowatt 2014; Silberstein‐Loeb 2014). The 1920s and early 1930s were the iconic age of the press baron in Britain: Lord Northcliffe, and his brother Lord Rothermere, who controlled the Daily Mirror and, following Northcliffe’s death, the Daily Mail (as well as several other daily, evening, and Sunday papers); Lord Beaverbrook, a Canadian who had acquired the Daily Express in 1916; and the Berry brothers, Lord Camrose and Kemsley, whose titles included more upmarket papers including The Sunday Times (from 1915), the Financial Times (1919), and The Daily Telegraph (1927). Even before World War I, Lord Northcliffe’s control over two mass circulation papers, as well as the elite The Times after 1907, seemed to give him unprecedented power. Although Lord Northcliffe died in 1922, interwar popular journalism was, as Adrian Bingham (2004) put it, conducted in his shadow (p. 22). Northcliffe, who had begun his career in magazines, had brought to newspapers their emphasis on “features” or “human interest” stories, along with brevity. At the same time, by merging his magazine interests with his newspapers (mainly the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, the latter sold to his brother Lord Harmsworth in 1914), by 1919, he had not only built an industry that achieved synergies across publishing forms but he had turned his holdings into Britain’s “fifteenth largest publicly owned manufacturing enterprise” (Cox and Mowatt 2014, p. 54). Yet, although newspaper content had been reshaped in part by generic borrowings from magazines, throughout the 1920s newspapers remained the more prominent form, and the newspaper side of the business attracted the most attention from Northcliffe and his successors (Cox & Mowatt 2014). Although the press barons were constrained by commercial imperatives – their influence on political elites depended upon their control over either large or elite circulations – they sometimes used their papers as a venue for pet causes. This included the Daily Mail’s mid‐1920s crusade against lowering the age of women’s suffrage to equalize it with men’s (Bingham 2004). Among the mass circulation dailies, the major exception to commercialized content and ownership was the Daily Herald. As the official organ of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), it eschewed sensational human interest content as a tool promoting working‐class false consciousness. By 1929, it had failed commercially, and Odhams Press took over a 51% ownership share on terms that left the TUC’s political line intact but otherwise transformed it into just another commercial paper (Richards 1997). Although such critics as Norman Angell argued that the popular press’s commercial focus inherently favored the pro‐capitalist political parties, Laura Beers (2010) has shown that by the late 1920s, the Labour Party had figured out how to accommodate itself to it. At the same time, as Bingham (2014) has argued, the popular press did not so much become depoliticized as it reconfigured politics emphasizing

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social and economic issues more than constitutional and religious ones, and adapting it to human interest news values. Unlike in the contemporary United States, neither professionalization nor devotion to a standard of objectivity characterized British journalism in the 1920s. By the mid‐1880s, a group of newspaper proprietors and editors had attempted to turn journalism into a profession based on credentials and a code of ethics largely to elevate the social status of press work; by the turn of the century, these efforts were widely regarded as having failed, particularly in that they did nothing to address the poor remuneration and working conditions of reporters and other working journalists. The 1907 founding of the National Union of Journalists signaled the widespread abandonment of professional aspirations in favor of a trades union model (Hampton 1999). Although this resulted in increased pay for reporters, this was hardly an unqualified success as newspapers continued to employ elite columnists and highly‐paid cartoonists outside either the professionalization or union models of journalism and increasingly enticed readers into providing free content through writing contests and other means (Newman 2014). At the same time, the ideal of objectivity barely penetrated British journalism in the 1920s or indeed throughout the twentieth century, particularly in regard to newspapers (see also Chapter 23). Instead, journalistic standards centered around “independence”  –  an ideal that itself was often seen as endangered by the ascendancy of the press barons – and truth‐telling, both were considered fully compatible with overt partisanship (Hampton 2008). Although the newspaper attained its centrality as a cultural and political medium, it was shaped in the 1920s by two emerging media of mass communication; both had originated around the turn of the century but came into their own after World War I: cinema and radio broadcasting. In the case of cinema, a field in which US imports gained ascendancy after the war (Chibnall 2007), the main effect was perhaps the heightening of expectations of popular newspaper readers that their papers to be entertaining. Wireless radio telephony, technically feasible from the 1890s, initially remained the province of hobbyists and was envisioned as an alternate means of person‐to‐person communication. Only in the early 1920s, partly inspired by the example of early US broadcasting, did radio broadcasting come to Britain. The British Broadcasting Company established in 1922, organized broadcasting on a tightly controlled commercial basis depending upon radio sales and a share of a statutory licensing fee. Thanks in large part to the efforts of the Company’s Director, John Reith, and rejecting the perceived “chaos” of American broadcasting, the Company was reconfigured in 1927 as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), an independent, non‐commercial monopolistic institution established by royal charter. Broadcasting potentially threatened daily papers’ control over news delivery, thanks to its greater immediacy, but throughout the 1920s, newspapers were protected by a political solution whereby the BBC faced restrictions on the timing and quantity of its news broadcasts (Briggs 1985, Nicholas 2000, see also Chapter 5). British political and cultural elites had debated the emergence of a mass press since the mid‐nineteenth century. By the 1920s, the most common charge against popular newspapers was that they evaded the responsibilities of a serious, elevating, and educational press by emphasizing instead the sensational and trivial. Even worse, critics feared these qualities of the popular press threatened to corrupt the elite press as well. However, with the exception of regulations concerning sexual morality or national security  –  often enforced as much by informal controls as legal ones – little attempt was made to regulate press content. The well‐established discourse of liberty of the press was chiefly equated with non‐regulation by the state (Bingham 2004; Hampton 2004). Cinema had emerged



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in the United Kingdom before World War I; following the war, the UK market was increasingly dominated by US products (see also Chapter 3). In this context, many of the charges against cinema  –  that it contributed to juvenile delinquency, led to life lived “vicariously” or encouraged crime and irreligion – were easily elided with perceptions of “Americanization.” By the late 1920s, regulations set aside a percentage of the market for UK‐produced films; this led, however, to US companies arranging production of so‐called “quota quickies,” cheaply and often poorly made “British” films whose existence freed the parent US companies to distribute glossier Hollywood products (Chibnall 2007; Richards 2010). Protected from the immediate demands of the market in a way that neither newspapers nor films were, the BBC used its monopolistic position to attempt to set a higher moral tone than was possible for the commercialized press or cinema. In the 1920s, particularly in the company period, programming often consisted of high‐level lectures and live music. The BBC articulated a middle‐class perspective and emphasized correct spoken English, factors potentially alienating to working‐class audiences (Briggs 1985). The United Kingdom was overwhelmingly urban by the early twentieth century, more so than the other countries considered in this chapter. The major faultline was the one between an increasingly dominant London and the provincial cities. From the late nineteenth century onward, the London press, itself increasingly concentrated, transformed into the core of a national press. The BBC in the 1920s, particularly during the company period, frequently courted resentment on the part of provincial audiences by its use of London‐centered programming and, alternately, on the part of smaller towns by offering programming from larger regional cities (Briggs 1985).

­Germany The German media landscape mirrored the developments in the United Kingdom to a certain extent: at the end of the nineteenth century, the so‐called “Generalanzeiger” – a commercial type of newspaper that relied on high circulation and advertising sales  –  replaced the small, elitist, and politicized newspapers that had dominated the German press before the 1880s (Wilke 2000). This new mass press gave the newly unified Germany a number of famous press barons of its own, namely August Scherl, Rudolf Mosse, August Huck, and the Ullstein family. After 1918, the Ullstein company emerged as the most dynamic and successful of these press houses and grew into “the giant of German publishing” (Fulda 2009, p. 2). However, in comparison to the United Kingdom or France, the German press market was highly fragmented, which reflected the country’s federal structure and traditions. Most newspapers had a distinctly local or regional focus and only a few, such as Ullstein’s Berliner Morgenpost, or the Frankfurter Zeitung, were read outside their core markets (Stöber 2014). Thus, in terms of circulation, even the Berliner Morgenpost, the biggest German daily with a circulation of over 600,000 copies in 1929, could not match publications like the Daily Mail, or Le Petit Parisien in France. While cinema and, from 1923, radio grew in popularity during the 1920s, everyday entertainment for most Germans was still provided by newspapers (Führer 2009). Their daily of choice – sold and delivered to their homes on a weekly or monthly subscription basis – was more than a source of news, it also offered hugely popular serialized novels, opinion pieces, reports from far‐flung lands, and information about the latest progress in technology, medicine, and science. In the late 1920s, 70% of households in Hamburg

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held a subscription to one of six different local newspapers (Führer 2008). Considering that the papers were passed on among family members, neighbors, and friends, it is safe to say that most Germans were newspaper readers during the Weimar era. However, the characteristic publication of the Weimar Republic was not the traditional subscription‐based broadsheet but the “Boulevardzeitung” – the tabloid sold on the spot by street vendors. While newspaper circulation in Germany grew by 30% between 1925 and 1930, “this growth was driven almost exclusively by the explosion of tabloids, which nearly tripled” (Fulda 2009, p. 22) during this time. Ullstein had introduced the tabloid format to Germany in 1904 with the B.Z. am Mittag, the first German newspaper sold not by subscription but by street vendors. While the paper was a great success, the “Boulevardzeitung” only really established itself in Germany in the 1920s, and came to be seen as the characteristic newspaper format of the Weimar Republic. By the mid‐1920s, even the party press saw the necessity of offering its audience a tabloid: in 1925, the Communist Party added the Welt am Abend to its media outlets to support its flagging party organ Rote Fahne; in 1928, the Social Democrats “attempted to jump on the tabloid‐bandwagon” by publishing a tabloid‐style edition of their party organ Vorwärts (Fulda 2009, p. 35). The growing popularity of tabloid papers had much to do with the other important innovation in the German press during the 1920s: the increasing importance of visual content. After 1924, when the economic and material constraints of war, revolution, and hyperinflation faded, earlier innovations in printing technology and photography could now be used in newspaper production (Dussel 2012). Images of all kinds rapidly gained great importance, catering “for the ever‐increasing demand for visual experience and instruction” in Weimar Germany (Kolb 2005, p. 96). Tabloids, which were predominately sold on the streets and, thus, had to grab the attention of passers‐by, naturally were the at the forefront of this visualization of the German press, but even the traditional broadsheets could not escape this trend. Consequently, illustrated newspapers and magazines became very popular. The most impressive example was Ullstein’s Grüne Post: introduced in 1927, this weekend paper for urban and rural audiences reached a circulation of nearly 1 million copies only two years later (Ullstein 1929, p. 2). The visualization of the printed press went hand in hand with the increasing popularity of cinema in Germany. Between 1914 and 1930, the number of cinemas doubled from 2,500 to more than 5,000, and the number of cinema tickets sold rose from 332 million in 1926 to 352 million in 1929. In the large towns, this gave rise to a new type of “film palace” – cinemas with a capacity of between 1,000 and over 2,000 seats (Führer 1996). The inflation of the early 1920s made film production in Germany very cheap, which promoted artistic experimentation and exports. The stabilization of the currency opened the market again to foreign – in particular US – films and rang in the end of the dominance of domestically‐produced films that had existed since the war: while there were 253 German films in the cinemas compared to 102 US productions in 1923, in 1926 there were 216 US to 185 domestically‐produced films (Kaes 1993). The new medium of radio also enjoyed a rising popularity during the 1920s. One year after the first regular broadcast went on the air on 29 October 1923, already 550,000 radio receivers were registered in Germany. By the end of 1929, this number had risen to more than 3 million. While the government played a central role in setting up the infrastructure and institutions of the new medium, they also reflected Germany’s federal structure: in 1923, broadcasting corporation were set up in nine German cities, including Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt am Main, and Stuttgart. These regional corporations, of which the postal ministry held a majority of the shares, were responsible for the entertainment



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programs; news and political programs were produced by the Dradag company owned by the interior ministry and a press consortium, including Mosse and Scherl. Representatives of the substates were given a monitoring role in both institutions through “cultural advisory boards” (Kulturbeiräte) and “controlling committees” (Überwachungsausschüsse) (Dussel 2010). During the late 1920s, radio as a medium developed its typical form: headphones were replaced by loudspeakers integrated into the radio set whose status changed from a kind of technical apparatus to a piece of furniture easily integrated into the home. At the same time, consumption practices changed from modes of reception modeled on concerts or lectures to the medium’s use for accompanying and structuring daily life (Lenk 1997). While the German public clearly welcomed these changes in the media landscape, many members of the country’s elites – politicians, intellectuals, even journalists themselves – were deeply concerned. The ever more integrated media ensemble of the 1920s seemed to give rise to an all‐engulfing, uniform mass culture that threatened the German tradition of deep contemplation and aesthetic education through the high arts. In 1926, Siegfried Kracauer criticized the “cult of distraction” that had developed around the new “picture palaces” in cities like Berlin. The cheap glamor of these “optical fairylands” distracted the urban working masses from their exploitation in a capitalist system – and then charged them for it (Kracauer 1995). In 1928, the media scholar Otto Groth bemoaned an “Americanization” of the German press, a tendency toward sensationalism in style and content (Groth 1928). A year later, Rudolf Arnheim lamented the decline of the newspaper into a “picture book for adults” (Arnheim 1929). German lawmakers introduced several measures to stem the tide of foreign mass culture, including a “compensation system” that only allowed the import of films if a domestic one was produced in turn. As in Britain, the system proved ineffective and led to the mass production of cheap films to secure the introduction of US hit movies (Kaes 1993). The fact that political parties in Germany largely failed to integrate the new media of radio and film into their subcultural networks has led some historians to claim that they instigated the emergence of a “classless” mass culture (Führer 1996, p. 739). However, media consumption in 1920s Germany was still very much structured along traditional class lines. Thus, cinemas in working‐class districts often showed quite different films from the inner‐city “movie palaces,” and audiences remained very loyal to their local establishments that catered to their particular tastes rather than offering a “homogenized” cultural fare (Führer 1996). Radio as a whole largely remained a “middle‐class appliance,” not least because of the relatively high cost of the receiver; radio content itself also often reflected German bourgeois values of Bildung and tasteful entertainment in the forms of lectures and classical concerts (Lenk 1997). However, the real divide in terms of media use in Germany was not a social but a geographical one: most cinemas were located in towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants, and many smaller communities did not have a picture house at all. While many cinemas in the big cities offered a daily program and the latest technology, provincial cinemas were often small establishments with old equipment and were only open on weekends. Outside the metropolitan areas, radio could only be received via much more expensive valve receivers, and the quality of reception was often very low (Führer 1996). While most rural Germans were able to at least buy a regular paper, economic, and political pressures increasingly forced many local newspapers to rely on content produced by agencies. The name most closely associated with this process is Alfred Hugenberg. An influential manager and right‐wing politician, Hugenberg had built an extensive network of news agencies, advertising brokerages and media outlets during the war, and he used

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it to influence the press in the interests of German heavy industry (Guratzsch 1974). In 1922, Hugenberg founded the Wirtschaftsstelle für die Provinz (Economic Agency for the Provinces, Wipro) to strengthen his influence on the provincial press. This agency supplied numerous small local papers, which could not afford their own correspondents and reporters, with finished printing matrixes of national and international news, into which only the respective masthead of the paper had to be inserted before printing. By the end of the 1920s, Wipro supplied 530 papers with such matrixes. Thus, the fears of German elites about a predominant mass culture were misplaced: the differentiation of the German media landscape during the 1920s was largely confined to the cities where media consumption was still governed by social background. Instead, it could be argued that the real homogenization occurred outside of the urban centers, in communities with economically vulnerable newspapers and limited access to new media.

­The Territorial Netherlands The Dutch economy and society underwent rapid modernization in the decades around 1900. For the press, modernization meant standardization (of both production and formats), innovation (such as the use of visual material), and improvements in content (including more emphasis on human interest, following US models). This in turn meant scaling‐up newspaper production to a degree that went well beyond the scope of the many family‐based enterprises that were still extant in the 1920s. The period witnessed a spate of takeovers and the rise of large city‐based companies, as well as an increase in the number of assertive journalists assigned to hunt for newsworthy items and scoops (Wijfjes 2005, pp. 158–163). However, as Karl Christian Führer (2008) has pointed out, the intense partisan competition of German journalism shocked contemporary Dutch observers, who were used to a more orderly national press culture. As the Netherlands had remained neutral during the World War I, this epic clash was experienced primarily as a propaganda campaign waged by foreign powers through foreign media. The tangle of competing interests in international reporting more or less forced detached observation and impartial judgment upon the Dutch press, and newspapers emerged from the war with a stronger sense for the need for independent interpretation. There were exceptions to this rule; the wartime period witnessed one noteworthy failed experiment in populist reporting when the Telegraaf made a faux pas by catering to popular opinion and openly promulgating its anti‐German stance (Wijfjes 2005, pp. 117–143). This convinced the social and political leadership that the press ought not exclusively serve commercial profit. The increase in leisure time and the (relative) growth in spending capacity in the interwar Netherlands became clearly visible in the increase of magazines and in the topics they dealt with. When the first film magazine was established in 1918, it made a point of noting the variety of weeklies and monthlies available. Periodicals came in all sorts and sizes: there were magazines for dog lovers, chicken breeders, pigeon fanciers, chess players, café performers, horse riders, aquarium keepers, cyclists, car drivers, fishermen, footballers, dressmakers, and home owners; there were periodicals for every trade, craft, hobby, and profession (Hemels and Vegt 1993). In the 1920s, magazines had to compete fiercely with newspapers, yet during and after the war, new magazine titles emerged, targeting ladies both “cultured” (1915) and Protestant (1918), as well as girls (1923), “modern youth” (1925), and especially families. The latter domestic periodicals came in many regional varieties and usually devoted particular attention to housewives. Periodicals



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for female readers and youth had been produced since the latter part of the nineteenth century. The 1920s, however, were characterized not so much by a diversification of audiences as an expansion in product range and, given the extensive use of images including photographs, the modernization of formats. Mass consumption grew especially in the second half of the decade, only to be brutally curtailed by the crisis of 1929. Before disaster hit, sports coverage had witnessed rapid growth, culminating in the coverage of the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games. The Netherlands had its share of radio amateurs who, like their colleagues elsewhere, avidly read radio magazines and dabbled with expensive transmitting equipment. Radio broadcasting for a broader public took off only after about 1925, when insightful radio entrepreneurs and adventurous businesses (notably the electronics company Philips) organized concerts and broadcast classical music through the ether. Within half a decade, the number of listeners grew from around 2,000 to 140,000 in 1930, a figure that was to increase exponentially in later years (Wijfjes 1994). The rise of radio was not without its hitches, however. Educated music lovers looked down on the new medium while theaters, gramophone companies and even the Dutch Olympic Committee worried about unfair competition resulting from the immediacy of radio communication. There was no point in reporting about events if everyone had already been informed over the airwaves. No less importantly, the political and social elites were afraid of dance music and jazz that were bound to lead to profligacy, of political debate that would upset family life, and of transmitting the voices of their political and religious competitors without restraint, which would, no doubt, result in the wholesale disruption of the social order (Wijfjes 1994). Throughout the 1920s, the potential of both press and radio to figure as independent forces that spoke directly to “the masses” worried elite commentators. They associated obeisance to popular sentiment with lack of principle, cheap gains, and the deleterious influence of “America.” But how was the problem of an unruly press in a bourgeois society that set great store by peace, quiet and “proper” behavior to be addressed? The Dutch solved the conundrum by organizing a distinctly segregated media system based on the organization of Dutch society: The most influential media identified with specific political, cultural and/or religious orientations, and maintained direct connections to their own constituencies as well as to the political elites who governed them. The system of verzuiling or “pillarization” divided Dutch society into pillars or zuilen  –  socialist, Protestant, Catholic, “liberal” – each provided for the different societal groups by establishing schools (and in some cases universities), homes for the elderly, labor unions, political parties, and so on. The press played a crucial role in this system. Within each particular enclave, media acted as tools of consensus, ensuring group coherence, control by social, political, and religious leaders and, of course, restraints on commercialization. Catholic newspapers, for instance, were run on a for‐profit basis by Catholic companies who appointed Catholic editors whose output was somewhat superfluously controlled by clerical censors. Editors of socialist newspapers were not only appointed by the party or union leadership but often also sat on party and union boards. Among Protestants and liberals the blending of social roles was less explicit but their profiles were clear nevertheless (Lijphart 1975). The absence of populist, tabloid journalism in the Dutch 1920s can, thus, be ascribed to the fact that the press was integrated into a pillarized society led by elites and dominated by the middle classes. It is important to note, however, that most of the press was not specifically allied to the orientations mentioned. The “neutral” press (both regional and national) accounted for about 50% of the total number of newspapers in circulation, the Catholic

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press for 25%, and the remainder was divided among the other orientations. Moreover, despite built‐in control mechanisms, even the pillarized press was not a mere continuation of church or party politics (Wijfjes 2005, pp. 146–151). The Dutch press was above all middle‐class, relatively sedate and, in hindsight, often irritatingly self‐congratulatory. Radio, too, was duly organized according to the system of verzuiling. The government allotted limited broadcasting time to each of the various groups who each established their own broadcasting corporation: Nederlandse Christelijke Radio Vereniging (the Protestant Dutch Christian Radio Association, NCRV, 1924), the Katholieke Radio Omroep (Catholic Radio Corporation, KRO, 1925), the socialist Vereniging Arbeiders Radio Amateurs (Association of Laborers Radio Amateurs, VARA, 1925), the Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep (Free‐thinking Protestant Radio Corporation, VPRO, 1926), and the Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep (General Association “Radio Corporation” AVRO, 1927, which aimed to service the nation as a whole). Protestants were not expected to listen to socialists, let alone Catholics. This system, including the specific corporations within it, remained in place for the remainder of the twentieth century, and beyond. The complacent lack of cultural dynamism in the Dutch 1920s tied in with local developments in politics and legislation. This period was characterized, in the Netherlands as elsewhere, by democratization as a form of political modernization, but in the Netherlands, it was constrained by a pillarized social structure and a strong middle class. The 1920s saw the consolidation of a constitutional parliamentary democracy based on mass participation subtly managed by elites. Men aged 25 and older were enfranchised in 1917, followed by women in 1919. A relatively stringent legal code regulating moral conduct (the so‐called zedelijkheidswetgeving of 1911) exemplified the middle‐of‐the‐road morality that fed into the workings of the media (Van Vree 1994). Characteristic of the spirit of the times was an affair triggered by the communist weekly De Tribune. It predictably denounced Christianity as the opium of the people but added insult to injury by suggesting that Christ himself be thrown on the rubbish heap of history. The controversy led to the inclusion of the law on “scornful blasphemy” (Wet inzake smalende godslastering, 1932) in the Dutch criminal code where it remained until 2014. If radio was less significant a medium of communication than the press, film was even more inconsequential in influence – not because the Dutch found moving pictures less appealing but because the Dutch elites were so successful in controlling the media environment. Protracted discussions in parliament on the pros and cons of preventive and restrictive censorship ultimately led to the “law opposing the moral and social dangers of cinema” (Wet tot bestrijding van de zedelijke en maatschappelijke gevaren van de bioscoop) of 1926 and the establishment of a film censorship board two years later. Thus, the elites governing the pillars not only advocated the moral codes the people were expected to comply with, but they also controlled the film commission. In response, the cinemas strictly maintained neutrality to avoid conflict and formed cartels to manage what remained of the market (Dibbets 1993; Dibbets 2006). All in all, the 1920s created a mold for media that was still recognizable almost a century later.

­Sweden The common denominator of Swedish media in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century was their role in the democratization process: to a large extent, political democratization in Sweden was built on the newspapers. The main papers were liberal



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and had developed in close connection to groups demanding universal suffrage, freedom of religion, as well as restrictions on alcohol. But also conservative groups and, later, the Social Democratic Party established their newspapers. Almost all newspapers had a political outlook closely connected to a party. In most local towns, there were at least three newspapers, one supporting the Liberals, one the Conservatives, and one the Social Democrats. Often, there were also papers supporting the Agrarians or the Left Socialists, depending on the specific area. The political outlook of the readers usually went along with that of the paper whose political profile was part of a strategy to reach new readers in an expanding market. In consequence, the press was embedded in party politics and mainly articulated or defended party‐political ideas (Weibull 2013a). In international comparison, the Swedish press system has, thus, been labeled “Democratic Corporatist” (Hallin and Mancini 2004). The politicization of the newspaper market also influenced news coverage, especially in the social democratic press (Kronvall 1971). During the first decades of the twentieth century, layout and language were modernized, mostly visible in headlines and the use of pictures. The first textbook on modern news writing “American style” was published in 1923 by the editor of Dagens Nyheter, the leading Stockholm paper. The book stressed the importance of catching the reader’s attention: “Read the first ten words you have written: If you believe that they can attract the reader to go on, then it is right, but if you think that it sure will leave the reader indifferent, to hell with it” (quoted in Holmberg et al. 1983, p. 121). Social changes, i.e. the expansion of the middle class and the increased amount of leisure time, and the corresponding new interests of readers were reflected in a broadened content. New ideas often originated from editors’ visits to the United States or the United Kingdom, but also to Denmark. New journalistic genres and forms emerged, among them sports, causeries, and family, later also comic strips (Rydén 2001). The new categories were mainly found in the main city papers, especially in Stockholm, and were often, like family and causeries, aimed at female readers. In the countryside, papers were more traditional, but here, the expanding magazine press, i.e. family journals or picture magazines, offered an equivalent content (Rydén 2001). Based on the “freedom of the press act” of 1766, political debate in Sweden met few restrictions, but there was an increasing criticism of the sensationalist press’s focus on crime and gossip. The main newspapers regarded this focus unethical and wanted to stop it. An important reason was that they saw a potential risk of censorship legislation being introduced by the government in response. In 1916, the Publicistklubben (The Publicists’ Club, PK), which had been founded in 1874 as an organization for publishers and journalists, initiated a press council to supervise journalistic practice, and in 1923, the PK, together with the Organization of Newspaper Publishers and the Union of Journalists, decided on a written code of conduct to prevent government legislation. The introduction of the code was a first step in the introduction of professional journalism ethics in Sweden (Weibull and Börjesson 1992, 1995). Cinema in Sweden had expanded during the late 1910s, both in the cities and on the countryside. By 1919, there were 703 movie theaters in the country, attracting a large public. However, the recession and rise of unemployment in the early 1920s led to a decline in cinema going, which created problems for the national film industry that to a large extent depended on the Swedish market. This opened the market for US imports: of the approximately 5,000 films shown in Sweden during the 1920s, 70% had a US origin. The content of these movies that were very popular among young people, was strongly criticized by newspapers, political organizations, and churches as a threat to

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Swedish culture. The national film industry, mainly the cinema owners, struggled to handle these critical voices and tried to balance the different interests by keeping close contact with the Statens biografbyrå (State Bureau for Cinema Censorship), which had been established already in 1911. The industry even argued that the bureau was a sort of guarantee that only politically and morally accepted movies were approved for distribution (Björkin 1998; Furhammar 1991). Swedish reactions to early radio must be seen in the context of a general technological optimism of the early 1920s. The first radio broadcast in 1921, was organized by the Telegrafstyrelsen (National Telegraph Administration), the public agency responsible for radio technology. Soon, local transmissions were broadcasted a few hours a week and were mostly run by radio clubs with equipment provided by the industry (Weibull 2013b). The Telegraph Administration was the central actor in the policy process closely monitoring international trends and conducting its experimental transmissions in cooperation with the radio industry. It was also responsible for handling applications for radio concessions. In its first call in 1922, none of the applicants, among them the radio industry, was accepted. The main reason was that the agency wanted to keep control over the technology. A state monopoly for distribution, the Telegraph Administration argued, would make it easier to safeguard political neutrality (Hadenius 1998). Further, the agency demanded, the financing of radio needed to be based on the licensing of radio sets, not on advertising. These policy principles were accepted across all political parties but met with strong criticism from the radio clubs that argued that advertising was a more effective and less bureaucratic financing model. This criticism gained little support, however, and the policy principles were accepted by the government. In the second call, a newspaper consortium called Radiotjänst (radio service) headed by the national news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT), which had been founded in 1921 and was owned by the Swedish press, applied for the concession. The director of TT had mobilized the press and argued that radio might turn out a dangerous news competitor if not closely controlled, and that newspapers had the necessary experience in content production (Weibull 1997). Because of the close link between newspapers and political parties, the application by the press consortium had a politically strong case (Elgemyr 1996). The Telegraph Administration, however, also wanted the radio industry to have its stake in the radio company, which led to a negotiation process that involved the government. In the end, the radio industry and business interests became minority stakeholders in Radiotjänst that finally received the government concession. The first transmissions started formally on 1 January 1925. The organization of broadcast radio that came out of the political process was a hybrid one. It was characterized by state control with the Telegraph Administration directing the process. The agency balanced the lobbying efforts coming from the different business interests while actively involving a company owned by all Swedish newspapers, a model acceptable to parliament. Further, the agency kept control over the technology while the program concession was given to a private company but was regulated in a government charter. In the beginning, local transmissions were accepted, but after a few years, they were stopped and replaced by the national programming. Thus, the outcome was a state‐controlled radio run by a private, independent broadcasting company, a model that lasted almost three decades (Djerf‐Pierre and Weibull 2001). According to the charter, radio programming was to be of a diverse nature and offer good entertainment. Further, programs needed to convey a high moral, cultural, and artistic level as well as reliability, objectivity, and impartiality. It was supervised by a council representing mainly cultural and educational interests. Radiotjänst developed cultural



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programming with classical concerts, opera and theater, as well as educational programming with lectures and language courses, and it sometimes reported live from events of national character (Nordberg 1998). Political discussions were banned, and originally, there was only one newscast per day at 9.15 p.m., delivered by TT. This timing had been set in response to the demand of newspaper publishers who had requested that radio news only be broadcast late at night – the only time when newspapers were not published. Further, the news was broadcast from the TT office and not from the radio house. In the 1930s, this structure became a focus of criticism as it was suspected that TT withheld some news in favor of the morning papers. This, however, could never be proven. Thus, a certain segregation of tasks emerged: newspapers focused on the daily news, the coverage of politics, and advertising, while radio was more of a cultural and educational institution. At the same time, radio, like cinema, was well covered in newspapers, i.e. in articles on how to build your own radio receiver (Weibull 2013b). The audience regarded the new medium as being almost magical, and the number of listeners increased fast. Already by the end of 1925, there were more than 125,000 licenses, and in 1930, the number was close to 500,000 (Hadenius 1998). A look into early audience correspondence of Radiotjänst reveals a grateful radio public, and the few controversies that did arise, were related to music programs: letters from the countryside expressed criticism on the amount of classical music and demanded more folk and accordion music, and old‐fashioned dance music (Nordmark 1999). The results from the first audience survey conducted in 1929, contrasted dramatically to the programming policy. It showed that a substantial majority of listeners was critical of classical concerts, opera, and modern dance music. The conclusion of Radiotjänst, however, was that this was not relevant for the programming profile, since it was not for the listeners to decide what music was to be played (Björnberg 1998). This decision was rooted in the view of radio’s civilizing mission: while it is often maintained that the 1920s meant the modernization of Sweden, not least by media expansion with the growth of newspapers and the introduction of radio, this is only partly correct. While Stockholm’s society was characterized by modern life styles, the countryside, where almost two‐thirds of the Swedish populations lived, remained very traditional. Some of the negative reactions to the radio programming reflected this political and cultural divide. Thus, national radio, centralized in Stockholm, represented the new time, and its profile was seen as a way of modernizing the whole of Sweden (Djerf‐Pierre and Weibull 2013).

­Italy In the 1920s, the Italian media system underwent a deep transformation. One of the main causes was the communication policy of the fascist regime, led by Benito Mussolini, which dominated the country for more than 20 years, from 1922 to 1943–1945. This policy should not be understood only as a means of channeling ideology and propaganda, but also as a thorough reorganization of the culture and media industries (Forgacs 1990, see also Chapter  7). Besides, there were other influential factors that were not directly linked to fascist media policy. To understand the development of the press in this period, it is important to also consider the growth of literacy: according to official figures, the level of illiteracy was almost cut by half during the 1920s, from more than 35% in 1921 to about 18% in 1931, and illiteracy was increasingly confined to the southern regions. Illiteracy, further, differed notably among age groups: while 10.4% of people aged 10–19 years were unable to read, so were 34.3% of people aged 50–64, and 49.4%

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aged over 65 (Ottaviano and Ortoleva 1991). This created a strong generational imbalance with regard to reading but also to the Italian language more generally suggesting a more open attitude of younger generations toward national popular culture under construction by an increasingly diversified (but politically homogenized) cultural industry. Because of the growth of literacy, many modern weekly illustrated magazines, particularly those oriented to a female readership, were founded in the 1920s, but they only fully developed later. Similarly, the popularity of radio and film – media more capable of reaching illiterate or semi‐literate audiences – grew during the second half of the 1920s, but they were destined to produce their richest fruits in the following decade. Newspaper and book readership, on the other hand, remained very limited. Nonetheless, Mussolini (a journalist in his earlier life) always paid close attention to the press: this referred to political censorship but also to a constant surveillance of writers and commentators, who could either be a threat to the regime, if not sufficiently controlled, or important supporters, if induced to cooperate (see particularly Castronovo and Tranfaglia 1980). The important role of cinema and early illustrated magazines compared to the limited access of large parts of the population to books and newspapers, seemed to support the idea of Italian popular culture of the 1920s as having been primarily visual – a culture consisting of photographs and films. However, such an interpretation ignored the role of soundscape in Italian media (Ortoleva and Pistacchi 2012). First, opera maintained a persisting popularity, also among the working class to whom one of the last great composers and heroes was Giacomo Puccini, who died in 1924. Second, Neapolitan – and increasingly also Italian language – songs played a central role. These were disseminated not so much through the gramophone as through the consumption, also by semi‐literate people, of lyrics printed on spare sheets or booklets, and fostered by the circulation of “organetti di Barberia” (mobile pianolas) in working‐class neighborhoods. The popularity of Neapolitan songs had grown since the 1870s, and with the birth of a nationwide market, they remained popular at least up until World War II. Third, dance halls, which were one of the most widespread forms of entertainment for the working class, continued to play a central role. New rhythms and dances, including the tango, gained major popularity in Italy through the adaptation of Italian lyrics to Argentinian melodies and by the creation of new songs written by Italian poets and musicians, following tango rhythms. Finally, with the introduction of sound film at the end of the 1920s, cinema, which had been an important industry already in the pre‐war period, gained further popularity among the population. This was also thanks to the combination of the traditions of variété and songs, possibly the most universally beloved of all genres of popular culture in Italy. Radio, which started its regular transmission in 1924 with Unione Radiofonica Italiana (URI), later transformed into Ente Italiano Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR), played an increasingly important role in the Italian soundscape. While its presence remained limited (by 1931, there were only 240,000 radio licenses in the whole country), radio was often consumed through collective and organized listening (Isola 1990). Through the early diffusion of galena devices (crystal radio receivers), the new medium also became the object of attention of city youth and enthusiasts’ clubs. In the 1920s, the language of radio was relatively traditional: much of its broadcasting time, particularly in the evening, was dedicated to opera and theater. During the day, important personalities of the regime and intellectuals held so‐called conversazioni (short talks), while the news consisted of direct reproductions of the bulletins of the official press agency Stefani (Monteleone 2001; Marzano 2016). The fascist regime concentrated much of its attention on controlling radio in the early 1920s and only started a policy of actively promoting radio at the end of the decade.



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It was in 1928–1929 that the government started a concerted effort to support radio enthusiasts’ clubs (formalized in 1930 as the semi‐official club “Pionieri dell’EIAR”) particularly in rural areas. Their role was to invite non‐listeners to share the experience of the new medium. In the late 1920s, the Ministry of Communication also started planning the diffusion of radio devices in rural areas. This effort culminated in the establishment of the Ente Radio Rurale, a public institution dedicated to increase radio use in rural areas of Italy in the early 1930s (Monteleone 2001). The advent of Fascism introduced an important change in the attitude of the ruling elites toward the emerging popular culture. While the dominant liberal culture had often identified “the mass” with ignorant unruly crowds, since the very beginning, fascist ideologists hailed mass media as the builders of an audience. The latter was often likened to a great assembly listening to one voice or to a crowd within which the whole nation was simultaneously present. If guided by a leader – or, even better, by the leader – this mass could become an active agent in history and identify completely with an idealized nation. In this idealized perspective, cinema, radio, a strictly controlled press, and forms of public art converged in a unified dialog of the Duce with the masses, which would make the crowd itself both a protagonist and an army ready to obey. How much of this political project became reality? Traditional interpretations (cf. Cannistraro 1975) still widely accepted by many historians view Italian media as a stream‐lined “factory of consent.” However, the specificities of Italian cultural traditions and the many factors and processes that strongly influenced the development of media and popular culture in the 1920s, at least partially contradict this rather simplistic reading (Ortoleva 2002). First, Italy’s media landscape was geographically divided in that the media industry was not concentrated in one single area. In the 1920s, Italian popular culture developed in two centers of gravity, one in the north and one in the south: Milan was the capital of print media, books, the main national newspapers, magazines, and the advertising industry, while Naples was the nationally and internationally recognized center of popular music producing many of the most famous variété and later of sound cinema. 1920s Turin, which had been the founding center of Italian cinema, became a crucial location for two sectors: radio broadcasting and the telephone system. Rome, meanwhile, was designated to become the film industry’s capital, a process that was to be completed in the subsequent decade. One of the main reasons for this continuing division was the protracted role of dialects, particularly of the Neapolitan dialect, as the vernacular language of popular culture  –  a role fascist leaders officially opposed, but in fact tolerated. Another reason was the technological shortcomings of the Rome area compared to Italy’s northwest with its big industries and great technical universities. The idea of a centralized cultural industry under direct control of a totalitarian party is, thus, not consistent with this multiplicity of languages and centers of production (Ortoleva 2002). A second relevant contradiction lay in the ownership patterns of Italy’s cultural industry. During the period from World War I until the Great Depression, the control of the country’s main newspapers remained in private hands, particularly the great banks of industrial companies. While Mussolini formally criticized this ownership structure, he in fact accepted it and limited himself to choosing the directors of the main newspapers. He also created a corporative system for journalistic professionals: they had to belong to an Albo dei giornalisti (Register of Journalists) in order to direct a newspaper or make a living from journalistic activities. In the case of telephony, the fascist regime even promoted a de‐nationalization in favor of a system based on a variety of firms (Balbi 2011), which went along with a strong presence of foreign capital to foster technological progress.

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In  the case of radio, some industrial companies such as the automobile manufacturer FIAT took a central role in early technical development. In the film industry, the regime promoted only a partial presence of the state: while the Istituto LUCE, responsible for newsreels and documentary films, was under direct control of the regime, feature‐film production remained in the hands of private entrepreneurs who were only under indirect control (Brunetta 2003). Furthermore, the influence of Catholic institutions was very relevant for the growth and transformation of Italian popular culture, and it contributed to its ambiguity. The national unification of Italy had been completed in the 1860s under the rule of a liberal ruling class against the will of the Catholic Church, and the Italian state officially remained a “lay” state until 1929 when a concordat was signed between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI. On the one hand, this led to a “parallel” presence of the church and the state, not only in respect of the school system, but also with regard to media such as magazines and cinema. On the other hand, the whole of Italian popular culture was largely influenced by a Catholic mentality: censorship of sensations, for instance, was essentially based on what the church considered to be obscene. This plurality of subjects in and influences on Italian popular culture of the time contradicts the still widely accepted idea of a political nomenklatura dominating the media system.

­Conclusion 1920s Europe witnessed the development of a “mass media ensemble” of press and illustrated magazines, radio, and sound film, which, as Axel Schildt (2001) has argued, remained stable until the proliferation of television in the 1960s. While the differences between the national “versions” of this ensemble were profound a number of factors were found across 1920s Europe: first, where the press had been the dominant mass medium, it retained this role expanding its reach and diversifying its product range, but it also was subjected to increased economic pressure and concentration. Second, radio rose as the new mass medium of the 1920s. In most European countries, the state played a central role in its establishment, but the result was often not straightforward state control but a hybrid model, particularly in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands. While radio programming differed considerably, the conception of radio as a tool of public education (often modeled on ideas of “high culture”) seemed to be a European‐wide approach. The development of the media ensemble of the 1920s, with radio and tabloid newspapers as its most spectacular representatives, caused consternation among the political and intellectual elites in many European countries. They were unified in an attempt to curtail the supposedly corrupting influence of popular media, fearing the undermining of traditional morals and the loss of national cultural character. However, it is clear from the above that such fears of social fragmentation and cultural homogenization were unfounded: particularly in places such as the Netherlands and Italy, the continuing influence of social milieus and cultural traditions still fundamentally shaped the production and consumption of media content. In many European countries, the real cultural division lay in the rural–urban divide: while European city dwellers had access to the developing new media ensemble of the 1920s – and its supposedly corrupting influence  –  much of the rural population only read or heard about it through their traditional media.



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Crises, Rise of Fascism and the Establishment of Authoritarian Media Systems Patrick Merziger, Gabriele Balbi, Carlos Barrera, and Balázs Sipos

­Introduction Since 1890, technical developments and innovations have fostered media distribution and have increased the importance of media in general; newspapers became more affordable, cinema had its breakthrough during the war and radio entered the stage. The experiences of World War I had shown that mass media could no longer be ignored by politicians but that it had be used by them for mobilizing the population. Many observers saw the reason for the victory of the Triple Entente and its allies in the French and English successes on the “media front.” At the same time, Gustav Le Bon’s “mass psychology” together with early communication research conceptualized the “masses” in modern society as easy to navigate, given a strong leadership and powerful persuasion techniques (Bussemer 2008). Politicians became increasingly responsive to the demands of media and took into account the presentability of their political initiatives. Simultaneously, politics felt pressured to intervene in new ways. It did not limit itself to censorship anymore but tried to shape, regulate, and patronize media – a development not necessarily restricted to dictatorships (Chapman 2005). Especially the radical movements of the right that thrived in the fragile European post‐ war democracies attributed the defeats of the First World War to inferior propaganda efforts while, as part of the stab‐in‐the‐back myth, the alleged “Jewish dominated press” was held responsible for undermining unity at the “home front.” Against this backdrop of attributing enormous power to media, they developed far‐reaching fantasies of controlling the people by gaining total control over the media. They founded organizational divisions dealing with propaganda. At the same time, the media policies of the fascist movements built upon widespread resentment against media in democratic systems that were allegedly controlled by dark forces. Therefore, fascist parties propagated overtly that they were to subjugate media and eradicate any opposition after a possible seizure of power.

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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After Benito Mussolini, leader of the National Fascist Party of Italy, became prime minister in 1922, many European countries including England, France, Greece, Portugal, and Poland saw the rise of right‐wing populist movements; prominent examples are the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) under Adolf Hitler, the Falange under Francisco Franco, and the Arrow Cross Party in Hungary led by Ferenc Szálasi. There is a rich literature on the question of whether these can be grouped under the term “fascism.” To many scholars, the term seems problematic as it connotes the Marxist interpretation that conceptualizes fascism as an advanced stage of capitalism and a coherent political approach. Still, the right‐wing populist governments, parties, and associations of interwar Europe shared ideological convictions and regarded the National Fascist Party in Italy, partly as a role model, partly as a competitor. These movements rejected democracy and aimed to establish a dictatorship under a strong leader, eliminating fundamental civil rights in the process. They all resorted to the racist notion of an organic national community and a pure race. The unity of the nation had to be defended against influences from outside at any price. This included the persecution of “alien elements” and in most cases an aggressive expansionism (Pinto and Kallis 2014). This chapter focuses on the fascist parties of Italy, Germany, Spain, and Hungary as they all gained power and implemented their concepts of political propaganda. After its seizure of power in 1922, the Italian Fascist Party undertook the first steps in installing an authoritarian media system, followed by the German National Socialists who established the most comprehensive propaganda apparatus after 1933. Starting in 1939, Franco was able to stabilize his regime for decades partly guided by these two examples. Hungary is typical of those European countries where fascist movements played an important role during the inter‐war period, advancing their media policies in the turmoil of World War II. Just as there is no homogenous fascist movement, however, there is also not one sort of fascist media system, and national media policies differed widely. Still, we can identify similar problems, goals, and approaches in the field of media control and public relations (Zimmermann 2007). In this chapter, we scrutinize similarities, transfers, and interrelations as well as differences in fascist approaches to media control and use. We, first, identify shared convictions arising from World War I propaganda and the theories on propaganda techniques. Second, we address the role public relations and campaign advertising played in the respective movement’s rise to power. But the main emphasis is put on the measures taken after the respective seizure of power. We describe the institutions that were meant to control mass media and to synchronize media content, and ask which role media played in stabilizing the regime. For most of the time, research has focused only on describing the impressive “propaganda apparatuses.” However, historians have demanded a “voluntarist turn” (Neil Gregor) also in the analysis of the public sphere. They have pointed out that propaganda, like any form of communication, runs in two directions and is also informed by it its reception (Mühlenfeld 2009; Merziger 2015). We, therefore, also have to ask to what extent the regime was successful in synchronizing media content and reception, especially in the realm of everyday media use and in the entertainment sector. Did mechanisms of market economy remain operational and what role did audience responses play in shaping media use of the regime? With these questions in mind, concluding remarks will briefly examine possible continuities after the end of World War II as these continuities could also give hints to the popularity of fascist propaganda.



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­The Fascist Media System in Italy: Between Imposing Control and Granting Leeway In Italy, the ideology of Fascism was based on cultural values that had emerged before Fascists came to power in 1922. It relied on a mix of nationalism, protectionism, imperialism, elitism, and totalitarianism. World War I had drawn attention to the role of propaganda, censorship and “masses.” Media such as trench newspapers, posters, pictures, and cinema became popular. Theories on the danger of crowds and masses circulated, and Mussolini himself declared he was influenced by Gustave Le Bon (De Felice 1968, pp. 367–369). Fascists’ rise to power was accompanied by intense propaganda efforts, successfully especially at street level; they made speeches and held rallies, showed off their uniforms and banners, marched and paraded, and, not to forget, committed spectacular acts of violence (Reichardt 2002). Fascism did not have time to elaborate a summa mediologica; power over media had to be established while governing. The Fascist regime considered newspapers and magazines crucial propagandistic tools able to mobilize the key influencers (Castronovo 1976). The first Fascist institution founded was the Ufficio Stampa della Presidenza del Consiglio (Premiership Press Office) in 1922. For the time being, it was set up in order to control intellectuals and high culture; only in the 1930s, it put a stronger focus on media reaching the general population. In 1924, the Ministry of Communication was established. It aimed to control the communication infrastructure (train networks, postal services, telegraph, and telephones, maritime traffic). In the same year, a centralized institution for managing the audio‐visual landscape in Italy was set up, the Instituto Luce, but a Fascist Italian cinema appealing to the masses developed only in the 1930s. In 1926, Fascist propaganda ushered in a new phase of popularization and centralization. The Ufficio Stampa took on new tasks: checking all the printed newspapers and magazines published in Italy, providing guidelines and financial support to (aligned) newsrooms, creating the myth of Mussolini as the duce, and organizing (from the beginning of 1930s) a permanent network of propagandists. In 1933, Joseph Goebbels visited Rome and promoted his ideas of propaganda, thereby encouraging and influencing the Fascists on their way to a centralized and popular propaganda. In 1934 and 1935, the Ufficio Stampa segued into the Ministry of Press and Propaganda. In 1937, when the Fascist Party was promoting war and expansions more overtly, the Ministero della Cultura Popolare (Ministry of Popular Culture) was created. It aimed at popularizing Fascist culture, centralizing all the cultural institutions, hastening propagandistic campaigns, sustaining historical revisionism, racist campaigns, and war propaganda. At first glance, the institutional structure set up by the Fascist Party to manage the Italian media system seems to be comprehensive and well organized. But on closer inspection, ambivalences and ambiguities start to emerge; leeway had to be given. As the Fascist Party considered the press to be of singular importance, it started to regulate and to control this medium first and more strictly than any other. With a “Royal Decree” in 1924 and then with the Press Law in 1925, freedom of the press was limited. The Agenzia Stefani, the main Italian press agency, was placed under the control of Fascist Party. In 1928, the party set up the Albo dei giornalisti (journalists register) to control journalists and to emit/subtract licenses. In the 1930s, the Fascist Party introduced the so‐called veline: papers containing instructions for newspapers and periodicals on sensitive matters for the party (Tranfaglia 2005). The Fascist Party also intended to

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take over or at least to influence the most important newspapers and during the 1920s well‐known newspaper directors were dismissed if they did not align with Fascist policy. By the end of the 1920s, a large part of the press was controlled by the Fascists, but relevant exceptions remained. Starting from the mid‐1920s, anti‐Fascist papers published in Italy and especially by exiled anti‐Fascists started to spread. The local newspapers were difficult to control because of their sheer number and their concentration on local matters. Popular illustrated magazines (i.e. the very popular La Domenica del Corriere) balked at being used for propaganda purposes: they aimed to entertain readers with an imaginative language and to convey a somewhat middle‐class way of life than the Fascist vision. Despite many attempts, the party was not able to limit the circulation of foreign newspapers (Forno 2005). Even in the 1930s, many journalists still disagreed with Fascism; more problems emerged during World War II, when some newspapers openly criticized the party’s choices. Structural problems also contributed to the failure of the Fascist intention to control the press, such as the high rate of illiteracy among Italians (that has historically affected also the book market) and the fragmentation of the country. How could the people be indoctrinated when in 1921, 35.8% and in 1931, 21% were not able to read at all, and when only few of the literate people did not use to read newspapers? And how could a homogeneous totalitarian culture be created in a country that was characterized by division between the north and the south, the west and the east, the cities and the countryside, especially when it came to access to newspapers and people’s reading habits? Fascism was not able to solve these problems. Also regarding the book market, we can observe an ambivalent pattern (Ragone 1999). Especially during the 1920s, new industrial models of production addressed and created a mass market. Arnoldo Mondadori grew dramatically publishing mainly novels and mystery fiction; other publishers (such as Bompiani, Rizzoli, Corbaccio) kept a degree of freedom and autonomy. An association of publishers (Federazione Nazionale Fascista dell’Industria Editoriale) was already founded in 1926, but control tightened only in the 1930s. Publishers started to self‐censor and obey government rules which led, for example, to the exclusion of Jewish writers and publishers after 1936. In Italy, “official” radio broadcasting started with the private URI (Unione Radiofonica Italiana) in 1924. It was renamed EIAR (Ente Italiana Audizioni Radiofoniche) in 1928; therewith broadcasting licenses were put under the direct control of the government, and the four members of the government sat on the board of directors. Italian public broadcasting was quite unique in Europe because it was financed both by advertising and fees paid by the audience (Monteleone 1995). During the 1920s, Fascist Party leaders and Mussolini himself did not believe in the potential of radio broadcasting. As a former journalist Mussolini had a “press mentality” and the first attempt to broadcast one of his speeches failed due to technical reasons (Balbi 2010). At this time, radio audiences were also very limited mainly because of the high costs of radio sets; in the south and the east broadcasting coverage was fragmentary. During the 1930s, Mussolini’s attitude toward radio changed and the government tried to stimulate of people’s interest (Monticone 1978). During this decade, radio evolved in many aspects. New programs and new schedule addressed targeted audiences (youth, women, and farmers). Between 1929 and 1936, EIAR itself strove to promote Fascist ideology through different broadcasts of, for example, Mussolini’s speeches, political ceremonies, and especially the news (the so‐called Radio Giornale). In 1936, these propaganda broadcasts were put under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Press and Propaganda. But as in other fascist regimes, especially in the late 1930s and



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early 1940s, one of the main aims was to distract citizens from internal struggles using music (around 50% of the programming schedule) and even American jazz. In addition, different campaigns to promote radio sets were launched. Nevertheless, these plans were only partially successful as can be shown by two examples. First, at the beginning of World War II, there were only around 1 million radio sets in Italy (Papa 1978, Vol 2, pp. 114–115). Second, unlicensed Italian radio stations and foreign radio stations broadcasting in Italian (first of all Vatican Radio) were tolerated by the Fascist Party for a long time, and their schedules were published in popular radio weeklies. During the 1920s, the Fascists neither had a strategy for cinematography nor recognized its relevance for propaganda (Brunetta 1975). At the end of 1920s, audiences decreased because of the financial crisis (see Chapter 3). Many movie producers went bankrupt and the Fascists decided to intervene in favor of the movie industry (Manetti 2012). In the 1930s, the Fascist coined the famous slogan “La cinematografia è l’arma più forte” (“Cinema is the most powerful weapon”). Rather than radio, cinema became the field where Fascism tried to implement a policy of “hyper‐nationalism” and aggressive modernism (Ortoleva 2011, pp. 52–53). The Istituto Luce reoriented its propaganda and started to promote the mythology of Fascism and to prepare Italian society for the war. Stronger controls over production and creativity were introduced in 1931. In 1934, the Direzione Generale della Cinematografia was put under the control of the Premiership Press Office. But also the movie industry was not completely controlled by Fascism and was not used for propaganda purposes only. The majority of movies produced during the Fascist era aimed to please the audience and make money. Italian cinema remained independent and private companies could make independent choices of what to produce. For example, one of the most popular genres at that time was the so‐called “cinema dei telefoni bianchi,” depicting rich people gossiping over their white telephones. Ambiguous is probably the best adjective to describe Fascist policy toward the mass media (Sangiovanni 2012). Indeed, ambiguities can be retraced at least in four dimensions. First, during the 1920s, Fascism was not able to fully understand the relevance of mass media; there was definitely a turn in the 1930s, but in the end the regime did not completely control the mass media, especially the radio and movie industry. Second, Fascism veered between propaganda and entertainment, between a desire to control the media system and the necessity of providing leeway. Third, Fascism was an autocratic regime that often left the media in private hands. Privatizations were among the first decrees of Fascism in the 1920s; private and sometimes foreign companies owned publishing houses, radio manufacturing, and movie production companies. Finally, the lack of media penetration can be perceived as an ambiguity. In spite of the Fascist initiatives, neither newspapers, nor radio, nor movies reached the Italian people as a whole. On the other hand, it would be misleading to describe Fascist media policy as a failure that did not leave any traces. Indeed, many solutions adopted by Fascism can be considered long‐term constitutive choices or, in other terms, predetermined the future development of the media in Italy. The dependency on state subsidies is a lasting characteristic of the Italian media industries, either as financial dependency or in terms of collusion between politics and businessmen. Institutions created by Fascism are still relevant in the country: the Venice International Film Festival is a Fascist legacy and the Albo dei giornalisti (quite a unique example worldwide) still regulates access to a career in journalism. Finally, funding via a mixture of advertisements and fees still prevails. It resulted in a

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public service broadcasting company (the RAI) (Radio Audizioni Italiane and after 1954 Radiotelevisione Italiane) which prefers entertainment to education and information in order to gather mass audiences to sell to advertisers.

­Media in National Socialist Germany. Between “Total Synchronization” and Audience Orientation Not least, the Fascist media policy in Italy had far‐reaching effects in its time, first of all on the National Socialist Party in Germany. Like many right‐wing politicians in Europe, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels blamed the lack of preparation regarding the propaganda efforts for the defeat in World War I. They concluded that in mass societies like the post‐war Weimar Republic, political success depends on the control of mass media. Italy served as a role model for a successful “national revolution,” applying means of propaganda. Therefore, already in the early days of the NSDAP the party leaders concentrated on communication. Already in 1924, Adolf Hitler proclaimed: “The movement has two instruments, first the propaganda machine and then the assault division (SA)” (Gruchmann and Weber 1997, Vol I, p. 24). Joseph Goebbels repeatedly emphasized that his modern propaganda techniques and the powerful propaganda organization of the party should be credited for the rapid rise of the NSDAP in the Weimar Republic. The reality was less spectacular as everyday campaigning on a small scale was much more important for their success. Before 1933, Nazi propaganda did not follow a master plan but was brought forward by a multitude of initiatives on the local level. They relied on brochures and pamphlets but especially on the speeches of their well‐trained speakers at small party events in villages and urban areas. In addition, simple visual media such as posters, flyers and stickers also proved to be effective (Paul 1990). Not least, the success of the NSDAP was supported by the general development of the media landscape. The industrialist Alfred Hugenberg had established a powerful media cooperation which supported right‐wing policies more or less openly; his news agencies, publishing houses, and film companies created a chauvinistic and anti‐democratic atmosphere (Guratzsch 1974). After the appointment of Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933, the party immediately began to build the “propaganda machine” they only had dreamed of by then. Within a year, the new government established a dictatorship and it set out to attain “total” control over the media with the same speed. From the outset, the new government left no doubt that it was aiming to mobilize for future wars and to get the population to commit to their extreme anti‐Semitism. The measures were inspired by the Italian example but surpassed their rigidity. They made a point of seemingly abiding all rules of a democratic system while establishing dictatorial authority and totalitarian institutions. But one should not forget that this process was accompanied by arbitrary violence and repression that contributed to its terrifying dynamic. Already in 1933, editorial offices were attacked. Communists, Socialists, Jews, and other “opponents” were illegally arrested, tortured and murdered, and many of them were forced to emigrate. The Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933, suspended among other fundamental rights freedom of expression and prohibited the publication of Social Democrat and the Communist Party newspapers. On 13 March 1933, the founding of the Reich  Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, RMVP) was the next important step toward the production of propaganda aiming to mobilize the people. The RMVP, together with several



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other agencies, also combined competencies of censorship for different media. Overall, pre‐censorship was preferred, as it could be handled behind closed curtains. Movie scripts had to be handed in and were reviewed and altered before production started. There was a daily press conference in Berlin which the chief editors of the main German newspapers had to attend. At these meetings, the RMVP determined what topics were to be addressed in which form, and it meticulously reviewed the outcome in presence of the “culprits” the next day. Digests of these instructions were dispatched to all newspapers throughout Germany. Regarding books, the RMVP could not rely on pre‐censorship as the market was too diverse. It issued a “list of damaging and undesirable writing,” which was updated every year. Public libraries had to discard all listed books and authors, and it was strongly suggested that bookshops stopped selling them. As important as censorship was the comprehensive control over the media staff. On 22 September 1933, the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer, RKK) was established. It consisted of seven sub‐sections for theater, film, music, radio, press, literature, and fine arts, and it claimed to regulate cultural life as a whole. In particular, the RKK decided who would or would not work in a media profession. Only members were allowed to publish in Germany. “Non‐Aryans” and politically “deviant” publicists remained excluded from membership, which implied a factual and comprehensive occupational ban. In case of the press, the regime went one step further: the Schriftleitergesetz (editors’ law) from January 1, 1934, subordinated all editors to the RKK and dismantled the publisher’s right to supervise and command (Sösemann 2011). Not least, the party and the state aimed at comprehensive economical control of all media. The nationalization of broadcasting had already been initiated in the Weimar Republic and was only finalized then; the famous cheap “Volksempfänger” (receiver for the people) was launched to foster listening. Max Amann, the manager of the NSDAP newspaper trust Eher, acquired covertly competing newspapers to the point of controlling 82.5% of the daily press circulation in 1944 (Hale 1964). In the film industry, already in 1933, the Filmkreditbank was established; it aimed at giving loans to an industry in crisis but also selected worthwhile projects against the backdrop of National Socialist ideology. In the following years, the quasi‐governmental Cautio holding company bought out most of the German production companies in a covert action; in 1942, the few remaining producers were officially nationalized under the name of the Ufa‐Film GmbH (Ufi) (Kreimeier 1992). The only exception was the book market, where a notable diversity of publishing houses persisted. But in World War II, with paper rationing, the National Socialist bureaucracy found an apt measure to control also the remaining publishers (Fischer et al. 2015). The “propaganda machine” was indeed impressive. But all too fast it became apparent that despite of the powerful organizational measures, the National Socialist propaganda agenda could not be implemented one to one; on the contrary, it created instant discontent, and one could even speak of failure regarding the first propaganda initiatives. Radio audiences complained about the lack of good entertainment (Marszolek and Saldern 1998); contemporaries recognized “reader fatigue” resulting from repetitive pledges (Frei and Schmitz 1989); virtually all early propaganda films proved to be failures (Giesen 2008). Therefore, an important modification can be observed: political messages were still prescribed in the minutest detail, but outside this realm, after 1935, entertainment of the “masses” became the main goal; media professionals and audience requests instead of party propagandists set the agenda (Ross 2008). However, it soon became clear that the resulting entertainment did not diverge too much from Nazi ideology. Genres that celebrated comprehensive harmony proved to be popular. Audiences favored topics based on

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people’s everyday lives. It could be well presented as conflictual, but allusions to the ongoing Nazi atrocities, of course, had to be omitted. Thereby, this German popular culture tells us much about a population that shared a longing for the Nazi “Volksgemeinschaft,” for a homogenous racial community that turned aggressively against “alien elements.” Recipients’ feedback attained a whole new meaning during the Nazi era. The Nazis highlighted repeatedly that they would set out to give a voice to the German people. They were taken at their word; especially the audience felt encouraged to complain even about the smallest issues. At the same time, revenue remained the most important performance indicator for all entertainment products. Success at the box office gave information about what audiences liked and disliked, even in Nazi Germany (Merziger 2010). Not least, the National Socialist regime made remarkable efforts to find out what people were thinking and requesting. The Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) was entrusted with compiling “Stimmungsberichte” (Secret Reports on Popular Opinion), and a comprehensive system of informers was established; their reports not only informed about resistance and criminal activities but also about the mood and the opinions of the average person (Stöber 1998). The strong orientation toward the audience can also be observed during World War II. At the beginning, manifest political propaganda flooded the market. Given the successes of the German army, the audiences cherished these products. Propaganda celebrated victories, adored “Nazi heroes,” attacked the English and derided the Jews. But when the fortunes of war shifted, Goebbels realized that once again an “entertainment offensive” was necessary to stabilize and motivate the “home front” and the troops in the field. This “offensive” consisted merely of providing entertainment that was selling well (Kundrus 2005) while political propaganda had to step back again. Even in Nazi Germany, the attempts of “total media synchronization” reached its limits. To be sure, in political journalism (newspapers, newsreels, and political magazines), the Nazis dictated content and form rigidly and meticulously for the price of uniformity and monotony. But in the entertainment sector, the simple propaganda models of Goebbels and Hitler largely failed. In this realm, products were the outcome of a complex, bi‐directional, and often conflictive process in which the feedback of the audiences played a decisive role. If anything, propagandists were quite good at realizing when they had to give in and start learning from popular patterns. After World War II, the Allies identified National Socialist propaganda as a decisive factor of success that had stabilized the regime even after defeat had become predictable. Therefore, they set out to radically restructure the German media system and were successful in many cases: central pillars, such as public service broadcasting, have been operating as important democratic institutions to this day. But one can observe several continuities. On the press market, the forced closure of publishing houses during the 1930s only anticipated a concentration process that would have been necessary anyway in order to stay profitable. In many cases, alleged innovations of the 1950s, such as paperbacks or illustrated magazines, had already been developed during the Nazi period and were, thus, well established. Furthermore, in the Federal Republic of Germany, most of the journalists, directors, actors, and publishing houses, after having been forced to take a break of varying length, eventually resumed work. For exeample in film, the Ufi was completely dismantled, admittedly, but a wide array of small production firms took over and produced a large number of remakes and films that followed patterns established in the 1930s. Especially the post‐war development of popular entertainment indicates that National Socialist propaganda was not necessarily forced upon the Germans, but it was the result of an interaction based on a comprehensive consensus between regime and people.



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­The Hybrid Media System in Hungary As a former part of the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, the Hungarian media system had been built on similar traditions and was geared to the developments in western Europe. Before World War I, the Hungarian media was to a large extent free, modern (westernized) with high professional standards. During the “Great War,” censorship was not too harsh, and the state propaganda activity was not effective (Balogh 1977). After the defeat, the king‐emperor had to abdicate in 1918, and Hungary suffered a significant loss of territory under the 1920 Treaty of the Trianon: about 3 million Hungarian nationals, about 30% of the Hungarian population, became expatriates in neighboring countries without having left their homes. This caused a great shock and gave rise to a new wave of ethnic nationalism and the foundation of a nationalistic authoritarian political regime headed by Governor Miklós Horthy (1920–1944). Horthy had served as a general during the World War I: he was perceived as a strong political leader, and he promised to unite the nation. As a consequence of the non‐democratic (authoritarian) constitution, a hegemonic party system was established. The prime ministers and the governor defined the rules of political competition and, thereby, secured the absolute majority of the right‐wing governing party in general elections for the next decades. This situation limited the influence of the different liberal, social democratic, Christian socialist, agrarian, and far‐right opposition parties. The authoritarian regime opposed civil rights, especially the free press. Governor Miklós Horthy declared several times in 1919 and 1920: “I respect the civil rights and the press freedom” but “our press freedom caused every wrong, immorality, disloyalty to our country” after 1914 and “the recent bad situation of Hungary” (cited in Márkus and Vásárhelyi 1979, p. 343). The right‐wing extremists, the so‐called race‐defenders (fajvédők) whose ideology was characterized by anti‐Semitism, anti‐liberalism, and extreme nationalism, proclaimed the democratic press a “back stabber” that had undermined the war effort. Others emphasized the role the inferior Hungarian propaganda had played in the defeat. Diplomats, politicians, and journalists perceived World War I as a war of propaganda rather than a war of weapons. Some suggested researching the field of propaganda in view of a future world war (Hornyánszky 1922, pp. 281–282, 291). But since the mid‐1920s, due to new political considerations, the Hungarian government moved away from these theories and depictions. Prime Minister István Bethlen aimed to form a “moderated” authoritarian regime, which he called “managed democracy.” Bethlen was prime minister between 1921 and 1931, and he was able to largely determine Hungarian political life until 1935. He regarded media policy a police matter and not a question of propaganda. Thereby, wartime legislation (except for censorship), based on the traditional prohibitive approach, remained in force until 1938. The minister of internal affairs controlled the distribution of journals from abroad; he, thus, had the right to ban any journal for a short period of time or for good without any legal reconsideration. For the Hungarian press, licensing was mandatory, and the Prime Minister’s Press Office decided to grant licenses according to the political views of the applicants. More than hundred licenses were denied in the 1920s; between 1921 and 1931, 50 journals, and between 1932 and 1938, 52 journals were completely or temporarily banned (Sipos 2005). These press regulations were perceived a sufficient means to determine and restrict the public sphere, and the Prime Minister’s Press Office managed two national and many regional dailies serving as platforms to propagate government politics (Sipos 2011, pp. 107–127). Nevertheless, the Hungarian interwar media landscape was colorful and

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exciting, partly as a result of a strong British influence on Hungarian politics. Horthy admired British lifestyle and traditions, and when the licenses of journals were revised in 1920, London advised that the partisan press should be admitted. The Social Democratic Party of Hungary was allowed to publish its own daily, just as the liberal opposition and conservatives. The most popular tabloid was liberal, the most popular serious newspaper was liberal‐conservative, and the most popular weeklies were a liberal‐conservative literary magazine for women entitled New Times (Új Idők) and a cinema‐theatrical magazine entitled Theatrical Life (Színházi Élet) whose design followed US patterns. During the interwar period, books, and book series did not need publishing permission, and the radical left could publish its periodicals “through this back door” declaring journals to be book series; but, when incriminated, they were forbidden in most cases (Sipos 2005). This pattern of a confined control recurred in other media. To outsiders, the Hungarian News Agency (established in 1881) and the Radio Broadcasting Company (1925) were privately owned firms while, in fact, the government supervised them, and their heads were appointed by the prime minister and the governor. They were a means of government public relations. Still, radio broadcast mainly high culture and popular entertainment rather than direct political propaganda. The Hungarian film studios were private companies, and US‐affiliated distributors supplied US feature films in large numbers, but all of the movies were censored. The majority of film theaters were privately owned but their managers had to obtain a license. Still, cinema owners and film companies were a financially and politically influential group that could even assert the distribution of movies, such as the French film La Garçonne, that were banned at first because of their “immorality.” Overall, the authoritarian media system of the interwar period can be described as a hybrid type. Especially the press and cinema worked according to the mechanism of the market but state support and bans distorted both. The government generally controlled journals without censorship, and it managed the Hungarian radio and news agency using its direct influence. Regarding the movie sector, censorship, and licensing were important means of control. Owing to a lack of sources, the effects of this controlled media system on public opinion are unknown. But data of media consumption show the popularity of the modern liberal or liberal‐conservative journals, and of entertainment movies in preference to political propaganda (Sipos 2011, pp. 108–112). Resulting from a shift in Hungarian political life and in international relations, fundamental changes occurred in 1938–1939. Since 1933, Hungary had worked on strengthening its relations with Germany. After 1935, the governing party started to veer to the extreme right and was strongly influenced by former anti‐Semitic “race‐defenders” and the new followers of Nazi Germany. These developments fostered a new stance on media policy. The government aimed to reshape media control and prepared a new press law in accordance with the new German media policy. It, thereby, could also rely on Hungarian approaches from the 1920s, and the government made a point in highlighting these traditions. The “race‐defenders” had introduced the first anti‐Semitic bill already in 1920, restricting the number of Jewish students in higher education. At the same time, they had planned to found a press chamber to punish the “Jewish press” for the alleged “stab‐in‐the‐back.” The press chamber was established in 1938–1939, and the media system became more similar to that of Germany. Every journalist, editor, or staff member of publishing houses had to be a member of the Hungarian Press Chamber. In 1938, only 20% of the members were allowed to be “Jewish,” and in 1939, this percentage was reduced to six. At the same time, the definition of who was considered “Jewish” became more rigid. First,



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it was based on religion, but in 1939, racial categories according to the National Socialist Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were introduced. A Theater and Film Chamber was established to “Arianize” production; this newly founded political institute also established the rules of movie making (Borsos 2005). This was followed by an act to revise journals’ publication licenses: more than 410 journals (about 25% of periodicals) lost their licenses by January 1939; according to the head of the Press Chamber, about 230 of them were “Jewish journals.” The most popular and respected tabloid daily, The Evening (Az Est), was nationalized because its owner was a Jew. The ruse of publishing periodicals as book series was closed. Finally, after the outbreak of World War II, the government generalized the censorship and now every periodical and broadcast program had to conform to government policies (Sipos 2005). However, the Hungarian media system did not become homogenous after 1939. The social democratic daily, the most popular liberal‐conservative newspaper and other oppositional journals were allowed to continue publishing. Elements of the market economy remained, and some conservative politicians were still part of the government. There was still room for “light forms” of dissent, such as reading non‐German‐friendly journals, listening to jazz, or watching US feature films, thereby, holding onto the Americanized interwar culture (Sipos 2014). Popular Hungarian motion pictures followed US patterns and did not convey a rightist political ideology. After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, all non‐German‐friendly journals disappeared and the media system became totalitarian for a year. In sum, the Hungarian media system between 1920 and 1944 can be described as a hybrid type. Although the media landscape was colorful and the vast majority of media companies were privately owned, media outlets were controlled and sometimes even managed by the government. It was partly similar to that of the upcoming multi‐party period immediately following the war: here, only political parties  –  which had to be authorized by the Soviet army – were allowed to publish journals and own cinemas. This limited pluralism ended by 1949, when a Stalinist media system was established in Hungary.

­The Spanish Media System During Franco’s Dictatorship: From Totalitarian to Moderate Authoritarianism Unlike Germany and Italy, the establishment of a long‐lasting authoritarian or totalitarian regime did not happen during the interwar period. After the Second Republic (1931–1936) and the end of the Civil War (1936–1939), General Franco established a dictatorship (1939–1975). Spain, although pro‐fascist, remained neutral in World War II. In this context, media control, inspired by the Italian Fascist model, was one of the dictatorship’s main concerns. Strict and harsh during the first decades, some press liberalization was granted during the 1960s and early 1970s. Although a small party close to fascism, Falange Española, operating during the Second Republic, did not become a mass party until the Civil War. Franco adopted, as the core of the single party, the so‐called Movimiento Nacional. Its origins in the Civil War determined the measures the new regime undertook regarding the media, for example the purge of journalists, the strong control of home and foreign news, and the enforcement of a mixed – public and private – ownership model. The establishment of the dictatorship coincided with the outbreak of World War II, which reinforced the necessity to keep a close watch on what was published in the printed press or broadcast

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by radio, a mass medium that played an outstanding role as a propaganda machine during the Civil War. According to the ideological principles of Francoism, media were considered necessary collaborators of the regime, and journalists the “apostles of the thinking and the faith of the nation that has recovered its destiny” (Press Law of 1938, as cited in Chuliá 2001, p. 41). The so‐called Prensa del Movimiento (Movement’s press) had over 35 daily newspapers (out of a total of 110 in Spain). The private press, however, was generally more powerful in terms of circulation (Nieto 1973). In the case of radio, the prior delivery and vetting of all program scripts and the news service provided by the public network became mandatory. Apart from the official radio network Radio Nacional de España (Spanish National Radio), there were three smaller networks dependent on the Movement apparatus and the official labor union. Nevertheless, the commercial Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión (SER), with roots in the 1920s under another name, was also granted permission to broadcast (Balsebre 2002). It is important to stress that only those newspaper publishers, editors, and radio station owners were granted licenses who had supported Franco’s troops during the Civil War. Public television, which started in 1956, was strongly politicized as power elites realized that it was to become the medium with the largest audience, as happened by the end of the 1960s (Palacio 2012). Regarding its influence, its entertainment function was even more crucial than the news programs. A number of direct and indirect measures were used to control media at different levels: publishers, editors, and journalists. Central to the efforts of controlling media outlets was the news agency Efe, created in 1939, whose declared purpose was to “spread the ‘Spanish truth’ to the world” (Olmos 1997). It had the monopoly on international news, a sensitive issue during World War II because of Spain’s official neutrality. A Press Law enacted in 1938 was in force until 1966. It was mostly inspired by the Italian Fascist dictatorship rather than by the Nazi regime (Chuliá 2001). The 1938 Press Law employed a wide array of measures to control media: newspaper licensing and the establishment of a news monopoly, instructions to newspapers and censorship, regulations over access to the profession and interference in the management. Instructions consisted of guidelines for writing editorials, op‐ed articles, or lists of prohibited topics. Sometimes they were transmitted via Efe news agency; they could also be sent to only one publication or those in a specific city or region. Every day, especially during the 1940s, censors wrote a report on each issue of a newspaper. These “inspection forms” were sent to the provincial delegations of the Ministry of Information. As time went by, censorship tasks were delegated to the editors, except for the newspapers of Madrid and Barcelona. Generally, this resulted in a sort of self‐censorship that sometimes became even stronger given the penalties that editors would receive in case of not obeying the instructions (Sinova 1989). Censorship also encompassed artistic and intellectual creations such as literature, films, theatrical plays, and large events in general. Censors had to fill out forms designed in such a thorough way that any sort of deviation from the official doctrine in political, religious, and moral terms could be detected and consequently erased; in other cases, authors were required to modify their manuscripts (Abellán 1980). The book market was, therefore, almost exclusively controlled by administrative agencies although private publishing houses were permitted to operate. As for films, they were also under close surveillance. A sophisticated censorship apparatus revised the scripts and banned foreign films. Furthermore, most renowned film directors went into exile after the Civil War, while others who had remained in Spain, struggled against the continuous impediments put in place throughout the entire filmmaking process by the censorship machinery (Gubern 1981).



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Access to the journalistic profession was controlled at different levels. First, a political purge singled out oppositional publicists. At the same time, an Official Register of Journalists was created for those wishing to work in any newspaper or magazine; this was inspired by regulations in Fascist Italy. Moreover, like Italy with its Scuola di giornalismo fascista (1929) and the Reichspresseschule in Germany (1935), an Official School of Journalism was founded in 1941 (Barrera 2010), established as a screening instrument for aspiring journalists. It also acted as the institution that issued press cards for journalists who had already been working but needed official recognition to be hired by newspaper companies. Unlike the short‐lived experiments in Italy and Germany, the school lasted for three decades but was not as strict in terms of ideological recruitment (Bösch 2015). The state intervened frequently in the work of private media. Besides licensing, the appointment of editors proved to be an apt means, especially in the cases of the most controversial and influential newspapers. The companies proposed candidates but the government had the final say; it could even “suggest” alternatives. As a result, media were generally subservient to the regime and contributed to the citizens’ perception of a Spain without problems. Dissent could only come from sections under less surveillance, such as local and cultural news, or correspondents’ reports from foreign countries. In the end, despite the mix of official and private media outlets, uniformity in news was almost completely ensured because of the means of exerted control (Barrera 1995). The social and economic development of the 1960s, along with the pressure from political elites, brought about media liberalization that primarily affected newspapers and magazines. Key to the relaxation of controls was the Press and Printing Law of 1966 that abolished censorship and the government appointment of editors but set up a number of indirect measures to observe the activities of publishers and editors. One example, perhaps the most effective, was the creation of the Register of Newspaper Companies, compulsory for those willing to publish any periodical publication. The registration had to receive the government’s blessing but could also be withdrawn at any moment for a number of reasons left to the government’s discretion (Fernández Areal 1971). However, new possibilities also opened up. From 1966 onwards, audiences could be surprised by the contents published. Few newspapers and a larger number of weekly or monthly magazines contended for more leeway. Though limited, some public debates were possible in the press so that readers had access to news or opinions contrary to the official position of the government (Barrera 1995). In 1969, Madrid, the most independent newspaper of the time, even dared to criticize the appointment of Prince Juan Carlos as Franco’s successor. Two years later, after many conflicts with the government, the paper was closed down. Similar liberalization occurred in the book sector, also affected by the new law, where some publishing houses dared to defy the limits imposed by the government as a form of dissidence but remained subject to political repression (Rojas 2006). In any case, mechanisms of a stronger market orientation began to work along with liberalization in media content and ownership. The former perception of an ideal Spain started to change due to news about strikes, labor disputes, riots, public disorder, and conflicts within Spanish society. Even radio escaped from government control by using innovative methods. In 1972, the commercial network SER broadcast the program Hora 25 at midnight. It offered a mix of local, political, and sport news that sometimes included criticism of political elites (Faus Belau 2007). Other means, such as literature, films, and other large events, also experienced some liberalization during the last years of the dictatorship as state control became softer.

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In sum, the media system in Franco’s Spain can be characterized by typically totalitarian features at the beginning and throughout the first two decades, which eventually changed into more moderate, authoritarian methods in the 1960s and early 1970s, in line with some degree of liberalization in other sectors, such as the economy, politics, and society in general. In this sense, the subsequent transition to democracy that started in 1975 did not mean a complete break with the past since many journalists and media had already been working under more liberal conditions; in other words, they did not start from scratch (Barrera and Zugasti 2006). Like the societal change as a whole, the transition of media was based more on the integration of all factions than on exclusion, thereby, granting the co‐existence of old and new newspapers, magazines, editors, publishers and journalists after 1975.

­Conclusion World War I proved to be of great importance in the approach to media. It triggered a shift from a prohibitionist stance favoring censorship to a pragmatic outlook considering and applying means of public relations. Especially the fascist movements saw the reason for defeat or disappointing outcomes in lack of mobilization of the “home front.” The new techniques of propaganda promised remedy and fascinated contemporaries. Unlike the traditional parties of the radical right, the fascists perceived mass media no longer as a threat but as an opportunity. Their stellar ascent to power only seemed to verify the far‐reaching effects that were attributed to propaganda. Once in power, the Fascist, the National Socialist, the Francoist, and the Hungarian media policies followed the idea that the total control of the media would secure the total control over the people. They understood propaganda as a pivotal means to mobilizing the people entirely for their own purposes. As motivations and objectives were consonant, polices and measures resembled each other. The different Fascist administrations aimed at total control and the synchronization of all media. Film production and public broadcasting were nationalized, either universally or to a great extent. Attempts were made to monopolize newspapers and political magazines; only the book market and cultural journals remained mostly in private hands. All regimes introduced informal and official censorship of media products and, thereby, achieved a comprehensive control, at least over information and political news. Over time, to avoid causing a stir, propagandists preferred pre‐censorship and case‐by‐case interventions to bans after the publication. Administrators also screened out journalists and media professionals of differing worldviews and ethnicities considered inferior. In Italy and Spain, fascists aimed at controlling educational and professional trajectories, and they all resorted to restrict access to the professions by making inscription into media guilds mandatory. To be able to take these measures, considerable propaganda institutions had to be created, and these administrative units did not confine themselves to control communication but also produced elaborate propaganda or instructed producers. Whereas objectives and policies of propaganda were similar, the timeline and scope of implementation differed. Italy and Germany were instigators and role models in the European development. The Fascists in Italy established the idea of actively influencing media, but they still followed a restricted approach aimed at the elites. The National Socialist took up suggestions but attempted to overtake all media, especially its popular



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outlets, the popular press, radio, and cinema, in order to consolidate their power and mobilize people. This broader approach influenced the turn of Italy toward popularization and centralization in the 1930s. It was indirectly adopted by Spain after the end of the Civil War in 1939. Hungary implemented similar measures, partly because of the growing influence of the Fascist movement on the government, partly because of the its desire to strengthen its relations to Germany and Italy in the 1930s. Italy, Spain, and Hungary were largely dependent on agriculture, much more significantly than Germany. In the countryside, however, the power of media had its limits set already by the lack of infrastructure and a much lower disposable income; especially Spain and Italy were characterized by extreme differences between regions. More importantly, only the German National Socialist Party could establish itself as the sole power. In Spain, the army and the Catholic Church played major roles as competing centers of power. In Italy, the Catholic Church specifically did not completely align and had the Vatican media at hand; also the royal family and the old elites in the civil service and military remained influential throughout the whole period of fascism. In Hungary, fascists never dominated the government, except during a short period in 1944. For Italy, the term “negotiated dictatorship” (Wolfgang Schieder) has been coined meaning that the interests of several influential groups had to be integrated; the term would be apt to label also the media system in Hungary and Spain. Since no other power bloc existed in Germany, the term “consensual dictatorship” could be a viable approach to describe its public sphere. Similarities and specifications of the media systems considered in this chapter become obvious especially if compared to media policies of communist states. In the past, historiography has attempted to summarize communist and fascist systems under the term “totalitarianism,” although the differences are striking at least in the field of propaganda. First, the fascist media policies left in place private ownership. Even when the state nationalized a whole media sector, it still worked according to market laws. Pursuit of (personal) gain was a driving force that should not be underestimated. Media outlets had to break even, whereas in communist systems revenue was not a determining category. Therefore, producers gave more weight to consumer needs. At the same time, fascist regimes could act much more pragmatically. The communist states aimed at indoctrination and education, and – officially – promoted analysis and critical thinking. Though European fascists shared a basic world view, fascism was not an elaborated ideology. Therefore, fascist regimes remained much more flexible in their measures to reach this goal. In communist countries, all media had to serve the purpose of educating the “new man.” Fascists, on the other hand, came to terms with a strictly controlled and uniform political propaganda next to an entertainment sector whose main goal was user gratification. Regarding public presence, the actual political indoctrination played a smaller role than historiography has suggested for the longest time. Entertainment proved to be of great importance to keep people in line. In this realm, audience orientation characterized fascist media policies, and it limited claims to gain complete control over the entertainment sector. All administrations set out with an idea of totalitarian communication but had to backpedal or compromise. The implementation differed not only in scope and timeline; it became apparent that a total control of media was not possible or even proved to be counter effective. Fascist initiatives often proved to be unpopular, thereby, threatening to undermine the consensus of the people they reached out for. Italian Fascists had to give leeway; the Nazis started their “entertainment offensives,” a

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euphemism for giving into popular demands; in Spain, a cautious liberalization took place over time; and in Hungary, a hybrid media system allowed for space for alternative opinions. Interestingly, the result was not necessarily a divergent form of communication. On the contrary, the fascist promise of a homogenous community (coming along with the implication to aggressively exclude perceived enemies) proved to be highly popular. Not the least, the continuities in the entertainment sectors of Italy and Germany after World War II indicate that fascists had aligned with popular demands. These gray areas in between actual political propaganda and the very few dissident media outlets promise to be a worthy field of further research. This significant part of the Fascist public spheres, its structures, its protagonists and especially the role of audiences therein, is still a desideratum at least on a European level.

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Gruchmann, L. and Weber, R. (eds.) (1997). Der Hitler‐Prozess 1924. Wortlaut der Hauptverhandlung vor dem Volksgericht München. 4 vol. Munich: Saur. Gubern, R. (1981). La censura. Función política y ordenamiento jurídico bajo el franquismo (1936–1975). Barcelona: Península. Guratzsch, D. (1974). Macht durch Organisation. Die Grundlegung des Hugenbergschen Presseimperiums. Düsseldorf: Bertelsmann. Hale, O.J. (1964). The captive press in the Third Reich. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hornyánszky, G. (1922). A szabadság nevében. Társadalomtudomány 2 (3–4): 281–293. Kreimeier, K. (1992). Die Ufa‐Story. Geschichte eines Filmkonzerns. Munich: Hanser. Kundrus, B. (2005). Totale Unterhaltung? Die kulturelle Kriegsführung 1939 bis 1945 in Film, Rundfunk und Theater. In: Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft, 1939 bis 1945. Zweiter Halbband. Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung (ed. J. Echternkamp), 93–157. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags‐Anstalt. Manetti, D. (2012). Un’arma poderosissima. Industria cinematografica e stato durante il fascismo, 1922–1943. Milan: Franco Angeli. Márkus, L. and Vásárhelyi, M. (1979). Die Rolle der Presse in der Verbreitung der Kriegspropaganda in der konterrevolutionären Periode. Acta Historica 25 (3–4): 343–366. Marszolek, I. and Saldern, A. (eds.) (1998). Radio im Nationalsozialismus. Zwischen Lenkung und Ablenkung. 2 vol. Tübingen: Diskord. Merziger, P. (2010). Nationalsozialistische Satire und “Deutscher Humor”. Politische Bedeutung und Öffentlichkeit populärer Unterhaltung 1931–1945. Stuttgart: Steiner. Merziger, P. (2015). ‘Totalitarian humour’? National socialist propaganda and active audiences in entertainment. History Workshop Journal 79 (1): 181–197. Monteleone, F. (1995). Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia. Venice: Marsilio. Monticone, A. (1978). Il fascismo al microfono. Radio e politica in Italia, 1924–1945. Rome: Studium. Mühlenfeld, D. (2009). Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man NS‐Propaganda? Neuere Forschungen zur Geschichte von Medien, Kommunikation und Kultur während des ‘Dritten Reiches’. Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 49: 527–159. Nieto, A. (1973). La empresa periodística en España. Pamplona: Eunsa. Olmos, V. (1997). Historia de la agencia Efe. El mundo en español. Madrid: Espasa. Ortoleva, P. (2011). Sintonizzare la nazione. Media e identità nazionale. Comunicazione Politica 1: 39–57. Palacio, M. (2012). La televisión durante la transición española. Madrid: Cátedra. Papa, A. (1978). Storia politica della radio in Italia. 2 vol. Naples: Guida. Paul, G. (1990). Aufstand der Bilder. Die NS‐Propaganda vor 1933. Bonn: Dietz. Pinto, A.C. and Kallis, A.A. (eds.) (2014). Rethinking fascism and dictatorship in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ragone, G. (1999). Un secolo di Libri. Storia dell’editoria in Italia dall’Unità al post‐moderno. Turin: Einaudi. Reichardt, S. (2002). Faschistische Kampfbünde. Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA. Cologne: Böhlau. Rojas, F. (2006). Poder, disidencia, editorial y cambio cultural en España durante los años 60. Pasado y Memoria. Revista de Historia Contemporánea 5: 59–80. Ross, C. (2008). Media and the making of modern Germany. Mass communications, society, and politics from the Empire to the Third Reich. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sangiovanni, A. (2012). Le parole e le figure. Storia dei media in Italia dall’età liberale alla seconda guerra mondiale. Rome: Donzelli. Sinova, J. (1989). La censura de prensa durante el franquismo. Madrid: Espasa‐Calpe. Sipos, B. (2005). Media and politics in Hungary between the world wars. In: Regimes and transformation. Hungary in the twentieth century (ed. F. István and B. Sipos), 195–226. Budapest: Napvilág. Sipos, B. (2011). Sajtó és hatalom a Horthy‐korszakban. Budapest: Argumentum.

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8

The Russian Revolution and the Establishment of the Authoritarian Media System Olga Kruglikova and Konstantin Alexeev

­Introduction The revolutionary socio‐political changes that occurred in early twentieth‐century Russia gave rise to the Soviet one‐party political and media system. The basis for any evaluation of its positive and negative sides are, thus, the social tendencies that led to the revolutions between 1905 and 1917 and left their marks on all information processes in the emerging Soviet society. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia was a country with an autocratic monarchy, it lacked a constitution, parliament, legal political parties and, in consequence, political journalism (or so‐called “party journalism”). Apart from a rigid censorship system, Russian journalism was marked by the influence of two other features: the commercialization of the legal press (until the mid‐nineteenth century, journalism in Russia was not perceived as a commercial activity aimed at profit) and a growing number of illegal political publications abroad, which reflected radical ways of thinking also in Russia.1 The year 1905, however, witnessed the emergence of a distinctly new era for Russian journalism as well as of political affairs.

­The Revolution of 1905 and the Emergence of a More Pluralist Media System The formation and intensive development of capitalism in Russia increased social tensions as the new economic reality conflicted with many remnants of the past. This affected not only the growing ranks of the working class, but also the peasants were feeling oppressed by landlordism and ongoing redemption payments for the land. Dissatisfaction was also emerging among the economic elites due to the lack of political freedoms. Tensions grew even stronger after Russia’s defeat in the Russo‐Japanese War (1904–1905) and the economic crisis caused by huge military expenditures. The Putilov factory strike in St. Petersburg on 3 January 1905, became the impetus for a series of The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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revolutionary events. The strikers put forward economic and political demands. A wave of walkouts and armed conflicts swept across the country, eventually forcing the authorities to make concessions. The monarchy was compelled to change the political structure in the country. The Tsar’s Manifest of 17 October 1905, was the main change emerging from the First Russian Revolution. As a result, Russian society obtained a few political liberties such as greater press freedom, freedom to form unions and political organizations, and its first parliament, the State Duma. “The Provisional Rules of Periodical Publications” released in November 1905, abolished prior censorship and administrative pressure on the press. In consequence, the government lost its most effective repressive tools in fighting an objectionable press. The new regulations required, for instance, a court order to take repressive measures such as confiscation of newspapers, fines, and prison sentences for the editors deemed responsible. But the court decisions were usually acquittal, i.e. in favor of press. A rapid increase in periodicals distinguished the period following the First Russian Revolution. More than 3,300 editions were being published, and about half of them had a social and political focus. Daily social and political newspapers began to play a more prominent and powerful role, and the press in general became highly politicized. This central feature of the period’s press was a reflection of a political struggle of various parties (Akhmadulin 2008). Since the end of 1905, about 10 parties took part in election campaigns and published their political programs. These changes led to a rise of a particular type of new journalism in Russia associated with the emergence of the State Duma. One of the largest and most influential parties in the State Duma was the party of “Cadets”  –  Constitutional‐ Democrats or, as it was officially called, the People’s Freedom Party. It included a large group of the so‐called Russian intelligentsia, the intellectual, social, scientific elite of the country. The focus of the Cadets’ program lay in demands for democratic freedoms, including press freedom. Cadets, therefore, made extensive use of print media. They owned over a hundred periodicals, headed by the popular newspaper Retch (Речь – the speech) edited by party leader Pavel Milyukov. All publishing and journalistic activity of the Cadets were coordinated by the party headquarter (Akhmadulin 2001b). The main opponents of the Cadets who occupied the center‐left position in the Duma were the center‐right “Octobrists” or the Union of October 17. The social basis of the union were people with a stable position in society and a high income. The union supported the government after it had embarked on the path of reform. Alexander Guchkov, a hereditary merchant, businessperson, and banker from Moscow, was the party leader. Together with other shareholders (textile manufacturers and major financiers), Guchkov headed and financed the newspaper Golos Moskvi (Голос Москвы – the voice of Moscow). The Golos Moskvi presented itself as a respectable business newspaper protecting the economic and political interests of Russia as well as public interests (as it interpreted them). This editorial policy was compatible with the big industrial bourgeoisie – a new class then aiming for social dominance (Akhmadulin 2001b). Disagreements over policy and the support of the government led to a division into the Progressives (a moderately progressive party) and the Octobrists. The movement leader Paul Riabouchinsky founded the newspaper Utro Rossii (Утро России – the morning of Russia) in Moscow; it was a bourgeois opposition newspaper that criticized the government. Different organizations that supported the far‐right monarchist views united in an association named “Black Hundreds.” The programs of these organizations centered around the inviolability of imperial power and the abolition of the reforms that had been introduced by the government under the pressure of the 1905 revolution.



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One group, the Union of the Russian People, consisted of representatives of various social classes and groups, such as conservative landowners and merchants, representatives of the bourgeoisie and artisans, townspeople and peasants, and it became the largest organization among the Black Hundred groups. Under the guidance of their leader, Alexander Dubrovin, the Black Hundreds established the newspaper Russkoe Znamya (Русское знамя  –  the Russian banner). Like other Black Hundred publications (i.e. Zemshchina (Земщина  –  the civilian population) or Kolokol (Колокол  –  the bell)), it largely depended on donations from wealthy supporters. Also the government subsidized their newspapers and helped to organize publishing and a printing house. Despite all this, the Black Hundreds criticized the government for its hesitation in the struggle with the opposition (Akhmadulin 2001a). Unlimited freedom of the press was not conducive to the government, and the authorities were trying to regain their lost control over the press. Here, the only way for the government to circumvent the restrictions imposed by the law was to declare a state of emergency in certain regions. In consequence, regional mayors and governors obtained dictatorial powers, such as the ability to act without a court order, using unlimited administrative measures. Under the pretense of fighting the revolution, the state of emergency was declared in most provinces of Russia. This measure was based on the conservative policy of Peter Stolypin, who became prime minister in 1906 (Zhilyakova 2009). By the summer of 1907, Stolypin’s policy led to decreased tensions and lower levels of revolutionary struggle and gave the monarchy a certain sense of stabilization. The members of the State Duma were dismissed and replaced by deputies completely loyal to the government. This meant the end of the First Russian Revolution. In result, the radical left‐wing press was again relegated to an underground status or forced into exile (Makhonina 2009). Stolypin’s policy on journalism was a mixture of repressive actions toward oppositional newspapers and of maintaining more flexible relations to those publications loyal to the government. In exchange for their loyalty, the latter could receive support from the state budget. Stolypin also reformed the officially state‐owned press. For the lower classes and the army, a number of new magazines and newspapers were established. The newspaper Rossiya (Russia) financed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs promoted the government’s policy rather successfully after its initiation. But in 1911, following Stolypin’s assassination, a new period of revolutionary activity began. The established powers (the governments and their supporters) were no longer able to control the legal left‐wing radical press as rigorously as in Stolypin’s times. The revolutionary press began to spread rather rapidly from 1912 when striking workers were shot at the gold mine on the river Lena. Social dissatisfaction with the government’s repressive measures led to increasing readers’ interest in leftist newspapers, which were established in 1912, including Pravda (Правда  –  the truth) by the Bolsheviks, Luch (Луч – the ray) by the Mensheviks, and Trudovoy golos (Трудовой голос – the laborer’s voice) by the Socialists‐Revolutionists. In later decades, the date of the first issue of Pravda – 5 May – was celebrated as “the day of the Soviet press” in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). From that day on, Pravda was defined as a revolutionary organ, directed by the emigrant and leader of the Bolshevik Party Vladimir Lenin through his associates in Russia. Eventually, Pravda became the main newspaper of the Bolshevik Party, and it kept this prominent and distinctive role for 80 years. The newspapers of the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and the Socialists‐Revolutionists were the fastest to report on the tragedy on the river Lena. They soon proved willing to

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report about every anti‐government demonstrations of workers, peasants, students, and soldiers, and they called for strikes and walkouts. The government, on the other hand, tried everything possible to fight off the revolutionary newspapers. For example, during the first 27 months of Pravda’s existence, the newspaper became the object of persecution 36 times, and while its print runs were confiscated some 105 times, the total fines amounted to 16,650 rubles. In addition, the paper was shut down nine times and then revived under other names (Berezhnoy 2003). Pre‐war imperial Russia achieved its high point of economic prosperity in 1913. This, in turn, influenced the press that experienced a “golden age.” By 1913, the number of newspapers and magazines had increased to approximately 3,000  –  more than three times the number of the early twentieth century, while the number of newspapers alone had increased almost 10 times. Private periodicals were published in 227 cities including all provincial cities and many localities in the countryside. Most newspapers and magazines published supplements, some of them came out several times a day, and the circulations of the leading socio‐political publications grew rapidly (Zhirkov 2011). However, the country lay in constant struggle between revolutionaries, reformers, and conservatives. And while a delicate balance of these internal forces had been maintained in Russia until 1914, the start of World War I) broke this balance. Most Russian newspapers welcomed the war enthusiastically. Journalists called themselves “the second Russian army” and launched strong anti‐German propaganda. Newspapers supporting the government and the idea of national unity in the face of the enemy, wrote: “Now we have one party, the party of Russians” (quoted in Zhirkov 2012, pp. 14–15). The radical left‐wing opposition, the so‐called “defeatists” who were in favor of Russia’s defeat in the war as they believed this would lead to a revolution, started to spread illegal leaflets despite harsh military censorship. Activities of the Bolshevik Party began to decline, and their publications, including Pravda, were banned. However, the optimism of the first days of the war eventually gave way to war fatigue. The public was increasingly resenting the lack of success on the frontlines, the numerous victims, rising prices, the government’s inability to improve the situation, all of which eventually resulted in the Revolution of February 1917.

­The Russian Revolution of 1917 – and the Start of the Bolshevik Media System By the end of 1916, a systemic crisis had matured in Russia: rising prices, shortages of goods, hardships, and other sacrifices related to the war. Members of the socialist parties successfully agitated an army that was tired of a bloody and failing war, and the strike movement in the capital and other industrial cities grew consistently. Most of the press was in opposition to the authorities. Publicists flooded the country with rumors and speculations about German agents at the court of the Russian Imperial family, corruption, and treachery of those in power. The idea of the “inner enemy” was rooted in the consciousness of the public; “the internal enemy” was presented to the readers as the reason for all of Russia’s military and political setbacks. This enemy were the government, the imperial family, the imperial court, and the highest dignitaries (Zhirkov 2012). In February 1917, long queues for bread gave way to riots under the banner “Bread!,” “Peace!” “Freedom!.” The government fought back, also in the field of journalism: clandestine printing plants were closed, the financial support for loyal publications was



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increased, and any publishing of news about strikes was prohibited as was that of speeches of the opposition. However, on 2 March 1917, Nicholas II abdicated hoping to thereby save the unity of society for the sake of a victorious end to the war. Russia was no, thus, longer a monarchy, rather a diarchy now reigned in the capital and the country. One of the poles of the new political system was the Provisional Government. Chaired by Prince George Lvov, it mostly consisted of Cadets and Octobrists. Milyukov took the Foreign Ministry, and Guchkov became the minister of war. The other pole was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies or the Petrosovet, a city council of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) created by representatives of the left‐wing parties, mainly the Mensheviks and the Socialists‐Revolutionists. Also, media were divided into two camps: bourgeois media, convinced the revolution had ended, supported the continuation of the war and the Provisional Government as the guarantor of democratic freedoms. Their circulation was larger than that of the newspapers of the Socialist‐Revolutionists, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks; measured by total volume, they surpassed the latter hundreds of times in the spring of 1917. Both governmental bodies created their own official gazettes. By an order of the Petrosovet, the tabloid paper Kopeika (Копейка  –  the kopeck) was taken over, and the council began to publish its own daily newspaper Izvestia (Известия – the news). The Provisional Government took advantage of the previous official press system by transforming official publications of the former imperial power into its own organs. Thus, the Pravitelstvennyi Vestnik (Правительственный вестник  –  the government’s herald) became the Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel’stva (Вестник Временного правительства – the herald of the provisional government). On 27 April 1917, in its issue 55, the Vestnik published the law of the Provisional Government “On Press” that had been developed by the Cadet Party, and declared full freedom of press for the first time in the history of Russia (Zhirkov 2012). Under this law, a period of unprecedented freedom of speech and journalism set in, and both flourished. In 1917, in spite of wartime conditions, issues with paper supply and printing services, and price increases, more than 4,800 newspapers and magazines existed in Russia. During this period, Russia also had one of the most flexible political systems in the world: debates and controversies between parties were openly led ̶ above all in the press ̶ without control or censorship. The main reason for this freedom lay in the fact that neither the Provisional Government nor the Petrosovet were able to assert a significant advantage or claim a decisive influence on the population. However, this total freedom eventually played into the hands of the most radical social force  –  the Bolsheviks (Kustov 2013). In April 1917, Lenin returned from exile and immediately published in the reestablished Pravda the programmatic article “On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution” (also known as the “April Theses”). This article urged moving from the first stage of the revolution to the second placing the “power in the hands of the proletariat [working class] and the poorest strata of the peasantry” (Berezhnoy 2003, p. 28). While during this time, there were constant polemical clashes between the bourgeois and the socialist newspapers, they did unite in criticizing the Bolsheviks, Lenin, and Pravda. The most active opponents of Lenin were the Russkaya Volya (Русская воля – the Russian will) representing the bankers’ interests, the Retch, the trend‐setter for all Cadet media, the Delo Naroda (Дело народа  –  the people’s business) where the Socialist‐ Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov criticized Lenin, the Novaya Zhizn (Новая жизнь  –  the new life) founded by Maxim Gorky and now published by Menshevik’s leader Julius Martov, and the Edinstvo (Единство  –  the unity) headed by Georgi

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Plekhanov. Lenin, Pravda and a few other Bolshevik publications opposed the united front of all other political parties and their periodicals. Still, due to a complex set of reasons, the final victory was with the Bolsheviks  –  the smallest and constantly harassed party  –  and their publications. The personality and charisma of the Bolshevik leader Lenin, the Provisional Government’s inability to solve any of the major problems facing the country (the problems of legislative regulation in such spheres as land law (land question), labor law (labor question) etc.), as well as the continuation of the unpopular war had contributed to the Bolsheviks’ victory. The party’s distinct and decisive slogans promised radical solutions for all major problems, and they turned out to be the closest to a large part of the population. Lenin’s supporters became more and more influential among the Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, and gradually, he took over control. The Bolsheviks became popular among the Petrograd proletariat and garrison, and in three months, the membership of the Bolshevik Party had increased from 40,000 to 400,000 people (Kuznetsov 2002). In July 1917, the Bolsheviks planned and prepared large demonstrations and protests, and were able to overthrow the Provisional Government. Alexander Kerensky – the new chairperson of the government – expressed determination, however, to restore the death penalty, and he reestablished military censorship. The military units that were loyal to the Provisional Government broke up pro‐Bolshevik demonstrations, and the police smashed the printing house of Pravda. In accordance with the new censorship regulations, Bolshevik publications were banned. At the same time, the press spread information about Lenin being a German spy, which forced him to leave Petrograd due to a prosecution initiated against him based on charges of treason (Zhirkov 2012). Regardless, the popularity of the Bolsheviks grew while also the Petrosovet became more powerful and influential than the Provisional Government, whose popularity had dropped drastically. Even the military eventually turned away from it, leaving it virtually defenseless. The Bolsheviks held a majority in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and its official newspaper Izvestia came into their hands. Because of issues of persecution, Pravda was renamed Rabochiy Put (Рабочий путь – the laborer’s way), and by the fall of 1917, it reached a circulation of 200,000 copies openly propagating the idea of an armed uprising. The Provisional Government’s attempts to crush the editorial office of Pravda failed for it was guarded by units of the Red Guards, which by 25 October 1917, took over the Winter Palace. In October 1917, the Bolsheviks stood at the head of the majority of the proletariat and the soldiers who were dissatisfied with the Provisional Government’s policy, and finally, the party took over state power. The Bolsheviks began to build a new class and one‐party state deeply intertwined with the idea of a one‐party journalism. Thus, after coming to power, Lenin immediately aimed to establish control over the press. This included the abolition of periodicals not supporting the Soviet power and the Bolshevik ideology and the establishment of a state monopoly in such important media sectors such as advertising (Kuznetsov 2002). On 28 October 1917, Lenin, as the head of a new government called the Council of People’s Commissars (the CPC), signed the “Decree on Press.” According to the decree, all print media, “calling for resistance and disobedience to the workers and peasants government” (Kuznetsov 2002, p. 144) were to be closed down. This wording gave Lenin an opportunity to close almost all non‐Bolshevik publications. Although the “Decree on Press” was declared as an interim revolutionary measure, it was never revoked (Zhirkov 2012). To suppress any opposition, Lenin also signed the “Decree on the State Monopoly on Announcements” on 8 November 1917, thereby depriving bourgeois newspapers of their main source of revenue. Now, advertisements could be printed only in the Soviet



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press. If private papers placed paid ads, they were subjected to closure, and publishers were threatened with imprisonment (Kuznetsov 2002). Based on these decrees, from October 1917 until August 1918, the Bolsheviks closed more than 450 publications of a broad political spectrum, accusing them of “counter‐ revolutionary and hostile intentions toward the working people” (Zhirkov 1999b, p. 19). These publications included all of the most popular social and political publications of pre‐revolutionary Russia (Berezhnoy 2003). At the same time, Lenin realized that he could not keep power by repressive measures only. The advantages of the new political system needed to be brought to the population by means of agitation and propaganda. Thus, the Bolsheviks began to build their own publishing system. Theoretically, Lenin had developed the concept of Bolshevik journalism before the October Revolution and had used it in organizing the Iskra and Pravda. This new model of Soviet media was based on the three principles: partisanship (all journalists were subject to Bolshevik Party directives), classism (the press was to focus on the winning classes – the proletariat and the peasantry), and ideological principle (all thought had to follow Marxist ideology). The party was interested in creating a mass press, covering the entire range of readers. The system of propaganda included official announcements of the party in Pravda, the government (the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies) newspaper Izvestia, and the official publication of the Komsomol (the Communist Youth League  –  the political youth organization controlled by the party) and trade union organizations. The most important component in the system of Soviet propaganda were the newspapers for peasants, who then comprised more than 70% of the population. The Bolsheviks wanted to gain their support by building the peasants’ class consciousness. The paper highest in circulation and influence among these publications was the newspaper Bednota (Беднота – the pauper). In addition to periodicals, the propaganda of Soviet power was maintained by the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), the Russian news agency established in Moscow in September 1918. ROSTA was simultaneously the information agency as it was the organizational center of the Bolshevik system of information. It produced numerous propaganda leaflets, brochures, and posters, trained professional personnel for work in the press, conducted regional training seminars on the organization of propaganda and the press, and developed new forms of communication such as radio broadcasting, and a program of propagandistic street‐performances (Kuznetsov 2002). In 1919, control over publishing was enhanced by the newly created Gosizdat, the state publishing house of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), one of the Union republics in the USSR. Next to being a publisher, Gosizdat took control of censorship for the entire publishing sector: it allowed or prohibited newspaper and magazine issues, and controlled or watched the logistical side including printing, and the distribution of papers, literature, and periodicals. All nationalized printing and publishing houses could work only by the orders of the state through the Gosizdat.

­Red and White Propaganda During the “Civil War” From the October Revolution of 1917 until the early 1920s, Russian journalism was not limited to Soviet media only. Following the October Revolution, a further military conflict broke out between the Reds (comprising the Bolshevik‐led government and their supporters), on the one hand, and the Whites, on the other. The latter received significant

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support from the major capitalist powers, who were themselves fearful of copycat revolutions in the fragile climate across Europe at the end of World War I. The so‐called “White movement” united different social groups, from the socialists to the Black Hundreds, with an irreconcilable hostility toward the Bolsheviks as the only combining element: while they held different views on the political future of the country, they united for a short time to expel the Bolsheviks. It was assumed that immediately after the victory over the Bolsheviks, a Constituent Assembly was to be convened choosing the future form of government in Russia. Until then all the power was to be given to the Supreme Ruler Vice‐Admiral Kolchak, whose military units were controlling large parts of Siberia. Other fragments of the White movement were located in northwest Russia (the territory of present‐day Estonia), and in the Volga region around the Ural mountain range. But the most significant part of the White movement was the Volunteer Army created in the south of Russia, in Novocherkassk. While Red propaganda developed actively in the regions controlled by the Soviet power, areas under the Whites’ rule continued with the traditional Russian imperial system of journalism (Zhirkov 1999b). The largest numbers of well‐known political leaders, publicists, writers, and journalists who had fled from the Bolsheviks, gathered around the Volunteer Army in Rostov and Novocherkassk. Not surprisingly, these regions had the broadest and most colorful spectrum of periodicals – from socialist’s editions to the Black Hundred’s press – representing very different political views. The main propaganda organ of the White movement in the south was the information bureau OSVAG, a cumbersome and ineffective organization with high costs and little outcome. After having collected information, the OSVAG possessed extensive materials showing the unpopularity of the White movement. The ineffectiveness of its work predicted the defeat of the Volunteer Army. The White movement largely continued to use approaches to the press that had been developed in tsarist Russia. Instead of informing about facts and producing an effective propaganda based on them, OSVAG misrepresented facts and did not allow the casting of any doubt or any criticizing of the action of the White authorities. Most posters, brochures, and leaflets issued by the OSVAG for soldiers and for the civil population were not adapted to the needs of a mostly illiterate audience (Zhirkov 1999b). In terms of the sheer volume of propaganda, at least, the White press did not concede to the Bolsheviks. The top cultural forces of pre‐revolutionary Russia, as well as many owners of printing houses and publishers, were united in their opposition to the Bolsheviks. Industrialists and financiers were willing to invest heavily in anti‐Bolshevik propaganda while the Whites’ publishers were able to obtain newsprint paper from abroad. The foreign allies of the White forces, primarily the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, subsidized the White press, and French technicians helped to launch a network of radio stations in the territories controlled by the White movement. In general, journalism of the White movement was better resourced compared to the Soviet press, but it was less successful in influencing public opinion. This had several reasons: first, the Bolsheviks were much more active in agitation and propaganda. Their approach was more systematic and consistent. In addition to general media, they created a whole network of special military newspapers to strengthen the morale and political training of soldiers and commanders of the Red Army. Throughout 1918/1919, about 100 mass newspapers were published to target members of the Red Army, most of them directly focused on the frontline armies (Zhirkov 1999b). Second, White propaganda was subordinate to that the Reds; it often simply copied the methods and techniques of the Bolsheviks. The Whites, for instance, borrowed the idea of creating agitation trains



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and steamboats, and also copied the Reds’ distribution systems and methods for print media. In addition, propaganda of the Whites was conducted in the old pre‐revolutionary style that was not very well received by different segments of the population: it was hard for former professional journalists to adjust their style of writing to make it comprehensible for peasants without false simplification and vulgarization. While the propaganda of the Reds was less clever, it was more direct. Their papers were easier to read and their slogans easier to remember. The characteristic feature of the Soviet press was an abundance of simple, brief, and clear slogans that became memorable through constant repetition. Compared to their opponents, the Bolsheviks did not employ many of the erudite and famous publicists from the past. Instead, they quickly brought up their own writers who wrote in a fresh style and avoided outdated templates. The Red press conveyed a high combative spirit, and was active, diverse and intelligible even to the most poorly educated segments of the population (Zhirkov 1999b). The publicists of the White movement could not answer the readers’ central question: what will happen after their victory? Too many different social forces were gathered under the banner of the Whites, and political differences affected their media. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, put forward simple slogans of peace and land, while promising a new and fair system of social life. In consequence, throughout the Civil War, Red propaganda was admittedly more skillful and effective than White propaganda, and this factor largely determined the result of the overall struggle over political power: the exceptional success of the extremely skillful Red propaganda enabled the Bolsheviks to win the Civil War. Later, this experience was widely used in Soviet journalism.

­Liberalization During the New Economic Policy Period and the Soviet Media System During the first years of the Soviet regime, internal, and geo‐political circumstances forced the Bolsheviks to establish an original economic system. This involved the appropriation of surplus and the forcible seizure of agricultural products from the villagers, which in turn helped shape the early stage of Soviet media and journalism. The so‐called “War Communism” was characterized by an extreme centralization of the economic management, the nationalization of large and medium‐sized industry, the state monopoly over many agricultural products, and the prohibition of private trade. By the early 1920s, the failures of the economic policy of War Communism became apparent as it had led to rapid impoverishment and starvation among the peasants, which had caused numerous riots. At the Tenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party held in Moscow in March 1921, Lenin proclaimed the NEP, according to which peasants had to pay a moderate food tax but received the right to sell surplus of agricultural products to the state or on the free market. NEP, thus, introduced elements of free enterprise into the Soviet economy, which inevitably came along with a certain liberalization of the political regime. Further, under the pressure of objective economic requirements associated with the expansion of trade and market relations, the government also had to ease some of the restrictions of press freedom (Kuznetsov, 2002). From the autumn of 1921, private publishing houses began to open, and by 1922, there were over 300 publishers in Moscow and Petrograd, soon followed by the reappearance of newspaper ads and the tabloid press. Later, the critically minded intelligentsia opposed to the Soviet authority began to issue magazines such as Economist

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(Экономист – the economist), Novaja zhizn’ (Новая жизнь – the new life), and others. In them, liberal‐minded scientists, philosophers, economists, and commentators expressed the hope that the new economic realities would encourage the authorities to abandon the persecution of dissidents and help create conditions for the free exchange of ideas (Zhirkov 1999a). In the spirit of the NEP, the party press was put on a different economic basis and, from now on, needed to be self‐sufficient. During the Civil War, the press had been perceived as a weapon of agitation. It had received priority in funding and, in most cases, had enjoyed free distribution. Now, NEP required party newspapers to be sold by retailers or distributed by subscription, which caused a deep crisis of the party press. The weaknesses of party media emerged, such as the acute shortage of qualified personnel, the lack of typographic workers, a low level of economic management experience, and, most importantly, the inability to analyze and explain complex political and economic problems. Journalists who had received their first professional experience during the Civil War, were used to slogans and aggressive propaganda, but they were not educated enough to give their readers high‐quality analytics. Thus, not all publications of the Soviet press were able to adapt to the conditions created by the NEP. After the adoption of the decree “On the Introduction of Paid Newspapers” toward the end of 1921, the number of newspapers drastically decreased. While in January 1922, some 803 newspapers were published in the Russian Federation, the number dropped to 382 by March, and to only 313 by July 1922. By August 1922, the total circulation of periodicals had been reduced by half (Ovsepian 1999). Despite the grave crisis of the party press in the early 1920s, the distinct system of Soviet journalism was being established at that time, and this same system remained in place throughout the existence of the Soviet Union. The party’s major publications established themselves at a competitive level, due to their concentration of the most qualified personnel and their access to high‐quality printing facilities. The Krest’janskaja gazeta (Крестьянская газета – the peasant newspaper), published from 25 November 1923, until 1 March 1939, enjoyed great popularity. It was the first newspaper in the history of Soviet journalism that reached a circulation of over a million copies; in 1925, it reached a circulation of 2 million copies, and some issues had even 5 or 11 million copies (Kuznetsov 2002). One of the essential aspects in the editorial work was the fight against illiteracy. Pages of ABC‐book Doloj negramotnost’ (Долой неграмотность – down with illiteracy) started to be published in the Krest’janskaja gazeta, on 1 March 1925. The editors asked subscribers to collect and store these sheets, promising to send a ring binder to everyone to gather them into a useful booklet. A pro‐active fight against illiteracy was the central positive feature of the press during the first Soviet decade. Print media widely used special sections with information for the uneducated and for those who were just learning how to read. This information was published in large print or words divided into syllables, similar to a primer. This campaign had considerable success: while only about 21% of the population had been literate at the end of the nineteenth century, literacy rose to 56% in 1926, and 87% in 1937. Thus, the Soviet state made a record leap in the spread of literacy among the population, and the press undoubtedly took its share in this campaign (Kuznetsov 2002). The differentiation process of the press during the first half of the 1920s was naturally accompanied by the creation of numerous applications to the newspapers. On 15 February 1923, the first issue of the illustrated literary and art magazine Prozhektor (Прожектор – spotlight) came out as a supplement of Pravda (Правда – the truth) until



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August 1935. A number of other mass newspapers and magazines were published as supplements to the Krest’janskaja gazeta, including the Derevenskij kommunist (Деревенский коммунист – communist peasant) (December 1924 until August 1930), the Krest’janka (Крестьянка – peasant woman) (1922), and the satirical magazine Lapot’ (Лапоть) (November 1924 until January 1933). The Rabochaja gazeta (Рабочая газета – workers’ paper) as well had several supplements such as the satirical magazine Krokodil (Крокодил – crocodile), and the children’s magazine Murzilka (Мурзилка). On 3 January 1924, the ROSTA began to transmit regular information broadcasts for the local press. It was the beginning of a long search for novel methods, forms, and genres specifically designed for radio. As a result of creative cooperation of a group of journalists, one new genre  –  the “radio newspaper” (with the announcer reading the newspaper on the radio) – was born, and this marked the beginning of mass broadcasting. In its basic structure, the radio newspaper was an audio copy of the printed paper. Since newspapers were not issued on Mondays, however, the information transmitted by the radio would at times come two days ahead of its printed version (Sherel 2000). The first Radio Newspaper started broadcasting on 23 November 1924. It contained a greeting telegram from the ROSTA, an article on an international topic, news on science and technology, and announcements. Initially, the radio newspaper format developed due to an acute paper crisis that had arisen during the Civil War. Continuing difficulties in paper supply limited editions and the spread of printed information; therefore, “the newspaper without paper” was to successfully deliver information across the different regions of the country. Over the next eight years, the radio newspaper became the main form of public‐ political programming both at the center and in the provinces. From 1925 onwards, broadcast radio was increasingly implemented in the villages. The program for the farmers was produced by the designated Agricultural Department. The Krest’janskaja radiogazeta (Крестьянская радиогазета – Peasant Radio Newspaper), first broadcast on 11 April 1926, contained a wealth of information on various aspects of agricultural production. Its release was the first step in the development of this radio genre from one general radio newspaper to various programs aimed at specific audiences. The year 1926 witnessed the introduction of the Rabochaja radiogazeta (Рабочая радиогазета  –  Workers’ Radio Newspaper) and the Komsomol’skaja pravda po radio (Комсомольская правда по радио  –  Komsomolskaya Pravda by Radio), whilst on 1 November 1927, the Krasnoarmejskaja radiogazeta (Красноармейская радиогазета – Red Army Radio Newspaper) began its broadcasts. The duplicated names of both print‐based and radio newspapers showed the nature of the relationship between them, their cooperation, and interaction. Each radio newspaper was a result of mutually creative and productive efforts of the broadcasting organizations and the editorial offices of the respective periodical. By the end of 1926, five radio newspapers aired regularly from Moscow: the Rabochaja radiogazeta (daily), the Krest’janskaja radiogazeta (three times a week), the Komsomolskaya radiogazeta (twice a week), the Pioneer radiogazeta (daily), and the News of Radio by Radio (weekly) (Kuznetsov 2002). ROSTA played a central role in the formation of the Soviet state media system. Besides mastering the technology of broadcasting, the agency also rapidly expanded the geography of its work. By 1919, some 42 local offices were in operation, and by 1922, its structure included 474 offices that functioned as correspondent offices, and seven regional associations. In addition, the agency organized the publishing process and was involved in the instruction, training, preparation, and improvement of (local) media personnel. The first short‐term growth started in 1919, and by 1920, some 136 newspaper employees had obtained four classes of education. In December 1920, the ROSTA

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opened the Petrograd Institute of Journalism organized by its local bureau, and in March 1921, the Moscow Institute of Journalism (MIZH) introduced a one‐year training course for journalists. MIZH, thus, became the first specialized educational institution for training journalists. In addition, training courses for journalists were set up in Smolensk, Vitebsk, Kazan, the Urals and in other offices of ROSTA (Kuznetsov 2002). Initially, the major Western powers refused to recognize the Bolshevik‐led government. The eventual restoration of diplomatic relations, however, led to the beginning of the ROSTA’s integration into the global information space. By the end of 1923, ROSTA’s foreign correspondents worked in almost all large countries of the world. At that time too, several agreements on the mutual exchange of information were made, and ROSTA started partnerships with the Havas agency (France), and Reuters (United Kingdom). On 10 July 1925, a special provision of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) was approved, and after the establishment of nation‐wide TASS, ROSTA became the Telegraph Agency of the Russian Federation (part of the Soviet Union). Another specific form of periodical press that was developed around this time was the prison newspaper. In 1921, Soviet Russia had some 132 concentration camps that contained between 40,000 and 60,000 inmates, about half of them had been convicted for political reasons. Regulations adopted in 1920, allowed for the publication of newspapers and magazines in detention and correctional facilities if they were technically capable of doing so. Since there were many talented and highly‐educated people among the prisoners, the prison press had qualified personnel. It was these prisoners who founded the Soviet prison periodicals under the supervision of the cultural and educational departments of the State Prison Administration (SOLR). In the early 1920s, a few dozen of such newspapers were published, and in 1927, some 432 issues of prison newspapers and magazines were released (Kuznetsov 2002). However, this period of relative liberalization linked to the NEP was very brief. After the first, successful years of the NEP, Soviet society was struck by a new economic crisis that fostered political consequences. The government re‐mobilized its struggle with bourgeois ideas that were deemed to be penetrating Soviet ideology and started to prepare the deportation and arrests of dissident scientists, intellectuals, and cultural figures. Eminent philosophers such as N.A. Berdyaev, S.L. Frank, and L.P. Karsavin, historians such as A.A. Kiesewetter, S.P. Mel’gunov, or A.V. Florovsky, and economist B.D. Brutskus and others were sent abroad. Starting in 1922, the elimination of the Mensheviks and the socialist parties became major policy priority, which led to a series of mass arrests. By this time, the Bolsheviks became the only legal political party in the country (Werth 2006). The Soviet state leadership perceived the media as a tool of propaganda in the spirit of the Leninist doctrine; therefore, it sought to establish tight control over all information processes in the country. In 1922, the Bolsheviks created the General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press, or Glavlit. Designed to protect state secrets in the press, Glavlit established a regime of total prohibition of all manifestations of dissent and of opinions that offered an alternative to the class ideology of the Bolsheviks. It controlled all aspects of spiritual life in Soviet society. Up to the end of the 1920s, Glavlit carried out state censorship by acting within specific laws approved by the government. In the following decades, however, Glavlit came under heavy pressure from the party. The increasing merger activity of the party apparatus with the state management system resulted in the replacement of state censorship with one of single party control. Before 1927, many radio programs, mainly radio art, were broadcast without a prepared script. The resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, “On the



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Broadcasting Authority,” released on 10 January 1927 introduced very strict procedures of censorship.2 It required all party committees whose territories had radiotelephone stations to take them under their control and to employ them for agitation and propaganda purposes. In this regard, the party officials in charge were appointed heads of broadcasting. They were responsible for the broadcasting organization and for the content of broadcast material (Kuznetsov 2002). As with all Soviet media, broadcasting turned into an integral part of the party propaganda system of the Soviet state. When Lenin’s health started to deteriorate, the struggle for power began in the party. The main candidates for Lenin’s successors were Joseph Stalin and Lev Trotsky. Stalin in this fight relied on administrative resources, gradually concentrating in his hands the cadre policy of the party. Trotsky was a talented publicist and an inspired orator; therefor he tried to fight through political controversy. The debate in the press became an integral part of this struggle. The discussion developed in two main directions: questions regarding the further development of the party and the economic policy. A particularly strong debate broke out between October and November 1923. It began with Lev Trotsky’s pamphlet, “The members of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission,” which he sent to the Politburo (the supreme administrative organ of the Communist Party) on 8 October 1923. A week later, Trotsky’s supporters released the “Statement 46,” and on 25 and 26 October 25, they held the joint Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the Communist Party, where the issue of the inner‐party situation with regard to Trotsky’s letter was considered. The plenum condemned Trotsky for factionalism and for aiming to implement Menshevik tendencies. By the end of December 1923, several articles by Trotsky had appeared in Pravda: “The Factions and Factional Formation,” “The Question of the Party Generations,” “Tradition and Revolutionary Policy,” and some others, later collected by the author in the book named New Course, which was released in January 1924. Trotsky, fearing the concentration of power in Stalin’s hands, advocated a decrease in the administrative influence of the party’s secretariat, and against the bureaucratization of the party. He insisted on the revival of collegial principles in party administration. Stalin in response denounced Trotsky for his desire to split the party, accusing him of factionalism. However, Stalin’s high level of administrative influence in the party let him put the loyal persons to the main posts; therefore the more Trotsky attacked Stalin, the more his popularity in the party declined. The total defeat of Trotsky was settled by Stalin’s polemical articles that appeared in Pravda in December 1923 (Ovsepian 1999). Lenin, leader of the party and head of the state, died in January 1924, and the struggle over leadership between Stalin and Trotsky escalated. As the chairperson of the Revolutionary Military Council, Trotsky had often stirred up public opinion with his speeches and articles. In September 1924, while on vacation in Kislovodsk, Trotsky wrote the article “The Lessons of October,” which continued to develop his ideas about the need to change the approach to the internal organization of the party. But his ideas were not supported, and in 1926, he was dismissed from the Politburo. In November 1927 his party membership was revoked for having organized a demonstration of the opposition. The struggle for the leadership between Stalin and Trotsky ended in 1929, when the latter was expelled from the country (Ovsepian 1999). Another great issue of this period concerned the economy. One of the main problems of the NEP period was a lopsided development of different sectors of the economy. The freedom of private enterprise that had been adopted by the Bolsheviks helped revive the small cottage industry as well as handcraft, but it could not provide effective recovery of

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the heavy and large‐scale industries that were most essential for the young Soviet state. Furthermore, the NEP was inconsistent within itself: the attempt to combine elements of free market mechanisms and an administrative‐command management of the economy caused speculation and a rapid growth of new class stratification among the urban population and in the villages. Under these circumstances, there were two views on the further economic development of the country, and the political elite formed two warring factions. Nikolay Bukharin (a member of the Politburo, the theoretician, the economist, and the editor‐in‐chief of the main newspaper of Communist Party) and his followers supported the rapid growth of agriculture and expansion of private property in the villages lost this ideological battle. The winner was the opposing political view, a group led by Stalin and his supporters, who held the majority in the political leadership of the country at that time. Stalin proposed an expansion of collective and state farms. He stressed that the NEP policy had reached a deadlock, and that the bitterness of the class struggle was caused by the increasingly desperate resistance of the capitalist elements in it. It, therefore, was necessary to quicken the pace of industrialization (Ovsepian 1999). Bukharin, on the other hand, tried to organize a counter debate by publishing an article named “Notes of an Economist” in Pravda on 30 September 1928. In it, he outlined the economic program of the opposition, and saw the roots for the NEP crisis in terrorism, the planning and price formation, and the lack of cooperation in the agricultural sector. Bukharin advocated for the return to economic and financial measures based on markets instead of increasing the measures of administrative control. After this and other oppositional publications, Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo and removed from his post as Pravda editor‐in‐chief. Later, in 1937, Bukharin was convicted on charges of participating in the opposition right, Trotskyist bloc, and in 1938, he was shot. Political discussions ended, and under these circumstances. Further changes in the development of a one‐party system were introduced, such as media that were in line with the ideological and organizational supports linked to Stalin’s concept of socialism.

­The Media System in Stalin’s Soviet Russia and the Threat of War in the 1930s Stalin’s economic program was based on two main pillars: the accelerated collectivization of land in the countryside and forced industrialization. The economic development was carried out in five‐year intervals through the so‐called “five‐year plan.” The period of the first “five‐year plans” was the era of the USSR’s transformation from a primarily rural economy into a powerful industrial state; within a short timespan, it was to be ranked second (after the USA) in its total industrial production. From 1928 until 1941, about 9,000 large industrial enterprises were established in the Soviet Union (approximately 600 or 700 each year). In a short time, the country launched the mass production of airplanes, cars and trucks, tractors and combines for several industrial sectors that were just newly developing. Breakthroughs in the industrial sectors of the economy, however, were accompanied by a massive (forced) collectivization and dispossession in the countryside: about 4 million people were evicted from the villages, at least 3 million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. Also the struggle with political and technical espionage aggravated the failures of the first steps to industrialization, and these failures were blamed on the activities of spies and wreckers. Further, the struggle with internal party opposition continued during the late 1930s: by the beginning of 1940, 1,334,408 prisoners



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were contained in colonies of the Gulag (the department that administered prisons and places of detention between 1930 until 1960); 315,584 people were in the Gulag camps, and 190,266 people were imprisoned. Between the beginning of 1929 and the end of 1940, 728,139 people had been sentenced to death for political and other crimes against the state, including banditry and military espionage (Zemskov 2012).

The Development of the Press However, this was also the time of significant quantitative growth of periodicals. In 1928, the Soviet press consisted of about 2,000 newspapers whose daily circulation amounted to 9.5 million copies. In contrast, in 1925  –  the final year of the recovery period – there had been 1,120 newspapers, and their daily circulation had been a little more than 8 million copies. By the end of the first five‐year plan in 1932, there were 7,500 newspapers in the country, and some 9,250 newspapers by the end of the second five‐year plan in 1936. Daily circulation during this period rose from around 35 to 38 million copies. However, prescriptive subscriptions to periodicals (subscriptions based on government order), put into place during the period of the NEP to maintain the party press, were still upheld (Kuznetsov 2002). Specific publications devoted to particular sectors of the economy, developed most intensively, for example, Stroitel’naja gazeta (Строительная газета – building newspaper), Legkaja promyshlennost’ (Легкая промышленность – light industry), and Tjazhelaja promyshlennost’ (Тяжелая промышленность  –  timber industry). The main topics of Soviet journalism were calls for implementing a five‐year production plan within four years, and agitation to increase the rate of collectivization. The slogan “Five‐Year Plan in four years!” had first appeared in Pravda on 1 September 1929, which is when the rest of the Soviet press picked up on it and began to proclaim its implementation vigorously. Soon, Pravda called for socialist competition, calling on the proletariat to work harder and compete with each other in the over‐fulfillment of the plan. Since the idea of socialist competition had some positive effects on the industrial sector, Pravda proposed to extrapolate it onto the agricultural sector as well. High rates of collectivization were claimed to be the basis for a successful agricultural development. The newspaper called for a focus of all forces on the acceleration of “dekulakization,” the confiscation of property from the most prosperous peasants (kulaks) who refused to join collective farms and transfer their property to poor peasants. Following the appeal of Pravda, the main organ of the party press, local party administrators with local party media support not only sought to carry out re‐distribution and dekulakization but also began changing the status of middle‐strata peasants into the category of “kulaks” in their efforts to fulfill the plan. Eventually, the plans and norms of dekulakization were exceeded. Newspapers often published articles about dekulakization illustrating in detail how kulaks’ homes and possessions were transferred to the poor. Sometimes, the press published letters from rural readers listing the names of those who, according to the authors of the letters, were “kulak” agents (the most wealthy and prosperous peasants). By making these letters public, journalists unwittingly laid the basis for subsequent repressions and expulsions. Thus, the press, in this instance, was not an observer and informant, but an initiator of social and political processes. The hype around dekulakization provoked by media led to distortions in the process of collectivization through which a lot of villagers suffered undeserved reprisals. This caused criticism of the authorities: some members of the Politburo, such as Mikhail Kalinin and Grigol Ordzhonikidze, condemned the wrong course of the newspaper at the Party Central Committee meeting in late

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February 1930. Stalin, on the other hand, appeared in the press with criticism of unhealthy and even criminal phenomena that occurred in the collectivization process. On 2 March 1930, Pravda published Stalin’s article “Dizzy with success,” that quite correctly detected the causes of errors in the collectivization process, but said nothing about the authority’s role or responsibilities in it (Ovsepian 1999). In mid‐March 1930, the government adopted a resolution aimed at fighting violations in the collective‐farm movement, which primarily was aimed to help the press to overcome prior mistakes. Thus, the style and tone of reports concerning collectivization problems and successes changed significantly, and Pravda now introduced the heading “Resolutely stop excesses against the middle peasants.”3 However, a new wave of dispossession that swept the country a few months later revived all the negative tendencies in the media work associated with collectivization (Kuznetsov 2002).

­Television and Radio Broadcasting At that time, radio broadcasting became an increasingly powerful mass medium. On 10 April 1929, the Central Election Commission and the People’s Commissars of the USSR adopted the resolution “On the Right of the Transmission by Radio and Wire of Public Performances of Music, Drama and other Works, as well as Lectures and Presentations.” According to the resolution, broadcasters were entitled to install microphones in the theaters, concert, and lecture halls without any additional payment. This contributed to a larger scale of socio‐political and artistic broadcasting. In September 1931, the Union Radio Committee (RMC) was created to function as a coordinator of central and local broadcasting. Its aim was to provide a wide audience with the technical opportunities for listening to the radio. The plan was to install radio receivers in 50% of workers’ apartments and not less than one‐third of the peasant households. The national radio had notable successes. By 1930, broadcasting was established in Moldova,4 by 1931, in Tashkent, while by 1936, radio broadcasting was an established medium in Ukraine, Turkmenistan, and the Caucasus (Sherel 2000). In October 1929, a plan to produce programs in foreign languages was launched. This initiative was to begin with regular broadcasts in German, then French, and by the end of the year in English, and by 1933, it had led to regular broadcasting in eight foreign languages. A new stage in the history of the Soviet radio began with the introduction of tape‐ recording. This is when it became possible to listen not only live broadcasts but also recorded transmissions. Next to receiving information, with the advent of sound recording it became possible to hear everything that happened in a specific surrounding, such as on construction sites: the damming of rivers or the voices of the heroes of labor live. Thus, the Central Record Library began to form. In October 1933, after the introduction of the second program of Central Radio, broadcasting became available for residents of Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East. To better coordinate the radio broadcasting services in light of time‐zone difference, five broadcast networks were launched in 1936: the Central European, the Central Asian, the West Siberian, the East Siberian, and the Far East network. In February 1937, a single program schedule for all territories of the Soviet Union was adopted. In the second half of the 1930s, the story of Soviet television began. The Leningrad television center started working on 1 September 1938. That same year, an experimental Moscow television center was launched on Shabolovka street. In March 1938, it broadcast the film The Great Citizen. However, in the pre‐war years, TV shows still remained



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at the experimental stage, although their regular broadcasts began on 10 March 1939, in a day’s work of the XVIII Congress of the Communist Party (Ovsepian 1999). The main development of the Soviet press of this period was that the press and information system became a part of the general governance system through which the party ruled the country. A central newspaper, often targeted at a particular industry or sector, effectively became an additional government unit for each sector of the economy or social life; such publications possessed the status and significance of party directives. If, for example, a critical review of a particular work of art was published in the newspaper Soviet Art, it was a direct indication for all other press organs to give a similar review of this work. Pluralism of opinion was, thus, eliminated; instead, the ideological uniformity of media was strictly controlled. Periodicals were free in their choice of creative forms and genres of propagating party directives, but they had no freedom in its ideological interpretation. The search for those new non‐standard forms of journalistic creativity, thus, became central, and one solution for the editorial teams was to visit the main industrial facilities and major construction projects: during the first five‐year plan, editors paid visits to the largest Soviet building projects (i.e. the Stalingrad Tractor Plant), as well as to rural areas. These offsite teams then released on the spot special editions of a newspaper, combat leaflets or posters. The first issue of Pravda in January 1929 in Kharkov (one of the largest industrial and scientific centers of the Soviet state), for instance, was printed on a small portable machine that had to be wound up by foot. In 1930, when the first specially equipped railway carriages came out, they gave editors an opportunity to visit all major construction projects. In consequence, the Komsomolskaya Pravda editions produced in a railway carriage had completed more than one hundred of such assignments between 1930 and 1935 (Kuznetsov 2002). The media’s deep integration into the public administration system had its positive sides: newspaper publications often offered a more effective way to draw the attention of the authorities to specific problems than direct complaints. Thus, sometimes readers perceived the newspaper as a tool of solving urgent social problems. For example, many publications (Gudok, Working Moscow, Peasant Newspaper, or the Leningradskaya Pravda) at the turn of 20 or 30 years were increasingly criticizing the bureaucracy, mistakes in economic planning, and formalism of officials in relation to their fields of activity. For officials and public figures, such criticism in media was equivalent to an administrative reprimand, and they were very sensitive to newspaper comments directed at them. In this sense, while media of a one‐party administrative‐command system did have the function of indoctrination, preventing dissent and promoting the dominant ideology, mass media in some cases also functioned as a mechanism of influence on authorities in the field of practical economic and production problems.

­Conclusion Born as an ideological weapon during the Civil War, the Soviet media system had always been a tool for ideological struggle and propaganda. Speeches of the party opposition that appeared in the press in the 1920s were the latest precedents of real political discussion in the Soviet media. When the struggle over power between the heirs of Lenin ended with Stalin’s victory, the idea of creating socialism in a single country became dominant. In accordance with the needs of intense state construction, which demanded the unity of efforts of the entire population, the press gradually ceased

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to be an instrument of public dialog. Media acted as an effective organizer of the ­everyday work of the population, a tool for suppressing dissent and a unilateral propaganda organ of government measures. However, it would be wrong to assess the entire activity of the Soviet media in a negative light. It was a complex phenomenon: Soviet press fought illiteracy and, at the same time, struggled with dissent; it fought “kulaks” and “spies” but also became a tool for combating inefficient bureaucracy. Soviet journalism enjoyed a unique freedom of creativity in the format of a message, but it did not have the freedom to choose the idea of the message.

Notes 1 Publications from abroad affected journalism and the social situation within Russia as they were made by influential men (writers, journalists, and public figures). Since they had no opportunity to publish in their homeland, they emigrated and released press abroad or sent articles to the publications of Russian emigration. These publications reentered Russia and became popular. 2 Note: The Communist party carried different names in different periods of history. It was called RSDRP(b) 1917–1918; the RCP(b, 1918–1925; CPSU (b) 1925–1952; the Communist Party, 1952–1991. The term “Communist Party” is used throughout the text to avoid confusion. 3 Initially the newspaper, too, trusted the authenticity of the letters from the village and demanded the dekulakization of those who were denounced kulaks in these letters. But rural correspondents were often guided by personal motives, hostility, and envy. Therefore, the active appeals of the newspaper led to massive repression of “middle peasants.” 4 Moldova in this chapter refers to the the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic created as part of the Ukrainian SSR. It included the left bank of Dniester (part of the legal territory of modern Moldova) and a part of modern Ukraine. 5 The relatively small number of publications in this reference list is due to the fact that most of the studies published before the 2000s, expressed an ideologically one‐sided interpretation of historical events. Studies that differ in their objective weighted position are still few. Unfortunately, the work of Russian researchers on the history of media has not been translated into foreign languages. For those interested in some particular aspects of the history of Russian media, the following electronic English‐language resources can be recommended as sources of information: https://www.bl.uk/russian‐revolution/articles/propaganda‐in‐the‐russian‐ revolution, also www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern‐world‐history‐1918‐to‐1980/russia‐ 1900‐to‐1939/war‐communism.

­References5 Akhmadulin, E. (2001a). Pressa politicheskih partiy Rossii nachala XX veka: izdaniya konservatorov. Rostov on Don: Kniga. Akhmadulin, E. (2001b). Pressa politicheskih partiy Rossii nachala XXveka: izdaniya liberalov. Rostov on Don: Kniga. Akhmadulin, E. (2008). Istoriya rossiyskoy zhurnalistiki nachala XX veka. Rostov on Don: Kniga. Berezhnoy, A. (2003). Istoriya otechestvennoy zhurnalistiki (konets XIX‐ nachalo XX vekov). Materialy i documenty. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt‐Peterburgskogo universiteta. Kustov, V. (2013). Informatsionnoye protivostoyaniye rossiyskih politicheskih partiy po voprosam voyny i mira posle fevralskoy revolutsii. Science and Society 1 (10): 31–37. Kuznetsov, V. (2002). Istoria otechestvennoi zhurnalistiki 1917–2000. Moscow: Flinta Nauka.



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Makhonina, S. (2009). Istoriya russkoy zhurnalistiki nachala XX veka: uchebnoye posobie. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta. Ovsepian, R. (1999). Istoriya nobeishei otechestvennoi zhurnalistiki. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta. Sherel, A. (2000). Radiozhurnalistika/Pod red. A.A. SHerelya, 2000. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta. Werth, N. (2006). Istoriya Sovetskogo gosudarstva. Moscow: Ves’ Mir. Zemskov, V. (2012). Masshtaby politicheskih repressij v SSSR. Izvestiya Samarskogo nauchnogo centra RAN 3: 80–88. Zhilyakova, N. (2009). Istoriya rossiyskoy pechati konca XIX‐ nachala XX vekov. Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo «UPK «Zhurnalistika». Zhirkov, G. (1999a). Nep kak otrazhenie NEPa. Ocherk istorii nezavisimoy pechati Rossii 20‐kh godov XX v.: Ucheb. posobie. Cheboksary: Izdatel’stvo Chuvashskogo universiteta. Zhirkov, G. (1999b). Zhurnalistika dvuh rossiy: 1917–1920. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt‐ Peterburgskogo universiteta. Zhirkov, G. (2011). Zolotoy vek zhurnalistiki Rossii. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt‐ Peterburgskogo universiteta. Zhirkov, G. (2012). Ot “narodnoy” voyny k narodnoy tragedii: istoriya russkoy zhurnalistiki 1914–1917 godov. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt‐Peterburgskogo universiteta.

9

International Radio Broadcasting During World War II Nelson Ribeiro, Hans‐Ulrich Wagner, and Agnieszka Morriss

­Introduction Since its emergence, radio has been used for transborder communication, allowing ­governments to directly communicate with international audiences. While the phenomenon became prevalent in many European countries during the late 1920s and early 1930s, it clearly reached its apex during World War II with the combatant powers using the new medium to communicate with audiences that were eager for information on the war. While some cross‐border broadcasts aimed to demoralize the enemy, others were designed to boost the morale of the military and of the populations living under foreign occupation. With international radio transmissions having been a widespread phenomenon across Europe throughout World War II (WWII), it is impossible to account for all in one single chapter. The focus lies, thus, on the major players – the German and the British stations – while references are also made to the Soviet and American broadcasters, due to their centrality during the war. The Polish and the Iberian cases also deserve particular attention, with the former having been under Nazi occupation, while Spain and Portugal were neutral nations. Analyzing these different cases, the intention is to demonstrate the distinct roles that international radio transmissions played in Europe during the war.

­“Hier spricht Deutschland!”: Nazi Wireless Propaganda Radio stood at the center of the National Socialist multi‐media propaganda. The medium was declared to be a “Führungsmittel” (Eckert 1941), the ideal medium to lead and direct the people. From 1933 onwards, radio journalists were given the mission to contribute to the creation of a so‐called “Volksgemeinschaft” (people’s community). Along with such use of radio for domestic audiences, the National Socialists continued a tradition of German foreign broadcasts dating back to the early radio years of the Weimar The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Republic in the 1920s. Even during these early years, transnational acoustical transmission was not only a means of conciliation but also of competition, struggle, and war. The possibility of a so‐called “Ätherkrieg” (war of the airwaves) (Bredow 1950 [1926], p.  53) became reality some years later, when Hitler assumed the power in Germany and especially after the outbreak of the war. The National Socialists clearly recognized the possibilities of radio to present their new German policy and to spread their “Weltanschauung” (world view) to foreign listeners. To shed light onto the various foreign broadcasts by the National Socialists during World War II, it is crucial to understand the rivalries among Nazi ministers. Next to overall discords within the Third Reich bureaucracy, the organization of the German “Auslandspropaganda” (propaganda to foreign countries) became a battlefield between two ministries – the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and the Reich Foreign Ministry, and between the two ministers, Joseph Goebbels and Joachim von Ribbentrop respectively (Boelcke 1977; Diller 1980). Contradictory plans were made in the run‐up to World War II, forcing Hitler to make an official decision on the competences of each ministry on 8 September 1939. Central decision‐making power was given to the foreign minister, whereas decisions on coordination and practical application remained the competence of the propaganda minister. Trouble was sure to follow. The German monitoring service, i.e. the Sonderdienst Seehaus, played a central role in the propaganda war of the airwaves. Planned by Adolf Raskin (1900–1940), an executive in Goebbels’ ministry, it was later run by the Kulturpolitische Abteilung, the Cultural Policy Department of the Foreign Ministry (Boelcke 1977). Located in Berlin‐ Wannsee, more than 500 employees monitored foreign radio services in 35 languages in 1941. The information they gathered was an important piece in the strategy of counter‐ propaganda developed by Nazi Germany. Despite permanent disagreements within the regime’s bureaucracy, a wide range of international radio programs were developed and broadcast during wartime. In April 1941, the Auslandsdirektion (the directorate for foreign affairs), a centralized unit under the direct control of Joseph Goebbels in Germany’s central broadcasting organization, the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG), developed strategies regarding the transmissions to the different target audiences. While addressing Germans living abroad (Auslandsdeutsche) remained crucial, also transmissions to occupied Europe became central to RRG’s propaganda strategy. Further, a dubious and opaque department was created under the euphemistic code name Concordia responsible for the management of all “Geheimsender” (clandestine stations) (O’Connor 2002). Their so‐called “black propaganda” was produced with the intent of deceiving foreign listeners, and it was a central piece of National Socialist broadcasting policy. British dissidents produced the programs of some of these clandestine stations. Radio Caledonia (1940–1942) and Workers’ Challenge (1940–1944), for example, pretended to be part of a Scottish independence movement and to represent the East‐London working class respectively. However, the most prominent black broadcaster was the New British Broadcasting Station (NBBS) operating daily from 2 February 1940 until 9 April 1945 (O’Connor 2002, p. 279). Owing to the wide array of small enterprises and clandestine stations, it is difficult to gather exact figures on German international broadcasting operations during the war. Figures vary according to sources, but officially, there were at least 18 foreign‐language broadcasts in October 1939. The number increased to 31 in the summer of 1940, and to 47 in 1944 (Diller 1980, pp. 327–330). Among them, the Deutscher Kurzwellensender (German Shortwave Station) played a central role in the National Socialist propaganda strategy prior and throughout the war.



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In 1938, on its fifth anniversary, the emphatic words “Hier spricht Deutschland!” (“Germany speaking!”) (Anonymous 1938, p. 334) revealed how the station perceived itself as representing the German nation. The Deutscher Kurzwellensender aired musical programs namely jazz that, despite being banned in the Third Reich, was broadcast abroad for propaganda purposes (Bergmeier and Lotz 1997). Radio plays were also common on the shortwave frequencies along with reportages, “Hörbilder” (features), and talks that praised the tradition and achievements of the rich German culture. These were often written by young authors, such as Heinz Oskar Wuttig, who later became prominent figures in the Federal Republic of Germany. But the Deutscher Kurzwellensender aired direct political propaganda as well, some of which authored by foreign dissidents. Up to 200 foreign citizens, rejected by their own countries, worked for Goebbels’ ministry and were involved in the production and presentation of different programs (Edwards 1991; O’Connor 2002; Weale 2002). Among them was Frederick W. Kaltenbach (1895–1945), an anti‐ Semite and fascistic US‐American journalist who worked in Berlin from 1933 onwards. Between 1939 and 1945 his series Letters to Iowa broadcast “purely anti‐Roosevelt, anti‐ British and isolationist propaganda” to the Midwest of the USA (Laurie 1994). One of the most famous propaganda series, strongly linked to William Joyce (1906– 1946) and his voice, was Germany Calling. This program, targeted at Britain airing anti‐British comments, made Joyce, known by the nickname “Lord Haw‐Haw,” a preeminent figure in the radio war (Doherty 2000; Tidy 2011; BBC 2014). Born in New York, he grew up in Ireland and became a member of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. He fled Britain in mid‐1939 and soon became a colorful figure in Nazi‐Berlin where he worked not only for the British section of the RRG but also for clandestine stations like NBBS. From 18 September 1939 until 30 April 1945, Joyce’s nasal voice started comments with the words “Germany Calling, Germany Calling,” and his mix of information and disinformation, of half‐truth and tendentious reports on battles and captures were aired by transmitters in Hamburg and Osterloog. His broadcasts received considerable attention in British newspapers (Doherty 2000, p. 95), and many surveys on public opinion eagerly tried to measure the effectiveness of his Nazi perspective reports and comments (i.e. Durant and Durant 1940). Since these broadcasts were received and recorded by Monitoring Service of the BBC, some of the comments have been preserved (Doherty 2000; BBC 2014). Despite the significant investments made by the Third Reich on international broadcasting, no definitive answer can be given on the success or failure of “Hitler’s radio war” (Tidy 2011). The intense work on radio propaganda as an indispensable part of warfare was based on the assumption of a media impact (Götter 2016). But on the whole, the results of direct political propaganda in the German “Ätherkrieg” can be considered small. While it is impossible to measure the effects of the German radio programs, their endeavors to mix information and disinformation at the very most helped to cause rumors and feelings of uncertainty abroad.

­Britain’s Engagement in the War via Radio Compared to the Axis powers, Britain had a late start in the field of propaganda via international broadcasting. This was due to the fact that during the pre‐war years it had been extremely difficult to prepare the propaganda machinery as many officials regarded it “as unnecessary and even dangerous in peace time” (Cole 1990, p. 2). In consequence, the BBC only initiated its foreign‐language transmissions in January 1938 with its Arabic

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Service. Set‐up at the request of the British government, it aimed at counter‐attacking Fascist propaganda that was being disseminated across North Africa and the Middle East from the south of Italy by Radio Bari and on shortwave from Rome (Taylor 1981; Partner 1998). However, at the BBC and the Foreign Office, it was clear that the most serious potential threat in terms of shortwave broadcasting more generally, and particularly in English, came from the Germans, not the Italians (Potter 2020). Thus, two months after the inauguration of the Arabic Service, the BBC started its transmissions in Spanish and Portuguese targeted at Latin America, a major market for German goods, where Nazi propaganda was particularly active (Wasburn 1992). With British economic and diplomatic interests at risk in this region, the BBC was called to play its part. During the Munich conference, on 27 September 1938, Neville Chamberlain’s speech in favor of peace was broadcast in German, French, and Italian, which marked the beginning of transmissions to continental Europe. While regular broadcasts in these three languages started with daily 10‐minute news bulletins in the evening, it did not take long for their number and duration to increase. Three daily broadcasts in German and French were offered at the outbreak of the war. Once it became clear that Chamberlain’s appeasement strategy did not achieve intended results, discussions within the BBC took place on the need to initiate transmissions to the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish Civil War was then being fought, in which the Republican government in Madrid was opposed by the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco. When in March 1939, the British government recognized Franco’s regime, the Foreign Office was already urging the BBC to broadcast to Spain and Portugal. The two countries were considered strategic targets as their positions in case of war were quite uncertain – both were ruled by authoritarian regimes with obvious ideological connections to fascism (Ribeiro 2009). The battle of the airwaves intensified after the outbreak of the war, leading the BBC to expand its foreign‐language transmissions at a quicker pace. In the first fortnight of September 1939, while bombs were falling in Warsaw, new services were added to target Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Even though until 1940, the BBC had a difficult time offering new foreign‐language services to all countries that were threatened or fell under Nazi occupation, it soon became the RRG’s main competitor in the war of the airwaves. The number of foreign transmissions jumped to 17 by the end of 1940, reaching 45 by the end of the war with more than half of these services being directed at European countries (Clark 1959). The introduction of each new foreign‐language service was decided by the government that directly financed the external broadcasts. Thus, British strategic interests determined when and what foreign services were being added while their output was subject to governmental control. However, even though during this period, the BBC was an instrument of war (Nicholas 1996), governmental control exercised over transmissions was much more subtle than the one exercised by Nazi Germany on its domestic and foreign broadcasts. The BBC’s functioning as a propaganda tool was to be kept secret in order for it to be regarded as immune to direct political control, contrasting the RRG (Seul and Ribeiro 2015). One of the issues the BBC had to deal with was to assure that all foreign services would broadcast coherent news. As each service had its own staff, including nationals from the targeted countries, it became a difficult task to ensure that the Corporation would speak at one voice across Europe. Therefore, the European Service was established in 1941. Daily news conferences were held at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. attended by all foreign‐language editors and by the staff of the central desk (Briggs 1970) that collected and prepared news stories for the different services (Brooks 2007). The editors of each



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foreign‐language desk could choose what to include in their newscasts from the material provided by official sources. However, they could not supplement it with anything other than news agency reports or foreign radio bulletins (Nicholas 1996). Throughout the war, the BBC received guidance mostly from the Ministry of Information in spite of the quarrels that took place during the first year with the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and the Foreign Office regarding the control of broadcasts to enemy and enemy‐occupied territories (Brooks 2007). After its establishment, the European Service came under the supervision of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) that had been founded in August 1941 to control propaganda and political warfare in occupied countries. Reporting to the Foreign Office, the PWE produced directive guidelines to be followed by BBC editors. Nevertheless, the European Service managed to maintain a significant amount of freedom from the PWE (Briggs 1970; Webb 2014). Furthermore, with different governmental bodies maintaining regular contact with the BBC, the Ministry of Information had difficulties taking over control as it had intended to (Taylor 1999b). Notwithstanding the fact that the BBC was subject to control and censorship, since its first transmissions in foreign languages, it assured its listeners that, contrary to the broadcasts of the Axis powers, it aired unbiased and reliable news. Even though this was not always the case, being a credible news source in Europe was a core concern of the BBC, as recognized by the Director of the European Service, John Salt in 1942: “The aim throughout must be to create and maintain an unrivalled reputation for prompt and reliable news” (p. 40). This concern was central also to the German Service that also claimed to tell “the truth” (Seul 2015). On its different foreign‐language services across Europe, the BBC, besides newscasts, also dedicated significant airtime to talks that helped to promote Britain, its culture, and its views on the war. In broadcasts targeted at occupied countries, nationalist talks and songs were part of the schedule along with programs that voiced the positions of the governments in exile. The BBC transmissions to France were certainly most famous for this. After the signing of the armistice with Nazi Germany, it was through the BBC French Service that General De Gaulle first called for resistance against German occupation (Briggs 1970). As the leader of the Free French forces, De Gaulle escaped to London where he attacked the armistice and spoke twice on the BBC, on 18 and 22 June 1940. Even though few listened to these transmissions, they became an iconic moment in the history of foreign‐language broadcasts during the war. Aiming to boost French morale and to encourage the resistance against the occupation, De Gaulle underlined that Britain and the United States would give military and economic support allowing France to be wrested from the Germans. This same message was also disseminated by other programs aired on the BBC French Service that aimed to counter the anti‐British propaganda then being disseminated by German controlled stations, namely Radio Paris and Radio Vichy (Brooks 2007). Starting in September 1940, one of the highlights of the French Service, besides the news bulletins, was the daily program Les Français Parlent aux Français that “gave the official political viewpoint of Charles de Gaulle’s ‘Fighting France’ movement” (Chadwick 2015, p. 428). The program also spread the idea that the BBC was far from being only a British broadcaster in that it spoke in the voice of the French. Similar to the French, other governments in exile in London also used the European services and BBC wavelengths to broadcast to their people, such as the Norwegian, Czech, Belgian, Dutch, and Polish governments (Briggs 1970; Dahl 1999 [1977]). Furthermore, throughout the war, the BBC became the host of other European broadcasters that were fighting for political liberation, such as the Polish state broadcaster Polskie Radio (see below).

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Even though there are no exact figures on reception, the transborder transmissions from London had significant audiences across Europe and beyond. An indication of a widespread listening to the transmissions from London was the success of the “V campaign,” the BBC’s best‐known propaganda endeavor during the war. Launched in January 1941 on the Belgian Service, it encouraged listeners to adopt the V‐sign as a rallying symbol. In the following months, the campaign was embraced by all European services leading to the letter V appearing on walls, pavements, doors, and posters, both in occupied and in neutral countries. It became one of the most visible signs of what Goebbels called “the intellectual invasion of the Continent by the British radio” (Rolo 1943, p. 141). The campaign achieved considerable success that it led the Nazis to incorporate the symbol into their own propaganda, presenting it as a sign of German victory (Briggs 1970). This, however, was not enough to conceal the influence of the BBC all over Europe. Perceived as a credible and objective news source, which became its biggest asset during the war, the BBC transborder transmissions reached a significant number of listeners not only in occupied and neutral countries but also in Germany where many dared to listen to broadcasts from London (Hensle 2003). News bulletins and commentaries (Kommentare zur Lage), broadcast between 8 p.m. and midnight, were the most successful features of the German Service, even though other programs were also in demand. Aus der Freien Welt, playing hot jazz and swing gramophone records “interspersed with news and short talks” (Briggs 1970, p. 432), was quite popular along with the satirical series Kurt and Willi. German writer Bruno Adler authored the latter in collaboration with British writer Norman Cameron. From the mid‐1940s, it aired weekly and consisted of a dialog between two German friends: a patriotic senior teacher and a cynical official from the Ministry of Propaganda who was systematically tampering with information on war developments (Taylor 1999a). The German armed forces also became the target of BBC transmissions that became successful mostly after the first British successes in North Africa (Briggs 1970). Having been one of the most important tools used by the Allies to win the hearts and minds of audiences in foreign countries, by 1945, the BBC had become not only “the largest and most powerful international broadcasting system in the world” (Black 1975, p. 59) but also the most respected one. Nevertheless, it was not the only broadcaster operated by the British during the war. In actual fact, as part of the activities developed by the PWE, several black propaganda stations were setup, targeted at the Nazis and the German population. Gustav Siegfried Eins (GS1), purporting itself as a clandestine German station, became the most famous one. Its aim was to create a divide between the Nazi party and the German armed forces by convincing the latter that, while the military was fighting the war, corrupt “party villains were ruining the country behind its back” (Crowdy 2008, p. 211). Other stations operated by the PWE were Radio Deutschland and Soldatensender Calais. Both had some success among the German public mostly because they played good music and offered good sports coverage.

­Cross‐Border Broadcasting in an Occupied Country: The Case of Poland At the outbreak of World War II, the Polish state broadcaster, Polskie Radio, was well‐ established. Operating one national and nine regional channels and transmitting in six foreign languages (German, Czech, Hungarian, French, English, and Italian), Polskie Radio broadcast in Polish to Europe, and North and South America. According to the



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British Embassy, Polskie Radio offered an “efficient and unbiased news service,” so much so that the inauguration of the BBC Polish Service was postponed.1 Yet, the efficiency of Polskie Radio was not the only reason why the BBC was reluctant to introduce broadcasts in Polish; it was understood that such transmissions would have political implications and could result in the BBC being accused by the Germans of using radio for propaganda purpose. This contradicted the Corporation’s policy which presented itself as a credible and unbiased source of information (Mansell 1982). During the September campaign of 1939, Polskie Radio played a significant role in maintaining public morale and in informing the nation about the military situation. It continued to broadcast in foreign languages, namely in English and French, urging for international help and bringing German atrocities in Poland to global attention. In order to interrupt communication and to cut Poland off from the rest of the world, the German Luftwaffe destroyed its power stations, but Polskie Radio managed to continue broadcasting by using the only remaining station in Warsaw (Warsaw II). Meanwhile, the Germans also used the Polish wavelengths to air black propaganda. An example of the false news that was then being broadcast was the surrender of Warsaw announced on 8 September 1939, 20 days before it actually took place (Kwiatkowski 1984). During the occupation, Polish stations were taken over by the Germans, providing news service for the Nazi armed forces and administrators in Poland. Broadcasts addressed both German settlers and “Volksdeutsche,” i.e. Poles of German ethnicity; all other Polish citizens were forbidden to own radio sets. Broadcasts by the Nazis in Poland became particularly important after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, when it became a priority to contradict news on the Red Army’s victories. Although after October 1939, all Polish stations fell silent, Polskie Radio continued its broadcasts, first, from France and later, from London where the Polish government had taken refuge after the capitulation of France in June 1940. Acting as a broadcasting arm of the Polish government in exile, Radio Polskie, as it was renamed by the Polish Minister of Information Stanislaw Stronski, reached a significant number of listeners, given the unquestioned authority and trust of the people in the Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski (Nowak‐Jeziorański 2000). Like other foreign governments’ broadcasts from London, Radio Polskie was subject to the Foreign Office censorship and Polish statesmen’s speeches had to be approved in advance before they could be aired (Morriss 2015). Although in many cases, Radio Polskie was mistaken for the BBC Polish Service, primarily because some of the presenters worked for both, there was a major difference between the two: the Polish Service presented news from the British point of view, while Radio Polskie gave the perspective of the Polish government in exile. Both Radio Polskie and the BBC Polish Service had loyal listeners in Poland throughout the war even though, as Kwiatkowski (1984) points out, “the possession of the radio sets next to weapons was seen by Germans as a direct attack on the Third Reich,” and, therefore, those who listened or owned radios faced the death penalty (p. 12). Polish citizens were, in fact, instructed to return their receivers to the German authorities but, according to data provided by Governor‐General Hans Frank, by March 1940, only 60% of sets had been returned to Warsaw illustrating that many Poles did not comply to the order (Kwiatkowski 1989). Despite the draconian penalty, many Poles were willing to risk their lives in order to access information. Listening itself became a symbol of resistance and approximately 100,000 wireless sets remained well hidden throughout the war.2 It was, however, the Polish Underground that played the chief role in monitoring foreign stations by distributing

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the content of the news bulletins in the clandestine press. It also produced its own sets and transmitters while some equipment was delivered from the west by parachute. They were used primarily for the Polish Underground’s communication in Poland, and for its communication with the Polish government in London.3 It should be noted that the Polish Underground differed much from other resistance movements in Europe. Over 100 years of partition from Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Russia had resulted in the creation of an ‘underground state’ with an army and, administrative, judicial and educational apparatus which, after Poland’s downfall in 1939, was resurrected. Within the civilian unit of the Underground, the Bureau of Information and Propaganda (BIP) was created with branches across Poland including the territory occupied by the Soviet Union (Mazur 1987). Knowing that news distributed by the Germans was biased, monitoring foreign stations and news agencies became a big part of BIP’s activities. Its radio department concentrated, in particular, on monitoring the BBC programs in English and Polish, and Reuters’ communiqués in Morse code (Mazur 1987). Whilst monitors of the radio department were located in the capital, there were other monitoring posts all over the country. Some were well organized and staffed, while others were very small and operated by just one person. By March 1943, between 350 and 500 monitoring posts were active across Poland, involving around 1,500 people.5 The hunger for reliable information on the progress of the war also pushed people to take extreme action: Witold Pilecki, for instance, organized the monitoring of the Polish broadcasts in Auschwitz, while other published research demonstrates that, even in the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews had access to content aired on the BBC which was disseminated in form of clandestine papers (Garliński 1975; Ferenc‐Piotrowska and Zakrzewski 2016). Under these circumstances, the BBC Polish Service became a particularly important source of information. Its broadcasts, initiated on 7 September 1939, not only played a significant role in transmitting news about the situation at the front and political developments, but they also informed Poles about what was happening in their own country. The broadcasts from London had a considerable importance for listeners in Poland, allowing them to connect with the government in exile whose representatives often spoke on the air, playing an important role in maintaining public morale. Moreover, it was understood that the BBC was expressing the official line of the British government, which led its programs to be valued highly (Morriss 2015). The BBC Polish Service cooperated closely with Radio Polskie which supplied, based on the Polish Underground reports, news about the situation in Poland. It was due to this cooperation that the BBC was able to learn about listening conditions under German occupation and to receive feedback from its listeners. Special care was given to address and adjust transmissions to the needs of the Underground; the introduction of early morning broadcasts was an example of this. In addition, Polish Service programs were used to pass secret military information, to support Allied intelligence and to sabotage German actions (Halski 1991). The Polish Service gained popularity not only in Poland, but it was widely accessed by Polish slave workers in Germany, Polish miners in France and Belgium, by the Polish community in London, Polish refugees in Kenya, where large settlements were being established, and the Polish army fighting in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East (Mansell 1982). After the diplomatic relations between Poland and the Soviet Union (USSR) ended in 1943, the Polish Service became a platform for convincing the Polish public to assent to the Soviet Union’s territorial demands (Morriss 2015). Both Stalin and Churchill’s pledges for a future independent and sovereign Polish state were often quoted in the



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broadcasts. Since the acceptance of the Curzon Line as a border was not supported by the Polish population, particularly by the leaders of the Polish Underground, because Poland would have lost over 50% of its territory, it was clear within the BBC that there was a need to sell this policy to Poland.4 The British government, although aware of Soviet political maneuvering and its arrests and killings of the Polish Underground Army, disguised information from the public. It demanded broadcasts to Poland to assume “an increasingly emotional anti‐German tone, going beyond factual reporting” to picture the Nazis as the greater of two evils.5 Until the end of the war, the Polish Service continued to suppress information that undermined the Soviet Union’s position as a friendly neighboring country and guarantor of Poland’s independence. Radio Polskie was stopped from broadcasting any news that threatened Allied unity. As well as the BBC and Radio Polskie, there was also Radio Kosciuszko, a station operated by Polish communists in the USSR, which broadcast to Poland during the Nazi occupation. Starting in February 1943, it became a platform for the propaganda of the Union of the Polish Patriots, an embryo Polish puppet government created by Stalin. Known also as Red Wanda, Kosciuszko claimed to broadcast from Poland while, in fact, its studios were located in Moscow and, briefly, in the city of Ufa (Jasiewicz 2015). Its broadcasts focused on attacking the Polish government in exile and the Polish Underground. It became particularly influential during the last weeks of July 1944, appealing to the nation to rise up against the Germans and to assist the approaching Soviet army. Some content aired by Radio Kosciuszko was countered by a black station, Swit (Dawn), created by the PWE in cooperation with the Polish government in exile. Disguised as a Polish station transmitting from Poland, Swit operated from Bletchley, near London (Newcourt‐Nowodworski 2005). Its main purpose was to attack German policies and to expose German crimes in Poland. Despite its popularity, the station was closed down in November 1944, after the collapse of the Warsaw Rising, when it became a priority for the British government to convince the Poles to accept Stalin’s territorial and political demands.

­Broadcasting in Neutral Countries: The Cases of Portugal and Spain During World War II, Portugal and Spain were dictatorships ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar, and Francisco Franco. Both regimes exercised strong control on the flow of information. Even though public and private stations coexisted, all were kept under close scrutiny (for the Spanish situation, also see Chapter 7). After the establishment of Franco’s regime in 1939, the different stations that existed in Spain were integrated into radio networks, all of which had connections with Franco’s regime, as was the case for Red de Emisoras del Movimento, Cadena Azul de Radiodifusión, and Cadena de Emisoras Sindicales. Furthermore, all private stations were subjected to censorship and were forbidden from broadcasting news bulletins, which limited the amount of news that was to circulate in the country during World War II (Bustamante 2013). The scenario was not very different in the Portuguese case. Private stations, having to deal with censorship, were forbidden to broadcast newscasts with the exception of Radio Clube Português and Radio Renascença, both maintained good relations with Salazar and his regime. News bulletins mostly repeated what had been published in the press or was distributed by news agencies; both were also subject to censorship (Ribeiro 2015).

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During the pre‐war period, it was clear that the Iberian countries had close ideological connections to the Axis powers with whom they maintained economic, political, and cultural relations. Furthermore, the Nazis invested significantly in propaganda efforts in both countries. Daily newscasts were aired to Portugal and Spain via shortwave transmitters. In Spain, the Germans, having founded several newspapers that had supported the Falange during the Civil War, also had strong influences on the press (García González 2015). After the outbreak of World War II, the Nazis continued to be the biggest investors in transmissions to the Iberian countries. By 1944, aired directly from Berlin or from other stations under German control, there were nine daily broadcasts targeted at Spain with a total of three and a half hours. One of these transmissions originated in Bordeaux and could also be received on medium wave, which increased the number of potential listeners, as not all Spaniards had access to shortwave receivers (Pizarroso Quintero 1998). In the case of Portugal, three daily transmissions, mostly from Toulouse, made a total of an hour and a half, divided between lunchtime, the afternoon, and the evening (Ribeiro 2009). Most of the airtime was dedicated to descriptions of Nazi war feats and the promotion of German military, scientific, and cultural superiority. The broadcasts praised both Salazar’s and Franco’s regime and, after 1941, also urged the population to actively demand their government to support the Axis (Ribeiro 2005). As well as the German transmissions, broadcasts from Italy also reached the Iberian countries. While the state broadcaster Ente Italiano Audizioní Radiofoniche aired newscasts in Spanish (Pizarroso Quintero 1998), there was also a daily broadcast in Portuguese that was, however, not well‐known in the country.6 Transmissions from Vichy, France, also targeting the two countries, were likewise not very popular. Contrary to the Axis that had started their transmissions to the Iberian Peninsula a few years before the war (Ribeiro 2009), the BBC initiated its transmissions to Spain and Portugal in late spring 1939, at a time when it was uncertain what position Franco and Salazar were to take in the event of a war in Europe. Besides fearing a possible alignment with Nazi Germany, the geographical location of the two countries, allowing easy access to the Mediterranean and North Africa, made the need to respond to the German propaganda in Iberia a priority for the British. Broadcasting was considered essential in this endeavor. The British ambassador in Lisbon, Sir Walford Selby, was the first to urge for transmissions in Portuguese to be initiated by the BBC. By the end of 1938, he requested the Foreign Office to put pressure on the BBC to transmit, at the very least, a regular news bulletin to Portugal. The issue was also on the agenda of the Foreign Office that started discussing broadcasts to Portugal in January 1939.7 In the following month, also transmissions to Spain were debated between officials of the Corporation and the Foreign Office (García González 2015). BBC broadcasts to Portugal and Spain began on 4 June 1939 and consisted of a daily newscast in each language. The Portuguese and Spanish ambassadors in London were invited to inaugurate the services, demonstrating Britain’s intention to keep good relations with the two Iberian authoritarian regimes. As with most BBC transmissions during World War II, the Portuguese and Spanish services became known for being the most unbiased sources of news available to the general population. This gave the BBC high ratings in both countries, clearly surpassing the popularity of the RRG. The mission of the two BBC services was to counter German influences in the Iberian Peninsula and to present a British perspective on political and military developments during the war. Even though the broadcasts avoided threatening Salazar’s, and Franco’s regimes, the two dictatorships adopted different approaches on the transmissions from



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London. While in Spain, the BBC broadcasts did not gather particular enthusiasm in governmental circles (García González 2015), in Portugal, Salazar, and his regime, known as the Estado Novo (New State), welcomed them. Used as a propaganda feature, the BBC’s interest in Portugal was presented as proof of the country’s importance in the international arena (Ribeiro 2009). During the first months of its transmissions, the broadcasts from London were well received by the Estado Novo. The Portuguese state broadcaster, Emissora Nacional, relayed the BBC newscasts so that they could reach listeners that had no access to shortwave receivers. Even though this practice came to an end in November 1939, possibly due to complaints from the German legation, it demonstrates that the BBC transmissions were welcomed by the local authorities. Furthermore, by relaying the news bulletins of the BBC Portuguese Service, the state broadcaster helped to establish the habit of listening to the BBC transmissions, which became a routine for significant segments of the population. Throughout the country, people would gather in private houses and public places to listen to the evening news from London (Ribeiro 2009). In Spain, the BBC faced a more difficult scenario, as the local press and radio stations were mostly pro‐Axis. While in Portugal it was common for BBC and RRG transmissions to be advertised in the press, in Spain, only the German broadcasts were publicized. Furthermore, aiming to make it difficult for the population to tune into broadcasts produced by the Allies, Franco’s regime invested in transmitters that were used for jamming (Pizarroso Quintero 1998). This was not the case in Portugal with only sporadic reports of jamming that was performed by transmitters operated by Germans, or by Portuguese groups that acted in compliance with the state (Ribeiro 2009). According to several internal reports of the BBC, jamming affected mainly the beginning of the Portuguese evening news, which seemed to overlap with the Spanish transmission that was “regularly and much more heavily jammed” and that was aired right before the service to Portugal.8 After France signed the armistice with Germany, the Spanish army occupied Tangiers, and Franco replaced the state’s neutrality with a declaration of non‐belligerence. Later, in October 1940, Hitler and Franco met in Hendaye raising British concerns about Spain’s position in the war. In consequence, broadcasting operations to the Iberian Peninsula expanded in the following months. As well as an increase in length, starting in 1941, talks and entertaining segments were given more airtime. This allowed the BBC to openly praise the British war effort and to address the benefits of an Allied victory for Portugal and Spain (Ribeiro 2009; García González 2015). The main announcer on the Spanish Service was António Torres, a pseudonym of Rafael Martínez Nadal, a writer and lecturer known for his opposition to Franco. In his talks, however, he was forced to avoid commenting on the nature of the Spanish regime as the British government and the BBC maintained a policy of appeasing Franco (García González 2015). On the Portuguese Service, Fernando Pessa, who had previously worked as a presenter for the Portuguese state broadcaster, became the best‐known announcer. For most of the war, he was responsible for presenting news bulletins, talks, and entertainment features. António Pedro da Costa who, starting in January 1944, presented a weekly talk, also became a significant name on the Portuguese Service during the final period of the war. He openly expressed his pro‐democratic convictions on the air, even though he was never allowed to express his desire for a regime change in Portugal. Like Rafael Martínez, António Pedro da Costa was forced to abandon the BBC after the end of the war because of his political stance against the Iberian authoritarian regimes (Ribeiro 2013).

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The latest station to enter the war of the airwaves on the Iberian Peninsula was Voice of America (VOA) that initiated its transmissions to Spain and Portugal in 1942. While in Spain, American officials were satisfied with the results that were achieved (Pizarroso Quintero 1998), in Portugal, there was little enthusiasm, and the number of regular listeners was always very small.9

­Other Major Players Radio Moscow also became an important player in the war of the airwaves. Even though it had been one of the pioneering stations in foreign‐language broadcasting (Wasburn 1992), the Soviets had less experience in transborder transmissions than the Germans at the outbreak of the war. It did, however, not take long for Moscow to establish an effective service that reached the entire European continent with broadcasts organized in five different divisions targeting Germany, its satellite states, occupied countries, the Allies, and neutral countries (von Geldern 1995). As with the RRG and the BBC, for many of its European language programs, Radio Moscow resorted to native speakers who were recruited among those who entered the USSR while fleeing countries under Nazi occupation (von Geldern 1995). Along with counteracting foreign propaganda, one of the main aims of Radio Moscow’s transmissions to Europe and beyond was to promote the Communist regime. For this, the number of foreign languages spoken on the air expanded throughout the war reaching 21 by 1945. Even though the station had listeners all over the world, in May 1944, the head of broadcasting wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party informing it that “only about half of broadcasts could be heard ‘well’ in their target territories” (Lovell 2015, p. 133). After the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Radio Moscow assumed a central role in opposing the German RRG. Both stations aired “premature declarations of victory, reports of atrocities on the opposing side, and accounts of conditions on the enemy’s home front” (Winek 2009, p. 101). Programs produced for the German public were particularly important and, as James von Geldern (1995) points out, its aims were threefold: “break down Nazi arguments; show that Nazi power had been weakened; show Nazi barbarism” (p. 58). To achieve these goals, among other strategies, letters taken from captured and killed soldiers were being read on the German Service. Some of these letters spoke of large‐scale corruption in the German army and the poor conditions in the rear. Even though it is impossible to measure the success of Radio Moscow’s transmissions to Europe, it did unsettle the Axis. Both the Germans and the Italians denied many news pieces aired by the Soviet station, and the Italian broadcaster included on its regular schedule a program entitled Moscow Lies on the Ether (von Geldern 1995). Among the major players, VOA was the last to enter the scene, making the US the last world power to invest in international broadcasting. Besides not having any tradition of government involvement in radio, the US had no colonial empire, and, thus, prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American overseas transmissions had been limited to those operated by commercial stations. Even though the State Department and the Federal Communications Commission had ensured that these dedicated some air time to news programs (Wasburn 1992), the direct involvement of the US government in international broadcasting only took place after the declaration of war upon the Axis powers.



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The inaugural transmission of VOA, targeted at Germany, was aired on 1 February 1942 (Heil 2003). Following the footsteps of the BBC, the station broadcast from New York and San Francisco, and presented itself as a credible news source that promised to tell the truth. After a few months in operation, it was taken over by the newly established Office of War Information, and it did not take long for it to become the official voice of the US government abroad. In Europe, the VOA worked in close cooperation with the BBC that re‐transmitted many of its programs on its different foreign services (Briggs 1970). By the end of the war, VOA had 39 transmitters at its service and was broadcasting in 40 different languages (Dizard 2004).

­Conclusion International broadcasting was part of the multi‐media propaganda effort operated both by the Axis and the Allies during World War II. Even though there was no concrete data on its impact, radio was perceived as a powerful tool to influence and manipulate public opinion, and, therefore, significant investments were made in domestic and transborder transmissions. Still a new medium at the time, listeners resorted to radio to learn about the latest war developments. Although Radio Moscow played a significant role in disseminating the communist ideology abroad, Germany and Britain became the two nations that invested most in international broadcasting throughout the war. In both countries, different ministries aimed to take control over international radio operations. Evaluating the results achieved by the RRG and the BBC remains a difficult task. However, the consensus is that the latter was more effective, which can be attributed to several reasons. Contrary to the RRG, that mixed information and misinformation on its broadcasts, the BBC was more cautious and made decisions based on the need to preserve its image as a reliable source. Even though it did present the British view on the news, it tended to avoid disseminating lies that could have damaged its reputation as a credible source. Furthermore, by giving voice to several European governments that sought exile in the United Kingdom, the BBC increased its credibility among listeners in occupied Europe and played an important role in keeping alive the hope of a Nazi defeat and the consequent restoration of the occupied nations. In the Iberian countries, transmissions from London became very popular, as they were the first to disseminate pieces of news censored on local media by the censorship apparatus established by the Spanish and Portuguese authoritarian governments. Along with the official stations, clandestine broadcasters also played a significant role during World War II. While airing black propaganda and deceiving listeners have become associated mainly with Nazi practices, the Allies also engaged in black transmissions to create dissidence among German civilians and military. Moreover, while after the war, the BBC was praised for having reported unbiased news, it had also been a weapon of war used to defend British interests as exemplified in the BBC’s dealings with Iberian dictatorships, and with the Soviet Union’s territorial demands in Poland. The important role of international broadcasting during World War II also led the belligerent powers to developed powerful services to monitor different foreign stations, assessing what enemy and neutral countries were broadcasting and what needed to be counteracted. This practice continued during the Cold War, when international radio broadcasting remained an essential tool of propaganda.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Undated note by J.B. Clark; Briggs (1970, p. 81). BBC Written Archives (WAC), R52/31 Technical Foreign, Enemy Broadcasting, March 1943. WAC, E1/1150/1. WAC, R34 /663. Propaganda, Directives: Polish Service: PWE, 16 January 1944. Foreign Office (FO) 371/39422, PWE directives for Poland: broadcasts to Poland: Polish underground movement, 23 March 1944. FO 371/34691, Michael Winch, “Report on Conditions in Portugal with Special Reference to Broadcast Propaganda,” January 1943. FO 395/625, Minutes from the Foreign Office, January 1939. WAC, E2/198, “BBC Surveys of European Audiences – Portugal,” 10 September 1943. FO 371/39616, Foreign Office internal report, 1944.

­References Anonymous (1938). Fünf Jahre Deutscher Kurzwellensender. Welt‐Rundfunk 4: 333–334. BBC (2014). Lord Haw‐Haw: the Nazi broadcaster who threatened Britain. www.bbc.co.uk/ archive/hawhaw (accessed 20 October 2017). Bergmeier, H.J.P. and Lotz, R.E. (1997). The Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Black, J. (1975). Organizing the Propaganda Instrument: The British Experience. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Boelcke, W.A. (1977). Die Macht des Radios. Weltpolitik und Auslandsrundfunk 1924–1976. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein. Bredow, H. (1950 [1926]). Wellenverteilung. In: Aus meinem Archiv. Probleme des Rundfunks (ed. H. Bredow), 50–54. Heidelberg: Kurt Vowinckel. Briggs, A. (1970). The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom. Vol. III: The War of Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brooks, T. (2007). British Propaganda to France 1940–1944: Machinery, Method and Message. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bustamante, E. (2013). Historia de la Radio y la Televisión en España. Una asignatura pendiente de la democracia. Barcelona: Edisa Editorial. Chadwick, K. (2015). Our enemy’s enemy. Selling Britain to occupied France on the BBC French service. Media History 21 (4): 426–442. Clark, B. (1959). The B.B.C.’s external services. International Affairs 35 (2): 170–180. Cole, R. (1990). Britain and the War of Words in Neutral Europe 1939–1945: The Art of the Possible. London: Macmillan. Crowdy, T. (2008). Deceiving Hitler: Double‐Cross and Deception in World War II. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. Dahl, H.F. (1999 [1977]). Dette er London. NRK i krig 1940–45. Oslo: Cappelen. Diller, A. (1980). Rundfunkpolitik im Dritten Reich. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch‐Verlag. Dizard, W.P. (2004). Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of U.S. Information Agency. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Doherty, M.A. (2000). Nazi Wireless Propaganda. Lord Haw‐Haw and British Public Opinion in the Second World War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Durant, H. and Durant, R. (1940). Lord haw‐haw of Hamburg: his British audience. Public Opinion Quarterly 4 (3): 443–450. Eckert, G. (1941). Der Rundfunk als Führungsmittel. Heidelberg: Kurt Vowinckel. Edwards, J.C. (1991). Berlin Calling. American Broadcasters in Service to the Third Reich. New York: Praeger.



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Ferenc‐Piotrowska, M. and Zakrzewski, F. (2016). Nasłuchy Radiowe w Getcie Warszawskim. Unpublished. García González, G. (2015). Pawns in a chess game. The BBC Spanish service during the Second World War. Media History 21 (4): 412–425. Garliński, J. (1975). Fighting Auschwitz‐the Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp. London: Julian Friedmann Publishers. von Geldern, J. (1995). Radio Moscow: the voice from the center. In: Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia (ed. R. Stites), 44–61. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Götter, C. (2016). Die Macht der Wirkungsannahmen. In: Medienarbeit des britischen und deutschen Militärs in der ersten Hälfte des 20 Jahrhunderts. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. Halski, C. (1991). 6 Lat: Perypetie Wojenne. 1939–1945. London: Caldra House. Heil, A.L. (2003). Voice of America – A History. New York: Columbia University Press. Hensle, M. (2003). Rundfunkverbrechen. Das Hören von ‘Feindsendern’ im Nationalsozialismus. Berlin: Metropol Verlag. Jasiewicz, K. (2015). Polskojezyczne radiostacje sowieckie w okresie II wojny swiatowej. In: Polskie Radio w czasie II Wojny Swiatowej: 90 Lat Polskiego Radia (ed. B. Andrzej and J. Krzysztof), 245–264. Warsaw: Polskie Radio SA. Kwiatkowski, M.J. (1984). Wrzesien 1939 w Warszawskiej Rozglosni Polskiego Radia. Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. Kwiatkowski, M.J. (1989). Polskie Radio w Konspiracji: 1939–1946. Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. Laurie, C.D. (1994). Goebbel’s [sic!] Iowan: Frederick W. Kaltenbach and Nazi short‐wave radio broadcasts to America, 1939–1945. Annals of Iowa 53 (3): 219–245. Lovell, S. (2015). Russia in the Microphone Age. A Hisory of Soviet Radio 1919–1970. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mansell, G. (1982). Let Truth Be Told: 50 Years of BBC External Broadcasting. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Mazur, G. (1987). Biuro Informacji i Propagandy: SZP‐ZWZ‐AK, 1939–45. Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax. Morriss, A. (2015). The BBC polish service during the second world war. Media History 21 (4): 459–463. Newcourt‐Nowodworski, S. (2005). Black Propaganda in the Second World War. Sutton: Sutton Publishing Limited. Nicholas, S. (1996). The Echo of War. Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC, 1939–45. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nowak‐Jeziorański, J. (2000). Wojna w Eterze. Warsaw: Znak. O’Connor, W.F. (2002). Expatriate American radio propagandists in the employ of the axis powers. In: Radio Reader. Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (ed. M. Hilmes and J. Loviglio), 277–300. New York and London: Routledge. Partner, P. (1998). Arab Voices: The BBC Arabic Service 1938–1988. London: British Broadcasting Corporation. Pizarroso Quintero, A. (1998). Información y propaganda norteamericana en España durante la segunda guerra mundial: La radio. Revista Complutense de Historia de America 24: 223–246. Potter, S.J. (2020). Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening: Britain, Propaganda, and the Invention of Global Radio, 1920–1939. Oxford, Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Ribeiro, N. (2005). A Emissora Nacional nos Primeiros Anos do Estado Novo 1933–1945. Lisbon: Quimera. Ribeiro, N. (2009). BBC Broadcasts to Portugal During World War II: How Radio Was Used a Weapon of War. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen. Ribeiro, N. (2013). António Pedro: the voice of democracy in the BBC Portuguese section during world war II. Portuguese Cultural Studies 5: 70–90. Ribeiro, N. (2015). Censorship and scarcity. Controlling new and old media in Portugal, 1936–1945. Media History 21 (1): 74–88.

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10

Media After 1945

Continuities and New Beginnings Hans‐Ulrich Wagner, Hugh Chignell, Marie Cronqvist, Christoph Hilgert, and Kristin Skoog

­Introduction On Tuesday 8 May 1945, many people celebrated Victory in Europe (VE) Day. This day marked the formal end of a war that, started by Nazi Germany, had devastated large parts of Europe and the world with unprecedented mass killing of both soldiers and civilians on the front lines and the home front as well as in the genocidal Shoah (Holocaust). However, this day was perceived differently across the continent: as an armistice, a liberation, a defeat, or as a beginning of an occupation. Technically, the acceptance of the unconditional surrender of Germany’s armed forces by the Allies stood for no less than the end of six years of misery, suffering, courage, and endurance across Europe. In fact, the political, social, economic, and cultural situation in Europe – not least with regard to media and communication  –  was far more complex, ambivalent, heterogeneous, and conflicting than many people believed and, indeed, hoped in these days. While democratic, liberal, and republican values were (again) pursued in some parts of Europe, especially in what later would be known as West Germany, traditional, authoritarian political ideas as well as ongoing dictatorship were still part of the southern European experience, for example in Spain and Portugal. Also, in Eastern Europe, a new era of political suppression was about to begin: the establishment of authoritarian, illiberal communist regimes. Even though there is a lively scholarly debate as to what degree 1945 was a world‐­ historical caesura and a pivotal year for post‐war Europe, many studies on European post‐war history take this year as a starting point (e.g. Sutcliffe 1996; Judt 2005; Stone 2012; Kaelble 2013). Other historians, however, underscore the various continuities and put this date into a different perspective. Thus, there was a period of contradictory transition that may be described as a form of conservative modernization or innovative reconstruction both in a material and an immaterial sense. It comprised the steady decline of the Third Reich since 1943/1944, and the overcoming of immediate scarcity

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and the first economic revival under peacetime conditions in and after 1948/1949 (e.g. Herbert and Schildt 1998). Also, as far as media were concerned, the end of World War II for most European societies meant the start of a period of ambivalence with a high degree of continuity with war and particularly pre‐war times as well the burgeoning of diverse new beginnings. This chapter investigates this period of media and mediated public communication from 1943/1944 – marked by the intensified planning of post‐war media policies by the victorious Allied governments – until about 1947/1948, before European media faced the Cold War (regarding media in the Cold War, see Chapter 11). We do so by focusing on the state of media in the years around VE‐Day in several countries, which represent core trends in the immediate post‐war period. The in‐depth case studies of the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden focus on a victorious country, a defeated state, and an officially neutral nation during World War II. In addition to this strategic focus, the chapter refers to other countries in western, eastern, and southern Europe (regarding authoritarian media in Spain, Portugal, and Greece see Chapter 12).

­The Media Landscape in Europe at the End of World War II Around 1945, despite the massive impact of World War II on European societies, the European media landscape as well as common patterns or preferences of media use were, in general, quite stable. The ensemble of mass media in all European countries was still dominated by the printed press, by the growing importance of broadcast radio, and by film. All were part of the everyday life of a vast majority of citizens. On the institutional level, however, there was a tremendous change in many countries.

Boom Years for Print Media Europe’s citizens were avid readers. Before and after 1945, newspapers were a main source of political, economic, and cultural information. Photos from the period depict populations in urban settings gathering in front of wall newspapers, pushing and shoving to read the broadsheets and leaflets as well as individuals calmly reading their daily newspapers at home. Newspapers were not only read to inform on world events and national politics and their impact on everyday life, but regional titles reporting on local issues were also immensely popular. By 1945, kiosks and newsagents in Europe’s larger cities offered a wide range of publications. This ever‐increasing range was supplemented further by journals and magazines, which often adapted new forms of photojournalism. Partly influenced by Time magazine from the United States and partly updated by earlier magazines such as Signal that spread German propaganda during wartime, these new magazines achieved great success in Europe after the war (i.e. in Germany Der Spiegel and Stern, in Sweden Se). Women’s magazines also gained in popularity, selling in their millions in the United Kingdom during the post‐war period (White 1977). Although radio listeners received detailed schedules from their daily papers, special radio guides were also available. In the United Kingdom, Radio Times (since 1923) dominated the market, and in Sweden the weekly Röster i radio, founded in 1930, was the leading publication. In Denmark, Det ny radioblad was published from 1940 until 1953, while Portugal’s Radio Nacional had been around since 1937. The German federal tradition was continued with the launch of



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several regional guides in 1946. Among them was Hör Zu! that was to become the most popular West German radio guide next to being an entertaining family journal. In the Netherlands, each broadcasting organization published its own program guides, such as VARA‐gids, the AVRO Radiobode and the VPRO‐gids. During the post‐war decades, these guides offered rich and colorful illustrations. Nevertheless, due to the destruction of infrastructure, many European countries faced paper shortages and, thus, a considerable cut in printed media (i.e. fewer pages or fewer copies) during the war and in some cases also in its immediate aftermath. Still, the post‐war years saw a marked period of growth for print media. The production of brochures and books included, print media was the key information resource across Europe at the time. In the United Kingdom, circulation wars had dominated the press during the interwar period but this trend was curtailed as the country entered World War II. Paper and newsprint rationing reduced the size of newspapers. This meant less space for advertisers who consequently redistributed advertising across the press, which allowed most newspapers to remain profitable. The immediate post‐war period has been described as the “boom years” for the UK press (Williams 2010) with the success of national dailies such as the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror, both were particularly notable at the time. Wartime economic controls helped strengthen left‐wing papers, and the experience of war produced a more radical journalism, partially in response to a new consumer interest in politics, and partially driven by a desire for social reform after the war. Additionally, newspapers such as the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Pictorial moved further to the left and represented more fully a working‐class audience. This shift not only supported the left but also the calls for social democratic change in wartime Britain; it consequently helped prepare the ground for Labour’s victory in 1945 (Curran and Seaton 2010). As a general trend in the United Kingdom, the war increased demands for more serious journalism, and by 1946, the coverage of public affairs had increased in the national daily popular press compared to the pre‐war period (Curran and Seaton 2010). In Germany, the media outlets of the Nazi regime continued their propaganda business until the very end of the war. For instance, the last issue of the nation‐wide Nazi‐ newspaper Völkischer Beobachter was published on 24 April 1945, and the Hamburg based newspaper Hamburger Zeitung was printed until 30 April 1945. This was true for almost all media in the dissipating Third Reich. At the same time, during the last weeks of the war, the Allied army groups in the newly liberated German regions published from time to time simple newssheets and bulletins to provide the local German population with information and ordinances. After the unconditional surrender, those “Heeresgruppenzeitungen” became regular newspapers. They were published weekly or up to three times a week in all major cities and regions under Allied occupation. There had been Allied plans for a comprehensive media “black out.” However, besides a strict prohibition for German media, the military governments immediately started to disseminate their own media in all major cities: the very first new German newspaper was the Aachener Nachrichten established by the United States Military Government on 24 January 1945. In the Soviet Zone, the Tägliche Rundschau emerged in Berlin on 15 May 1945. Just a few months later, the German people had a variety of publications to choose from. Various daily newspapers were licensed, edited by hand‐picked German staff that came from different political angles sometimes including left and communist opinions (Liedtke 1982). Newspapers were licensed mainly on a local as well as on a regional level, and less commonly on a zonal or national level like Die Neue Zeitung in the US zone of occupation or Die Welt in the British zone. In addition, some weekly newspapers

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were awarded a license: for instance Die Zeit (21 February 1946), and Rheinischer Merkur (15 March 1946). In October 1947, 172 newspapers were registered in all four occupation zones plus Berlin (Handbuch Deutsche Presse 1947, pp. 235–238). Besides these journalistic newspapers, several intellectual journals blossomed, such as the Frankfurter Hefte, Die Wandlung, or Die Gegenwart in the western zones in 1946, and Aufbau in the Soviet zone in 1945. The early diversity of print media in post‐war West Germany thinned out with the “Währungsreform” (currency reform) in June 1948, when the licensed‐based system was forced to succeed in a market place that promoted new titles competing for readers’ attention. In Sweden, with its intact and thriving forestry industry, there were no paper shortages as there were in Germany, the United Kingdom, or central European countries like Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, the Swedish press – the weekly magazines in particular – also faced a degree of paper rationing for two very different reasons: first, much paper was required for export (Sweden’s paper and steel exports quadrupled in the first two decades after the war), and, second, the government was eager to put a brake on the expansion of the yellow press, also called “den kolorerade faran” (the colored danger). The 1930s expansion of weekly magazines and light entertainment was seen as troublesome, and the government’s view was that it needed to be monitored (Larsson 1989; Engblom et al. 2002). However, for Swedish media consumers, the daily press was still, next to radio, the primary source of information by the end of World War II. With around 200 papers, the total circulation exceeded by far the number of households. Four dailies, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs‐Posten, Stockholms‐Tidningen, and Aftonbladet, had each a circulation of over 100,000 copies. In addition, the evening newspaper Expressen, founded in 1944, left its mark on the post‐war media ensemble in Sweden, not least through its many international reports from the war‐ravaged continent of Europe (Engblom et al. 2002).

Ongoing Radio Times Radio had become a leading medium in the 1930s, and it maintained its dominance across Europe well into the second half of the 1940s. Its relevance to audiences increased not only as a steady source of entertainment but also of – more or less reliable – information about the war and the emerging tensions following it. Listening to foreign radio programs (not least to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and its foreign language services) in many cases helped to satisfy the need for information – even in times of war and when it was partially prohibited (see also Chapter 9). Radio was a domesticated medium; the radio was used at home, in the kitchen and in the living room. It could be listened to around the clock but was most popular in the early morning and in the evening. During the evening peak hours, radio presented the latest news and cultural programs, for example, radio plays, concerts, and opera performances, as well as entertaining programs featuring popular music, witty dialogs, and humorous quizzes. Radio was a medium within a borderless space: radio dials invited listeners to tune in to a broad range of European stations on both long and medium waves. Together, their names formed atlases of European landscapes (Fickers 2012) and displayed an imaginary vision of a continent. Whether people could listen to foreign stations or not, depended on various technical and non‐technical parameters – the time of day, weather conditions, the power of one’s own wireless set, and the power of the foreign transmitter. The reverse side of this variety was a chaos in the ether. More than 250 European radio



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stations broadcast over medium‐wave frequencies and about 50 stations aired over long‐ wave frequencies. Annual international broadcasting conferences tried to regulate the distribution of frequencies across the radio spectrum. After 1945, countries such as Germany, Austria, and Hungary were granted only a very few inefficient frequencies. Broadcasting was organized differently, either as state‐run, state‐controlled, or as a more or less private enterprise. Countries across Europe, therefore, operated a broad range of different broadcasting systems. French broadcasting, for example, was completely state controlled while both private and state‐run stations coexisted in Spain and  Portugal. In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the long‐wave station Radio Luxembourg became again a commercial broadcaster after the end of the war with great appeal not only for its own citizens but also for listeners in France and the United Kingdom. In Scandinavia, the broadcasting system was run as a public service. The Dutch had a “verzuilde” (pillarized) system of public‐service broadcasting that had been established before World War II and was re‐established in 1947. Different broadcasting organizations, each representing a “pillar” of society, received time on national channels: for example, Vereniging Arbeiders Radioamateurs (Association of Worker Radio Amateurs, VARA), Algemeene Nederlandsche Radio Omroep (General Netherlands Radio Broadcasting, AVRO), Katholieke Radio Omroep (Catholic Radio Broadcasting, KRO), Nederlandse Christelijke Radio Vereniging (Dutch Christian Radio Association, NCRV), Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep (Liberal Protestant Radio Broadcasting, VPRO). In Germany, radio was rebuilt by the Allies – in the West as a public service, in the East as a state institution. Britain’s approach to a public‐service system – developed in pre‐war times – was now widely discussed and became particularly influential. Although the BBC had been under pressure from Churchill’s wartime policy and had received orders from the Ministry of Information, it emerged as a bigger and bolder corporation by the end of the war. Its reputation had been particularly enhanced in the area of news and current affairs. The public‐service model, thus, continued to dominate broadcasting, and the BBC was to see further developments and changes to its service. The introduction of more popular, “lighter” programming allowed it to reach a wider audience. The corporation shifted its focus from being an arbiter of self‐improvement and taste to being an important tool for public information. Just as importantly, the BBC recognized the need to echo popular tastes, and a more inclusive range of voices appeared. During the war, working‐class voices and regional accents had increasingly been heard in a range of content such as talks, features, and light entertainment (Nicholas 1996). After the war, in 1945, the BBC divided itself, first into two services, the Home Service and the more popular Light Programme, which replaced the General Forces Programme that had been introduced during the war. In September 1946, the cultural and “intellectual” Third Programme began. The BBC had to demonstrate that it could meet the demands of a national audience of which the majority preferred light entertainment and, at the same time, maintain its commitment to culturally enhancing public‐service broadcasting.

TV Plans and Omnipresent Film At the end of World War II, the idea of transmitting and receiving television signals in addition to radio was widely discussed in Europe. But in contrast to the development of television in the United States, television on the European continent was still a pipe dream. Although various experiments and even initial broadcasts had been made, the

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United Kingdom and Germany had suspended their television services during the war. Television was resumed in the United Kingdom in 1946 mainly as a form of entertainment. In Germany, a group of practitioners with experience in television gained under the Nazi regime gathered in Hamburg and attempted to start from scratch. However, experiments in television were not allowed by the British Military Government until 1948. In Sweden, experiments had also been carried out during the 1930s – television was, for example, showcased in 1938 as a spectacular public event of “visual radio” staged by the newspaper Stockholms‐Tidningen. Owing to political disinterest or reluctance, however, regular broadcasts were not taken up by the Swedish broadcaster Radiotjänst until 1954 (Djerf‐Pierre and Ekström 2013). Instead of watching television at home, people continued going to the cinema in great numbers both during and after the war. Popular genres were screwball comedies, melodramas, or even films that dealt with contemporary problems in an emotional way. Next to the feature film, European cinema audiences were exposed to an extensive program including newsreels, documentaries, and other short films. Carrying on their own long tradition from the 1920s and 1930s, newsreels went on to offer news and information on current affairs to all cinema‐goers, and, thus, reached an audience of millions. Experienced companies such as British Movietone News and Pathé News focused on domestic and foreign news, royalty, the trials of German war criminals, and rationing. In the Netherlands, Nieuws en Polygoon Wereldnieuws, produced by Polygoon‐Profiti firm, in Switzerland, the Schweizer Filmwochenschau, commissioned by the federal government, and in Sweden SF‐Journalen, produced by the company Svenska Filminstitutet, were all well‐known weekly features of cinema programming. In the German occupation zones, Blick in die Welt, Welt im Film, and Der Augenzeuge were established. With regard to cinema, Hollywood productions on the one hand and domestic film production on the other were important. Hollywood films were particularly popular among British women and offered an escape from the everyday drudgery of austerity. Hollywood represented an apparently classless society, a world of materialism, excess, glamor, and magnificent clothes (Stacey 1994). A similar pattern existed in Scandinavia. In particular Sweden, although politically neutral, embraced North American culture in the 1950s and the allure of Hollywood was very strong. In Germany, Hollywood movies had been banned by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, but began to be screened again after the war (Garncarz 2013). However, according to recent research, domestic film production continued to hold an important place in the national cultures of European countries. Thus, in almost every country, national movies from the 1930s and early 1940s were screened, and film companies and makers started new productions. An emerging trend was the depiction of everyday life in films. In Italy, the cinematic movement of “neorealismo” (neorealism) started in 1943/1944 and became famous in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Miccichè 2004). The “Trümmerfilm” (rubble film) was a temporary genre that emerged between 1945 and 1948 in all occupation zones of Germany (Shandley 2001). Movies about contemporary social problems produced by the Deutsche Film AG (DEFA), founded in the Soviet occupation zone in 1946, had a massive impact on the German audience. Addressing Nazi crimes, the Allies also screened so‐called “atrocity films” during Germany’s immediate post‐war years. Depicting the crimes committed in the recently liberated Nazi concentration camps, these films were part of an attempt to re‐educate the German populations. They were not a great success and were halted somewhat soon in the wake of a more flexible strategy employed during the intensifying Cold War (Weckel 2012).



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­Established Orders – New Orders? Media Policy and the Post‐war Media Systems As a political caesura, the end of World War II gave most European countries the opportunity to discuss the future shape of their respective media systems. A key feature of these debates became the preferred relationship between the state or its government, in particular, and the media. In most cases, the concept of journalism, independent from state control, was still not taken for granted at that time. In Central and Eastern Europe, the end of World War II was heralded by victorious partisan movements, i.e. in the Federativna Narodna Republika Jugoslavija (Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia), the gradually accelerating advance of Soviet troops, and the retreat of the German Wehrmacht and its allies. Especially after the Belorussian Strategic Offensive Operation in summer of 1944, the end of the war in Eastern Europe was clearly approaching. Bulgaria, for instance, a Nazi ally during the war, formed a coalition government in September 1944, deposing the pro‐Nazi regime and offering the country a fresh start. Dominated by communists, the new coalition depended on the support of the occupying Soviet Red Army that wasted little time to set up a system of censorship. Western democratic ideals were still vibrantly discussed, however, not least by newspapers owned and run by democratic political parties. Nonetheless, it was not long before the freedom of speech was restricted as one of the first steps toward totalitarianism (Stankova 2011). By late 1945, the Bulgarian communists began to openly suppress opposition parties and sow the seeds of a new political system firmly established by the end of the 1940s. Western media and information sources were systematically banned. The structures of media administration and control in Bulgaria favored the Soviet Union and the local communist institutions. Similar restrictions and allegiances were formed across Central and Eastern Europe in countries such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the eastern parts of Germany, all of which endured Soviet pressure. Mass media were considered the weapons of the proletariat (working class) in the alleged class struggle and were used as a propaganda tool, as an agitator and as a means of organizing the establishment of a proletariat dictatorship. Since the ideal of a free and impartial press had not become self‐evident in most central and eastern European countries before the war, the “tendency for government interference in and control of the press and its freedom was an authoritarian legacy that paved the way for the transition to totalitarianism” (Gross 2011, p. 115). This made the transition from a pre‐war media system to a communist one a relatively straightforward process as in the case of Czechoslovakia. After 1945 in Czechoslovakia, the liberal concept of the press, which had been pursued during the interwar period, was criticized for serving individual interests rather than national ones. Hence, while the Košice government program from May 1945 affirmed freedom of the press, later, only political parties or mass organizations (i.e. trade unions) belonging to the part coalition National Front were permitted to publish newspapers and periodicals. Mass media were also regulated by a department for the affairs of the periodical press located in the Ministry of Interior led by the Communist Party. Officially, until December 1947, there was no censorship, but a wide range of “soft factors” enabled increasing control of the press (i.e. taboo topics and the unfair allocation of printing paper) and the media by the emerging communist regime (Bednařík 2004; Brenner 2009, pp. 20–24). The United Kingdom witnessed a change in the political tide with the victory of the socialist Labour Party in the election of 1945, which set the agenda for building a

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“New Britain.” During the Labour administration, two debates on the state and the future of the media landscape took place. The first concerned the press and the second broadcasting. After the war, journalists as well as voices within the government, expressed growing concerns for press freedom, concentration of ownership, and the future of the newspaper industry. Despite the fact that these debates failed to generate significant reform in the short‐term, the concerns culminated in the first Royal Commission on the Press in 1947/1949 (Moore 2006). Reporting in 1949, the Royal Commission was skeptical toward any restrictive legislation and did not favor reform. Instead, the outcomes promoted a continued faith in the free market. However, the Commission proposed the establishment of a General Council of the Press (which was introduced as the Press Council in 1953) that would focus on the professional training of journalists, self‐regulation, and the establishment of a code of conduct. In broadcasting, the BBC had anticipated an inquiry into the future of broadcasting since 1946. The issue of license renewal and the possible demise of its monopoly placed a certain pressure on the corporation during the immediate post‐war period, and in response, it tried to balance demands for a more popular service while maintaining its public‐service ethos. This resulted in the 1949/1950 Broadcasting Committee on the renewal of the Royal Charter that allowed it to operate as a monopolistic broadcaster and to collect the license fee. Although the committee was somewhat critical of the BBC and wary of the dangers of its monopoly, it did, in the end, recommend the continuation of the monopoly and the renewal of its license. The committee’s findings had an influence on the introduction of commercial (television) broadcasting in the 1950s through its favoring of spot advertising and the de‐centralization and regionalization of broadcasting (Curran and Seaton 2010). In Germany, it became obvious that the Allies had no shared plan or policy for the future shape of German media. In the western zones, the first months of occupation saw many, often conflicting ad hoc decisions made by local Information Control officers that were influenced by individual beliefs and the structures of the media system at home to which they were accustomed. From late summer 1945 and especially after spring 1946, German citizens who had passed a political screening were gradually re‐integrated into media work. The plan was that they were to rebuild a German media system that was to foster the ideals of democracy, freedom of the press, accuracy, and political as well as journalistic fairness. Military Government control was gradually relaxed from censorship to mere supervision. Considering federalism as an antidote to nationalism, German media legislation was assigned to the occupational zones and soon to the (re‐)established German “Länder” (federal states), limiting the influence of the soon‐to‐be established federal government. This legislation stood in line with German tradition but was much stricter than it had been before (Rüden and Wagner 2005). With regard to the press, the Soviet and the British administrators, and later the French, granted licenses to individual representatives of the newly emerging, localized political parties to found newspapers (“Parteirichtungszeitungen”); the variety of opinion represented by these papers was to strengthen democratic debate. In the US zone of occupation, by contrast, the idea was to build a nonpartisan press by licensing boards of editors (“Gruppenlizenzen”) that represented different political perspectives. Both models proved to be unworkable as the polyvocal editorial boards, in most cases, broke down amidst quarreling, not to mention that the party related press was economically and journalistically unfit for the embattled newspaper market after the end of the license period in 1949 (Koszyk 1986). Allied expectations and German realities also clashed in the field of broadcasting. As a commercial system (as in the United States) or the revival



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of a state broadcasting organization (as in France) was not an option for Germany, the western Allies agreed on a public‐service model very similar to the British system as represented by the BBC (Wagner 2015). German politicians, however, consistently attempted to increase their influence on programming, not least by interfering in the selection of journalists, achieving considerable success with their efforts as soon as the Allies handed over responsibility in the late 1940s. While in West Germany a media system emerged that was generally based on the idea for being a fourth power which was independent of political pressure, in East Germany media policy was dictated more and more by the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) and sustained by the Soviet Military Administration. In Sweden, there was no real debate about changes in the media system. Compared to Germany and Britain, there were more continuities than radical changes when the country moved from wartime (in neutral Sweden called “the preparedness years”) to peacetime. The most fundamental change was gradual; it took place during the war, from an almost entirely German‐oriented cultural, ideological and economic landscape in the 1930s to an Anglo‐American‐oriented intellectual landscape in the late 1940s leading, for example, to the prioritizing of the English language, as opposed to German, in schools. Prominent journalists and academics who could in any way be associated with, or seen as advocates of, the German cultural sphere (be it Weimar or Nazi Germany) were stigmatized in public life (Östling 2008). However, one important legislative event in Sweden after the war was the introduction of a new press law, “Tryckfrihetsförordningen” (the Freedom of the Press Act) of 1949. This law marked the end of wartime censorship and enforced the basic principles of the 1766 constitutional law (the first in the world) abolishing censorship and guaranteeing the freedom of the press (see also Chapter 1). The party press system was still strong by 1945 in contrast to most other countries in Europe, and as an integral part of the Swedish political structure, it remained strong for several decades to come (Engblom et al. 2002).

Myths of European Networks Some of the changes discussed took place almost exclusively within national contexts as legal frameworks of media and communication were traditionally designed at a national level or – if existing – by their federal entities. Inter‐ and transnational organizations such as UNESCO founded in 1946 and the Council of Europe founded in 1949 did not influence the debate on territorial spaces. Promising projects and plans for international communication or for “Europe – On Air” (Lommers 2012) that had been widely discussed in pre‐war Europe did not play a decisive role after the war. Instead, mass‐mediated transnational communication was considered a utopian ideal. There were, however, exceptions. For broadcasting, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was important for the distribution of radio frequencies within a limited spectrum. In 1948, a new wavelength plan for post‐war Europe was developed at an ITU meeting in Copenhagen. It revised the 1933 European Broadcasting Convention agreements of Lucerne and led to a redistribution of several long‐ and medium‐wave frequencies. In June 1946, the Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion (OIR) was founded, and in February 1950 the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) started. The latter turned out to become a more or less influential international organization “creating transnationality” through its radio and television activities (cf. Henrich‐Franke 2010).

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­New Faces, New Voices? – Women in a Male Dominated Profession Media work, especially journalism, was traditionally a male dominated profession. Moreover, European journalists usually had a political, literary, or academic background. However, World War II and its aftermath mobilized women across Europe to work in various sectors including media, and the post‐war period opened a window of opportunity for women to enter the media profession. In Germany, the Allies largely (though not lastingly) replaced former Nazi journalists, and newcomers – the so‐called “generation 45” – was given the chance to work in editorial offices, and many began successful media careers (Hodenberg 2006). Among these newcomers were young female academics: for example, 21 women and 55 men completed one of three courses at the Rundfunkschule (broadcasting training school) of the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), the broadcasting station in the British zone. Although many of them were hired and not expected to solely produce women’s, children’s, and educational programs, they still struggled to wield influence in political programming (Rüden and Wagner 2005). In wartime Britain, broadcasters such as the BBC increased the number of female staff in a range of roles both in front of the microphone and behind it. For example, the BBC’s first female war correspondent, Audrey Russell, reported from abroad. After the war, however, her work was more oriented toward reporting for women’s programs and “softer” news items suggesting that a woman reporting “hard” news from the frontline was perhaps the exception rather than the rule (Skoog 2018). The impact of the war on female practitioners in Europe was contested and complex. Some were able to continue their occupation in the post‐war period, whereas others were marginalized as men returned. An important post‐war change was that more married women took up paid employment, particularly part‐time employment that became more acceptable and more widely available. In post‐war Europe, many female broadcasters found themselves in departments specifically oriented toward women and many had, through the mobilization of war, developed transnational contacts and networks. This resulted in the establishment of the International Association of Women in Radio in 1951, a professional organization consisting mostly of women in the western world whose aim was to exchange ideas and thoughts on the role and function of broadcasting in the post‐war period (Badenoch and Skoog 2016). Though female newspaper journalists’ opportunities had expanded during the war, after it, many faced redundancies or could only find part‐time positions, or they were once again confined to the area of “women’s journalism” (Chambers et al. 2004). There were exceptions, though: British journalist Evelyn Irons transferred from the women’s pages to the news desk of the Evening Standard during the war, and afterwards, would continue to work as a foreign correspondent (McCrystal 2000). The war had also increased demand for information films and, as a consequence, increased the availability of work for women in documentary film production. Nevertheless, after the war, women’s experiences in documentary film continued to be a site of struggle for women’s professional achievement and recognition (Fox 2013). In sum, large parts of Europe saw a common trend of women entering the workforce during wartime and leaving it again after 1945. The signs of a conservative backlash were also to be seen in Sweden, and in some ways, here even more than in many other countries. Swedish men, unharmed by their “battle‐less battlefields” in the military during the



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years of preparedness, went back to their regular jobs. There was an intense demand for female workers in the rapidly growing industrial sector, but modern welfare policies were still modeled around the housewife ideal, and employment outside the home was unthinkable for most mothers since childcare was still in the making. This was also true for women in the media sector: not even feminist role model and successful journalist Barbro “Bang” Alving of the daily paper Dagens Nyheter was able to manage life as a working mother (Arnborg 2010).

­Key Topics in the Immediate Post‐war Period Needless to say, mass media played an important role in post‐war public communication processes. Depending on the political backdrop and the context of freedom of expression in which they were situated, they reflected and shaped public discourse on the post‐1945 situation. But what did European mass media discuss once World War II was over? How did they interpret and express various post‐war experiences? Three key topics dominated public discourses in Europe.

How to Survive? – Everyday Problems Most essential in every country affected by the war were narratives around the management of everyday life. Many news media offered advice on coping with the practicalities of daily life such as food, clothing, heating, fuel, and the black market. They assisted their audiences by addressing their concerns about life and survival relating to oneself and to family members. Fictional genres such as radio plays and motion pictures depicted strong male and female characters that succeeded in surviving during a period of devastation and scarcity. Advice booklets were published and columns in newspapers with practical information became very popular. Radio still offered a wide range of specialized programs designed for target groups such as farmers, miners, children, adolescents, or women. In the immediate post‐war period, women’s programs dedicated a great amount of airtime to handy hints on how to sew, how to customize old military uniforms, how to cook in times of misery, and other practical help for housewives (in Germany, i.e. Tipps für die Hausfrau; in the United Kingdom, i.e. Woman’s Hour). The German “Zusammenbruchgesellschaft” (society of collapse) had the most instructive examples of mass media narratives on the management of everyday life (cf. Badenoch 2008). First, the role played by media in helping to bring together families dislocated by the war: The Suchdienst des Roten Kreuzes (tracing service of the Red Cross) was widely publicized on bulletin boards and wall newspapers, newspaper columns, radio announcements, and even popular novels. All stations in the four occupation zones were engaged in the search for relatives lost during flight and expulsion, wives searching for their ­husbands who had been Wehrmacht‐soldiers or vice versa, of prisoners of war for their parents, spouses, and relatives. One of the most striking features was the Kindersuchdienst, a tracing service specifically focused on lost children. Second, mass media played a crucial role in not suppressing Germany’s Nazi past after the war, although it was considered less important than coping with the chaos the country was left in. “Rubble” became a catchword. Literature depicting Germany’s devastated cities came to be known as “Trümmerliteratur” (rubble literature) while the same happened to cinema with the “Trümmerfilm” (rubble films). One of the most popular characterizations, the

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“Heimkehrer,” was a soldier who came home from the war forced to come to terms with the impact of the post‐war environment. Along with concerns for one’s own everyday problems, Germans tended to consider themselves as victims of history, by fate, of a war that allegedly had taken place beyond their control.

What Do We Want? – Visions of the Future What did the end of World War II mean for European citizens? One of the most powerful narratives revolved around Greco‐Roman history, Christianity, and Western civilization and the values and norms, the humanistic morality and order these traditions engendered. Along with it came a sentiment of Anti‐Americanism that aimed to resist commercialization and mass culture. In general, it was more a renaissance of a conservative world view than it was an awakening of new ideas. The “Hunger nach Kultur” (hunger for culture) and “Nachholbedarf” (a backlog demand) were rumored to be key characteristics for post‐war Germans. Particularly late‐night programs for academic elites were dominated by culturally conservative ideas and an anti‐modern form of cultural criticism. Against this backdrop, a debate around popular and mass culture took place. In the United Kingdom, popular radio serials such as Dick Barton – Special Agent (1946–1951) and Mrs Dale’s Diary (1948–1969) were both introduced on the BBC Light Programme reflecting new directions taken. Both became immensely popular with listening figures in their millions. However, these serials were seen by some within the BBC and beyond, as too American and inappropriate. There were frequent concerns over the impact these serials might have on listeners including the ability to turn women into sentimental serial addicts and young listeners into juvenile delinquents (Skoog 2010; Hilgert 2015). Visions of the future were frequent issues of political debate. The achievement of lasting peace and international understanding, of economic and political stability, of a democratic or maybe socialist society were noted as lessons to be taken from the past. The young generation in particular was given the task of fulfilling these visions of the future, a task promoted by numerous articles and broadcasts at the time (Hilgert 2015, p. 199ff). In Soviet controlled Eastern Europe, visions of socialist utopias with anti‐fascism promoted as a key term were soon widely propagated by mass media and did appeal to large parts of society (Brenner 2009, pp. 20–24; Classen 2004). The recent war and the echoes of economic distortion in the interwar years promoted pluralistic debates about the future. These, however, were gradually suppressed in favor of communist positions either due to a self‐sovietization of the political elite or due to outright political pressure (cf. Creuzberger and Görtemaker 2002). Media and mass communication, essential tools of propaganda for the so‐called class struggle, were impacted by the establishment of communist regimes as local communists enforced Stalinist techniques of propaganda and censorship at varying degrees across the region (cf. Mertelsmann 2011, p. 10). The Labour Party’s 1945 election manifesto “Let Us Face the Future” was influenced by the 1942 Social Insurance and Allied Services report (a government report better known as the Beveridge Report after its creator, the economist and social reformer William Beveridge) that laid the basis for a future welfare state. Labour’s manifesto was greatly influenced by the Beveridge Report including its recommendations of assuring a commitment to full employment, a new national health service, and new and better housing. The manifesto’s reformist agenda helped secure the party’s landslide victory in the election. Post‐war reconstruction was discussed in the media during and after the war. Picture Post magazine, for example, published a special issue in 1941 entitled A Plan



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for Britain. The BBC began to prepare listeners for post‐war reconstruction with programs such as The World We Want in 1943 that focused on employment, social security, housing, and education. Media products like these saw to it that British reconstruction propaganda was in full swing by 1944 (Nicholas 1996). The Labour Party looked to Sweden for inspiration as the country began to “rebuild the future” (Francis 1997). Visions of Sweden also seeped into British media with particular focus on architecture and design as well as Swedish culture in general. For Sweden, the future looked bright indeed. The ideas of a welfare society or “folkhemmet” (the people’s home), originally a conservative idea but rhetorically re‐launched by Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti (Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti, SAP) in the 1930s, became reality after 1945. A series of social reforms including the allocation of school lunches, parental benefits, health insurance, national basic pension, and universal holidays had been introduced at the wake of World War II and continued in the decade that followed. The universal child allowance introduced in 1947, not only made life easier for many families, it also placed a symbolic emphasis on youth and notions of the modern and the future. The Swedish model of welfare reform was hailed by a unanimous press: Swedish media did not miss any opportunity to tell a story of economic and social prosperity. While this was not a particularly new story, it was one that was told with considerable vigor after 1945 (Engblom et al. 2002).

Who We Are? – Management of National Identity Societal reconstruction took place within national frameworks and was supported by national media. “Europe” was a common project, a rather vague vision for the future, discussed mainly by the “younger generations.” It dealt with ideas of a new economic order and a peace‐oriented brotherhood. Conservatives, however, painted the idea of a unified Europe as a mythical ideal and as a bulwark against the communist East that needed to be independent from the United States. Europe or the process of European integration as a media discourse became powerful no earlier than the 1950s. During the immediate post‐war years, the intensifying Cold War and the accompanying ideological tensions between East and West were frequently addressed by media. Even in neutral Sweden, a Cold War sensibility began to develop. The country had made concessions both to the German Wehrmacht and to the Allied forces, but as far as the press was concerned, the fear of communism had become an increasingly significant narrative already by the early 1940s. No less than four communist papers had been banned during the war as a prolog to the early 1950s, when fears of a Soviet invasion of Sweden via Finland, as well as deep fears of foreign spies, were palpable. In 1946, there was also a general anxiety of too close a contact with the war‐ravaged continent of Europe. Swedish national identity – a narrative extensively represented in the press at the time – was enforced through values such as peace, modernity, and the future; from the Swedish media’s point of view, “Europe” stood for the opposite, namely war, disarray, and history (Cronqvist 2004). In general, one of the most influential media narratives in western, northern, and southern Europe negotiated the nationally framed nuclear family in a welfare society. It addressed issues such as the household, the good life, and the normality of a bourgeois or middle‐class life. After the war, there was a widespread desire to return to normal life, a life in peace, the absence of the catastrophes of war and post‐war austerity. Stories of a healthy life and a sufficient income for a humble existence were recounted. Post‐war reconstruction led to the building of new housing that introduced to many homes

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modern amenities, such as indoor bathrooms, relative luxuries that suggested a sense of modernity. In the United Kingdom, Labour held a strong commitment to social change but traditional class structures remained and maintained existing social identities and class divisions. Tensions fostered by generational change and transforming gender roles were negotiated with a desire to preserve the traditional family unit. The most notable media format that tried to address the idea of change and promote the ideal of the nuclear family were radio series that emerged across Europe: Familien Hansen was broadcast by Statsradiofonien, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, between 1929 and 1949; Swiss Radio Beromünster featured the Familie Müller; German stations invented national German families based on different dialects such as the Familie Hesselbach (Radio Frankfurt), Brumml‐G’schichten (Radio Munich), the Familie Schmitz (NWDR‐ Cologne), and the Familie Staudenmaier (Radio Stuttgart); and the British had the already mentioned Mrs Dale’s Diary. These idealized fictional families became popular role models in their respective national contexts.

­Conclusion With regard to media coverage in the immediate post‐war period, everyday concerns were prevalent for many Europeans. Formally, the war was over, but for many people, austerity and scarcity continued until the late 1940s. The home and the family featured heavily in popular discourse next to post‐war reconstruction and idealistic visions of the future. At the same time, Cold War tensions were rising and a new clash between “the West” and “the East” stood on the horizon. There was no critical debate on far‐reaching alternative projects in the media. Conservatism and culturally conservative ways of thinking were crucial to explain the profound intellectual crisis caused by the Holocaust and the atrocious conditions of war. The end of World War II should, to some extent, not be considered a turning point in European media and communication history. This related in particular to preferences in and practices of producing and using media content. Although the European media landscape did see some institutional, organizational, and administrative changes, continuities dominated. The short period of transition between 1943/1944 and 1947/1948, thus, cannot be considered a marking point of great historical change. Nevertheless, the political transformation processes that grasped central, eastern, and southeast Europe after 1945, giving a liberal democracy to West Germany and authoritarian communist regimes to East Germany and the other states of the “Eastern bloc” in the late 1940s, severely impacted the respective media. In the immediate post‐war period, there were no substantial ideas for using media for transnational and international communication. Instead, a return to the national paradigm was prevalent as was the national way of thinking, at least up to the end of the 1940s, and even the idea of Europe was one of a federal body or better of two divided bodies.

­Acknowledgments For detailed information and useful suggestions we thank Nelson Ribeiro (Lisbon), Gloria García González (Salamanca), Morten Michelsen (Copenhagen), Darina Volf (Munich), and Alexander Badenoch (Utrecht).



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11

Media and the Cold War The East/West Conflict

Michael Meyen, Kaarle Nordenstreng, Carlos Barrera, and Walery Pisarek

­Introduction This chapter deals with the propaganda efforts of the two rival blocs between the late 1940s and the late 1980s. During this period, the Cold War between the two superpowers, the United States of America (USA) and the Soviet Union (USSR), was the main international conflict dominating both, the world and the news media coverage of international affairs (Bastiansen 2014, p. 155). This applied to close allies united in NATO and the Warsaw Pact, as well as to neutral countries in Europe, and even to Africa, Asia, and Latin America where East and West were trying to win the loyalties of newly independent and developing nations. At stake was, to use Melvyn P. Leffler’s (2007) expression, no less than “the soul of mankind.” This “war of ideas and ideologies” (Risso 2013, p. 145) was fought both between East and West and within each bloc. It is, therefore, natural that the bipolar confrontation not just influenced media content, media structures, and journalists but also media theory and the academic community of communication studies. The two opposing blocs, first, spread their messages via transnational broadcasting stations, movies and documentaries, brochures and leaflets, foreign correspondents and even communication textbooks (Siebert et  al. 1956) and communication scholars (Meyen 2014). Second, the Cold War provided a set of criteria for the selection of events to report on, and the corresponding framing processes enforced either by official media steering (Fiedler and Meyen 2015) or by dominant political values and beliefs (Hanson 1995). Still, despite the time, energy, and resources both sides invested in their own propaganda products and in jamming, banning, and deconstructing the opponent, mainstream historians tend to overlook the crucial role media played in the East/West conflict to this very day (cf. exceptions Webb 2014, p. 3; Tobia 2011, p. 173). Recent massive works such as The Cambridge History of the Cold War or The History of Russia mainly focus on traditional players such as the states, foreign policy and diplomacy, on economic aspects, The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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on the alternation of confrontation and détente, or on the final clarification of the question of guilt (cf. Leffler and Westad 2010–2012; Zubov 2009). Moreover, in historiography, the Cold War and its propaganda effects are unfortunately not yet behind us. This relates to discrepancies about causes and conclusions or, in media historiography, a repetition of past battles including late attempts of legitimizing US‐backed “free radios” that broadcast into the countries behind the Iron Curtain (cf. Pittaway 2003), and the denial of the confrontation narrative (Badenoch et al. 2013). Other parts of the continuing fight are the blocking or dry‐cleaning of Western archives (Aldrich 2001). In particular the British and the US intelligence services still do not release even “half‐ century‐old records” (Dorril 2015; Leab 2006, p. 140). Even with these files and materials, the crucial question of effects is a difficult one to answer. Contemporary reports are, first, biased and, second, rely on not representative sources such as listener and reader letters, press clippings, or refugee and proxy surveys (Pittaway 2003, pp. 100– 110). Although more than a quarter of a century elapsed since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the issue of media’s contribution to this remains to be solved. However, in media historiography there is a large and growing body of literature covering almost all aspects of the topic. In addition to the usage, reception and effects of transnational media this includes propaganda institutions such as the United States Information Agency (Cull 2008), the so‐called Cultural Cold War (Belmonte 2008; Hixson 1997; Rawnsley 1999), US paid transnational broadcasters such as Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty (Cummings 2009; Heil 2003; Johnson 2010; Parta 2007) and the BBC World Service (Webb 2014), the influence of Eastern European exiles in shaping the content for such broadcasts (Kind‐Kovács 2013), secret CIA and US government sponsorship of movies and documentaries (Leab 2006; Schwalbe 2005), espionage accusations and convictions (Alwood 2010; Dorril 2015), underground literature crossing the Iron Curtain (Kind‐Kovács 2014), specific efforts aimed at friendly countries such as Italy or France because of their strong communist parties (Tobia 2011, 2013), content and structure analyses of Western media (Bastiansen 2014; Bernhard 1999; Roslyng‐Jensen 2012). There are overviews as well as carefully crafted case studies such as Alban Webb’s (2013) reconstruction of the broadcasting during the Hungarian uprising in 1956 or Simona Tobia’s (2011) story about the relationship between VOA and the Italian broadcaster RAI. There is also evidence about the link between Western propaganda efforts and the rise of the quantitative and psychology oriented communication research paradigm (Parry‐Giles 1994). However, for all these topics addressed, most of the literature is linked to both Western countries, in particular the United States, and to the Cold War’s early stages often including roots and parallels in World War II. Even a first glance at this rich body of literature shows that this chapter, with its focus on propaganda efforts, the East/West conflict and Europe, can cover only a small part of the topic. Therefore, the decision was made to concentrate on one of the big European countries (Germany), one Eastern European country (Poland) bordering on the main Eastern power the USSR, and two of other Western countries – one far away from the Iron Curtain (Spain) and another just next to it (Finland). There is no doubt that Germany is of special importance here. To quote the historian Henrik G. Bastiansen (2014) from Norway, “[i]n no other place was the Cold War more visible than on German soil, and especially in the divided Berlin – and even more so after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961” (p. 159). According to Bastiansen, “the



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most famous single event” (p. 160) at the end of the Cold War was the fall of that wall on 9 November 1989. There is also no doubt that the trade union Solidarity triggered the Polish Crisis of 1980–1981 and, as a consequence, the events of 1989 (Paczkowski 2003). Conversely, Spain and Finland represent different types of Western European countries regarding their relationships to the two superpowers. While Finland was one of the driving forces behind the negotiations on security and cooperation in Europe, leading to the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 (Nordenstreng and Schiller 1976; Thomas 2001), in Spain the notorious anti‐communist Franco was in power until the very same year. In order to represent both, literature and European diversity, in an appropriate way, a second decision regarding the chapter’s agenda was made. While the sections on Poland and Spain are mainly dealing with internal media structures and practices including foreign policy on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the part on Germany has a focus on usage and reception. Owing to linguistic reasons, in no other region so many programs (of either side) were as easily accessible to the overall population. The section on Finland presents a case in which the Cold War was not very prominent but served rather in the background as a kind of soft power.

­Germany For two reasons, the two post‐war German states, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), are of particular interest (cf. Meyen and Scheu 2011). First, the parallel broadcasts from the FRG and the GDR targeting each other’s population provide a rich case for assessing the usage and effects of transnational broadcasting (radio and television). The broadcasts did not have to cross a language or a cultural border and had good reception in almost all regions of the two states. In the GDR, radio programs from West Germany and from stations like RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) or Radio Free Europe could be received throughout the country (at least on medium wave), and 85% of viewers were able to watch Western TV broadcasts (Dittmar 2004). What distinguished the German‐German example from other cases was that national broadcasting stations fulfilled a dual role: they produced content for their own, and for a foreign audience. Second, it is indisputable that Western media influenced GDR citizens. Domestic programs were controlled by the Communist Party and were seen as not trustworthy from the very beginning (Fiedler and Meyen 2015). The party elite also tried to cut off the flow of information from the West. They forbade importing newspapers and magazines, put up interfering transmitters (particularly against RIAS), and exerted moral pressure. Until the end of the GDR, this was mostly felt by those who tried to make a career within the country. Nowadays, the case of the divided nation offers the advantage of being able to rely on a relatively broad base of sources because the reception of external media has been the subject of social science research since the beginning of post‐war Germany (Meyen and Scheu 2011, p. 117). In West Germany, after the end of World War II, countless representative surveys regarding mass media were conducted. Especially during the 1950s and 1960s, the fear of “red media” – media that spread Soviet propaganda – flooding West Germany caused the government to fund studies that examined receptions of East German radio broadcasts and print media. For the GDR, the availability of sources is more difficult. Although radio and TV audience research was conducted, findings were not published until 1989. They also are of doubtful value. On the one hand, GDR citizens had plenty of reasons to not trust the anonymity of the surveys; on the other hand,

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Western media were excluded from this kind of research. Possible research substitutes are, first, surveys taken among GDR refugees and West Berlin visitors, carried out by the West German government and US authorities in the FRG and second, biographical interviews. This part of the chapter is based on more than 100 such interviews, held between 2000 and 2002, during which former GDR citizens were asked about their everyday media use during the 1980s (Meyen and Schwer 2007). According to these sources, people from West and East Germany agreed on what they had expected from broadcast media (Meyen and Scheu 2011, p. 121). These expectations were also very similar to those expressed in other industrial societies, which was that the purpose of radio and TV broadcasts was first and foremost to provide a pleasant atmosphere at home. Media programs from the neighboring country were consumed when home broadcasts could not meet the demand for entertainment or when reception was bad. Until the middle of the 1970s, the GDR broadcast entire radio programs and parts of TV programs to listeners and viewers in the FRG and West Berlin. However, the response was very low and even those who switched to stations from the East avoided the ideological messages. Although surveys show that the Eastern music program was praised during the years immediately following World War II, the respondents already criticized it as having had too much propaganda and biased talk. Further developments of the broadcasting network in the FRG and the increased focus on the audiences’ needs led to a drop in the usage of GDR broadcasting stations. At the beginning of the 1960s, only 5% of those who had the possibility switched channels regularly to Eastern programs, 22% switched channels occasionally, mostly for programs that offered music or other forms of entertainment (Meyen and Scheu 2011). Those responsible for GDR radio were aware of such audience expectations, both, from reports about reception and listeners’ letters. Nevertheless, they continued to broadcast political messages to the FRG and began to promote the further development of their TV network in the middle of the 1950s, as part of the country’s “Westplan.” This in turn was noticed by the FRG and it warned against a “flood of red TV broadcasts.” The news magazine Der Spiegel feared in 1957 that the GDR TV network was being developed into an instrument of propaganda targeting the West (Meyen and Scheu 2011, p. 122). Although this attempt faced the same limitations as the radio broadcasts mentioned above, the All‐German ministry in Bonn sponsored several surveys about the reception of Eastern programs. Those surveys show that the GDR TV program was mainly used as an alternative when no entertaining programs were running on the home station. Films, entertainment, and sports reached the widest audience, with the proviso that there was a limit to the amount of political content that most West Germans would accept in entertainment programs. However, the possible impact of East German TV was made into a political issue. Media experts, survey analysts, and the FRG government warned against “ideological infiltration” and demanded that details of GDR TV programs were not printed in TV guides. When the publishing company Axel Springer and other newspapers acceded to this demand in the early 1960s, small magazines were the ones to profit. They were immediately able to increase their print runs by including information about the class enemy’s programs. The boycott, therefore, only lasted four years, even though Axel Springer lobbied several government authorities for a general prohibition on printing GDR TV program details (Meyen and Scheu 2011). GDR’s television programming also influenced program planning of FRG broadcasting corporations. The Eastern competitors were a continuous issue at conferences of



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broadcasting managers during the late 1950s and 1960s. This accelerated the development of entertainment programs and increased the focus on the audience, thus benefiting even viewers who could not receive GDR TV. Broadcasting managers and the FRG government always stressed that the GDR possessed unlimited economic resources, even though it was well known that this was far from the truth. The development of radio programming also benefited from this competition. For example, the introduction of a night‐time show in 1952 was justified with the argument that GDR programs would otherwise have no competition at this time of the day. When arguing for such kinds of changes, politicians were able to refer to the needs of the “brothers and sisters in the East.” Similar to RIAS or Radio Free Europe, the public broadcasting stations of the FRG carried out the task of informing the population of the GDR carrying on the idea of a reunified Germany. Thereby the broadcasting stations promoted West Germany’s aim of reunification  –  which was anchored in the German constitution  –  against the interests of GDR officials. This is one reason why West Germany was able to see itself as the winning party after 1989, even though it was the citizens of East Germany who initiated the fall of the Berlin Wall (Meyen and Scheu 2011). That Western media played a central role during the 1989 change’s initial phase is part of the founding myth of the reunified Germany. The short version: West German stations and RIAS were not only the “window to the world” for the population of the GDR, but they also informed them about what really happened in the GDR, which was concealed by the Communist Party media. Western media “unmasked” socialism and also provoked a comparison of living standards between East and West. In the long run, even advertisements, family programs and quiz shows, it is said, contributed to the collapse of the regime because people from the GDR had been sensitized to their own country’s supply bottlenecks and bad quality of goods by permanently being confronted with the Western range of goods (Hesse 1990). However, the material used here indicates that the relevance of external media for the GDR and probably for other East European countries as well, has been overrated. There are several reasons for this conclusion. It is certainly true that experiences during the autumn of 1989, reports by West German TV stations about demonstrations, and the occupation of embassies, escape routes, and opposition groups played an important role for the protests. Nevertheless, it must be underlined that the autumn of 1989 was a time of crisis and that functions of media systems for societies change during such times. The need for entertainment becomes less important while the need for information gains  priority, and media use increases. Yet, a crisis is not an everyday phenomenon. Communication research still fails to understand the paramount importance of daily routines and patterns in shaping the communication needs of people living in closed political systems. Just as the predominant wish for entertainment was underestimated, scholarship has overestimated the general need for information in closed societies in non‐crisis periods. This overestimation is partly due to the use of doubtful sources in earlier studies without further reflection, such as letters by dissidents who naturally feel a greater need for information and cannot be considered representative of the general population (Pittaway 2003; Webb 2013). The East German case indicates that expectations of media neither depend primarily on political and media systems, nor on specific media content, regardless its origin. Apart from time and income, communication needs are rather shaped by the specific working and living conditions and the complexity of a particular society. GDR citizens that were gainfully employed, held a subordinate position in the professional hierarchy or were busy meeting the numerous requirements of everyday life. They used media primarily as

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a means of diversion and relaxation, usually giving little thought to political coverage. Many women did not even have time to watch the news on West German TV. Consequently, they were even less interested in political magazines. Though people did not trust the GDR programs and papers at all, West German media were not an adequate alternative to most of them. Advice programs could not be applied to the situation in the East, nor did the news or political magazines offer much help in managing everyday life. Furthermore, GDR citizens were skeptical of the credibility of West German media. Biased media coverage was perceived as absolutely normal, since propaganda was a part of everyday life. Why should West German reports be different? The fact that the coverage of Western broadcasting stations often decried the East and, therefore, collided with the self‐perception of the respondents, confirmed those suspicions. Even those watching or listening to Western news did not care too much about these programs. Surveys funded by the FRG government show that in 1955 not even one out of three GDR citizens could name an anchor or commentator of RIAS, and in 1958 only 24% of the Eastern respondents could remember the contents of a political broadcast. “Real” listeners and viewers could be found mainly in the peripheries of churches, in milieux where artists or intellectuals were rooted, as well as in professions that were considered politically less relevant and, therefore, were lower paid such as, for example, engineers and technicians (Meyen and Scheu 2011, p. 125). This, however, does not imply that Western programs have been without effects. Although some broadcasts seemed to be propaganda to East Germans, the fact that there was a polar opposite stimulated thinking. Can one believe in certain facts and not question them while permanently being confronted with doubts? The efforts of the party to cut off the flow of information from the West by interfering with transmitters or moral pressure actually contributed to those doubts. Surveys about the use of media showed that these efforts failed, because of the stubbornness of the GDR citizens. That is why moral pressure eased off gradually, and by the mid‐1970s, consumption of West German media was officially tolerated (Steinmetz and Viehoff 2004, p. 320). Good reception of Western programs could mean for some an improvement in their quality of life. This was particularly important in the exceptional circumstances of a crisis, such as in June 1953 and during the autumn of 1989. The German example also offers the possibility to study the indirect effects of external propaganda media. On the one hand, politicians and practitioners dealing with media, both in West and East Germany, exploited the efforts of the other and effect myths to promote their activities and demand more resources. On the other hand, programs became more audience‐focused in order to prevent listeners and viewers from switching channels. Right from the beginning, GDR radio and TV copied successful programs from the FRG, developed specific programs for adolescents, and from 1982, started broadcast entertainment programs after 8 p.m. because it was clear by that time that educational and ideological programs would drive viewers into the arms of the “class enemy” (Dittmar 2004).

­Poland The Iron Curtain fell in Europe before its name had been established. Its run was decided by the four powers at the conferences in Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945). In the Soviet zone of influence, Poland stood out in terms of area and population size. In addition, the country was surrounded by countries belonging to the community.



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Perhaps for this reason, the Soviet army did not intervene in Poland in 1956, 1970, or 1981 as it did in Berlin in 1953, in Hungary in 1956, and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Maybe for this reason, the activity of the Catholic Church and its press as well as private ownership of land cultivated by peasants was tolerated in Poland all the time. However, the Polish People’s Republic did not conceal the existence of preventive media censorship. The constitution of 1952 included Article 83, which stated, first, that the republic guaranteed freedom of speech, press, assemblies and rallies, marches and demonstrations. The realization of this freedom, second, was to be fulfilled by putting printing offices, paper resources, public buildings and halls, communications, radio and other necessary material means into service of working people and their organizations. Systematically created after the war, the new press system replicated the model of the Soviet press, throwing away the native pre‐war model. However, first, the Cold War was not a uniform period both in European and Polish terms (Pisarek 1991). Second, in contrast to the Soviet one‐party system, Poland’s political system included so‐called allied parties: the United Peasant Party and the Democratic Party. Both parties were publishing newspapers and magazines, just like religious, mainly Catholic, organizations. The result was pluralism – “socialist pluralism.” The cornerstone of the unified information policy of all state and public media institutions was the principle of the leading role of the ruling party. The maintenance of this uniformity was assured by the personnel policy. Party resolutions determined the main tasks of particular media and carried out their evaluations. The party decided on the allocation of paper, and finally on the activities of the formal state organs of censorship. Regular meetings of the propaganda secretaries of the fraternal parties in the socialist countries were another relevant element. One of these meetings (in Prague in 1975), for example, revolutionized journalism education in the socialist countries, both, in terms of organization and program (Pisarek 1976). The arrangements from such international consultations took on the form of resolutions established at the successive congresses and plenary meetings of the central committees of each party. These resolutions, in turn, obliged editors to popularize them in newspapers, magazines, and on radio and television programs. This mechanism was to ensure that media from the Soviet sphere of influence were always, besides periods of crisis, speaking with one voice. However, such a consensus could be maintained only in case of the most important political issues with international implications. In matters of local interest, freedom of journalistic interpretation of current events was incomparably greater. Maybe that is why local and regional dailies in People’s Poland were given greater readership and trust than national newspapers (Siwek 1970). The Iron Curtain as the main weapon in the Cold War was to limit the flow of information, ideas, people, and goods between the first “free world” and the second one, “the camp of peace and progress.” This second world, accused of isolation, argued that the West, pumping its content through all media, simultaneously shut itself off from the rest of the world. A striking example of the lack of balance was the global exchange of television programs (Nordenstreng and Varis 1974) and news agency services. The West showed no interest in the offers from the East, treating it as propaganda; and the East feared both the manipulative impact of Western media and the comrades’ accusations of succumbing to those media. As regards to international exchanges, state controls played a big role. The state was responsible for the export of Polish books and magazines, as well for the import. In 1988, for example, more than 5,000 newspapers and magazines with a total circulation of almost 2 million copies were brought in from socialist countries while 8,419 newspapers and magazines with a total circulation of 37,708 copies were brought in from so‐called

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capitalist countries. In the same year, almost 1.5 million copies were exported to 13 socialist countries and only 0.2 million copies to 125 capitalist countries (Biuletyn 1989). The customs service “protected” the inhabitants of People’s Poland from forbidden books, newspapers, and magazines. Usually, officers turned a blind eye to imported foreign‐language publications but ruthlessly confiscated Polish exile publications, especially the monthly Kultura, published in Paris. With equal ruthlessness, publications sent from abroad by mail were confiscated. At the same time, in Warsaw and other major Polish cities, there were so‐called “clubs of international press and books” where anyone could enjoy on‐site and completely free single copies of foreign newspapers and magazines. While newspapers and magazines from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries dominated, one could also read (usually, pledging his/her ID card) Western newspapers and magazines including Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Spiegel or Time (Biuletyn 1989). The State Office for Control of the Press, Publications, and Performances guarded the appropriate selection of information, aiming to ensure that any sensitive information couldn’t slide into Poland and slide out abroad. Sometimes the actions of this institution took on grotesque forms. After Lech Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize, for example, it introduced a temporary taboo on the words of Norway and Norwegian. As a result, it was not possible to include the information that Henrik Ibsen was Norwegian (Majchrzak 2015). However, many Polish media phenomena of the period, critically evaluated today, occurred not only in other socialist countries but also on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Polish government and president in exile were written usually in quotes in the newspapers of People’s Poland, like the name DDR (GDR) in the West German newspaper Die Welt. The murder of 22,000 Polish officers by the NKVD in Katyń could neither appear in media of People’s Poland nor in the Polish‐language BBC services, since relations between the United Kingdom and USSR were at stake (Butler 2003; Sanford 2006). For Poles interested in national and international politics, the Iron Curtain was not an effective barrier to information, omitted by the censored national media. In periods of social tension, despite intense jamming, Polish‐language radio programs, broadcast on shortwave by the BBC, VOA, or Radio Free Europe, reached 20–30% of the adult Polish population, sometimes forcing official media into polemics. One can also say that Polish mass media functioned on both sides of the Iron Curtain: apart from the domestic press in the country, Polish immigrants in the West also published newspapers and magazines where intellectuals from the country usually published using pseudonyms (Goban‐Klas 1994). The most important publication was Dziennik Polski in London, and the most smuggled into Poland was Kultura issued in Paris. In addition, beginning in the second half of the 1970s, there were underground magazines issued by illegal political and social organizations such as the Movement for the Defense of Human Rights and the Confederation of Independent Poland. In 1980–1981, approximately 3,000 underground periodicals appeared. In 1982–1988 more than 4,500 books and 2,000 periodicals were issued illegally. Some of them had circulations of more than 40,000 copies. In Poland, xerography effectively countered the official, censored media. This is true particularly in the light of the 16‐month period of intense confrontation between the old system and a 10‐million Solidarity movement, demanding “bread and freedom,” beginning in August 1980. Some Poles experienced it in revolutionary romantic euphoria, others in fear of their own fate, their families, and the whole country, and some declared the will of the defense of socialism. All were interested, above all, in



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politics, and all enjoyed – although under formally applicable restrictions – an almost unlimited freedom of expression. Everyone also tried not to annoy the Soviet Union despite the adoption of the “Message to the Working People of Eastern Europe,” at the first Congress of Solidarity (5 September to 7 October 1981), which supported the development of independent trade unionism (Pisarek 2007). This period ended on 13 December 1981 with the promulgation of the martial law that was again abolished on 23 July 1983. After the lifting of martial law, the information policy of the party and government was characterized by erratic, often contradictory, and ever ineffective attempts to restore the old.

­Spain For the winners, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was seen as a victory over communism. Although anti‐communism was a propagandist simplification of a more complex issue, it certainly became one, if not the most significant, inspiring principle of the new dictatorship led by General Franco. The neutrality proclaimed by Spain could not entirely disguise its sympathy for Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, given the military support that these countries gave to the Francoist troops during the civil war. In return, some Spanish volunteer troops – the so‐called Blue Division – fought with Germany and against Russia between 1941 and 1943. As Delgado (2003) wrote referring to the post‐war period, “[i] n the European context of that time, Franco’s regime was an anomaly (quirk), a trace of the past, an annoying neighbor for Western Europe” (p. 237). After the end of World War II, the Allies declared a long period of economic and diplomatic isolation of Spain that lasted several years. Spain started a counter‐propaganda campaign to seek an agreement with the United States, thinking that this country could appreciate the strategic value of Spain with more pragmatism. As a sign of openness, and among other initiatives, Franco was interviewed by various US media outlets, for example CBS in 1951, and UPI news agency in 1953 (Rodríguez‐Mateos 2008, pp. 82–85). Moreover, the Spanish news agency Efe signed an agreement with UPI for the distribution of news (Delgado 2003, p. 238). The recognition of Franco’s dictatorship by the United States in 1953, the Concordat signed with the Vatican that same year and the admission of Spain into the United Nations Organization in 1955 signified the end of isolation. Within this historical context, it is understandable that Franco’s propaganda machinery repeatedly insisted on describing communism as the main enemy not only for Spain where it had already been defeated, but for entire Western civilization. The strict control of the media, especially strong during the 1940s and the early 1950s, contributed to spread this idea with two complementary purposes: one for internal consumption and aimed to intimidate Spaniards, and the other as a message sent to the Western countries trying to convince them that Spain could become a trustworthy ally for the new era of the Cold War, a barrier against communism in southern Europe. As Sinova (1989) put it, “[s]ince the very beginning, communism was the enemy to be overcome, responsible for all evils, so that fighting against it gives meaning to the existence of the nation” (p. 233). In his book on censorship during Franco’s regime, Sinova describes how censors tried to distinguish between Russia and the so‐called “exported communism:” the first one to name the country that joined the Allies, and the other expression to refer to communist or Bolshevik parties all over the world; in other words, the “political phenomenon of subversive internationalism” (Sinova (1989),

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p. 235) in Spain and other countries. The official newsreel NO‐DO successfully adopted similar criteria by stressing the communist influence in different international conflicts (Korea, Cuba, Hungary, Prague, etc.), thus, reaffirming the original values of Francoism (Tranche and Sánchez‐Biosca 2001, pp. 375–376). Ruthless propaganda campaigns against “communism” also included other non‐­ communist opposition parties. In 1962, significant opposition leaders of different political camps (socialists, liberals, Christian democrats, etc.) were brought together at a conference of the European Movement in Munich. Spanish newspapers were obliged to publish news that contained gross insults and personal attacks on the Spanish delegates. One of them, for example, was accused of intending to tie the country to “the yoke of capitalism, freemasonry and communism” (Tusell 1977, p. 400). Any movement against the regime was considered communist or an instrument of communism. Similar arguments were used on the public radio station Radio Nacional de España (RNE) including programs created for foreign countries, especially those in French and English. In the midst of diplomatic isolation, Western countries were usually criticized because “they had not been aware – especially France – of the communist danger: something that Franco had realized ten years earlier” (Cervera 2005, p. 186). As the Soviet Union was gaining ground in Europe after 1945, the Spanish propaganda insisted, in a rather paternalistic tone, on the fact that Spain had already defeated the threat of communism. The growing internal political problems in France were usually attributed to the lack of strength shown against communism in the neighboring country. When Spain was admitted into UNESCO in 1953, this fact was interpreted in the sense that the world had “realized the goodness of the Spanish regime due to its hostility against communism, the root of all evils” (Cervera 2005, p. 194). Positive views of communism were not publicly allowed, and this extended to other non‐communist movements and activities that were considered by propaganda services as “travel companions” of communism and enemies of Francoism. For many years, the only possibility for Spaniards to access different voices were radio stations from abroad. Radio España Independiente (Radio Independent Spain) stood out among them. Created in July 1941, it transmitted first from Moscow and after 1955 from Bucharest. It became popularly known as La Pirenaica (The Pyrenean). Other stations with similar purposes were broadcasting from communist countries like Albania and China, and from Western countries like France and the United Kingdom, but none of them acquired the same influence and reputation. The Spanish Communist Party (PCE) was in charge of La Pirenaica, and its first director was one of the most charismatic communist politicians in exile, Dolores Ibárruri “La Pasionaria” (Zaragoza 2008). With the passing of time, government control of the media was not as strict as in the early years. In 1966, a new press law allowed broader margins of freedom for newspapers and magazines, which helped the formation of public opinion debates about different issues. However, only negative references to communism were permitted as it continued to be considered an ideology threatening the Franco regime itself. One exception was the IAMCR conference held at the University of Navarra in April 1968, with the participation of a number of professors and deans coming from Eastern European universities. Originally, the conference was to take place in Oxford but there had been no guarantees for the granting of visas to the participants from communist countries (Meyen 2014). However, paradoxically, in the somewhat fascist, anti‐communist Spain, local organizers could guarantee it, and the event was a complete success. Flags representing the participants’ countries were raised in front of the main building of the university as a courtesy to them (Barrera 2009).



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With the beginning of the transition to democracy after the death of General Franco in 1975, the political atmosphere rapidly changed. The Communist Party was legalized and could take part in the first general elections in June 1977 (Powell 2011). Spain’s entry into NATO in May 1982 took place under the centrist government of the transition to democracy. It was a significant step toward the country’s full integration into the Western world but also a controversial issue, since the Socialist Party, then in the opposition, voted against this decision in parliament. While conservative newspapers like ABC and La Vanguardia showed clear anti‐communist positions and stressed the Soviet threat to Spain, other, more progressive papers like El País showed pacifist views close to leftist parties, and consequently opposed Spain joining NATO (Del Val 1996, pp. 161–165). One of the main Socialist electoral promises for the October 1982 elections was to call for a referendum to decide between remaining in NATO or leaving. The new prime minister, Felipe González, changed his mind during his first term of office and supported remaining in NATO, while the conservative party Alianza Popular (People’s Alliance) encouraged abstention in an attempt to erode the strong position of the Socialists. A new alignment of the main newspapers took place, depending on their political leanings. El País, although trying to maintain some balance between different opinions and despite some hesitation, supported the change of position carried out by the new government (Seoane and Sueiro 2004, pp. 314–333), while ABC was closer to the pro‐abstention positions. The Socialist government also used this issue to pressurize those media companies interested in obtaining broadcasting licenses for TV channels that were finally granted in 1989. The Cold War had finished but still served as a conditioning element for business purposes in the Spanish media landscape up to the late 1980s.

­Finland Finland – a country on the north‐eastern edge of Europe with 1,340 km of common border with Russia – constitutes a peculiar case in Cold War history. After having been part of the Kingdom of Sweden for over six centuries, Finland was annexed by Tsarist Russia in 1809, and by the end of 1917, it gained its independence by a decree of the new Soviet government led by Lenin. Until World War II, Finland had an anti‐communist and pro‐German political orientation, leading to a military alliance with Nazi Germany in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941 until 1944. The war ended with Finland retaining its independence, at a cost of nearly 90,000 lives and about 10% of its territory bordering on the USSR. After the war, Finland’s political orientation changed dramatically with the lifting of the ban on communism and the transformation of the far left from an underground movement to the second largest political party after the Social Democrats; together, these two won practically half of the seats in the parliamentary elections of 1945. This delicate balance did not lead to a communist takeover of the political system as happened in Czechoslovakia and other Central European countries. Stalin was content with a treaty of mutual cooperation and assistance with Finland to safeguard Soviet security interests. Finland for its part continued as a parliamentary democracy with a predominantly Western capitalist system but bound by a state treaty to remain on good terms with its big Eastern neighbor. This meant a foreign policy of strict non‐alignment regarding military alliances and relatively slow integration into the West European economic and political structures (European Economic Community‐European Union, Council of Europe)

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with the tacit approval of the USSR (for an overview of the political history of Finland and its media, see Nordenstreng 2017). Surrounded by the abrupt historical turns of Finland’s political life, the media landscape of the country was relatively abundant and pluralistic throughout the twentieth century. All political parties and civic associations had their respective organs after the war and until the 1960s most newspapers were allied to political parties. Since then, more and more papers gave up their political affiliations, thereby making the press predominantly “non‐political”  –  in practice, commercial and increasingly concentrated. Politically, this meant an overall bourgeois orientation aligned with the Western side of the Cold War divide. Despite such a “bourgeois hegemony,” the media  –  since the 1960s, thanks to a unique reform of public service broadcasting – provided a fairly pluralistic view of society and the world at large. In the international statistics of newspaper copies per thousand inhabitants, Finland held the top position together with Japan and Norway; likewise, the Finnish media system has been rated highly as far as freedom and diversity are concerned (cf. Nordenstreng 2013). Nevertheless, the Finnish media avoided vociferous Cold War propaganda and exercised effective self‐censorship notably in matters concerning the USSR. This informal practice began as the Cold War evolved in the late 1940s, when journalism in Europe and the USA typically adopted an increasingly anti‐Soviet stance, while in Finland, the conservative party president, personally instructed right‐wing editors to accept the geographic realities and refrain from provoking the Soviets. Violations against good neighborly relations were actively monitored in the USSR with Pravda pronouncing the verdicts, which in Finland became a burden for the political right while furthering the cause of the communists and other pro‐Soviet parties. Although no legal regulation was exercised, Finnish media learned to be consistently discreet regarding Cold War issues in general and the USSR and its socialist allies in particular. The resulting self‐imposed restraint or structural self‐censorship was later viewed by right‐wing commentators and scholars as shameful resignation acquiescing to “silenced media” (Salminen 1999), whereas the political center and left typically welcomed it as an honorable and professional way to suppress Western Cold War propaganda, and to exercise a policy of peaceful coexistence between countries with differing socio‐political systems. Finland’s overall policy in the Cold War was later named “Finlandization” – a term introduced by West German right‐wing politicians as a warning against succumbing to Soviet power. However, this buzzword did not travel well in the 1970s, when the USA and the USSR proceeded to disarmament talks and both Eastern and Western European states agreed to the Finnish initiative to hold a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Finland could even present itself as a success story of the Cold War, after enjoying privileged trade with the USSR and the socialist countries of Central Europe. In the context of the CSCE, “Finlandization” could be recommended to the Western media world as a model for a more balanced exchange of information (Kekkonen 1974; Nordenstreng 1976). Balance, impartiality, and bridge‐building were indeed central characteristics of Finnish policy in the Cold War. Accordingly, unlike any other West European country, Finland was a member of both, the Eastern broadcasting association OIRT, and the Western EBU, and Finnish journalist associations were members of both, the Eastern IOJ and the Western IFJ. On the other hand, leading newspaper editors joined the Western IPI without any corollary on the Eastern side. Moreover, behind a more or less courteous face toward the Soviets, the deep structure of the Finnish media and popular culture at large



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was overwhelmingly Western and commercial – more so than their neighbors elsewhere in Scandinavia. There was a Finnish Wild West next to the Soviet Iron Curtain. By and large, the Cold War was anything but a dominant and tangible element in Finland, either in popular consciousness or in the media. It was undeniably a crucial factor in domestic politics and foreign policy, but rather than being a manifest and visible operator, its influence was that of a latent structure beneath the surface – as a largely innocuous soft power. After a bitter war against the USSR and a new political order with clear limits imposed by its Eastern neighbor, the Finnish people were quite content during the Cold War years – officially between the two camps but, in fact, leading a totally Western capitalist life. In post‐Cold War conditions, Finland continued the same basic policy with Russia while taking a decisive step toward the West by joining the European Union in 1995. But the positive legacy of the Cold War is still reflected in public opinion regarding NATO: whereas most of the Finnish political elite – and indeed the media – are sympathetic to NATO membership, an overwhelming majority of the general public prefers to remain non‐aligned.

­Conclusion As the sections above clearly show, there can be no European communication history of the second half of the twentieth century without a strong focus on the Cold War and its implications for media politics, media production, media content, and media use. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, politicians, journalists, and communication researchers were involved in the war of ideologies fought both, between East and West, and within each bloc (Risso 2013, p. 145). Since media were seen as the most appropriate tools for winning hearts and minds, there was no important Eastern or Western message that could be explained outside the Cold War frame of reference. In Franco’s Spain, for example, papers and newsreels insisted on naming communism as evil, targeting both residents and foreign politicians. In Polish‐language media, the Katyn massacre was a taboo, whether the releases were published by the communists in Poland or by their adversaries in the West. However, as seen in both, the German example and the evidence from Poland and elsewhere, audiences were in the first place well aware of the constraints faced by journalists back then. Second, since the political tensions increased the need for current and credible information, in particular Central and Eastern Europeans actually used Western media to get a more comprehensive picture of the situation. Looking at the project European communication history, more comparative research is required to break down the excessive national focus, which characterizes many of the available studies. By themselves, the five countries presented in this chapter suggest a certain degree of common ground with regard to the political use of media on both sides of the Iron Curtain. However, the Cold War manifests itself in different ways in each country, mediated by the prevailing geopolitics as well as by national political tactics. Accordingly, in Spain the Cold War was largely waged on the theme of communism  –  accepting NATO as a shield against it  –  while in Finland the Cold War was regarded as an unfortunate situation that needed to be played down by a strategy of non‐alignment – something that put joining NATO totally out of the question and for a long time positioned even the Council of Europe as too Western an organization. An overall lesson of this exercise is that the impact of the Cold War on media and journalism is far from simple; its proper understanding demands profound knowledge of

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both, the national realities and the international context. One should also avoid presenting the stereotype of the Cold War as a rigid scheme with an impermeable Iron Curtain separating the socialist and capitalist worlds. After all, “[b]eneath the seemingly bipolar structure, there were corporations, organizations, unofficial networks, and individuals interacting, connecting, and communicating” (Mikkonen and Koivunen 2015, p. 3).

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Rawnsley, G.D. (1999). Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Risso, L. (2013). Radio wars: broadcasting in the Cold War. Cold War History 13: 145–152. Rodríguez‐Mateos, A. (2008). Un franquismo de cine. La imagen política del régimen en el noticiario NO‐DO (1943–1959), Rialp. Madrid. Roslyng‐Jensen, P. (2012). From World War to Cold War. Scandinavian media attitudes to the Soviet Union 1945–1948. Scandinavian Journal of History 37: 526–548. Salminen, E. (1999). The Silenced Media: The Propaganda War Between Russia and the West in Northern Europe. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Sanford, G. (2006). The political management and definition of inconvenient truth: massacre, historical truth and its handling by policymaking elites. Paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Session, Nicosia (25–30 April). Schwalbe, C.B. (2005). Jacqueline Kennedy and Cold War propaganda. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 49: 111–127. Seoane, M.‐C. and Sueiro, S. (2004). Una historia de El País y del Grupo Prisa. Barcelona: Plaza & Janés. Siebert, F.S., Peterson, T., and Schramm, W. (1956). Four Theories of the Press. The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Siwek, H. (1970). Czytelnictwo prasy centralnej poza Warszawą. Kraków: OBP. Sinova, J. (1989). La censura de prensa durante el franquismo. Madrid: Espasa‐Calpe. Steinmetz, R. and Viehoff, R. (2004). The programme history of genres of entertainment on GDR television. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 24: 317–325. Thomas, D.C. (2001). The Helsinki Effect. International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tobia, S. (2011). Introduction: Europe Americanized? Popular reception of Western Cold War propaganda in Europe. Cold War History 11: 1–7. Tobia, S. (2013). Did the RAI buy it? The role and limits of American broadcasting in Italy in the Cold War. Cold War History 13: 171–191. Tranche, R.R. and Sánchez‐Biosca, V. (2001). NO‐DO. El tiempo y la memoria. Madrid: Cátedra. Tusell, J. (1977). La oposición democrática al franquismo. Barcelona: Planeta. Webb, A. (2013). Cold War Radio and the Hungarian uprising, 1956. Cold War History 13: 221–238. Webb, A. (2014). London Calling. Britain, the BBC World Service and the Cold War. London: Bloomsbury. Zaragoza, L. (2008). Radio Pirenaica: la voz de la esperanza antifranquista. Madrid: Marcial Pons. Zubov, A.B. (ed.) (2009). Istoriia Rossii. Volume 2 (1939–2007). Moscow: Astrel.

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Authoritarian Media Control in Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Greece After World War II Anke Fiedler, Helena Lima, Emmanuel Heretakis, Balázs Sipos, Juan Antonio García Galindo, and Antonio Cuartero ­Introduction Authoritarian regimes attempt to take control of the public sphere in its entirety, for instance by undermining private and social life with the help of their secret and intelligence services, through recurring public manifestations and parades of all kinds in support of the ruling political elite, and by controlling mass communication. The latter often implies both the total control of domestic media, and the restriction of access to media channels from abroad – be it through moral pressure, technical interference, or by imposing an official ban. This is mainly because media in authoritarian systems are considered to play an integral part in maintaining power structures. The aim is to suppress any information that could counter run prevailing ideological or political interests. For this reason, authoritarian regimes usually establish a media control apparatus that provides the necessary tools to steer, monitor, and control all means of mass communication. At the same time, they create a legal and regulatory environment that is conducive to self‐censorship and repressive in its nature vis‐à‐vis freedom of opinion and expression (Borejsza and Ziemer 2006; Ginsburg and Simpser 2014; Linz 2000; von Saldern 2003; Silberman 1997). While in most Western European countries democratic structures (including press freedom principles) were restored after World War II, in Eastern Europe new authoritarian systems were established. However, also in Western Europe some authoritarian regimes continued or, as in the case of Greece, emerged in the 1970s. In this chapter, we look into the institutional, structural, and legal frameworks of authoritarian media systems based on the example of five states representing four different types of authoritarian systems in post‐World War II Europe: first, the fascist regime in Francoist Spain, second, the corporatist authoritarian regime in Portugal’s Estado Novo (New State), third, the military junta in Greece, and, fourth, communist party dictatorships based on the examples of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Hungary. The selection of countries followed the principle of a “most different systems‐similar outcomes” design, in The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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which we seek to identify similar patterns of media control among otherwise fundamentally different political and communication systems (Esser and Hanitzsch 2012, p. 13). The aim of this comparative approach is threefold: first, we describe the structures of media control in the five respective countries to explore what media control mechanisms were in place, how they worked and how effective they were in the end. Since it was assumed that media had a significant impact on the rise and fall of different authoritarian regimes already in World War I, and after the Nazi rise to power, scholars began to systematically study the role of propaganda (see Arendt 1951; Friedrich and Brzezinski 1965; Lasswell 1927). Today, we can find a variety of studies dealing with communication structures under authoritarian rule. Yet, most are based on individual cases (i.e. Folch‐Serra 2012; Pena‐Rodríguez 2012), and, if following a comparative approach, they are often rooted in other social sciences. They, thus, ignore  –  or only touch upon – the role of mass media in the establishment and legitimization of authoritarianism (i.e. Chilcote 1990; Lewis 2002; Schofield and Levinson 2008), with a few exceptions (i.e. Adinolfi 2012). The present contribution allows us to bridge this gap and to advance the scholarly debate on authoritarian communication by juxtaposing five different regimes. The latter are now part of European history, but they have left an imprint that persists in Europe’s understanding of democracy to this day, if we think of, for instance, recent discussions surrounding media policies in Hungary or Poland (see Batory 2014; EJO 2016). Second, we analyze different communication strategies  –  generally referred to as “propaganda” in the context of authoritarian regimes (see Cull et al. 2003) – that were used by the ruling elites. While mass media in military dictatorships, for instance, usually play a subordinated role in legitimizing the rule of political leaders, the communist ideology aims at creating a new socialist mankind and uses media as a tool to convince “the masses” of the need for a social alternative to capitalism (Voltmer 2013). Third, we explore the question whether or not the aim to monopolize the public sphere was successful. Was there, for example, any (un‐)official counter‐public such as oppositional or transnational media? Doing this, we assume that the regimes allowed for a minimum of loopholes to avoid alienating the population but also that total control of the public sphere was simply impossible. The chapter is divided into three parts: after this introductory overview, we present our five case studies along the main historical lines. Beginning with the Western European authoritarian states and followed by the Eastern European cases, the focus is put on the politically controlled public sphere (i.e. official propaganda and censorship, media control mechanisms, the role of specific media outlets, and legal structures) as well as co‐existing and competing public spheres on the level of (mass) communication. The conclusion not only summarizes the major findings but also highlights broader patterns and frameworks that account for both the similarities and differences between the countries.

­Spain: From the Press Act to a Democratic Constitution The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) led to a break with the constitutional order of the Second Spanish Republic and its democratic code of law. At the peak of the war, Francisco Franco established his regime, imposing with his victory a political and social model based on civil repression and censorship of intellectuals and the media. The blood shed by Spaniards on all sides and the enforced exile of artists, intellectuals, and politicians opposed to the regime emptied the lecture rooms, the publishing houses, the theaters,



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and the press, and set the country back many years (see García Galindo et al. 2002). In 1937, after the creation of the political party Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS) – the sole legal party under the Francoist regime – all other political entities and organizations were dissolved. On 30 January 1938, Franco constituted the first government based on fascism and Catholicism that served henceforth as ideological foundations of the so‐called Nuevo Estado or New State. Only two years after Franco’s death, in 1975, were the first democratic general elections held in Spain.

The Construction of the New State: Ramón Serrano Suñer’s Law of 1938 Control of the media was a fundamental concern in the establishment of the New State model. The Francoist authorities, aware of the importance of the press, radio, and cinema in the construction of a new society as well as of the role played by propaganda in Hitler’s Germany and Italian fascism, did not hesitate to take control of domestic media as one of their first actions. The high level of mobilization brought about by the press during the Second Spanish Republic, and the high level of participation and activism among the warring parties enforced by newspapers and the radio in the first stages of the Civil War, underlined the strategic value of these media (Terrón Montero 1981). Radio Nacional de España (National Radio of Spain), established in Salamanca in 1937 by General José Millán‐Astray, founder and commander of the Spanish Foreign Legion, became the Francoists’ leading radio station during the Civil War. Franco also lost no time in adopting a new Ley de Prensa (Press Act), which came into force in April 1938. Shortly before the enactment, his brother‐in‐law, Ramón Serrano Suñer, was appointed to several high‐ranking positions within both the state and party structures. As the new minister of the interior he presided over the Servicio Nacional de Prensa (National Press Service); at the same time, he was the chief of the FET and JONS National Delegation of Press and Propaganda (Amaya Quer 2013). Suñer was also in charge of the implementation of the new Ley de Prensa, which marked the beginning of systematic repression. It enabled the central power to tighten its grip on the media in every respect. The pluralistic media landscape that once characterized the Second Spanish Republic completely vanished. The once flourishing Spanish journalism of the 1920s and 1930s was replaced by Franco’s propaganda that could be described as anti‐liberal and anti‐communist. The objective was to promote the unity of Spain, fundamentalist Catholicism and social conservatism. Moreover, prior censorship was implemented by the Servicio Nacional de Prensa using an elaborate system of instructions. The minister of the interior was entitled to appoint the directors of the newspapers. The authorities could impose predetermined media content, and a large catalog of sanctions against media professionals was introduced. On the whole, the Press Act was a law that created an environment of permanent surveillance, devoid of any glimmer of journalistic freedom (BOE 1938). Franco’s victory in the Civil War in 1939 allowed for the implementation of the New State’s rules throughout all Spanish territory and, thus, the total control of all media. It was in January the same year, some months before the war ended, when the famous news agency Agencia EFE was founded in Burgos. The state press network Prensa del Movimiento, established in 1940 and later renamed as Red de Periódicos del Movimiento Nacional (Newspaper Network of the National Movement), operated under the auspices

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of the FET, JONS, and National Delegation of Press and Propaganda and controlled dozens of daily and weekly publications. The notion of “national movement” was intended to disguise the factual one‐party rule (Barrera 1995). In 1940, too, the Ley para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo (Law for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism) was enacted, providing the legal basis for the establishment of a special tribunal with the same name. Under the pretext of judicial legitimacy, thousands of people were convicted. The Special Tribunal for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism operated until 1963, its Dissolution Committee until 1971. Along with the respective law, the regime passed other decrees and norms related to “good morals”; at the same time, the Catholic Church applied moral and cultural repression – all with the aim of changing the mindset of Spanish society and of nipping in the bud any sign of criticism against the Francoist dictatorship.

Signs of Liberalization: Fraga’s Law of 1966 Despite the attempts of Gabriel Arias Salgado, minister of information and tourism (1951–1962), to amend the Ley de Prensa of 1938, it was not until 1966, when Manuel Fraga Iribarne, the then head of the ministry, finally replaced the law. The 1960s were characterized by a political liberalization and economic progress. Tourism played an increasing role in the modernization of the country. New diplomatic ties with foreign countries led to the end of the autocracy of the 1940s and 1950s. The introduction of the new Ley de Prensa e Imprenta (Press and Printing Law) could be described as a shift from a “strict media control system” toward a “liberal system of restrictions”: prior censorship was lifted, the freedom to establish newspapers was guaranteed, and editors could now appoint their own directors. New newspapers and periodicals flourished during this transitional period. Magazines such as Triunfo, Cuadernos para el Diálogo or the journal Madrid were established (see Barrera 1995). In 1971, the weekly Cambio 16, an important publication during the transition, was born and the first faculties of information science in Spain were founded. The period of Pío Cabanillas Gallas, minister of information and tourism in Arias Navarro’s cabinet in 1974, was the most liberal during Franco’s regime (García Galindo et al. 2002). At this point, it has to be mentioned that the French and British press, since the end of World War II, exerted an enormous pressure on the Franco regime as did the transnational Radio España Independiente, better known as Pirenaica Radio, which was run by the Spanish Communist Party in exile. Inside the country, there were also attempts to bypass censorship. The political newspaper El Socialista, organ of the Spanish socialists, was illegally published, and the same was true for Mundo Obrero. The illegal press, often closely affiliated to trade unions, played a very active role in supporting the workers’ struggle. In the 1960s, a couple of legal organs appeared to be benefiting from the political “thaw” of this period. Having said that, the regime still had enough power to control the media: it continued, for instance, to use the Registro Oficial de Periodistas (Official Register of Journalists), and a journalist who was expelled from the register was automatically disqualified from practicing the profession. Also, the second article of the former Press Act restricting freedom of expression was still effective. The appointment of León Herrera Esteban as the new minister of information and tourism by the end of 1974 marked a return to a stricter control of the press due to the increasing pressure from the political opposition and media. Between October 1974 and April 1975, 24 publications were



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confiscated and many journalists were prosecuted. Once more, a new law, the Decreto‐ Ley de Prevención del Terrorismo (Decree‐Law of Terrorism Prevention) of August 1975, was used to justify and legitimate acts against the press. After Franco’s death in November 1975, most of the newspapers sent out a message of change and renewal. Even though the transitional period up to the enactment of the Spanish Constitution in December 1978 was marked by the seizure of newspapers, and imprisonments of, and lawsuits against media professionals, Spanish journalism experienced a major qualitative change at that time. The emergence of various newspapers, such as El País, Diario 16, Avui, or El Viejo Topo, reflected the realities of new media pluralism (see Carrillo 2001).

­Portugal: “Preventing the Perversion of Public Opinion” After a coup d’état in 1926, a new regime was established in Portugal know as the Estado Novo (the New State) as of 1933. Under António de Oliveira Salazar, who ruled the country for more than four decades, Portugal became a corporatist authoritarian state built on a repressive system that influenced all aspects of society. The freedom of the press was constrained by both a censorship apparatus and a restrictive legal framework. Boundaries were continuously redefined, and journalistic practices were constantly under negotiation; both made the censors’ actions even more effective. The 1960s were marked by a gradual process of liberalization. Incapacitated due to an accident, Salazar was replaced by Marcelo Caetano in 1968. He was overthrown in 1974 during the so‐called Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution), putting an end to the Estado Novo regime.

The Media Under Salazar’s Rule: Decades of Legal Uncertainty (1926–1960s) The new military government quickly evolved toward a conservative dictatorship under the rule of Salazar. Censorship played a role from the very beginning. In the early years, it was exerted by the military in a non‐organized way and without a legal framework. The purpose was mainly to deter the republican press from critical reporting and political disruption. Many opposition publications were suspended and their supporters and sponsors persecuted. With Salazar’s rise, a constitutional law was approved in 1933. Civic rights and freedom of speech were mentioned, but often could not be enjoyed. In spite of the promise to introduce special legislation, Salazar never promulgated a press law. Yet, the grip on the media was tight: due to the legal vacuum and the ambiguity of rules, journalists were in a state of constant alert (de Carvalho 1999). Having said that, the lack of clear guidelines sometimes allowed for small surprises such as when newspapers wrote about international awards for Portuguese authors whose books were forbidden in their own country. Censorship was regulated by Decree 22469 that was issued in 1933 and effective until 1972 when the first press law was approved by Salazar’s successor Marcelo Caetano. According to the decree, censorship was necessary to “prevent the perversion of public opinion as a social force” and to defend the latter “from all factors that may misguide it against truth, justice, morals, efficient administration and the common good” (cited in Spirk 2014, pp. 10–11). Soon, other legal texts followed. The aim was to build a system of surveillance targeting both press and culture. According to Azevedo (1999), censorship

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in the Estado Novo was a” policy of spirits” and its mission was to silence any voices that could undermine the legitimacy of the regime and its values. Censors were mainly recruited among the ranks of retired military with low cultural capital. It happened that they censored and suppressed information out of ignorance, mistrust, or lack of understanding, and some decisions were taken in a completely arbitrary manner (de Carvalho 1999). During almost five decades of existence, the regime reorganized the system of censorship several times: responsibilities were shared and shifted between different institutions and actors. In 1944, for instance, the Propaganda Secretariat for Information, Popular Culture and Tourism was created from Decree 33545/44; propaganda and censorship were now placed under one roof. Depending on its political agenda, the regime tightened or loosened its level of control ad libitum. News consisted of a mix of information and propaganda, and hardly met the public’s expectations. All newspaper headlines and articles were remarkably similar, though some editors tried to convey their messages in a less propagandist and more neutral fashion. Clandestine publications, such as the communist newspaper Avante, were being circulated but their circulation was very limited. Leaflets played a pivotal role during elections, strikes or student protests, but their distribution was dangerous. Controversial matters, in particular, were controlled or censored such as articles on Portugal’s colonial war. In 1965, the Portuguese Writers’ Association was abolished because Luandino Vieria, a well‐ known anti‐colonial war writer had been awarded a prestigious prize for fiction. The press was the main source of information for the elite and urban population, as it was considered as more relevant for fomenting public’opinion making. During the Estado Novo, newspapers gained an almost unrivaled importance, and even radio and television could not challenge the quasi‐monopolistic position of newspapers. At the same time, the leadership delayed any attempts to modernize the press, and the level of literacy remained extremely low, which reinforced the impression that the population was at the mercy of Salazar’s henchmen. In the early 1970s more than 30% of the population was illiterate. Portuguese public radio was established in the 1930s and, shortly after, complemented by the Catholic Church’s Rádio Renascença, both were tightly controlled and censored (Cristo 2005). Salazar intentionally delayed the launch of television as he mistrusted this new technology. It was eventually introduced in 1957, thanks to the efforts of Marcelo Caetano who recognized the potential of the new medium. Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) was a public service company that started with a small budget and only a few hours of airtime. Television, too, was strictly controlled and since the technical capacities were limited, the new medium was not able to unfold its magic. Under this tight surveillance, the internalization of rules and regulations became the norm, and self‐censorship among journalists was widespread. The newsrooms turned into very bureaucratic organizations with little room for personal initiative. Written directives that were sent via the pre‐censored Portuguese news agency Agência de Notícias de Informaçōes (ANI), together with phone calls from the Censorship Commission, contributed to the monotonous and stereotyped image of Portuguese journalism by the end of the 1960s (Lima 2012). Criticizing the regime, its political leaders or other public personalities was taboo. Any events that related to opposition movements were eradicated from the official public sphere and so were counter‐narratives. Apart from political news, topics relating to “good morals” or religion often faced the “blue pencil” (as the censors in Lisbon used a blue pencil, this became a general expression for censorship). In fact, sometimes Salazar intervened in person by telephoning newspaper directors. Other types of sanctions included economic pressures (Cabrera 2006; Lima 2012).



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The “Marcelist Spring” (1960s–1974) In the latter years of Salazar’s government, things began to change. Most newspapers, traditionally owned by family companies, were gradually bought  –  partially or completely – by banks and powerful Portuguese economic consortia. This change of ownership brought about new investments and a modernization of the press as a whole with young and eager journalists entering the profession and promoting change. Under the rule of Marcelo Caetano, during the final years of the regime, this trend was further accelerated. Caetano was increasingly looking for a close alliance with journalists. Media Restrictions media, however, were maintained. During this liberal phase called the Marcelist Spring, some journalists, politicians, and intellectuals debated the idea of a new press law. Eventually, they presented a draft proposal to the National Assembly, which was interpreted as a provocation by the political leadership. In 1972, Caetano responded with his own press law reflecting his vision of media policies. Although this press law paved the way for a less rigid censorship, nothing really changed. In the eyes of the ruling elite, the country simply was not ready for free speech (Cabrera 2006; Lima 2013). Unlike Salazar, Caetano viewed media as allies and used them to construct the image of a charismatic leader, educator, and father of the nation. Caetano was also the first to use television as a strategic weapon of communication. He launched a program called Conversas em Família (Talks with the family) in which he addressed the nation on topics related to current Portuguese policies. However, the “soft version of censorship” did not last for long as the regime started to fall apart, and there was an urgent need to silence opposition to the still ongoing colonial war. The new press law of 1972 was prepared for these “worst‐case scenarios”: according to its chapter II, any public writings or images were forbidden “that could favor movements aiming to undermine the integrity of the national territory or to call for armed struggle, as well as social unrest, even if without inciting an immediate disturbance of public order”. This and other examples left no doubt that the logic of the 1972 press law was similar to the censorship apparatus of 1933. The National Secretariat of Information was replaced by the Ministry of Information and Tourism and the Censorship Committee was renamed the Preliminary Examination Commission. But those were simply changes of name, and the regime’s objectives remained the same (Lima 2013). Only after a military coup in 1974, the Movimento das Forças Armadas (Armed Forces Movement), responsible for the so‐called Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution), introduced a new press law that established press freedom and laid the first stone for a new democratic order in Portugal.

­Greece: Propaganda in Disguise of Consumerism, Kitsch, and Greek Christianity The last parliamentary elections in Greece, held in February 1964, culminated in a triumph for the Center Union party, Enosi Kentrou, an assemblage of smaller political parties led by George Papandreou. In April 1967, Greek democracy was overthrown by a group of middle (colonels) and low‐ranking officers who established a military dictatorship. Two years later, the country was dismissed from the Council of Europe. In 1973, the School of Law at Athens University was occupied by students, followed by an

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uprising at the Athens Polytechnic School which resulted in many dead and wounded. The events marked the beginning of the end of the Greek junta that eventually collapsed in July 1974, only seven years after its seizure of power.

After the Coup d’État: The Greek Media Under the New Military Rule The print media were among the first victims of the new regime. The dictatorship closed down quite a number of newspapers and magazines, took into custody several journalists and applied a sizeable number of repressive measures against. It censored the newspapers that remained in operation (with the exception of those on friendly terms with the regime) and issued, at the same time, an Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books). Only a small number of books could defy censorship. During July 1970, the Dekaohtó Kímena (18 Texts) were published. The book contained exactly 18 texts, written by very well known and widely acclaimed Greek men of letters, with strong and proven democratic convictions. Its sensational effect both in Greece and abroad led to the publishing of the Néa Kímena (New Texts) in February 1971, and subsequently to an explosion of book publishing. The fact that the television had already begun in February 1967 was very convenient for the regime, and it made every effort to exploit it further. A few months after its inauguration, TV was placed under the censorship regime of the colonels, which had been already established. Its logotype, the unadorned capital with a Pindaric hymn, was promptly replaced by the phoenix, the soldier and the military march, all of them being visible and audible symbols of the dictatorship. A large number of inexperienced people were recruited for senior positions. The new medium was an example of the duality of power: The public state broadcaster Ethniko Idryma Radiofonias or Ε.Ι.Ρ (National Radio Foundation) was answerable to the Minister of State, while the military TV and radio station Ypiresia Enimeroseos Enoplon Dynameon or Υ.ΕΝ.Ε.Δ. (Information Services of the Armed Forces) was answerable to the Minister for the Armed Forces. The primacy of the first of these two ministries was abolished to a degree, due to the power of the Minister for the Armed Forces, since he had the overall control of the new medium, addressing a significant part of the TV audience (Heretakis 1997). Television brought to the fore a new reality for its audience which had started increasing in leaps and bounds, thus helping to create a mass audience. Advertising had already begun to utilize the potential of television, by educating its audiences about the various products being advertised. Indirectly, the military dictatorship was promoting the initial phase of consumer society as compensation for the suppression of civil liberties and rights. Owing to censorship, the content of the print media showed no particular differences, while the concept of the entertainment program was established as a key factor of TV content. Furthermore, foreign TV programs carried subtitling in Greek, on the condition that they were carefully screened by the censorship authorities before going on air. Those foreign programs promoted the norms of “proper” consumer behavior, still entirely unknown by most Greeks at that time (Heretakis 1997; see also Heretakis 2015). During the junta years, media control was absolute; there was no possibility of expressing – in any conceivable way – any other view, opinion, or thought even slightly diverging from the junta’s policy. Media control mechanisms included the state information services directly answerable to the prime minister, and the ministry for the press, directly responsible for media censorship. For the practical application of the above, the junta did not hold back from mobilizing its henchmen from state information service supplemented by those of the Greek Military Police. In fact, employees of the prime minister’s office, and ultimately the prime minister himself, were responsible for censorship.



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Legislation related to the publishing and dissemination of news was absolute; fines for voicing any oppositional ideas were draconian, and imprisonment for an indefinite number of years, accompanied by heinous torture, was among the usual practices. The junta’s posture was summarized by one of its highest cadres, Colonel Pattakos: “Torture is necessary for the protection of our civilization” (quoted in Anastasiades 2001). The only possible ways to express dissident voices was through writing on the walls of buildings and houses (a night‐time job), by anecdotes castigating the junta, with a vast mouth‐to‐mouth circulation across the entire country, or texts and expressions in any form whatsoever – in the media, in plays and movies, or in music using a language full of allusions, indirect references, disguised messages and hidden meanings which the public understood very well. Just as when Greece was occupied by Nazi Germany (1941–1945), the Greek public developed a strong preference for listening to foreign radio stations. During the junta years they listened to the BBC, Radio Moscow, and Deutsche Welle.

A Military Junta Devoid of Ideology The number of newspapers was significantly reduced during the seven‐year period of the junta. The totality of the Left‐oriented newspapers ceased to circulate from the very first day of the junta regime, while others with a pro‐junta affiliation were promoted by the regime, such as Néa Politeía (the organ of the junta), Eléftheros Kósmos, and Simeriná. At the same time, the quantity of printing paper produced (in tons) showed an almost continuous increase (except for 1970), suggesting a growing use of printing paper for propaganda reasons, reaching its zenith (108 tons of printing paper) during 1973, the junta’s penultimate year in power. The disseminated news proved to be a continuous reiteration of governmental activities in the print media, on the radio, but especially on television. Such outspoken governmental propaganda did not achieve a wide range of followers  –  in spite of the attentive endeavors of the dictatorship. The overt contradiction was continuously present: while newspapers contained photographs of policemen dragging students by the hair, at the same time, TV news reported that the government fully respected the sanctity of universities. Gradually, TV viewer reduced their interest in political information and concentrated their attention on sports news and popular entertainment (Heretakis 2010). In fact, in spite of the Goebbels‐type theoreticians of the regime and their inventiveness in outright lies, falsifications and naivetés, the junta was completely devoid of ideology. What existed was mainly a mythology that borrowed elements from the most backward, reactionary, and conservative circles of the Greek Grand Idea (leading to the complete destruction of the Greek army in Asia Minor back in 1922), nationalism, anticommunism, religiosity, and the petit‐bourgeois triptychs of Tranquility‐Order‐Security and Homeland‐Religion‐Family, which had been significantly deprived of their social and historical foundations and context. In a very clumsy manner, there had been an attempt to unite all of the above in the dogma of Greek Christian ideology and the slogan “Greece for Christian Greeks.” The ridiculous anticommunism of the colonels was not in a position to inspire those under their rule and thereby to extract from them even a slice of consent that would legitimize their power. The regime did not stand for a social class or a social group. Its ideological scheme was utilized as a necessary framework for the preservation of a certain social and economic status established by the junta. What remained was the imposition of a fruitless anti‐communist mindset, systematically excluding every non‐reactionary element, person, and organization, from every possible aspect of social or cultural life (Sefertzis 1975).

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An additional (and at the same time) key element that had been a junta legacy was the ever‐increasing utilization of kitsch, harmonically combined with the increased use of entertainment content in the vast majority of the TV content. This was to create a widespread taste for kitsch content in the years to come. Kitsch was combined with the “civilization” of cheapness and vulgarity, expressed at a later time via trash‐TV content, also widely popular among the audiences of other European countries. Furthermore, what came out through the ads of the time was a new sexuality combined with sensuality, expressed through the dominant aesthetics of the time via an ever‐expanding popular culture. Sensuality and sexuality were integral parts of the climate of advertising of the period, and this was embedded in the TV entertainment content, which was – in more ways than one – a reincarnation of the older soap operas (Heretakis 2010, pp. 599–600). What the dictatorship bequeathed to the Greek people were grains of mental and artistic corruption, along with financial corruption and cultural cheapness, but finally it unintentionally created very favorable conditions for cooperation between the collective expression of intellectuals and the flourishing of the arts and various publications, where a privileged position was held by the traditional and the new Left after the collapse of the regime. Already from the summer of 1971, “dangerous books,” newspapers, movies and theatrical performances helped create a new mentality. As the size of the reading public and the audiences participating in these cultural and artistic performances increased, so too did the segments of the population directly opposing the regime. The resistance to the despotic and anti‐cultural regime of the military junta culminated in the Athens Polytechnic School uprising in November 1973. The main slogan of the student movement was: “Bread‐Education‐Freedom.”

­The GDR: Collective State and Economic Interests as Supreme Guidelines The GDR was a child of World War II. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the country was divided into four occupation zones, namely a US, a British, a French, and a Soviet zone. In 1949, the latter became what was known as the GDR for more than 40 years. Being a member of the Eastern Bloc and a close ally of the Soviet Union, the case of the GDR is particularly interesting: Against the backdrop of the politically, socially, and ideologically divided German nation, the communist state constantly had to compete for the minds and hearts of the (East) German population against its economically more successful Western counterpart, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This continuous struggle shaped national policies and eventually resulted in the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The Iron Curtain could stop the “brain drain” and decrease in population, but it could not change the fact that the two German nations shared the same language, culture, history, and in many cases, family ties. Also, for these reasons, almost a year after the fall of the Wall in November 1989, both German states were reunified, and the GDR was absorbed into the German Federal Republic.

The Ulbricht Era (1949–1971): Media as Diplomatic Weapons The establishment of a media control and licensing system dates back to 1945 when the East German territory was still under the control of the Soviet Military Administration. While pre‐censorship was abolished in 1947, most of the Soviet zone’s media control



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structures survived to varying degrees until after the foundation of the GDR in 1949. Important players at the top of the hierarchy included two institutions on a party level and one on a state level, that is the Abteilung für Agitation und Propaganda (Department for Agitation and Propaganda) of the Central Committee and the Agitationskommission (Agitation Commission) at the Central Committee’s Politburo (both controlled and guided by the Secretary for Agitation and Propaganda) as well as the governmental Presseamt (Press Office) at the Council of Ministers. Not only did the East German leadership carry on the inherited dual system of party and state institutions until 1989, it also continued the practice of issuing instructions for media, which had been established after the end of World War II. Various units of the Central Committee of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (SED) (Socialist Unity Party) as well as ministries and mass organizations generated these instructions and forwarded them to the Department for Agitation and Propaganda. There, they were centrally collected and then dispatched to the media outlets, either in written form as telegrams or discussed in meetings in the so‐called weekly sessions of argumentation. The purpose of these argumentations was threefold: first, “to articulate the party line for the upcoming weeks,” second, “to circulate a list of taboo themes and words, which were not to be published in the GDR media,” and, third, “to mete out specific criticism or praise for individual organizations that had or had not fulfilled the expectations of the party’s elite over the past week” (Boyer 2005, p. 133). While all newspapers in the GDR were officially controlled by the SED or by the SED‐affiliated “block parties,” television, radio, and the central news agency Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (General German News Service) were nominally state‐run. In reality, however, they, too, were bound to the service of the SED and took direct orders from the party (Fiedler 2014). Media control during the era of Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the SED, was very much focused on issues related to the GDR and the FRG. The leadership had been coming under great pressure due to the threat posed by the increasing flow of refugees from East to West Germany. All efforts were geared at convincing the population of the socialist ideal and at dissociating it from the West, which found its representation in the instructions, and in the steered reporting of media. After the building of the Berlin Wall, the economic and political system of the GDR was consolidated, but the new political realities had caused the GDR a serious loss of face on the international scene, and it started to look for political support and economic cooperation with states that were not affiliated with either the Eastern or Western blocs. The GDR tried to gain diplomatic recognition in particular from the new nation states in Africa, and in Asia, and it succeeded to a certain extent. Instructions to media were adapted accordingly focusing now on issues such as Western imperialism, decolonization, and new friendships with Arab, African, or Asian leaders. Like in many other socialist countries, the GDR’s media system, too, was based on Lenin’s theory of the press stating that media should be “collective propagandists,” “collective agitators,” and “collective organizers” (Wilke 2009). Still, in the absence of a democratic electoral process, the GDR rulers had to seek a measure of legitimacy via public communication. They, furthermore, needed to find justifications for the split of the German nation into two entities and for the poor economic achievements of the GDR in comparison to the West. The GDR ruling elite used media, first and foremost, to pursue their political objectives – and those were subject to change. In other words, political and economic interests often prevailed over socialist values and ideology. It was possible to observe in the mirror of the press what kind of internal and external issues the country was facing. The SED endeavored to set up artifacts in the segment of the public sphere it could control,

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namely the media output, to serve its own interests while it had to account for the fact that more than 80% of the GDR population could receive West German television and radio broadcasts. After several unsuccessful attempts to restrict the reception of Western broadcasts in the early 1960s, the use of West German television and radio, both continuously providing an alternative view of the world, was widely tolerated with very few exceptions. This helps to explain why the communist elite in the GDR held a tight grip on unpleasant news that could play into the hands of the “class enemy.” The rulers in East Berlin constantly feared that Western electronic media could make use of negative news in their reporting against the GDR (Fiedler 2014).

The Honecker Years (1971–1989): From International Breakthrough to Political Stagnation The era of Erich Honecker, secretary general since 1971, heralded an international breakthrough when the GDR entered the United Nations Organization in 1973 and established diplomatic relations with various Western states. In the course of the 1970s, the SED was fantasizing about having achieved legitimacy: consequently, it indulged in publishing a large amount of socialist rhetoric in the media. The decline of the socialist camp in Eastern Europe, starting with the upheaval in Poland in 1981, the increasing indebtedness of the GDR, and the election of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, up to the street protests in 1989, ended the time of socialist slogans and catchphrases in the news coverage. During that last phase, the GDR had to seek financial support, and it had to import consumer goods from the capitalist world to survive its economic stagnation. Unsurprisingly, instructions relating to the Western world and the FRG (especially critical ones!) lost their relevance in the Honecker era compared to the Ulbricht years. During the 1980s, the secretary general struggled with internal crises: nearly two‐thirds of all instructions to media dealt with domestic issues. Honecker himself even took time to draft announcements, commentaries, and articles for the leading media outlets. The SED mouthpiece Neues Deutschland (New Germany), in particular, became a victim of his obsession with controlling the news. In all its publications, the GDR leadership made every effort to suppress any reporting of critical information relating to the crisis. At the same time, the SED attempted to silence the voices of opponents and critics in the Eastern bloc (Fiedler and Meyen 2015a). Of course, possibilities remained to discuss problems and to form opinions that diverged from the published views. This happened within the family, with friends, under the auspices of the churches, and via outlets of the “counter‐public sphere” such as ecclesiastical or samizdat publications (i.e. underground publications) with small circulations and very limited outreach. Nevertheless, the wave of protests that caused the end of SED rule was boosted also by the fact that reality and media fictions had grown further apart (Fiedler and Meyen 2015b).

­Hungary: The Media Between Communist Virtues and Libertarian Efforts Hungary was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945; along with other countries, it became part of the Soviet bloc in 1948 until its collapse in 1989. Two different kinds of socialist media systems existed in Hungary during these 40 years: the first one replicated



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the Stalinist model of an extremely centralized system under total control; the second one, under the influence of de‐Stalinization in the Soviet Union, epitomized a somewhat more liberalized and Westernized stance. The transition from the first media system to the second one was marked by the revolution of 1956. At that time, a democratic media system emerged but was brought to an abrupt end in the years of retaliation after 1956 when media again came under total political control.

The Establishment of a Stalinist Media Model (1948–1956) In the years 1948–1949 the communist party Magyar Dolgozók Pártja (Hungarian Workers’ Party) established a Stalinist type of dictatorship. At that time, media’s major role was to convey the party directives, to propagate its politics to strengthen the legitimacy of the communist leadership, and to educate the population on the values of a new social order (Jowett and O’Donnell 1999, pp. 222–225). For this reason, the party established a media control apparatus that included several institutions on a party and a state level. The system of rules was clear. The media had to follow both the Marxist‐ Leninist ideology and the political party line. Every journalist was obliged to act upon those maxims without exception; therefore, and consequently, the Soviet type of journalism education was introduced in Hungary. Also, all publishing houses, film studios and theaters were turned into party or party‐state properties. In accordance with the so‐ called nomenclature system, chief editors and directors as well as high‐ranking journalists of national media outlets were appointed by the party’s Central Committee while the leaders of local media outlets were appointed by local party authorities. Oral and written directives were issued by the Agitációs és Propaganda Osztály (Department for Agitation and Propaganda) of the Party and the State Information Office; both institutions also checked whether or not media followed these orders. Journalists were intimidated by show trials, the imprisonment of colleagues, and by forced relocations as warnings of potential punishments for a “political mistake” (Sükösd 2000, pp. 125–127). Entertainment media were also part of political indoctrination: feature films, socialist musicals or children’s novels asserted the superiority of socialism and the new socialist mankind over the capitalist world. Western entertainment was banned, and so was Western music, such as jazz (Sükösd 2000). The use of oppositional or foreign media was prohibited. Every day, workers were supposed to read and discuss collectively the articles of the national communist mouthpiece Szabad Nép at work. In short, communist media were an integral part of the propaganda machine, and their aim was to mobilize society as a whole. Moreover, they created an extensive personality cult of Stalin, and the Hungarian party leader Mátyás Rákosi. Unsurprisingly, despite official bans, international broadcasters grew in popularity. The US‐financed and Munich‐based Radio Free Europe (RFE) “quickly became a cause célèbre of international broadcasting,” in particular during the 1956 Hungarian uprising (Webb 2013, p. 222).

A New Media Model After De‐Stalinization (1956–1989) After the revolution of 1956 and a transitional period marked by severe repression, the communist party, renamed Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt (Hungarian Socialist Workers Party), restructured both the political, and the media system. In the eyes of the party leaders, the consolidation of power was successful since no new “rebellion” against

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state‐socialism stood on the horizon. During this so‐called period of de‐Stalinization, a new state‐socialist media system was established. While it was still characterized by propaganda for the new leadership and political taboos, also many non‐Marxist media outlets emerged in the 1960s, such as weeklies, quarterlies, magazines, feature films and books, as the communist leaders came to realize the importance of “high culture.” While the party continued to control the media and the official public sphere, the leadership tended to be more tolerant of alternative ideas, as long as they did not counter the prevailing political and ideological philosophy. Different from the pre‐1956 media system, the rules were no longer clear and evident but the party distinguished between mainstream (Marxist‐Leninist) and alternative (non‐Marxist) media; both became part of the public sphere. In party jargon, the latter were called “tolerated” media outlets. And there was a third category: illegal productions. The borders between the three were hard to define and tended to blur, just as they did on the political level: the political spectrum of the leadership ranged from conservatives to reformers, and from moderate nationalists and technocrats to agrarian and industrial lobbies. Resulting from these diverse political tendencies, there was some sort of critical debate regarding media control and the three already mentioned categories (especially the concept of “tolerated media”) among the party leaders. Consequently, media policies were subject to constant change. Authorities and media professionals even negotiated about rules and about what did or did not constitute a taboo topic. In the post‐1956 era, media still belonged to the party and the state, and the nomenclature system was maintained. But the party leadership showed some more flexibility: many journalists entered the profession and occupied posts on the senior level even without a party card (Sükösd 2000, pp. 132–133). Western rock, pop, and jazz were now broadcast on Hungarian radio and television, and so were Western feature films and TV series. The system of oral and written directives was kept in place, but the practice of issuing instructions diminished somewhat. Instead, post‐censorship became the new norm: media were now being monitored according to what they had already disseminated. Also the terror against journalists was stopped, but editors and other senior staff, such as theater directors, were still being dismissed; theater plays could be banned, and authors could be prevented from publishing their work. Hence, those who fell into disgrace were excluded from the official public sphere. At the same time, the secret police infiltrated both the media, and the cultural scene. Resulting from the limited journalistic autonomy on the one side, and the softening of penalties on the other, many journalists, theater and film directors as well as publishers engaged in discussions regarding the limits of the official public sphere under party control, sparking new debates about taboos, regulations, and so on. Those who joined these illustrious ranks risked their jobs, but by adhering to professional values instead of political standards, they gained in both reputation and recognition among their fellows. This led to the emergence of an opposition within the official media sector, which became increasingly important during the early 1980s (Sipos 2013, pp. 90–92). While mainstream media reached millions of households – because of affordable prices for books and newspapers both with high circulation numbers, as well as prime time TV and radio programs – access to the “tolerated” media remained restricted. News about sensitive topics on the radio was limited to night‐time programming. Newspaper circulations were low, regardless of audience expectations. Movies, plays, and art were part of the public sphere too, but the population could only enjoy them in small film clubs or cinemas, experimental theaters, or exhibition halls in small towns (Radnóti 2011).



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As mentioned earlier, there were other attempts to break the party’s monopoly over the public sphere, both from the inside and from the outside. Several international radio broadcasters, such as the BBC or Voice of America, were available in Hungary and provided an alternative view albeit with certain limitations (Webb 2013). The most popular Western radio was RFE. According to Hungarian polls, more than 20% of the adult population regularly listened to RFE in the early 1980s (Hann 1989, pp. 47–50); Western polls reported up to 60% (Johnson and Parta 2010, p. 142). Apart from that, there was the samizdat; the most important periodical Beszélő (The Speaker) was first published in 1981. In its early days, it oscillated between 1,500 and 2,000 copies; later it increased in importance and reached 8,000 copies by 1989. Although Beszélő played its part in the radicalization of many journalists from the legal media sector, the “tolerated” media outlets were still the most important oppositional media channels in the 1980s. The circulation of the legal review Mozgó Világ (The World in Motion), for instance, reached 13,000 copies before it was suspended for three months, and its editors were removed due to the periodical’s oppositional tendency (Falk 2003, pp. 130–135). Thus, in the long run, the liberalization of the media sector facilitated and fostered the emergence of counter‐publics. “Tolerated” media offered an alternative way of thinking and another view on the world (Sipos 2010). This cultural resistance was supported by Western radio stations and the samizdat. In the meantime, the political leadership maintained control over the official public sphere represented by mainstream Marxist‐Leninist media.

­Conclusion The authoritarian regimes discussed in this chapter emerged from years of war (Spain, Hungary, and the GDR) or political crisis and instability (Greece and Portugal). Despite their ideological and political differences, the establishment of an authoritarian type media system in each of the countries showed several similarities throughout. The regime leaders recognized the importance of media as propaganda tools either due to their experiences from previous wars or crises, or because they were inspired by the propaganda machines of other European regimes, such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or Fascist Italy. For this reason, from the very beginning, in each of the countries, media were placed under the direct control of the state. The new leaderships established sophisticated systems of media control with various institutions at different levels that were in charge of censorship measures, of sanctioning journalists, and issuing specific instructions to media outlets. Perhaps the most striking similarity between the five states is the duality of media control mechanisms on a state and party level (in Greece: military level). The reason for this duality of structures may have stemmed from the need to simulate governmental sovereignty – and, thus, some sort of “democratic legitimacy” through an ostensible separation of powers (which can be observed elsewhere, for instance, in the field of law). In all countries, the steering of media became a “top‐level issue” as it involved the top political leaders, be it the prime minister of Portugal who personally telephoned the newsrooms, or the East German secretary general who drafted newspaper articles himself or the Greek prime minister who monitored the compliance with censorship regulations. However, and more importantly, there was nothing static about media control in any of these authoritarian states. There were always times, when the regimes tightened their

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grip on media, especially after their seizure of power, and before their decline and fall. And there were times, when they were more lenient toward the press. This particularly so after the regimes had passed their “half‐way mark.” Maybe at one point the political elites felt more comfortable and secure and, thus, were less eager to control the media. Other reasons may be found in the overall changing political climate, in the establishment of diplomatic relations enforcing the adherence to international law, and in the emergence of human rights movements in many democratic countries of the world. International pressures on non‐democratic states increased constantly during the 1960s and even more so during the 1970s. Last but not least, in none of the five countries could the ruling authorities take total control over the public sphere. Of course, the regimes were able to steer mass media, but there were always ways to bypass official barriers, for instance, through illegal newspapers, literature, leaflets, writings on the wall, or – as in the cases of the GDR, Hungary or Greece – by transnational media and international broadcasting. With regard to the latter, we can find one of the major differences between the five media systems. In spite of their authoritarian nature, the Western states of Portugal, Spain, and Greece were part of the Western bloc. Portugal was even a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); Greece joined the alliance in 1952. International broadcasting ventures, such as RFE or Radio Liberty, specifically targeted countries in the Eastern communist bloc. And there is another difference: while the media systems in Western authoritarian states, in particular Spain and Portugal, were based on legal codes or decrees legitimizing control over the media, the communist dictatorships mainly relied on ideological arguments (class struggle, anti‐fascism, etc.) rather than on legal principles.

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13

The Rise of Television

Institutionalization and the Forming of National Audiences Andreas Fickers, Dana Mustata, and Anne‐Katrin Weber

­Introduction Television has occupied a central place in people’s communication environment for more than 70 years now. It has changed the way people perceive the world and has affected their daily lives in acting as a timer for media consumption habits and domestic rituals. This chapter aims at reconstructing key moments and factors in the complex process of the emergence and development of television as a new means of mass communication. Using a comparative and transnational approach, we argue that this process has to be analyzed and described by using a multi‐dimensional framework, emphasizing the different temporalities and spatial performances of television as a historical phenomenon and actor. By looking at the many histories of television using a European lens, this chapter demonstrates the need for a methodological approach in television history and historiography that transgresses the national framework without neglecting the importance of the state as a structural agent in the formation, regulation, and normative or ideological framing of television as a means of communication. By using historical examples from a broad range of different European countries – from northern to southern, eastern to western Europe – we propose a historical reading of television that breaks with the master narratives of television being first and foremost an instrument of national community building and socialization. Instead, we argue that the history of television is characterized by a constant negotiation of its technical, economic, political, social and cultural identities and functions, thereby emphasizing the intrinsic hybridity of the medium as a technology and a cultural form. This argument will be presented and developed in three steps. In a first part, we look at the many births of television in popular imaginations of nineteenth‐century science‐ fiction writers, laboratories of inventors, and corporations. This includes public discourses about the miracle of seeing at a distance and how they have co‐shaped the cultural construction of television as a new means of communication. In a second step, we focus on the complex process of how television as a “technology of attraction” was The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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domesticated and gradually turned into a new mass medium. This phase was characterized by a continuous negotiation of the medial identity of the new medium with regards to aesthetics, scheduling, and audiences, as well as norms and values that were inscribed into the institutional setting of television – reflecting the power relations at stake. Finally, the chapter pays specific attention to the transnational performances of television during the Cold War, showing the many trans‐border phenomena that characterized East–West relationships in this period of asymmetrical interdependencies. This unfamiliar view on the complex geographies of television in times of ideological dichotomy aims at problematizing the notions of “Western” or “Socialist” television cultures by demonstrating the similarity of, and intense exchanges between, television productions on both sides of the “airy curtain.”

­The Many Births of Television Within television historiography, early television occupies a particular place. Research on pre‐1940s technologies and cultural practices is most often conducted independently from studies of television’s post‐war institutions and programs and, inversely, historians of television broadcasting rarely look at the decades preceding regular television services. Opening with a brief discussion of television’s archaeology, this first paragraph aims at connecting the two historical narratives and discussing how pre‐war developments actively shaped television’s institutionalization after World War II. It highlights television’s long history as a multifaceted medium and briefly describes the political, institutional, and economic determinants leading to television’s definition as a broadcasting medium for domestic use. Adopting a transnational perspective, it proposes an overview of television’s many histories from the nineteenth century to the late 1930s.

Inventing Television in the Nineteenth Century The technological and social project of “seeing at a distance” dates back to the late nineteenth century, when first televisual devices are imagined in the wake of recent innovations in transportation and communication. In particular telegraphy and the introduction of telephonic transmission and reception stimulated the writers’ and inventors’ imagination, who presented numerous drafts in the specialized and general press, as well as in  popular (science‐fiction) literature (Müller 2000; Uricchio 2005). Flourishing in Germany, Great Britain, and other Western countries, televisual utopias and research testified to a transnationally shared imaginary on ubiquitous and instantaneous communication. Throughout the nineteenth century, the boundaries between scientific invention and fictitious creation remained fluid and both, the scientific as well as the literary production, constituted a mutually influencing horizon of expectations concerning the near future of ubiquitous communication (Sturken, Thomas, and Ball‐Rokeach 2004). The devices’ conceptual core resided in the simultaneous transmission and reception of audiovisual content rather than in the archiving and storage of information. For writers and inventors alike, “seeing at a distance” is defined as a mediated presence of absent places and people that connects geographically distant “here and nows.” This centrality of “liveness” for television’s definition translates its affinity with other media for instantaneous communication, and derives from a transnationally shared context of scientific research and public debates that produced collective expectations and fears in relation to



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technological innovation stemming from the second industrial revolution (Smil 2005, pp. 21–27). The main televisual paradigms such as ubiquity and immediacy are explicitly linked to the experience of modern life and responded or interacted with the processes of “time‐space compression” observed in industrialized societies (Erikson 2001; Borscheid 2004). While the propositions for television systems flourished and the consensus concerning the theoretical blueprint of “seeing at a distance” is broad, the early schemes have in common their impracticability: the realization of instantaneous transmission of an image remains technically challenging. This slow development of concrete machines, however, did not curb the collective imaginary concerning ubiquitous communication whose applications and benefits were predicted and widely discussed (Galili 2015).

Television’s Technologies, Images, and Spaces in the Interwar Period The visionary interest in television as an object for science‐fiction authors was re‐launched after a slowing down due to World War I, and from the mid‐1920s, the demonstration of working television cameras and receivers became frequent. Aiming at the general public, newspapers and magazines discussed the medium’s progress in Europe and the United States (Sewell 2014). Furthermore, television was regularly demonstrated at industrial fairs and international exhibitions (Weber 2016). During the interwar period, the protean devices developed by independent inventors as well as by major telecommunication companies testified to television’s continuous hybridity, since the manufactured devices embraced bidirectional or collective television as well as the broadcasting model, and participated in a broad network of media technologies and consumption forms. While the telegraph and the telephone were the main sources of inspiration for imagining television in the late nineteenth century, the emergence of film and wireless technologies – especially radio broadcasting – caused a reframing of this televisual imaginary. This was reflected in the range of terms that were invented to describe television as “Fernkino,” “Funkkino,” “Radiokinematografie,” “Radiovision”, or “Telecinema” which highlight the role of media convergence for the realization of television. The hybridity of the new medium was, however, not only a discursive construction but a practical one too (Weber 2014). Receivers for home use were directly derived from the experience of radio broadcasting and prefigured televisual consumption of television programs in the private space, thus, participating in the consolidation of domestic space as a privileged site for media consumption. The first models were simply connected to radio sets and switched on during certain radio programs transmitting a synchronized image. Television on the big screen, developed from 1927 on by most laboratories, referred to the experience of collective entertainments. Similar to today’s transmissions of opera and plays in movie theaters, the large screen devices of the 1930s were a part of extra‐ cinematographic screen practices whose history remains to be written. Alternative forms of collective television were so‐called “public address systems” for the transmission of speeches to large crowds, developed in Germany and the USA. Combined with a telephone, television also became a medium of bidirectional communication. The picturephone, sometimes called “visiophone” or “Fernsehsprechstelle” in German, was an evident example of the persistence of television’s affinity with telephony and the importance of its long history. Demonstrated at industrial fairs in Berlin and New York, the two‐directional device was considered to be a communication

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apparatus combining telephone and television. In Germany, the “Fernsehsprechdienst” (literally the “televisionphone”) was made available to the general public in the mid‐ 1930s following several years of timely demonstrations of the same technology (Goebel 1953, pp. 333–338). During the interwar years, research laboratories as well as the public opinion continually expressed great interest in the new media and its potentials. Its actual audience, however, remained very small since television’s technology was only rarely commercialized. In Germany, despite efforts by the National‐Socialist regime to promote television, the sale of home receivers did not take off before the war, and the use of public visiophones, available in a few cities throughout the country, remained expensive. In London, where the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) transmitted programs from 1936 a few hours each day, it is estimated that 20,000–25,000 sets were in use at the end of the 1930s (Briggs 1965, p. 620); in New York, by August 1939, only about 800 sets had been sold (Burns 1998, p. 562).

Launching of Regular Television Broadcasting from a Transnational Perspective While the actual distribution of television receivers and the production of television programs remained limited during the interwar period, governmental actors increasingly participated in the debate on television and, in Germany and Great Britain, launched regular television services in 1935, respectively in 1936. In both countries, the radio and television companies were public and centralized, and, in the case of National‐Socialist Germany, integrated into a totalitarian regime. Contrary to radio broadcasting, however, which directly serves the national imagined community by producing a unified airspace and by disseminating a national (spoken) language and national news from the centers to the provinces, the televisual technology was not able to unite a dispersed public in front of its screen. Nevertheless, public broadcasting, in the mid‐1930s, represented an important moment for television’s definition as a national medium: if not (yet) addressing the whole nation at once, television was conceived of as a national technology. The symbolic capital of television as a national technology was particularly evident at the inauguration of public services. In April 1934, the British government became involved in television by establishing the Selsdon Committee, mandated to discuss the future of British television and the government’s eventual implication in the medium’s growth. The committee consulted numerous witnesses from the radio industry and other interested parties who discussed questions including the financing of a public service, the possibilities of a television news service, and the use of television in movie theaters, among other things (Burns 1986, p. 303). The committee’s final findings published in January 1935 treated every aspect of television’s development and was in favor of a permanent Television Advisory Committee.1 The Selsdon Committee also recommended that the BBC should be responsible for the programs and that they should be transmitted using a “high‐definition system” comprising an image composed of at least 240 lines and 25 frames per second. More broadly, these measures also aimed to outpace the German television standard of 180 lines, and, thus, to place Great Britain at the forefront of television research. In March 1935, Germany launched a public television service that was largely understood as a reaction to the British venture, testifying the fierce competition in matters of television between the two nations. Indeed, the British Selsdon Inquiry boosted the



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opening of an official television service in Berlin since it uncovered the ambitions of a direct competitor in a field Germany was determined to win (Uricchio 1990, p. 175; Winker 1994, pp. 59–61 and pp. 71–72). That same year, at the Berlin radio fair, television constituted a main attraction, and it was billed as an original German invention consolidating the vision of a modern German nation. But also in the USA, where the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) opened the first public service in 1939, the Selsdon Committee Report had an impact. From 1935 onwards, radio journals and the mainstream press proclaimed the beginning of a “World television rush” and an international “Television Race,”2 and observed closely the progress made abroad. This media interest translated the symbolic capital of television as a technology representing a nation’s progress and confirmed the role of transnational competition for the development of national services. In Europe and in the USA, the institutionalization of television and its integration into pre‐existing economic and organizational structures also explained its “streamlining” into one single definition as a broadcasting medium for domestic reception, which resulted in the concealment of television’s multiple identities. In other words, the media’s conquest of spaces of domesticity in the post‐war period was the consequence of pre‐war industrial and institutional decisions and not the expression of its “essential nature.”

­The Emergence of Television in Post‐War Europe: Patterns and Paths Developed in the interwar period, the integration of television into pre‐existing radio companies during the 1940 and 1950s happened smoothly. Similarly to radio before, television was conceived as an influential means of mass communication apt to consolidate the nation by disseminating hegemonic representations of national culture and identity. In Western Europe, the centrality of broadcasting for nation‐states translateed into infrastructural and institutional choices subsumed in the idea of “public service.” European public broadcasting services (PBS) were primarily organized as monopolies overseen by governmental bodies and, provided a coverage of the national territory, operated on a non‐commercial basis, partly funded through license fees paid by television‐set owners. The non‐commercial nature of PBS was central to its ideal definition put forward most prominently by the BBC and its first director general, John Reith. Personifying the strong – paternalistic – stance on public service, Reith praised broadcasting for offering the opportunity of placing the whole nation in immediate contact with the best of British culture and thought. As Reith put it in 1924, radio is “an ally of immense potency in the campaign for a general intelligence and a higher culture” (quoted in Avery 2006, p. 16). Accordingly, the BBC’s final goal was to “inform, educate, and entertain” the British people (see Bourdon 2013). This triple mission of public service would serve as a model for most Western television institutions after the war, which would, in their respective charts, highlight the medium’s responsibilities for the functioning of modern democracies. From a transnational perspective, the European ideal of PBS as a cultural agent with non‐commercial goals was tied to a longstanding history of US‐European relations in which the USA represented the feared and the admired “other” of European culture (Bondebjerg 2008, p. 154). The threat of an “Americanization” of European media was expressed from the interwar period onwards, and the PBS model reflected and sustained

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continuous efforts to distinguish European (high) culture from the commercial system dominating US broadcasting (Hilmes 2011). The resistance against commercialization and privatization, however, did not hinder continuous transformations of European PBS including the introduction of advertisements on the small screen during the 1960s and the liberalization of the television market during the 1980s opening the airwaves to private broadcasters and, thus, definitively breaking the PBS monopoly (Bourdon 2011, pp. 23–76). Consequently, within the context of deregulation and globalization at the end of the twentieth century, the nationally organized and governmentally controlled institutions were frequently under pressure, if not under direct attack. The notion of “public service” henceforth was increasingly defined within the context of its own crisis and designated an ideal of television broadcasting that historically has rarely been attained (Bourdon 2013, pp. 15–26). This shared storyline of public televisions in Europe, however, should not veil the important differences in the organizational structures of broadcasting from the 1950s onwards. The history of broadcasting institutions is inextricably linked to the history of nation‐states and their respective political organization  –  studying the former offers a “privileged access” for the latters’ political, social, and cultural histories (Vallotton 2012, p. 20). In other words, the variations among European public service models depend inherently on the different socio‐political contexts of a given country, as the examples of Italy, West Germany, Switzerland and France may illustrate. The difference among national systems on the grounds of specific political contexts reveals how each country sought to put in place a system that corresponded best with the ambitions of those in power. The paternalistic model of broadcasting dominated the first decades of Italian television in the hands of the Christian Democratic party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC). The responsible elites at Radio Audizioni Italiane (RAI) were deeply convinced that television is a new and essential tool for cultural enhancement and education of the masses. Emblematically expressed in programs such as Non è mai troppo tardi aimed at increasing the literacy rate among adults by offering televisual language classes, this “pedagogical project” of public television was intertwined with DC’s political ambitions (Musso and Pineau 1989). The arrival of Ettore Barnabei, head of the RAI for 14 years between 1960 and 1974 and linked to the political establishment, consolidated the triple definition of Italian television as a state monopoly, a pedagogic project for a mass audience, and an ally of the DC government (Musso and Pineau 1989, p. 24). This convergence of a broadcasting institution and the political elite was disrupted at the end of the 1960s, when the state‐controlled monopoly was questioned by defenders of a private market model, by left‐wing movements reclaiming democratic access to airwaves, and by the emergence of new technologies, cable TV in particular. The 1975 decree reforming the RAI, shifted power and control from the government to the parliament, thus, abolishing the monopoly of the DC over the airwaves. In the subsequent years, RAI’s main posts were distributed among the three main parties through an “increasingly formalized” system of quotas known as “lottizzazione” (Padovani 2007, p. 4). A similar system of shared responsibilities among political parties, but within a different institutional context, was instituted in West Germany. Following World War II and the Hitler regime, the main aim for the occupation forces constituted the prevention of another potential instrumentalization of broadcast media by political parties. The reorganization of radio and television thus implemented a decentralized, federal system, in which the public stations were placed under the governance of the different Länder. Each station was headed by a council composed of political representatives, but also of non‐governmental actors such as trade unions, churches, and cultural organizations,



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organized according to a Proporz system by which the parties in power shared the most influential posts (Smith 1995, pp. 76–80; Hickethier and Hoff 1998). In Switzerland, the launching of regular television service in 1958 following a short period of experimental services, led to a centralization of the SSR, the Swiss Radio and Television Society, which reflected the federal political system contingent on the four linguistic and cultural spheres. Conceived as institution unifying a heterogeneous media landscape, the SSR functions as an umbrella association for regional stations producing their own programs in German, French, Italian, and Romansch (Mäusli and Steigmeier 2006). A more centralized broadcasting system was implemented in France where radio and television were defined as a means of bringing the political and cultural center – Paris – to the provinces. This conception of television as a means of communication for those in power became particularly salient in 1959 and General de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic. Rather than solely supplying technical infrastructure and judicial oversight, the French government exerted more and more pressure on public television, influencing choices of personnel and programming (Sauvage and Veyrat‐Masson 2012, pp. 68–73). The predominant conception of television as a national medium was also mirrored early on by the international competition for technical norms. Techno‐nationalist rivalries are part of the history of television oscillating between its definition as a national means of communication and a “window on the world.” If this latter conception became indeed central for the constitution of a European television space projecting a European “imaginary community” to its member states from the 1950s on, television’s infrastructure and technical development regularly were at the center stage of an ongoing technical, economic, and symbolic competition among these same actors. From a technical point of view, line standards were among the most important features necessary to homogenize the national television infrastructure. In most countries, line standards were, thus, adopted before World War II: Great Britain chose a 405‐line standard in 1937; Germany opted for 441 lines in 1938, and the USA decided on 525 lines in 1941. After the war, France introduced a new standard of 819 lines, while Germany implemented the 625‐line norm recommended by the Consultative Committee on International Radio (CCIR), and also used by the Soviet Union. In the mid‐1950s, the European infrastructures for television, therefore, represented “a mess of divergent technical parameters,” which considerably complicated matters of international program exchange and collaboration (Fickers 2006, p. 18). A decade later, the introduction of color television was similarly complicated by the parallel existence of three different color standards, namely the American NTSC, the French SECAM, and the German PAL system (Fickers 2007). As the examples of the line and color standard debates showed, matters of technical norms were far from being neutral issues, but reflected broader political motives and institutional contexts that shaped the international field of techno‐diplomacy (Fickers and Griset 2019).

­Television as Medium and Message Television’s Transition from Public to Domestic Spaces In the public television discourse of the post‐war years, state or national interests were intrinsically intertwined with the promotion of the new medium within each nation. While the press at the time promoted a vision of television as being family‐oriented, television viewing remained initially a collective, public experience. The transition of the new

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medium into the private homes of television viewers did not occur at once. The successful domestication of television needed further incentives to materialize. It was the live broadcasting of the Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953 that convinced the public – not only in the United Kingdom, but in other European countries that relayed the event – that receiving images in real time in their own homes was a great added value to what the radio set or the experience of cinema‐going had to offer. The reception of the live broadcast on the streets of Paris enthused Parisians about the advantages of owning a television set.3 Governments also played a role in creating incentives for the mass purchase of television sets. In Romania, the Communist Party led by Nicolae Ceauşescu made improving the conditions of domestic spaces and the home a priority throughout the 1960s. Thus, the party supported the building of new apartments in the cities and houses in rural areas. “By moving into new houses, people will buy new furniture, television and radio sets” declared Ceauşescu in one of his official speeches. (Ceauşescu 1971). While in 1955, shortly before Romanian television began broadcasting 1956, there was no national production of television sets, but sales of Romanian TV sets increased to around 25,000 by 1960, 159,000 by 1965, reaching 242,000 in 1970, with the record being set in 1975 with 395,000 television sets sold (Deletant 1999, p. 113). Similarly in 1970 in Greece, the Ministry of State the sponsorship of several Greek industries, handed out television sets in bulk to villagers in the remote areas of the country in the attempt to spread the domestication of the new medium.4 This phenomenon echoed government investments in the “privatized home” throughout Europe and the United States (Williams 1990, p. 21). These included investment in the production of reception technology and the lowering of prices for the initially very expensive receivers. Such initiatives continued the state effort on the improvement of the “privatized home” that had started out with radio and saw the penetration of consumer technologies that would bring news, music, sports, and entertainment into the domestic space (Williams 1990, pp. 19–21). This process of domestication and the enhancement of the “privatized home” witnessed the transformation of television viewing from a collective and public event that resembled the experience of cinema‐going into a domestic activity shared within the space of the home and the family. According to John Ellis (1992): “The ideological notion of the nuclear family in its domestic setting [became] the overarching conception in which broadcast TV [operated]” (p. 115) Even more so than with radio broadcasting, the notion of the nuclear family shaped the scheduling practices for television. Scheduling television became centered on reproducing the everyday rhythm, the seasonal and annual calendar of family life. Soap operas, a genre adapted from radio, targeted women in what was conceived as their “spare time,” at midday and in early afternoon. Entertainment programs aimed at the entire family were broadcast in the evening when the family was expected to reunite at the end of the working day. Children’s programs were broadcast when children returned from school. Alternatively, a range of programs that flourished in Europe throughout the 1950 and 1960s under the umbrella of “School TV” – which aimed to augment school curricula and provide pupils and teachers with extra lessons broadcast on TV – were tied to the school timetable. Special programs were broadcast at the time of major religious and national holidays.

Early Television Audiences While the family and the domestic space became the measure through which television audiences are targeted, on the side of production, television audiences are envisioned and constructed as homogeneous masses. This is facilitated by the scarcity of broadcast



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content that characterized early television from the 1950s and until the early 1980s, which left audiences with little to choose from (Ellis 2000). The “mass audiences” resulting from the early scarcity of television content have further social and political implications as they reconfigure existing groups in society and reinforce new forms of sociability. In the Netherlands, the era of scarcity contributed to the “de‐pillarization” of society as the scarcity of existing television output was unable to reproduce the different religious “pillars” (or segments) in Dutch society with the effect of homogenizing existing social and religious groups into one national television audience (de Leeuw 2014). In addition, the broadcasting of live national events reinforces what Benedict Anderson (1983) characterizes as the invention of “national imagined communities.” But television not only fosters the shaping of national audiences. The transnational broadcasting of live events, such as the moon landing, Yuri Gagarin’s return from space (Lundgren 2012) or the televising of the Eurovision Song Contest (Pajala 2013a), broadens the social spectrum of television audiences into trans‐border and transnational communities. Furthermore, the exports of US television programs into different European countries (Bourdon 2008)  –  a phenomenon, which helps to fill in the production and programming gaps – opens up shared global viewing cultures to television audiences in Europe. Politically, the construction of television viewers as homogeneous masses fuels the idea that television as a means of mass communication would have direct effects on audiences and expose people to the unmediated propagandistic messages of political leaders. Such ideas are at the core of the “hypodermic model” of mass media developed by the Frankfurt School which conceives mass media as “having the power to ‘inject’ a repressive ideology directly into the consciousness of the masses” (Morley 1992, p. 41) and cementing the link between “mass society” and fascism (Morley 1992, p. 42). Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that scholarly attention to television audiences in the 1950s comes from the field of mass‐communication studies and puts forward different strands of research mostly based on a model that tends to see mass media as connecting powerful leaders to the powerless audiences based on a linear sender‐message‐receiver model. The difference between these strands of research consists merely in varying assumptions about the message and the effect being linked directly or indirectly. Thus, in Europe, research informed by the Frankfurt School focuses strongly on the direct effects of broadcasting on audiences and mirrors the predominantly monolithic broadcasting structures and the homogenous mass of audiences constructed by the scarce offer of television content (Bourdon and Méadel 2014). In the United States, on the other hand, the relation between the message and the effects is presumed to be indirect and reflected the pluralistic nature of US society, which translates into a private broadcasting market and a plurality of choice for early television content (Scannell 2007). It is with the rise of private television and second public channels throughout the 1960 and 1970s that mass television audiences in Europe fine‐tuned more and more into niche audiences that enjoyed some degree of choice in the television content they watched. The power balance between broadcasting institutions and television audiences shifted radically by the end of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s with the advent of cable television and the rise of the video recorder (VCR), which endowed audiences with a “managed choice” in a period that John Ellis (2000) called television’s “era of availability.” The breaking down of mass audiences into niche ones targeted by narrowcasting is reflected in scholarly research by the rise of cultural approaches to audience studies and television reception, which looks at audiences as actively decoding messages and shaping individual readings conforming to, resisting or challenging the dominant power or analyzing them as part of the political economy and power relations of the household.

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Television Coming of Age The institutionalization of television precedes not only the demand, but also its content. As Raymond Williams (1990) has acknowledged, “unlike all previous technologies, radio and television were systems primarily devised for transmission and reception as abstract processes, with little and no definition of preceding content [italics in original]” (p. 17). Early television broadcasts occurred at a low level of content‐definition, both in terms of narrative forms and genres, as well as aesthetics. The earliest television programs consisted of genres taken over from radio: news, soap operas, theater or sports. Early programs looked like “radio with pictures,” while editorial practices as well as personnel were transferred over from radio to television. “In 1958, the move from radio to television was not a promotion. You left a consolidation institution to work at a branch that was still finding its way and that was not supposed to be neither cinematography, nor radio, let alone journalism, but which had to encompass all of these elements and even add a little to them,” said former editor‐in‐chief Popescu at Romanian television (Viziune Tele, p. 172). Such confessions made by early television personnel are recurrent across Europe. Early production infrastructures relied on cinema studios improvised as television studios. Television content was live or tele‐recorded live throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Making television content at the time was like “trying to make film by means of television,” as former Romanian image director Druga remembered (Viziune Tele, p. 83). Despite the strong rhetoric of newness emphasizing the feeling of “intimacy,” “immediacy” and “liveness” as being key qualities of the television experience, they are, in fact, well‐known media experiences appropriated in the age of radio. As a “conservative revolution,” television, thus, has to invent its own “language” and to define and negotiate the semantic and aesthetic specificity of the medium (Fickers 2012b). Over time, as Jerome Bourdon (2004) has argued, liveness in television became equated with instilling “regimes of belief” in its viewers, extending beyond the presentation of events in real time. At the same time, television developed specific forms of narration, as John Ellis (1992) argues: The basic organization of material is that of the segment, a coherent group of sounds and images, of relatively short duration that needs to be accompanied by other similar such segments. The segment as the basic unit according to a short burst of attention is matched by the serial and series form. These provide a particular kind of repetition and novelty that differs markedly from that found in the narrational patterns of classic cinema (p. 116).

Thus, the segment is a specific narrative form (that of the series and the serial) as well as an organizational mode of broadcast television into patterns of narrative coherence and repetition. The “spot” advertisement represents, according to Ellis, the quintessence of television. But again, this serialized and segmented mode of narration was something that television borrowed from radio, when the genre of soap operas – the ultimate serial form – is brought to television in the very early days. It is primarily the rise of cable television and the mushrooming of niche channels – such as Cable News Network (CNN), or Music Television (MTV) – throughout the 1980 and 1990s that led media theorist John Caldwell (1995) to assert that when it comes to television, it is not the text and its narrative forms that single out the medium within the mass media landscape, but rather its style. Developments in filming, production and editing technology (such as, for instance, the use of graphics enhanced by genres such as MTV music videoclips, the introduction of new film stocks in television drama and



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advertising, the rise of electronic non‐linear editing, etc.) lead to program individuation and a “stylistic exhibitionism” that makes television programs and channels utterly distinct. Caldwell calls this exhibitionism of style “televisuality” and argues that this is what defines the specificity of television against other media. On the side of television reception, watching television is seen to be defined by the practice of “glancing,” the mode of spectatorship that presumed shorter and differing degrees of attention the viewer would give to the TV screen in a domestic environment in which television competes with other distractions (Ellis 1992). This is opposed to the cinematic mode of “gazing” in which the viewer would give full, immersed attention to the screen. Raymond Williams (1975) argues that the television viewing is marked by a continuous experience, which he calls “flow” referring to “the replacement of a program series of timed sequential units by a flow series of differently related units in which the timing, though real, is undeclared, and in which the internal organization is something other than the declared organization” (p. 93). Flow defines television’s meta‐text and helps to understand broadcast content as part of a sequence of programming as well as part of a sequence of zapping. It is no wonder that all this media theory on television emerged primarily in the 1970s and 1980s, which marks not only television’s “era of availability” characterized by the proliferation of television content and channels, but it also coincides with the institutionalization of television studies as a field (Brunson 2013).

­European TV Cultures in the Cold War Media Landscape It is primarily with the recent emergence of socialist television histories that the limitations of reducing television histories to the politics of the nation‐state are starting to surface. The transnational turn to television history in Europe (Bignell and Fickers 2008; Fickers and Johnson 2012a; Badenoch, Fickers and Henrich‐Franke 2013) has already exposed the lack or scarcity of empirical research on television in Eastern Europe while it has made evident the predominance of Anglo‐Saxon histories of television at the expense of other national (or non‐national) histories of television. Scholars working on socialist television histories have also pointed out an improper transfer of Western concepts of television to the socialist context of Eastern Europe (Lundgren 2012; Mustata 2012, 2014; Mustata and Lundgren 2013; Mihelj 2014). The national lens applied to television history in Europe has situated the study of television predominantly within macro spaces of state politics, regulation, and deliberation or – at best – within dichotomous social spaces (public versus private spaces, spaces of state politics versus spaces of everyday life, spaces of high culture versus low culture, spaces of history versus spaces of memory). On the one hand, this has obscured those historical narratives on Eastern European television that are situated in micro spaces of everyday television reception and production labor, which have fostered practices of resistance, opposition, circumvention or even subversion of state control. On the other hand, the isolation of television history to one (macro) social space or to divergent social spaces has impeded our understanding of how television in the former socialist Eastern Europe has performed historically as part of oppressive political systems. This state of the art of the historiography of Cold War television mirrors the fact that political histories of television have run in parallel to histories of the medium to the extent to which one has become confused with the other. In the Cold War context, the “politicization” of television history in Europe becomes evident as the politics of the Cold War become reproduced within the discursive field of television history, in the

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Foucauldian (Foucault 1970, 1972) sense. With this critique of the “politicization” of Cold War television history in Europe in mind, we propose to open up the study of Cold War television beyond the political histories of the nation, and address Cold War television through the prism of different social spaces (spaces of production, reception, institutional organization, and television programming) and through the lens of diverse geographies (local, regional, national, European, and global).

Geographies of Television in Europe European Cold War television space is constructed as two main zones of communication: the Western zone rooted in the tradition of independent public service broadcasting and the Eastern zone comprising of state‐controlled broadcast institutions. These two zones of broadcasting are further delineated by transnational organizations and broadcast infrastructures: the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) established in 1950 functions as an umbrella institution of transnational exchanges and cooperation among Western television broadcasters, and the Organization Internationale de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision (OIRT) that emerged in 1960 out of the Organization Internationale de Radiodiffusion, and provided a platform of cooperation primarily for broadcast institutions under the Soviet sphere of influence. Each of these two organizations provided a joint legal and administrative framework as well as technical infrastructures (“Intervision” in the East and “Eurovision” in the West) for program exchanges and cooperation within and between the two zones of influence. The two communication blocs catered for by the EBU and OIRT did not necessarily foster competition between the East and the West, but also further interaction, cooperation, and spill‐overs from one geopolitical region to the other (Badenoch, Fickers, and Henrich‐Franke 2013). As empirical studies show, despite the conflicting ideologies from which they emerged, both the EBU and OIRT functioned in fact as “mediators of pan‐European television program exchange” (Henrich‐Franke and Immel 2013, p. 179). Program exchanges took place from the West to the East and, to a lesser degree, from the East to the West (Henrich‐Franke and Immel 2013, pp. 177–213). The case of the EBU and the OIRT demonstrated that the European broadcasting space was not determined by the politics of war but it was also shaped by legal, administrative, institutional, and technical relations initiated by the broadcasters themselves. Within this context, particular broadcasters, such as the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yleisradio Oy (YLE), positioned themselves as a link between the East and the West by becoming part of both the EBU and the OIRT (Pajala 2013b, pp. 215–239). Yugoslav Radio Television, marked its separation from the Soviet Union by becoming part of the EBU, unlike the other socialist broadcasters. Within these practices of cooperation, exchange and transfer between the East and the West, flows of information did not go only from the West to the East, but also from the East to the West (Eugster 1983). For instance, Gagarin’s return from space was broadcast live from the Soviet Union to both sides of the Iron Curtain (Lundgren 2012, pp. 45–55), while the Finnish broadcaster YLE facilitated the supply of news from the Soviet Union to Eurovision (Pajala 2013b, pp. 215–239). In addition to the EBU and the OIRT, in Northern Europe, “Nordivision” was established in 1959 as an organization aimed at securing program exchanges and professional collaboration among broadcasters in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, with Iceland joining the network in 1966.



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The southern broadcasting region of Europe, on the other hand, was defined by cross‐ border transfers and exchanges with the United States. While under a dictatorial regime, Spanish public television operated as part of a decentralized market being funded by the state and by means of advertising. For this reason, Spanish producers initiated “American television pilgrimages” in which they would visit US broadcasting institutions and production studios, returning with ideas for programs to be developed on Spanish television (Bourdon 2008). In Franco’s Spain, the market  –  besides the state  –  emerged as an important player in the organization of television broadcasting as a national, state‐ controlled institution with international and commercial influences (Binimelis, Cerdan, and Fernández Labayen 2013; Gutiérrez Lozano (2013). Similarly, in Yugoslavia, the market was identified as a key instrument for financing television. Media policies adopted in 1965 stipulate that television institutions have financial independence and only receive support from the state in cases when the market circumstances prevent the financial independence of broadcasters (Mihelj 2014, pp. 7–16). The particular cases of Spain and Yugoslavia signal the market as an additional social space in which broadcast activities in Europe were situated. One key point that resurfaces from the complex geographies mapped by broadcast relations in Europe during the Cold War is the fact that television broadcasting has performed simultaneously as part of local geographies (i.e. the border‐region Romanian audience watching Western programming on Yugoslav television), national and regional geographies (i.e. western and eastern Europe, northern and southern Europe) as well as global and pan‐European geographies (e.g. exchanges and transfers between European broadcasters and the United Stated, between the BBC and other broadcasters in Europe). These overlapping geographies and cross‐border transmissions or exchanges of television have created hybrid zones of convergence, characterized by an “asymmetrical interdependence” of the transnational interactions (Fickers 2016, pp. 7–25). We, therefore, propose to conceptualize television as a network of inter‐dependent social spaces, constantly affecting and interacting with one another. These social spaces and their pertaining social actors are opened up by the simultaneous processes that make up television broadcasting: from institutional regulation and organization, to production, reception, distribution, and television programming. It is primarily at the interaction between these different constituent spaces of television that television has performed as part of history. It advocates that in order to understand television as part of history, we first need to understand how television as a broadcasting medium works and how it has been realized in particular temporal and spatial contexts.

­Conclusion This chapter has aimed to move away from the notion of “television nations” (de Leeuw et al. 2008) that has been at the core of national approaches to television. Instead, we want to emphasize the historical dynamics of transfers, exchanges, cooperations, and cross‐overs that have characterized the European television landscape over the past 100 years at least, as much as the continuous efforts to nationalize or control the medium in various political regimes or structures. The shared ambition of all three authors to trans‐ nationalize and globalize television historiography is backed by a growing number of theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded studies that force us to rethink classical scholarship in this field. These studies have underlined that the know‐how involved in doing television broadcasting has been traveling across Europe and to Europe, and

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have demonstrated that television content has crossed national as well as the ideological and physical borders. They have also shown how professional cooperation – on legal, administrative, technical and programming matters  –  was fostered by pan‐European organizations such as the EBU and the OIRT. This heightened attention for the transnational nature of television should not create an analytical blind spot when it comes to the importance of the state as a powerful agent in the structural organization and political as well as socio‐cultural framing of television as a medium. As we have tried to demonstrate by using a consequent comparative approach, the emergence and continuous re‐invention and development of television as a medium was characterized by a constant negotiation between television professionals, regulatory bodies, economic players, and television audiences. These negotiations have played out differently in different countries. Understanding the dynamics of each of these historical developments helps us to be critical and specific about how, when, and why television has performed the way it did. In other words, we have tried to emphasize the hybridity of television as a technology, a social phenomenon, political actor and cultural form. This hybridity of television, we argue, is not limited to specific moments in the history of television or only characteristic for periods of transitions, but rather it is the essence of a medium in constant development. The transnational and comparative view on the many temporalities and geographies of television force us to depart from any attempt to essentialize the apparent “nature” of the medium at a given time and space. We rather share the vision that one should study and understand the many historical performances and meanings of television in a de‐essentialist and transnational perspective.

Notes 1 The report was published as a supplement in Television and the Short‐Wave World (February 1935), reprinted in Herbert (2004) and is discussed at length in Burns (1986). 2 “World television rush is On!,” Radio World 16 (February 1935), p. 4; “Television Race Gets Hotter,” Radio World 17 (September 1935), pp. 5–6. 3 “The coronation of Elizabeth II broadcast on TV to the Parisians [silent],” News 20H, 1953, INA, France. See the full clip at: http://euscreen.eu/play.jsp?id=EUS_CC4533B7CBC44204 94FFC4F3DF653D4D. 4 “Transport of television sets to the villages of the periphery,” Greek Newsreels 197051, ERT SA/Greece, 1970. See the full clip at: http://euscreen.eu/item.html?id=EUS_48E9B44E2D 814908BEA97B16B4B7D791.

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14

The Introduction of Commercial Broadcasting to Europe Rosa Franquet, Giuseppe Richeri, and Matthew Hibberd

­Introduction Radio and television in different European countries were either forged through private initiative or by states that understood the power that controlling the Hertzian wave transmission conferred upon them. The Spanish Civil War and World War II revealed the power and influence that radio could exert over people in exceptional periods of history. Numerous authors have described the close relationship between broadcasting and power, such as Richeri (1983), Miège (2000), Moragas and Prado (2000), Franquet (2000), Bustamante (2002, 2003), Hallin and Mancini (2004), and Hibberd (2006). For Regourd (1992), this relationship was simple to see during the emergence of com­ mercial television: “Liberal evolution, which led to the collapse of most public monopo­ lies and the appearance of commercial television, has not eliminated the osmosis of television and politics” (p. 83). Although models for the organization and exploitation of radio and television differed among countries as a result of their particular histories, ­cultures, and legal and political traditions, we also find common traits. These derived from the structuring of radio and television under a regime of monopoly or duopoly with the mission to prevent and/or regulate the entry of private actors. Public television maintained its monopoly in Western Europe until the 1980s, with some exceptions such as Finland, the United Kingdom, and Luxembourg. In Finland, the “private commercial television has been a part of the system since 1957, when MTV3 Finland was established” (Österlung‐Karinkanta 2000, p. 165); the United Kingdom, with a mixed system (duopoly) of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the private network Independent Television (ITV) since 1955, or Luxembourg, where the private Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion (CTL) holds a monopoly and has since its creation been fully funded by advertising. The European media landscape changed radically with the advent of commercial televi­ sion and the decentralization processes of broadcasting. However, as noted by de Moragas and Garitaonandía (1995), “European States have not lost their influence and leading role in communication policies, although they are no longer the only players involved in these policies, and they now have to share the lead with other, new agents” (p. 6). The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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This chapter analyzes the reasons for the emergence of commercial radio and television in several Western European countries, such as France, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Other aspects analyzed in this chapter are the pressures exercised by private groups as well as deregulation policies in media markets as “synony­ mous with increased commercialization” (McChesney 2003, p. 125), the emergence of technologies, and changes in modes of consumption.

­Radio and Television at the Center of the Political Debate: Pressures for Access The questioning of public monopolies came from the private sector that sought to profit from the emerging advertising market, and from social movements that denounced the instrumentalization and manipulation of media by political parties and groups holding political power. In the private sector, the debate in favor of commercial television was based on the claim that an audiovisual market had the potential to create industrial growth and numerous jobs. Television represented a route to expansion for publishing groups originating in concentrated and competitive national markets. They viewed the audiovisual market as an opportunity for growth that was to generate financial profit and a means of social and political influence. In turn, investors from other non‐media sectors envisaged new forms of business and projection by investing in the radio and television sector. The supporters of privatization proclaimed the virtues of ideological pluralism and programming diversity. They extolled the advantages of expanding the radio spec­ trum to private actors by linking it to the audience’s plurality and freedom of choice. Potential imbalances were either ignored or justified in terms of market laws. In addition, the questioning of broadcasting monopolies was perpetrated by social groups. An initial factor that helped to remodel the news media landscape arose during worker and student protests in Italy that started in 1968 and would be seen in different forms in other countries. Indeed, as had happened in France, this prolonged phase of acute social conflict saw vigorous protests regarding television together with a wider critical debate about media. The news media, primarily the Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI), were accused of presenting the protests according to the interests of the “dominant power,” and of distorting the motives and methods of the mass strikes and other forms of mobilization. The media were criticized for a lack of “objectivity” and accused of bias in their representation of events (Richeri 1978). As a result, the media became a focus of political debate in European countries, although in some, such as Greece, Portugal, and Spain, this debate did not arise until much later due to their ­political dictatorships. At the same time ongoing technological developments with the expansion of fre­ quency modulation, cheaper transmitters, and low‐frequency reproduction led to the developments of, first, radio initiatives and, later, television. Both were pushed by groups that questioned the existing status quo and demanded the right to broadcast. Meanwhile, business expectations were the impetus for the appearance of profit seeking initiatives that sought to gain financially from the benefits of broadcasting. This group included so‐called pirate radio stations that broadcast from outside the jurisdictional borders of certain countries, such as Radio Merkur in Denmark, which broadcast commercial radio programs from a ship in international “waters” between Sweden and Denmark (Prehn 1998), or Radio Caroline that aimed at the UK market in 1964, as well as those stations



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that were anchored in the North Sea from where they broadcast entertainment shows crammed with advertising. These actors challenged authorities and demanded a place of their own in new legislation (Konijnenbelt 1985, p. 205). In the 1970s, social groups and movements that supported free radio demanded the right to broadcast freely, and they criticized the discretional system used by governments to allocate radio and television licenses. These ideas took root in different European countries, like the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy and Spain, and became the justification and excuse for the many local, community, and non‐ profit radio and television stations associated with specific social groups and movements. In Spain, the transition to democracy in the late 1970s led to the creation of the first independent radio stations followed by local radio and television channels linked to the first democratic councils. A similar process took place in Portugal with the creation of hundreds of radio stations under the auspices of municipal authorities (Moreira Teixeira 1998). Local politicians and activists demonstrated the importance of having ­instruments to directly reach the people, and radio and television were the perfect tech­ nological devices for doing so. As the awareness of media’s strategic role grew, news and the coverage of current affairs attained an important position on the political agenda. Core political and social organiza­ tions, however, also came to the firm and specific conclusion that news media were vital tools for improving the public’s engagement with politics. They demanded the right to access media, primarily public radio and television services, and asserted the need to develop independent means of disseminating counter‐information “without asking for permission” (Baldelli 1972; Faenza 1973). Some even theorized that the media should operate not just as information tools but also as a means for mobilizing and organizing activism. This was the mission of underground broadcasters in Poland created by the lead­ ers of the labor union and social movement Solidarnosc in the early 1980s. In Western Europe, independent radio was born out of the idea of subverting tradi­ tional communication setups by demanding the right of private groups to broadcast independently. At a Paris meeting of the groups promoting independent radio in Europe, attended by the Association pour la Liberation des Ondes (ALO), the Italian Federazione di Radio Emitenti Democratiche (FRED) and by independent radio stations from Belgium and Germany, the International Federation of Free Radio Stations was created (Dolç et al. 1985). It promoted the view that journalism ought to liberate itself from the influences of political parties, editorial hierarchies, and from the interests of the publish­ ers. Thus, journalism was to loosen its ties with the official political agenda and to observe processes of social change and their main protagonists, emerging problems and solutions proposed “from the grass roots” more closely (Cesareo 1974). These were some of the main influences that created a breeding ground primarily for local and “community” radio and television stations – some sporadic, others more business‐like, some run by one or two people, others with organized editorial staff and distribution networks involving a great number of people. Many of the activists came from outside the journalism profession, some even made that a principle. According to their view, people needed to act collectively and to directly articulate their own experiences, ­problems, and views through the media without the mediation of professional journalists whose role appeared to be obsolete, and in need of radical reform. It is no coincidence that similar debates arose regarding the internet and new digital technologies. Discussions of journalism’s role, its possible decline, and need to reinvent itself under the pressure of user‐generated‐content and citizen journalism contain themes and elements that originate from this earlier phase of media evolution and before.

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People who developed this awareness of, and interest in, “self‐run” media provided fer­ tile grounds, first, for (commercial) local radio and, later, for local television stations. Regarding the latter, the defining characteristics of commercial Italian television changed radically between 1976 and 1984. In the early days, the terms of televisioni libere (inde­ pendent television), or televisión comunitaria in Spain, were often used precisely because many channels aimed to offer local information and unofficial means of access and involvement that were not agreeable to the existing economical and political powers. The movement in favor of independent community radio and television linked to associate and/or alternative groups countered the actions and claims of the main media groups in order to conquer the majority of frequencies available as a result of radio and  television deregulation. Rebuffing these movements, local commercial radio and television emerged in many European countries, such as Spain, France, Italy, and Ireland. This, however, had nothing to do with the quest for the social and political transforma­ tion of municipal or community television but, as in the case of France, “instead of non‐profit community stations dreamed of by Socialists, radio stations began to expand into commercial networks” (Open Society Institute 2005, p. 645). The process of deregulation of radio and television took place in a political environment based on a liberal economy, which was upheld, in many European countries, by the idea that privati­ zation brings more economic efficiency (Regourd 1992). In turn, the argument of the commercial television promoters focused on the idea that the more channels there were, the more options there would be to create a diversity of content. On the other hand, “supporters of a strong public broadcasting system tend to make a more somber predic­ tion when they claim that ‘more channels’ will lead to ‘more of the same’” (de Bens 1998a, p. 27). This author points out, referring to the concern expressed by McQuail (1992) about the public role of the mass media, that: the market mechanism may boost convergence between the kind of programmes and the sort of schedules private and public broadcasters produce. Moreover, because of growing com­ mercialization, the quality criterion is increasingly being threatened. As commercial stations try to satisfy as many tastes and needs as possible, quality and diversity are not exactly their prime targets (de Bens 1998a, p. 27).   Ultimately, the multiplication of private television channels will be kept alive by “the free market, consumer sovereignty, individual satisfaction, the end of elitist programming and state‐controlled monopolies” (Donders et al. 2013, p. 13)

­Private Pressure Groups and the Deregulation of Television The 1980s marked the beginning of a major transformation television would undergo in Western Europe through the emergence of free‐to‐air commercial channels, and cable and satellite subscription services. Most Western European countries liberalized their broadcasting sector by adapting regulations and authorizing private enterprises along­ side public broadcasters, as was the case in Germany, France, and Italy. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, and Finland, had permitted commercial television before, while other countries introduced private channels in the late 1980s or early 1990s, such as the Benelux countries, Greece, Portugal, Scandinavia, Spain (Iosifidis et al. 2005) and Austria (Steinmaurer 1998). Supporters of European deregulation considered audiovisual media to be a “service” and, in consequence, the European Economic Community’s (EEC) green light to cable



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and satellite broadcasting in 1984 catered for this idea, while the Television Without Frontiers (TWF) Directive of 1989 legitimated liberalization processes across the audi­ ovisual sector in Europe. The idea was to treat television like any other commercial service sector and to regulate it according to the principle of the free market. The campaign in favor of commercial media argued for, and magnified the virtues of the market and the idea that the media sector was no different from other industries. This economistic concept ignored the social and cultural role that media, as a cultural industry, should serve. As Bustamante (1999), Hibberd (2008), and Miège (2000) noted, radio and television are essential instruments for the collective socialization in democratic societies. In this context, media companies, including newspaper publishers, audiovisual enter­ prises and advertising groups, focused on the profits to be made from commercial ­television networks while purporting to be the guarantors of the free market, plurality, modernity, and innovation. In the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Greece, Portugal, and Spain, newspaper press groups and audiovisual companies promoted the creation of commercial free‐to‐air television, and cable and satellite sub­ scription services. Media empires groups such as those of Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch in the United Kingdom, Springer and Bertelsmann in Germany, Prisa in Spain and Hersant in France focused on the commercial radio and television sector. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi held shares in publishing and cinema enterprises, as well as real estate, finance, and other companies. He would come to create the Fininvest Group, with three television channels in Italy, and other divisions in France, the Federal Republic of Germany and Canada. However, companies associated with the communication sector were not the only ones with an interest in commercial radio and television business. Various economic sec­ tors, such as banking, construction, finance and telecommunications companies, and the suppliers of such services as water, electricity, and gas also expressed an interest in the deregulation of television. In the United Kingdom, Barclays Bank invested in the ITV network; a French property group did likewise with Télévision Française 1 (TF1), and so did Objedinionny (Union de Banques) with the PSB Obshchestvennoye Rossiyskoye Televideniye (ORT) in Russia (Lutz and Jankowski 1998). The audiovisual sector, widely seen to be a growing one, promised enormous potential to generate finance, profit, and jobs. In this context, the scarcity of frequencies exploited by states to control broadcast­ ing came into question going along with the advance of technology, and the emergence of cable and satellite operators capable of broadcasting satellite television direct‐to‐home. In the deregulation controversy at the time, the emphasis was “placed on private owner­ ship and ‘free’ entrepreneurial initiative and on consumer sovereignty and choice” (Dyson and Humphreys 1988, p. 96). The concept of transfrontier television became mainstream in Europe, and legislation was adapted to this new situation. In this context, CLT’s (Compagnie Luxemburgeoise de Telediffusion) terrestrial broadcast transmissions to neighboring countries such as Belgium, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany opened up new opportunities for an international advertising market that simultaneously threatened to question national sovereignty and television frontiers. Some broadcasters such as CLT or the Fininvest Group based their strategy on “the provision of different channels for the various linguis­ tic groups in Europe” (European Institute for the Media 1988, p. 139). At the same time, debates emerged regarding the inefficient management of PSB and its constant funding problems. In France, as Machill (2008) noted: “the financing of public service television is a controversially discussed topic and a sensitive instrument for controlling television” (p. 227) with the government having decided in 1987 to sell and privatize

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the most popular public television channel TF1. In the 1980s United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government encouraged, if not fetishized, the virtues of the so‐called “free market” and highlighted the excellent opportunities of new information technologies like cable, and Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS). At the same time, the Peacock Report explored and recommended supplementary methods to finance the BBC (Humphreys 2000, p. 186) to solve the difficulties with public service funding.

­First Steps of Commercial Television An analysis of the beginnings of commercial television in different countries suggests rather dissimilar processes. In the United Kingdom, the pressure for deregulation started in the 1950s. The political, economic, and social climate that had greeted the recom­ mencement of television services in 1947 was very different from that in 1939, when the nascent BBC television service (1936–1939) had been suspended. Stuart Hood (1980) asserted that from the 1920s to the late 1940s, businesses were unwilling to invest in the television and radio broadcasting companies. However, by the early 1950s “they had scented the beginning of a consumer society and guessed the profits to be made from television advertising” (p. 62), and the United Kingdom developed one of the earliest European public‐commercial television duopolies in 1955. The existence of a new com­ mercial lobby demanding an end to the BBC’s broadcasting monopoly quickly found supporters in the Conservative Party. The legislation for commercial television was ­formally introduced to Parliament in 1953 and became law in the United Kingdom in 1954. The Television Act paved the way for a federal system of regional television com­ panies, ITV, funded by advertising. ITV was required to provide a broad range of pro­ gramming including a daily news service and regionally produced programs. Commercial television inherited the traditions of PSB, and, thus, “ITV was made in the image of the BBC” (Curran and Seaton 2003, p. 165). Indeed, the new commercial television companies were robustly regulated to perform a public service rather than to exist for purely private gain. Television in the United Kingdom enjoyed rapid growth for much of the next 15 years, under a mixed system of a state‐owned public service broadcaster and commercial ­operators. This growth was interrupted intermittently by a series of crises in the industry. The reallocation of ITV contracts in 1967 (as laid out in the 1964 Television Act) led to the disappearance of some regional operators and provoked a financial crisis for some of the new companies (Sendall 1983, p. 333). The best example of this was in London where the new ITV weekend franchise‐holder, London Weekend Television (LWT), found itself in major financial difficulties within a year of gaining its license. The down­ turn in national advertising rates, coupled with the increase in levy payments to the government, hit inexperienced companies like LWT especially hard (Sendall 1983, pp. 367–373). This temporary downturn led to redundancies and increased industrial unrest (which was undoubtedly also influenced by unstable industrial relations through­ out Western Europe in 1968). Another problem was the rising costs of broadcasting, a situation that worsened due to competition and the addition of a second BBC channel. Finally, the 1960s witnessed an increasing number of political and public disputes about program content covering sensitive political issues (i.e. Northern Ireland), sex, and violence. By the early 1970s, the attention of government, regulators, and broadcasters shifted from commercial television to commercial radio reform. In 1967, the BBC introduced



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city‐by‐city local radio. BBC local radio was followed by the start of commercial local radio in 1973. Such moves were a precursor to broader developments in the radio and television industry in the 1970s and 1980s, especially after the Peacock Report of 1986, which provided the main stimulus to expand commercial imperatives in the UK radio and television industries. In other European countries, deregulation processes did not emerge until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Such was the case with Denmark where local commercial radio and television started appearing on an experimental basis in 1981. After a few years, local radio (1985) and local television (1987) were subject to legislation, and a short while later, innumerable local independent radio and television stations emerged that were funded by advertising (Prehn 1998, p. 56). In the case of the Federal Republic of Germany, although the Constitutional Court had issued a verdict that paved the way for broadcasting to be organized on the principles of the private economy, whereby the Länder were granted exclusive competence regarding radio and television in 1961, com­ mercial television broadcasts were not authorized until 1984 (Krotz 2000). “However, in contrast to Italy and France, the legalistic approach taken by the German Government initially meant that a strong public service element was retained alongside a burgeoning private sector” (Humphreys 1996, p. 187). In Austria, France, Poland, and Sweden the break‐up of PSB started on the lowest rung: radio. The irruption of commercial stations reached Sweden in the form of the proximity radio Närradio, once the Swedish parliament had authorized the submission of bids for broadcasting licenses in 1979. In Poland, the Catholic church was the first group to obtain permission to exploit radio broadcasting in 1989, constituting the first step for commercial television. French commercial television started out under the aus­ pices of the political liberalization of socialist president François Mitterrand in the early 1980s, and was designed to demolish the television monopoly in order to create an internationally competitive media industry. The beneficiaries of licenses included the Havas agency wich signed a deal with the state in 1983 to develop the first analogue pay‐TV television, Canal Plus, that would play an active role in invigorating the audio­ visual sector by dedicating part of its revenue to the funding of French cinema. Other European countries began deregulating their television in the late 1980s, such as the French and Flemish communities of Belgium that legalized commercial channels, most of which were pay‐TV networks and local television channels, in this period (Bens 1998b, p. 47).

­The Privatization of Radio and Television in Southern Europe: Differences and Similarities The development of commercial television channels featured some typical characteristics of all countries in southern Europe, although other aspects differed from country to country. Spain’s evolution was peculiar due to its Civil War (1936–1939). The structure of the broadcasting system could be defined as an “oligopoly,” with a centralized PSB controlled by the government coexisting alongside commercial radio stations that were vestiges of the Franco dictatorship. In 1979, during the political transition, new radio licenses were granted. The following decade reaffirmed “the right to rights acquired dur­ ing the Franco period but, above all, established the precedent of absolute discretion on the part of the Administration for private concessions and politicisation with party and cliental criteria of such concessions” (Bustamante 2006, p. 75). However, the municipal

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radio stations, created in 1979, were left out of this share‐out until their legalization in 1999, which meant years of “illegality” for these radio initiatives under the auspices of democratic town councils. The extension of the radio spectrum enabled the owners of print media and publishers to set up new activities in the audiovisual field. This interest could be seen on a national or regional level through the appearance of new radio broad­ casters linked to local and regional publishing groups. In Spain the political use of the television monopoly by the different governments, along with the inefficient management of Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), whose image was falling into disrepute, and corruption scandals were the focus of the debate to end such a monopoly. Those who defended Spanish private television alluded to the concept of efficiency and the guarantee of pluralism through the existence of private operators. Nevertheless, despite pressure from players interested in the privatization of television, the government delayed this possibility until 1989 when three licenses were granted (Bustamante 2006). Italian television went through two periods of rapid transformation. Between 1976 and 1980, hundreds of local television broadcasters were established. Initially, they were community‐minded, with a mission to inform, and a desire to give a voice to local peo­ ple. However, the commercial model, albeit in “home‐made” form, would soon prevail. The second stage began in the late 1970s when investments rose, and the first private national networks were formed. Strangely, this coincided with the launching of RAI’s third television channel and a regionally driven decentralization, both established by the new law n. 103/75 approved by parliament in April 1975 called “public service reform law” (Richeri 2009). Starting in the early 1980s, developments in the Italian television sector were marked by the growth of private national channels that had the necessary technical means, economic resources, and professional expertise to gradually rival the public broadcaster RAI (Grasso 1992). The advent of a virtually private television monopoly of one provider with three national channels in 1984, led to public‐private competition on an equal footing making Italy’s television market unique in Europe (Balbi and Prario 2010). However, as time passed, a dual transformation occurred: first, the importance of pri­ vate local TV stations progressively eroded in competition with private national networks; second, the community spirit of “independent” television channels became increasingly marginal leaving room for a commercial outlook to take its place. Thus, De Vescovi (1986) noted: “In 1976, private television emerged as the expression of a local scene and culture that public‐service broadcasting was failing to tap into. But the early system con­ tained the seeds for destroying that type of television” (p. 89). The drive toward the nationalization and commercialization of TV came firmly together in 1984 when most local stations were taken over by Fininvest. The formation of the “imperfect duopoly” between RAI and Fininvest (later Mediaset) can be seen as a distortion of the socio‐­ cultural drivers that had initially launched private broadcasting in the 1970s (Murialdi 1990). Local television stations were grouped into circuits and networks that simultane­ ously broadcast the content of the same parent station while facilitating the sale of adver­ tising through commercials that reached increasingly more people. This concentration process with centralized management, scheduling, and placement of advertising contrib­ uted greatly to Berlusconi’s media empire (Regourd 1992, p. 77). During the same period, Greece initiated its deregulation process without a solid regulative body to help private broadcasters to operate without authorization or supervision. This would lead, as in other countries, to relatively high levels of concentration in the sector (Heretakis et al. 2000, p. 198).



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The analysis of television deregulation processes provides evidence for the willingness of multimedia groups to internalize their economic activities and to intervene in the creation of television channels in different European countries. The interest in operating in several markets initially emerged with the CTL and its broadcasts in France, and with the emergence of commercial television that managed to extend its activities to the Federal Republic of Germany and Belgium, “serving an audience of more than 120 mil­ lion television viewers” (Regourd 1992, p. 114). The case of Berlusconi’s Fininvest in Italy with branches in Spain, France, and Germany, or of Canal Plus operating in six countries in the early 1990s, are other examples of this process. The goal to cross national borders continued to exist over decades and led to large‐scale business movements and cross‐media conglomerates, some of which still exist today. But as noted by Iosifidis et al. (2005): “The historical origins of broadcasting as a national concern, and the enormous cultural and linguistic diversity within Europe, have meant that the vast majority of tel­ evision is still produced for and targeted at distinct national audiences” (p. 132). This brief review of the birth of commercial radio and television in Europe serves as a warning regarding the concentration of capital and the trans‐nationalization of media content. Private investments in radio and television led to a high degree of concentration of ownership in many European countries and to the formation of major cross‐media conglomerates. This concentration strategy also led to an increase in advertising revenue and wider financial profit margins. By working for the same parent company, television production became cheaper but also meant a homogenization of the programming and a decrease in content quality standards. The European Institute for the Media described the unfolding effects of liberalization policies in 1988 as follows: “The progressive merg­ ing of private media interests in Europe into a small number of multinational enterprises is beginning to give cause for concern on account of its potential consequences for the maintenance of media diversity and freedom of expression” (p. 113). Meanwhile, public and commercial operators have to deal with another destabilizing factor as a conse­ quence of the new cable and satellite channels: audience fragmentation. This fragmenta­ tion will be accentuated further in the future due to internet‐based options for audiovisual media consumption.

­European Regions: An Opportunity for Commercial Radio and Television Those European regions with a certain degree of decentralization and administrative autonomy were a political factor in the development of a favorable terrain for the emer­ gence of public and commercial local radio and television broadcasters, and the drive for decentralization in the television sector. This regionalization process occurred at a differ­ ent pace in different Western European countries, and the typological heterogeneity of regional television models needs to be seen in relation to the economic, political, demo­ graphic, geographic, and linguistic particularities of each European region, and the ­historical development of national television systems (Moragas and Garitaonandía 1995). For purposes of clarification, Moragas and Garitaonandía (1995) define a European region “as an area of territory associated with a specific identity which in terms of size is smaller than the nation‐state, but considerably larger than an urban centre” (p. 11). Some of these regions have strong political structures, and cultural and linguistic identities. In this context, we could consider organizations such as ITV in the United Kingdom, and the radio and television of the German Länder to be “federated television.” With

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regard to ITV, Humphreys (2000) notes: “The Television Act of 1954 created the Independent Television Authority (ITA); this was the supreme regulatory body which supervised the ‘federal’ structure of 15 regional independent television (ITV) compa­ nies” (p. 184). While ITV’s regional public service remit complimented that of the BBC’s as the national broadcaster, the concept of public broadcasting after 1955 became somewhat less clear. There were several interlocking reasons for this. Tom Burns (1977) argues that the main reason was the change in social structure and the economic boom of the 1950s, which allowed more people to buy television sets, but which also “brought into question the authority of the whole hierarchy of values on which the Reithian sys­ tem of control, consensus and ethos itself depended” (p. 43). In the Federal Republic of Germany, “the regional third channels of the regional broadcasting installations were set up, originally as mainly educational and cultural channels” (Krotz 2000, p. 123) in the second half of the 1960s. However, it was from 1984 with the emergence of cable and satellite broadcasting when the Länder authorized commercial television channels. Following the treaty to reunify the two German states in 1990, radio and television of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was organized in accordance with the Länder model (Krotz 2000). In 1970, sometime after the constitutional mandate, and trailing in other countries’ wake, Italian regional assemblies were elected. Their powers were wholly or partly delegated from the central government to legislate on various sectors, from agriculture, health, and tourism, to town planning and professional education (Mazzoleni 2010). Apart from political parties, the most active players in the debate in the early 1970s were trade unions, leisure associations and the regional public institutions that also devised their own reform plans with two especially important aspects. The first was the proposal that some members of the reformed RAI’s management board should be appointed by the various regions to represent their needs and c­ oncerns. The regions, expecting to have their own representatives to pursue their own agendas, were following an old power model that was ingrained in the Italian public‐broadcasting service. The second aspect sought to give voice to the popular demand for pluralism and access. The solution was found in the decentralization of television whereby regional RAI offices were established that were to devise and produce programs, and the third RAI channel came into being; its programming had a strong regional empha­ sis offering both national programs and local productions for regional transmission only (Monteleone 1992). In some European regions, the news and media acquired great political importance for two main reasons. The first dealt with the “new way of governing,” based on a broader and more direct engagement of people with their own community’s problems both in decrying them, and in devising solutions and monitoring the work of public institutions. For this reason, having new channels for the systemic exchange of informa­ tion, not just from the institutions to the citizens but also in the opposite direction, became indispensable. Thus, various initiatives were launched to encourage the general public to discuss and formulate their ideas (often independent from traditional political organizations), and to participate in communication activities using old and new media such as video and cable television. In other words, the regions were primarily interested in new media to articulate calls “from the grass roots,” to encourage ordinary people to get involved and, thus, to influence the running of public affairs. The second reason for the regions’ interest in media, and television in particular, was their belief in being entitled to seek broadcasting reform to reflect the new structure of



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the European state with the regions being a constituent part. The reforming of PSB is another issue that provokes bitter debate even today, given the situation’s significant parallels with contemporary new digital media offering, seemingly unprecedented access opportunities (Grandi and Richeri 1976). This decentralizing process reached France when the socialists promoted the decentralization of law and, in 1982, created a government agency for communication regulation and legalized the possibility of creating private radio and television broadcast companies. The 1982 law provided decentralization in creating “twelve regional television companies, responsible in territorial jurisdiction for one or several regions for broadcasting audiovisual documents of public service television” (Article 51 al. 1). According to the law, the national company FR3 was responsible for coor­ dinating these regional companies, and had to provide them with the technical and financial resources that would enable them to be autonomous within four years. But for many politi­ cal and financial reasons, this section of the law was never applied: FR3 remained a national channel, despite many efforts to develop more regional programmes. After the disappoint­ ments of this missed opportunity for decentralization, FR3 entered the most troubled phase of its history in 1985 for several reasons (Lafon 2010, p. 105).

The case of Spain exemplifies how regional radio and television are closely linked to political situations (Bustamante 2002; Franquet 2002). After the dictatorship, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 allowed for the organization of Spain in autonomous communities. The political panorama designed a media scenario in which the different historical nationalities, such as the Basque country, Catalonia and Galicia, committed themselves to articulating their voices in their own languages (Catalan, Euskera, and Galician) in regional media. The latter were seen as instruments of a regional, cultural, and linguistic policy that aimed to end a long period of linguistic and cultural repression. As Hallin and Mancini (2004) note, the public radio and television system in Spain could be labeled the Mediterranean model, or as “polarised pluralism.” It contains a high degree of politicization, a tendency that is repeated in regional media. Similar to state television, key problems of public regional radio and television are oversized structures with a lack of transparency and efficiency, increasing indebtedness, and a subordination to the (regional) governments. Nevertheless, some regional radio and television ­channels managed to connect with their audiences and became the drivers for linguistic normalization and for a regional audiovisual industry, especially in Catalonia. In Belgium, in the 1970s and 1980s, political reforms were initiated to satisfy the regions that “wanted to have more autonomous power,” and the linguistic and cultural communities; thus, the Flemish, French, and German speaking communities were given responsibility for broadcasting and “are completely autonomous in their decisions on cultural policy” (Pauwels et al. 2000, p. 83). In Austria, the monopoly of the national public service broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) ended with the passing of the Regional Radio Act of 1993 that permitted regional and local commercial radio sta­ tions (Steinmaurer 2000, p. 71). Concurrence would not appear in Luxembourg until 1991 with the authorization to establish four regional radio channels covering the whole territory. This regional decentralization did not happen in countries such as Portugal and Greece due to a lack of political interest in the development of regional television as well as their small‐scale economy considerations. In new or small‐scale regional markets, commercial regional radio and television groups find it harder to survive and to ­overcome financial difficulties, not least in an increasingly more concentrated and homogenized broadcasting industry.

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­New Technologies for a New Society: VCR, Cable, and Satellite Television The deregulation of television coincided in time with technological developments both in the transmission systems and in the tools used for production, reproduction, and reception. The expansion of cable networks, the emergence of satellites, the introduction of portable video cameras, and the consolidation of video cassette recorders (VCRs) were breakthroughs that transformed the European media landscape and led to varia­ tions in television consumption. The powerful drive to develop decentralized, basic local communication originating in both social and institutional changes exploited all the opportunities offered by new com­ munication media. Indeed, they opened up original perspectives in the production and local distribution of information and cultural content as well as in new consumption practices. One innovation came from Japan with semi‐professional low‐cost portable video cameras and video recorders, notably those made by Akay and Sony. The audio­ visual content created with these tools was of decidedly inferior quality to the profes­ sional programs of public networks. For the first time, however, local audiovisual production became an easily accessible activity in economic, technical, and creative terms. Furthermore, portable video recorders had a dual advantage over professional cameras, making them especially suitable for that point in history. First, the filmed and recorded images could be immediately viewed, packaged, and transmitted to audiences, large and small. Second, these video recorders were ideal for collective group projects, offering opportunities for participation and discussion in selecting and disseminating the content. In several European countries, the technical breakthroughs of video caused an explosion of new communication experiences in the sphere of local and regional ­ ­communication. Thanks to these technical features, which proved a perfect fit with the latent socio‐cultural needs, various parts of Italy began to see basic video groups spring up, with aims ranging from political and social activities to campaigning and militant activism (Faenza 1973). Numerous video groups also formed within social and cultural organizations, trade union branches, and recreational associations. Some regions (such as Lombardy, Emilia‐Romagna, and Tuscany) encouraged new video groups in the workplace, and in schools and communities, seeing them as a manifestation of that aspired‐for decentralization of media, and basic political and social engagement through communication. At the time, the most systematic region’s endeavor appeared to be Emilia‐Romagna. They mooted that creating a large‐scale network of video groups asso­ ciated with local industry, and with cultural and social organizations could become the basis for creating content to broadcast via future cable television networks. To highlight how much was invested in that project, the region set up its own studio to establish cable television networks in the 13 largest towns in its territory (Fanti 1973; Grandi and Richeri 1976). Video was a tool at the service of local communication, and it allowed experimenta­ tion with contents and formats. However, this enthusiastic, pioneering phase quickly gave way to gradual disillusionment. As Regourd (1992) points out, these practices aimed at enforcing their right to “make television” outside the public monopoly opened the way to privatization.



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­Cable and Satellite: Emerging Technologies Policies implemented by different European countries in relation to cable and satellite transmissions differed substantially. While certain countries had pioneering experiences in cabling large parts of their territories, this technological infrastructure still hardly exists in other countries. The telecommunications sector and the electronics industry, on the other hand, had great expectations and considered cable networks and satellites to be a path to growth and financial profitability. “Specifically, industry envisaged exciting new markets for cable systems, broadcasting satellites, satellite reception equipment, pay‐TV decoders, new television sets, and so forth” (Humphreys 1998, p. 530). The introduction of cable had an impact on the development of local and regional television but, above all, it opened the door to the major television networks that gradu­ ally consolidated their position in the European audiovisual landscape. In Italy, starting in 1972, over 40 cable television networks emerged across the country in little over a year. Some ventures primarily sought to encourage local culture and information, and were open to the public and its involvement; others had explicit commercial aims. However, all these initiatives were largely “home‐made,” with modest technical, eco­ nomic, and professional resources, as none was investing heavily in a field that was not yet legally defined – it was only in 1974, after the Constitutional Court’s intervention, that the private cable networks became legal. Certain leading industrial groups like Fiat (a bigger Italian industrial company) were closely monitoring developments, ready to make their move when the legal situation was resolved (Balbi and Richeri 2015). Although cable television had been long‐established in other European countries such as Belgium and Switzerland, and especially in North America, with a particularly impor­ tant initiative in Quebec, it was a novelty of sorts to the Italian media scene. During the 1960s, many North American cities had taken to using cable both to improve the quality of color transmission and to boost the number of channels beyond what the airwaves could provide. However, in Europe, cable’s renown stemmed from the many cases in which it had also created new forms of community television (Flichy 1974) run directly by amateur groups allowing members of local communities to become involved. In Canada, new cable television legislation obliged network owners to offer one or more channels to local communities free of charge, and to give them access to the studios and means of production. These strictly non‐profit “community” channels were to strengthen a sense of belonging, to energize local social and community life, and to create a forum for citizens to share and engage in collective problems. These factors drove public bodies across Europe (including in France, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United Kingdom) to launch a series of experimental cable networks and channels to establish the possibility of replicating the North American “community” experience (Grandi and Richeri 1976). In Italy, in contrast, no legal framework was created to enable any such experimental initiatives, and cable television channels struggled to find a foothold. Nonetheless, their efforts triggered a slow and complex process that culminated in the liberalization of the local television sector (first cable, then terrestrial transmissions) and, hence, heralded the dawn of true commercial television in Italy (Duiz 1986). The countries with the highest growth of cable services and number of subscribers were Belgium (over 84%), the Netherlands (70%), and Switzerland (nearly 70%). This data represented the percentage of households with cable connection. It was supplied by

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the Institute for Media in 1987 and established three categories, and stages of develop­ ment: countries with a higher density of cable connections; countries with an average penetration of between 14 and 50%, which included Denmark, Finland, the Federal Republic of Germany, Ireland, and Norway; and, finally, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom with less than 13% of households having sub­ scribed to cable. These differences can be explained by the different policies implemented in their respective countries. In Belgium, cable was introduced by the end of the 1960s, reaching 93% of households by 1991, and the Netherlands attained 80% in 1990 (Regourd 1992, pp. 59–60). In France, “After enforcing a restrictive policy during the 1960s and 1970s that limited the use of cable to retransmiting free‐to‐air channels, the Government launched an ambitious ‘Cable Plan’ in November 1982, under direction of the France Telecom, then a public administration” (Open Society Institute 2005, p. 704). At the same time, in Sweden the establishment of private cable networks began in the mid‐1980s, and their introduction was much slower. Finally, in Spain, despite investments in cable by Compañía Telefónica (then a public company) undertaken in Madrid and Barcelona in the 1980s cable television did not develop. Close relations between cable operators and the promoters of satellite resulted from the need of the first satellite radio and television broadcasts for cable networks to reach households. Subsequently, with third‐generation DBS, television broadcasts reached homes directly allowing for transmission penetration also in those countries that did not have cable networks. In Germany, the government was to remove the “cable blockade” in 1982 and to promote the satellite industry. Four years later, the Constitutional Court “approved the introduction of a ‘dual system’ of public and private broadcasting in which the commercial companies were freed up by a significant, yet measured, degree of regulation” (Iosifidis et  al. 2005, p. 39). These political and legislative measures, the launch of the Sat.1 satellite in 1984, and the introduction of commercial television ­channels contributed to the dynamism of the German television market, especially after German reunification. The expansion of cable operators and satellite companies in Europe was not free from setbacks that arose from legislation, from the characteristics of each national market, and from the lack of financial viability of some television projects. These difficulties led to frequent changes in shareholding and resulted in merger and business concentration processes. An example of that was the agreement between the European Tele­ communications Satellite Organization (Eutelsat) and the Société Européenne des satel­ lites, which launched the Astra satellite in 1988 that provided television coverage to Western Europe and ended the European Postal Telephone and Telegraph (PTT) monopoly of “the application of space telecommunication to television”(European Institute for the Media 1988, p. 17). Deregulation and technologies had an impact on the European television market and the European Key Facts report analyzed the increase in channels in 33 countries. In 1995, there were 303 television channels and 383 in the following year. In 1997, there were “400 channels, including, 110 public, more than 40 pay TV, 25 pan‐European and 7 digi­ tal packages. An ever‐growing list of channels which does not even allow for all the local and regional channels” (IP Group 1997, p. 11). This transformation began with deregula­ tion and led to business concentration, and the formation of big conglomerates. Along the same lines, the French market was dominated by three companies in 1997 as described by the monograph of the Open Society Institute (2005): Bouygues, the main owner of TFI, Suez, the owner of M6, and Vivendi, the owner of Canal + Group (pp. 649).



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All these groups had interests in the cable and satellite industry. In ­addition to the business dimension, as pointed out by Brunsdon (1991), satellites took on a specific context‐related symbolism, and for Morley (2007), it was essential to analyze this dimension as satellite dishes have come to symbolize quite different things: not so much “taste poverty” as cultural sophistication in some parts of the Middle East; suspicious forms of unwanted “Americanisation” in other contexts. In some parts of Europe, they have come to symbolise forms of “cultural treason” against their “host nation,” through which migrant groups live out a virtual form of diasporic existence (p. 282).

­Transformation in Media Production and Consumption The arrival of private commercial multi‐channel television at the beginning of the 1980s accelerated convergence processes, fostered the permeability of television programs from foreign markets, transformed how television was made as a result of the technological innovations and the demand for low‐cost programming, and led to audience fragmenta­ tion. With commercial operators introducing more adventurous and popular program­ ming, television broadcasting boomed. It was, however, this popularity that caused the problems. As Curran and Seaton (2003) argued, television went through a golden age, “and yet the attempt to reach a big audience (especially the working classes) while meet­ ing public service criteria caused creative tensions” (p. 195). There were, arguably, three possible ways in which the BBC could have dealt with the onset of commercial competition. The first was to remain loyal to its strictly non‐­ commercial tradition of PSB, and to the maintenance of those same program formats. Otherwise, the BBC could have chosen to fight ITV on commercial grounds. The third option was to search for a middle way. This meant to compensate for the general move in UK television toward a more popular direction by placing renewed emphasis on ­certain elements of public service provision. Of these possible strategies, the BBC chose the middle way, as Anthony Smith (1974) argued: Producers within the BBC were more often conscious of an internal competition between different sections of the BBC, producing an enormous flowering of talent and inventiveness, which became characteristic of broadcasting in the first half of the 1960s; the coming of commercial television had undoubtedly produced a mood of competitiveness, but the changes which occurred within the BBC were not to any great extent imitative of independ­ ent television. The BBC pioneered daring forms of television satire, it instituted profession­ alised political interviewing, and adopted traditional journalistic standards in its current affairs programmes. ITV for much of the time found itself lagging slightly behind the BBC in viewing figures, but its journalistic work too became confident and highly professional­ ised (pp. 126–127).

The adaptation of radio and television companies and of their professionals was inevi­ table as competition increased in all countries. In Italy, the journalists, including many editors of national newspapers and at the RAI, began to reflect on their profession’s social role and on the necessary changes to keep in step with the great changes afoot in society. With the transformations that took place in the 1980s and the 1990s in Spain “TVE had to assimilate these social changes and work, at the same time, to adapt to the formal and perceptive demands of new audiences” (Palacio 2001, p. 139). Palacio (2001)

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also pointed out that these changes contributed to improving the programs offered in the mid‐1980s with programs that were “more committed” and “modern,” especially in the case of the second channel of RTVE. However, as indicated by Bustamante (2002), TVE “was a pioneer in Europe in importing American fiction” (p. 214), and for years, it was not an important driving force in Spanish films. The phenomenon of adapting to a competitive television market had various facets, and the reaction was not the same in different European countries. The private television companies’ aggressive programming strategies led to a reaction of some PSBs to embrace formats with which it was easy to penetrate the audience. This led to the abandoning of less financially profitable program genres such as, for example, theater and of quality standards of past times to counteract the private broadcasters’ loss of audiences. These changes, moreover, had an impact “on news and current affairs programing, which in the 1960s and 1970s was often shaped more by a political or professional than by a strictly commercial logic” (Sinclair and Turner 2004, p. 13). The audience is essential, since advertising forms a substantial part of the overall budget of a large proportion of public networks, such as the Irish Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTE), the Spanish RTVE, and the Italian RAI. In the medium term, the arrival of commercial television represented a reduction in advertising income, which, together with the possible reductions in the contributions of public money, led to structural deficits that accumulated over the years, as occurred with RTVE and the Spanish regional channels. The increase in the number of television channels available, the existence of several television sets in households, the growth in the use of video cassette recorders and the practice of continually changing channels by zapping contributed to the progressive fragmentation of the audience. Television managers wanted to counteract this phenom­ enon by means of programming strategies based on target audiences and with thematic channels (sports, music, film, children’s, etc.). In addition to this phenomenon, another occurred in the European free‐to‐air general‐interest channels, content homogenization. The ideas behind deregulation referred to the benefits of the diversity and plurality of contents, but reality had other nuances. The data from the Euromonitor observatory offered a clear conclusion on the effects of deregulation on the general‐interest television offered in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (Prado 2002). In these markets, the comparison between 1990, when deregulation was beginning to show its effects, and 2000 is conclusive with two clear trends: homogenization and spectacu­ larization, with concentration in two macro‐genres, these being fiction and information in both years, and the deployment of the info‐show that increased by 10 points in 10 years, as can be seen in Figure 14.1. Finally, the expansion of VCRs affected television consumption with rented or pur­ chased tapes of cinema films and by recording television programs to be viewed later. These practices had an impact on the film and television industry that had to adapt and understand audiences’ new patterns of television consumption.

­Conclusion The deregulation of traditional television systems in Europe and the arrival of commer­ cial television facilitated the emergence of powerful economic groups interested in attracting international capital by creating multinational companies for operating in the audiovisual industry. “Havas was first involved in advertising, tourism, and publishing;



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40 35 30

35 29

1990

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2000

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25 20 15

12

10

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8 5

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2

10

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3

8 5

4 2 2

2 2

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0 Fiction

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Info-show

Show

Quiz

Youth

Children

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Figure 14.1  EU‐5: Programming evolution, 1990–2000. Source: Euromonitor. Reproduced with permission of Euromonitor.

Bertelsman in publishing; Berlusconi and Bouygues in the construction industry; Murdoch and Maxwell in newspaper” (European Institute for the Media 1988, p. 88). The main purpose of these groups was initially to take over control of broadcasting com­ panies and to expand their activities into the audiovisual industry by creating production and distribution companies and by “controlling cinema chains, cable‐distribution or using satellites” (European Institute for the Media 1988, p. 88). The liberalization of the television market was supported by industrial, economic, or political European actors, but also by players from outside Europe, notably precedents from the United States “who stood to benefit directly from the liberalisation of television markets such as advertisers, existing and prospective commercial media players, big electronics manufac­ turers, and content producers” (Michalis 2013, p. 40). As we have seen, numerous terrestrial, cable, and satellite channels were created in Western European countries during the 1980s and 1990s as a result of deregulation and technological innovations. In Eastern and Central Europe, the media landscape also underwent an important reorganization as a result of political and legislative changes that gave the green light to private channels. One of the elements to be considered is the emergence of initiatives linked to the sphere of social movements. Throughout Europe they demanded the right to have radio and television channels to set out their ideas and participate in a collective dialog. Demand again increased with the internet, and the technologies were appropriated, as in previous decades, to challenge the existing status quo and to experiment with messages and formats. During this period, there was tension in the ownership concentration processes. These were sustained by political and legisla­ tive action to promote the creation of cross‐media communication groups in the differ­ ent countries, with the aim of competing with multinational holdings at the international level. These business conglomerates called into question diversity and plurality, and promoted homogeneity of contents and formats with faster audience penetration. ­

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Michalis (2013) argues the impact of private television on programs, schedules, and audiences shares: Still, private broadcasters overall are interested in high ratings and good demographics and tend therefore to focus on the most commercially attractive audience segments and to invest significantly less in original domestic productions, relying instead on cheaper imported, mainly entertainment, programmes mostly from the United States (p. 40).

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15

History of the Media in Central and Eastern Europe Péter Bajomi‐Lázár, Auksė Balčytienė, Alina Dobreva, and Beata Klimkiewicz

­Introduction: Media History and Central and Eastern Europe Studies on the universal history of media tend to focus on Western Europe and the United States, as most of the media‐related technological innovations – from the print book through the telegraph to the internet – have emerged in these parts of the world (cf. Kovarik 2011). A notable exception to this rule is the Soviet Union/Russia, to which many media history books devote a chapter or two for its obvious global political importance (cf. Miquel 1984; Barbier and Lavenir 2000). By contrast, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which until recently have been lagging behind in technological development and are lacking global political importance, are often ignored or mentioned only briefly (cf. Briggs and Burke 2002). This chapter is an attempt to offer an overview of the media histories of some of the region’s countries with a focus on recent developments. Central and Eastern Europe as a region differs in multiple ways from Western Europe, including, among other things, a lower density of population, belated industrialization and urbanization, weaker middle classes, a heavier reliance on agriculture, and poorer economic and democratic performance (cf. Rupnik and Zielonka 2013). While similarities may still prevail as a result of slow modernization and a common historical legacy including membership of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECOM) and the Warsaw Pact during the decades of state-socialism and under Soviet influence, it is increasingly recognized that since the political transformations starting in the late 1980s, the region’s countries have taken “divergent paths” (Mungiu‐Pippidi 2013, p. 40) that led to “multiple post‐communisms” (Jakubowicz and Sükösd 2008, p. 25) or “diverse outcomes” (Mihelj and Downey 2012, p. 7). With this “miscellaneity and hybridity, heterogeneity, and even flux as a region” (Balčytienė 2013, p. 32) in mind, this chapter, which was completed in late 2016, maps the history of politics and media in four Central and Eastern European countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland. This selection of countries includes the southern, northern, eastern and western parts of the region of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as small, medium‐sized and big countries whose media, political and economic system indicators vary greatly. Russia, The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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which, unlike the former communist countries discussed in this chapter, has remained outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) and has built a “statist commercialized” or “neo‐authoritarian” media regime (Vartanova 2012, p. 139ff) after the fall of communism, is only mentioned on the side. Contributors to this chapter, first, briefly discuss some of the political history of the twentieth century to outline the different country backgrounds that may explain their divergent paths in the post‐transformation period. This is followed by an assessment of the role of the media during and in the immediate aftermath of the political transformations, whose length varied from country to country. Finally, the media histories of the post‐transformation period are described with a focus on the 1990s, including processes of deregulation, which had taken decades to unfold in the “West” but in the “East” took place in a compressed period of time. In search of recurring and divergent patterns, the authors discuss the privatization and commercialization of media, the relationship between political actors and journalists, including the status of public service ­broadcasters, and professional norms and practices. The central theme of this chapter is “mimetic transplantation” (Jakubowicz and Sükösd 2008, p. 18ff), that is, the transfer of institutions and culture, long established in consolidated Western democracies, into the consolidating democracies of Central and Eastern Europe without regard to differences between the political landscapes of “old” and “young” democracies, and often resulting in controversial practices such as media capture by parties and an ensuing deficit of media freedom. This chapter does not discuss media digitalization, because – unlike legacy media – new media technology in Central and Eastern Europe emerged at the same time as that in Western Europe.

­Bulgaria After centuries of Ottoman rule, the Bulgarian state was restored in 1878. Bulgarian politics in the first half of the twentieth century were dominated by two major efforts: the strengthening of the modern state in an attempt to catch up with other European countries, and the unification of all territories populated by Bulgarians in one state. The former had considerable success. The first constitution of independent modern Bulgaria was one of the most liberal constitutions in Europe at the time (Karasimeonov 1999). A  great number of political parties and a vivid and well‐developed newspaper market represented a variety of political ideas. The latter, however, faced major challenges and led to painful military losses and national catastrophes. The communist regime established in Bulgaria after World War II was a particularly harsh one. It started with the murder of tens of thousands of local elites in the late 1940s, and it continued with the establishment of a large network of concentration camps until the early 1960s and ­political imprisonment until the collapse of the regime in 1989. “Patrimonial communism” in Bulgaria (Kitschelt, Mansfeldova and Markowski 1999) meant the destruction of all political parties and civil society organizations. The tight totalitarian grip of the communist state and its secret police did not allow for the development of a viable political opposition. The media system was almost completely penetrated by the party (Raycheva and Petev 2003), operated under total censorship (Nikolchev 1997), and was subsidized by the state in line with its propaganda purpose (Mickiewicz 1999). Alternative sources of information such as the samizdat press were very limited and even the Bulgarian‐language transmissions of Deutsche



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Welle, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Radio Liberty, and the Voice of America (VOA) were heavily jammed (Mickiewicz 1999). When the political movement for reformation “perestroika” began in the Soviet Union, even Soviet media had to be smuggled into Bulgaria (Nikolchev 1997). The impact of alternative sources of information was profound on those who had access to them, but their reach was limited. In 2014, the medium‐sized country of Bulgaria had a population of 7.2 million (of which 85% were ethnic Bulgarians, 9% Turkish, and 5% Roma). With a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of US$7,713 (World Bank 2014), it was one of the ­poorest EU countries in 2014.

The Political Transformation of 1989–1997 and its Aftermath The political transformation in Bulgaria started with a staged change of leadership within the Bulgarian Communist Party in November 1989. This, however, triggered mass demonstrations demanding real political changes. Opposition parties were quickly formed in the streets and started roundtable negotiations for a transition to democracy. After the first free elections in June 1990, Bulgaria became a multi‐party parliamentary republic with a proportional voting system. Executive power is held by the government, while the president, albeit directly elected, has limited powers. The 1990s political landscape was dominated by bi‐polar confrontations between the former Communist Party, renamed as the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the anti‐ communist opposition called the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF). In this turbulent political sphere, a slow and difficult economic transition ensued under short‐lived and weak governments. Only the UDF government from 1997 until 2001 committed itself to moving the country toward NATO and EU membership, which had a major impact on moving from transition to democratic consolidation. Freedom of speech and of the press was a first major sign of democratic change (Nikolchev 1997). The lack of other democratic institutions gave media an unusually strong influence on political processes (Milev 1996). The turbulent political events of the time created a high demand for political information, which was answered by a sudden rise in the number of newspapers outnumbering even the heavily subsidized press in communist times (Raycheva and Petev 2003). With one newspaper or magazine per 1,000 people (Nikolov 1996), the newspaper market quickly reached economically unsustainable levels of pluralism. Most of the quality newspapers or broadsheets were party outlets (Fileva 1998), heavily polarized, and to a certain extent using the propagandistic style of the communist press (Lozanov 1996). A process of democratization started in state radio and television: censorship was removed almost immediately and independent productions were aired on public television. The first licensed Bulgarian private radio station FM+ was established in 1992 by Petar Punchev, Konstantin Tilev, Kiril Kalev, and Boycho Avtov, and the first private television station called Nova TV, owned by the Greek Antenna Group, was established in 1994. Private radio outlets almost exclusively aired entertainment. Media had a great influence on political events: for example, the transmission on public television of a video of Prime Minister Petar Mladenov stating that “it will be best if the tanks come” during one of the first pro‐democracy demonstrations in December 1989 triggered national strikes in 1990 when it became public, and consequently the prime minister resigned. National television and radio also participated in and contributed to the national strikes in 1990 provoked by the widespread suspicions of electoral

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fraud in the first parliamentary elections, and then again in 1996/1997 provoked by hyperinflation, economic catastrophe, and lack of reforms, ousting two governments. Also, there were several demonstrations, strikes and petitions by journalists and citizens defending free speech as many of the 1990s governments tried to discredit and rule the media (Nikolchev 1997). Arguably, media studios became more central stages to political life than the political institutions, including the parliament. Until the first post‐communist broadcasting act was adopted in 1998, media operated under the media law of 1975 using loopholes in legislation such as the possibility of establishing temporary outlets. The authorities turned a blind eye to this, yet this legal arrangement created insecurity in media. The professional standards of journalism gradually shifted from those established under communism toward democratic ones, which led to significant disagreements within the professional community (Raycheva and Petev 2003). Journalistic standards and practices reflected the transforming political conditions that were very different from those in established democracies. The overall economic difficulties of the transition as well as the over‐saturation of the press exposed media to corruption (Mickiewicz 1999). The general impression was that media gained their freedom in the early 1990s but very soon lost their independence and fell victim to economic dependencies and bribes (Dobreva 2009).

The Post‐Transformation Period The post‐transformation period witnessed a great deal of change in the political ­landscape, which, with the elections of 2001, moved away from the bi‐polar left/right cleavage. New centrist and arguably populist parties emerged and helped form governments, including most notably the National Movement for Simeon II, and the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria. Their success related mainly to their charismatic leaders and to the protest votes of the disappointed electorate (Vassilev 2004). BSP remained by far the most important left‐wing party, while many UDF members left their party at different moments to form somewaht small, new parties. One of the few parties to demonstrate stability and even a steady increase in electoral support was the Turkish minority party Movement for Rights and Freedoms. It also preserved its role of a needed, and sometimes unavoidable, coalition partner. In general, political life in the post‐transformation period brought stability. The problems of endemic corruption and of a dysfunctional judiciary system, however, became increasingly manifest. Corruption led to non‐transparent political dependencies and deficiencies in the execution of rule of law (Bąkowski and Voronova 2017). Closely related to that, the media suffered from political capture and high levels of corruption, indicated by the ever‐declining indices of media freedom and pluralism. Media, thus, lost their central role in political life, not the least since political institutions took over their expected functions. Media in the post‐transformation period were also characterized by commercialization and the technological harmonization with Western standards. These trends were strengthened by foreign media investments that began in the late 1990s, thus, later than in other post‐communist countries (Nikolchev 1997). The hope that foreign investors would bring about higher journalism standards was not met. Some argue that foreign ownership actually introduced new problems, most notably the monopolistic position of big multinational media companies on small local markets, an overwhelming search for



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profit, and a lack of social responsibility (Mickiewicz 1999). The case of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) group, the biggest foreign investor in the Bulgarian newspaper market, is illustrative of the mismatch between expectations and the actual impact of foreign ownership. For a long time, the market share of the WAZ group was over 70% while the regulatory limit was 35%; but due to the company’s strength, national authorities turned a blind eye on this (Mihaylova 2004). In search of profit and to keep its commercial hegemony, the WAZ group reinforced collusive local practices such as aligning their editorial policy according to who was in power, conducting smear campaigns, or accepting bribes for publications (Alfandari 2000). The adoption of relevant European legislation was also expected to guarantee a democratic and plural media system. During the accession negotiations between Bulgaria and the EU, there was an evident improvement in media performance in Bulgaria, reflected in many international comparative studies and national reports, for example Freedom House and Reporters without Borders. Similar to other former communist countries, however, once the intensive scrutiny of the accession process was over, media freedom and pluralism again began to decline. This was mainly a result of an inappropriate design and implementation of the respective laws (Brogi and Dobreva 2015). Also, the economic crisis that started in 2008 further weakened the over‐saturated media market, and advertisement budgets became insufficient to maintain economically viable media outlets. As a result, media have become strongly exposed to political pressures, especially with the state being the biggest advertiser. Budgetary pressure is, thus, often used by the government of the day to control the public service broadcasters (see reports of the Media Pluralism Monitor). The party press has declined and largely disappeared. However, political bias is still manifest in many media outlets though usually less systematic and ideological. The major explanation for poor professional performance is endemic corruption in the media sector, which takes two main forms: either politicians corrupt journalists directly by giving them money, or they bribe chief‐editors or owners with money or favors related to their other economic interests. In the latter case, the journalists themselves may be unaware of where exactly the political pressure comes from. On the other hand, journalists and media owners are sometimes not just the victims but also the initiators of these collusive relationships with political elites (Dobreva, Voltmer, and Pfetsch 2011). A new method of exercising non‐transparent political influence is using the dependence on bank loans of particular media to influence their editorial policy according to the political affiliations and interests of the banker. Similar problems of corruption, lack of ownership transparency and political pressure have been observed on the television market, including a most recent case of politicians threatening to fire a journalist as they did not like the questions of the journalist (Association of Bulgarian Journalists 2017). The private television sector has been growing in recent years, but mostly in terms of regional cable television channels with limited audiences and influence. The most notable examples of political pressures and corruption, therefore, usually relate to national channels. The two broadcasters with a national terrestrial coverage, Nova Television and bTV, are under foreign ownership and have steadily been more popular than public television. They provide more appealing entertainment programs while their news bulletins and political programs have also gained popularity. Apart from a single private radio station, Darik Radio, and the public radio, the rest of the radio market has an overwhelmingly entertaining and apolitical character.

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Bulgaria: Summary and Conclusions A political culture of corruption has survived the political transformation and even developed further in the past 25 years. There still is a lack of institutional capacity to challenge this problem and to properly implement European regulations and legislation. Consequently, the Bulgarian media system is characterized by a high degree of political capture enhanced by the lack of established traditions of democracy and of free media. Bulgarian media are increasingly perceived as part of the political system and journalists are widely seen to belong to the political class – ironically, similar to how it was during the communist era.

­Hungary During the twentieth century, Hungary went through several political regimes in quick succession, including the Austro‐Hungarian Habsburg monarchy (1867–1918), the Hungarian Democratic Republic (1918), the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919), the Regency (1920–1945), the coalition years (1946–1948), Mátyás Rákosi’s Stalinist dictatorship (1949–1956), Imre Nagy’s short‐lived revolution (October–November 1956), János Kádár’s first “hard,” then “soft” dictatorship (1956–1988), and the Third Republic (1989–present). Hungary’s borders also changed repeatedly; most importantly, after the Trianon Treaty in 1920, about 2 million ethnic Hungarians found themselves under the jurisdiction of neighboring states (Szabó 2000; Romsics 2002). Hungary’s recent history has, thus, been marked by a great deal of discontinuity. The ideologies promoted by the successive regimes varied greatly and ranged from the far left to the far right. Consequently, many of the political elites attempted to politically instrumentalize the media in order to deliver their ideologically based messages to the public. Hungary, with a population of about 10 million, is a medium‐sized European country. In 2014, the biggest ethnic minority were the Roma estimated at 6% of the population. Nearly 40% of Hungarians are Catholic. The per capita GDP in 2014 was US$13.902, placing the country in the middle tier of the former communist countries that joined the EU in the 2000s (World Bank 2014).

The Political Transformation of 1989–1990 and Its Aftermath Kádár’s party state was frequently described as “goulash communism” because of its pragmatism and less rigid political control after the consolidation of his rule, compared to other countries in communist Central and Eastern Europe (Lánczi and O’Neil 1997). Hungary’s media policy (or “information policy,” to use the term of the time) was based on the Soviet‐type model of agitation and propaganda (cf. Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm 1963[1956]), albeit the grip of the Hungarian Communist Party over the media was gradually relaxed over the years; for example, the state broadcaster Hungarian Television, established in 1957, began to air Western television series and crime shows starting in the late 1970s. In the late 1980s, as Kádár was aging, economic recession grew, and Mikhail Gorbachev’s accession to power in the Soviet Union put an end to the Hungarian Communist Party’s external support. Change was generated from both inside the ruling Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party and by members of the democratic opposition, including public intellectuals gathered around the samizdat press (Kitschelt, Mansfeldova and Markowski 1999; Romsics 2002). The scenario for a peaceful transformation was set



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during a series of ­trilateral roundtable negotiations that involved the reform communists, the democratic opposition, and civil society, and that was backed by massive street demonstrations between June and September 1989 (Bozóki 2004). The Third Republic was proclaimed on 23 October 1989, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Revolution of 1956. The political transformation was preceded by a partial transformation of the media:. In 1986, a young journalist called Endre Aczél replaced the long‐standing editor‐in‐chief of Hungarian Television’s news bulletin and changed the style and content of the news after 30 years of solid propaganda programming. Hungarian Radio launched Radio Danubius, the first quasi‐commercial station in the country airing pop music and entertainment, marking the beginning of the end of the propaganda model. Further, city councils established television channels across the country, which ended Hungarian Television’s monopoly at the local level, and a Press Act was passed, which undermined the practice of “manual control” that had served as a means of media control for decades. Perhaps most importantly, a political show called Night Owl, aired on the thirtieth anniversary of the Revolution of 1956 and anchored by Miklós Györffy, raised the question of where the bodies of the revolution’s executed martyrs had been buried (Bajomi‐ Lázár 2014). The show was instrumental in setting a new political agenda and eventually led to the reburial of 1956 Prime Minister Nagy. It took place on 16 June 1989, in Heroes’ Square in Budapest with the participation of 200,000 demonstrators and was aired live on television. In a symbolic act, the ceremony marked the de‐legitimization of the regime headed by Kádár who had ordered the execution (Bruszt 1990). Many Hungarian journalists look back on the transformation years as the “golden age” of media freedom: the old political elites were no longer powerful enough to control media, while the new ones did not yet have the will or the power to do so (Horvát 1997). In this power vacuum, journalists acted independently: they criticized the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, presented dissident politicians and parties to voters, and mobilized people to attend demonstrations. They no longer acted as “the soldiers of the party” but as “the watchdogs of democracy.” In this period, journalists appeared united, sharing the joint goals of changing the system and establishing democracy (Sükösd 2000). While the forces of the democratic opposition were largely united in promoting political transformation in the late 1980s, the campaign leading to the first free elections, held in March and April 1990, revealed the ideological cleavages dividing them. The roots of these divides  –  along left/right, secular/Christian, European/national, progressive/ conservative, and market‐driven/state‐oriented lines – originated in the various political regimes of the twentieth century (Körösényi 1998). Growing ideological polarization in politics was increasingly reflected in media and eventually led to the outbreak of a “media war,” that is, bitter struggles among the political elites to control the media, especially the public service broadcasters. Ever since the political transformation, Hungarian ­journalists have been under political pressures of varying degrees. Media were first instrumental to democratic change, only to be politically instrumentalized later by ­democratically elected political actors.

The Post‐Transformation Period In the transformation years, Hungarian political elites implemented Western European institutional models in the political, economic, and media realms. A single‐chamber multi‐party parliamentary system was established, with the government as the main executive power, and the president of the republic, elected by parliament, playing a mainly

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ceremonial role (Körösényi 1998). State‐owned assets were privatized, often under ­controversial circumstances, including print outlets that had until that time operated under party control. In a process frequently described as “self‐privatization,” most newspapers were sold to multinational investors such as Bertelsmann, Hersant, and Axel Springer, and foreign ownership reached 70% by the end of 1991. At the same time, tabloid newspapers became available, hundreds of new publications emerged, and the circulation of quality newspapers began to decline (Gulyás 2000). While private ownership gained ground in the press early on, the privatization of the broadcast media was delayed by the media war. Rhetorically, all parliamentary parties were devoted to the ideal of media freedom, ready to deregulate the media and determined to establish public service broadcasters modeled on the BBC. However, by virtue of the constitution and possibly uniquely in the world, the passage of broadcasting regulation required parliamentary approval by a two‐thirds majority. Because no consensus had been reached between the conservative‐Christian government, and the liberal and socialist opposition parties, no broadcasting act was adopted for years. After bitter controversies accompanied by street protests of the general public and journalists and a shift of power to the socialist and liberal parties in the 1994 elections, this situation finally changed. The adoption of the 1996 Radio and Television Act allowed for the ensuing launch of the nationwide private commercial television channels RTL Klub (CLT‐UFA) and TV2 (MTM‐SBS) and radio stations Danubius Radio (Advent International) and Sláger Radio (Emmis Broadcasting International) (Lánczi and O’Neil 1997; Hall and O’Neil 1998). The Radio and Television Act also regulated public service broadcasters, attempting to bring them in line with British and Scandinavian standards (cf. Curran et al. 2009). It dictated politically neutral news programming, and the boards of Hungarian Radio, Hungarian Television and Danube Television included representatives of civil society as well as members delegated by political parties. Under most of the post‐transformation governments, however, this system failed to operate properly. Parties captured public service broadcasters by delegating party loyalists on their boards with the aim to access media resources such as well‐paid senior positions, airtime, programming, and advertising funds to be channeled to their supporters. As a result, the major news bulletins ­frequently displayed pro‐government bias. The case of Hungarian Television is, in fact, an example of mimetic transplantation: the project of establishing genuine public service broadcasting did not work because the Hungarian political context was ignored. Unlike in the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries, the consensus needed for any meaningful public service broadcasting to be operational was missing in Hungary. Also, unlike in old democracies, the Hungarian party system was unconsolidated. This enhanced the drive of parties to capture the state, the economy, and the media, particularly public service media in search of resources that they can use to honor the services offered by their clients by granting them well‐paid positions, as well as advertising and program production grants. Similar issues of mimetic transplantation appeared in journalism ethics and practice. After press and media outlets had been purchased by multinational investors, editorial boards and journalism associations adopted codes of ethics modeled on ideal‐type Anglo‐ American journalism. These provided for objective reporting, the separation of news and views, the reliance on multiple sources, and specific conflict of interest rules. Yet, despite these rhetorical expectations, “neutrally objective” reporting (cf. Kunczik 2001, p. 76) became at best marginal in Hungary. News items were selected and framed in line



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with the political sympathies of the editors, and the views of those associated with d ­ isliked parties were frequently ignored (Vajda and Kaposi 2002). The reason for the dissonance between rhetoric and practice possibly lay again in the political context that was highly different from that in the United Kingdom and the United States. Hungary had a multi‐ party system, which, unlike two‐party systems, made even reporting of all parties hardly possible. Also, unlike in the United Kingdom and the United States, most media outlets in Hungary were openly but informally associated with political parties. For nearly two decades, Hungary was considered a success story of democratic transformation. However, after the 2008 global financial and economic crisis hit the country, and corruption under the then ruling liberal and socialist political elites was revealed, the 2010 legislative elections brought victory to the anti‐system proto‐hegemonic Fidesz party in alliance with the Christian Democratic People’s Party. Immediately upon taking office, the new government set out to radically transform Hungary’s political system, which included a new constitution and a new electoral law. As the Norwegian Helsinki Committee observed in 2013, “Fidesz, led by Prime Minister Orbán, has weakened institutional checks and balances and compromised the independence of institutions central to the rule of law and democracy.” The Washington Post (2010) spoke, in an editorial, about the “Putinization” of Hungary. In the media field, a new law called Act CLXXXV of 2010 on Media Services and Mass Communication passed after the government change in 2010 heavily restricted media freedom. It established a new supervisory system and restructured public service media in a centralized manner. New management turned the news bulletins on public service broadcasters into a means of pro‐government propaganda (Bajomi‐ Lázár and Tóth 2013). The new media authority under Fidesz control re‐allocated many of the radio frequencies in line with its political affiliation, thereby supporting Christian radio stations and repeatedly refusing to renew the broadcasting license of Club Radio, a station known for its critical position toward the government. State‐ owned institutions denied advertising to oppositional newspapers, which undermined their financial stability in an already dwindling press market. Freedom House, which lists countries in the categories free (1–30 points), partly free (31–60 points) and not free (61–100 points), granted Hungary 23 points in 2009, 30 points in 2010, and 40 points in 2015 (Freedom House 2016). For the sake of comparison, in 2015 the Czech Republic was granted 21 points, Estonia 16 points, Slovakia 24 points, and Slovenia 23 points; that is, these post‐communist countries were listed in the free category. In a few years’ time, Fidesz and its cronies have captured, in addition to the public service broadcasters, much of the private media as well, establishing a near‐ monopoly throughout the country with the notable exception of the capital Budapest (Bajomi‐Lázár 2017).

Hungary: Summary and Conclusions Throughout most of its history and especially in the twentieth century, Hungary went through successive waves of political and territorial change and experienced great instability. Changes in the political realm have always affected  –  and have been reflected in – the media, especially since many of the ruling political elites attempted to instrumentalize media outlets in line with their political needs. The peaceful and negotiated political transformation in 1989–1990 opened the way for democratic and free media systems to emerge for the first time in the past 100 years.

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After 20 years of relatively uninterrupted development between 1990 and 2010, however, a new wave of authoritarian rule threatens Hungarian democracy and undermines its media freedom.

­Lithuania Among the young democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, including Lithuania, were the only post‐Soviet countries that had neither their own national political and economic institutions, nor solid resources to rely on in the period of rapid political, economic and social changes at the end of the twentieth century. These countries had to “nationalize” their existing institutions, to introduce monetary and economic reforms, and to start privatization and social reforms practically from scratch (Balčytienė 2009, 2015a). In Lithuania, a country that has repeatedly faced foreign occupation, issues of publishing and language have been closely linked and have played a major political role throughout its history (Balčytienė 2006). Until 1864, all printed works were written in the Latin alphabet. Between 1864 and 1904, however, print culture was severely affected by the Russian tsar banning all publications in the Lithuanian language and Latin alphabet. Despite this and prohibitions on the use of the national language in schools and religious services, Lithuanian cultural life persisted. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, all publications were published in East Prussia, also known as Lithuania Minor, and book smugglers brought thousands of books into the country. This is how Lithuanian traditions and language persevered, and the cultural press and literature became a means in the pursuit of national self‐expression (Balčytienė 2006, 2012). Between 1918 and 1940, Lithuania was an independent republic. Although Poland annexed eastern Lithuania, including its capital city Vilnius, in 1922, this was a period of intense modernization and state building; Lithuania remained in a state of war with Poland, and the new capital city Kaunas was officially designated as the “interim capital.” In 1940, the country was occupied by Soviet Russia. On 11 March 1990, for the second time in the twentieth century, Lithuania declared its independence. The country came back into existence through the revival of its historical, linguistic, and cultural heritage rather than the exercise of power. The “Singing Revolution” of the three Baltic nations ended Soviet rule, and the three nations emerged from their political non‐existence to become political entities and historical actors in their own right (Balčytienė 2012). During the five decades of Soviet rule between 1940 and 1990, Lithuania – along with Latvia and Estonia  –  underwent a radical social and political makeover. The cultural sphere, including theater, exhibition, and film, was strictly supervised and regulated by the Communist Party, and all media were under state control and censorship. At the same time, however, various underground publications were issued, and a kind of “semi participatory” channel developed in the cultural sphere of the subdued Baltic nations (Balčytienė 2012). As official media were strictly controlled, the only arena for alternative discourses, including political ones, was within the sphere of the arts. Lithuania joined the EU in 2004, and has been a Eurozone member since 2015. With a population of only around 3 million, it is the biggest of the three Baltic states, but it is small compared to most other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. It is also the largest among the three countries in reference to geographic territory and economy, and, unlike the other two, it is ethnically and religiously relatively homogeneous. The biggest



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minorities are Poles (6.65%) and Russians (5.88%), and most people belong to the Roman Catholic Church (77.2%). The per capita GDP in 2014 was US$16.444 (World Bank 2014).

The Political Transformation of 1989–1990 and Its Aftermath The first steps toward democratization in Lithuanian politics and media were taken in the mid‐1980s, when Gorbachev’s reform policies of “glasnost” and “perestroika” were introduced. Public ideals and visions of independence were playing up high with media inducing and disseminating them. While the coverage of newspapers started to change, also more varied programming and live broadcasts were aired on television. These were the “golden years” of Lithuanian journalism: because of changes in reporting, content and style, the circulation of the Communist Youth Party newspaper Komjaunimo tiesa rose from 108,000 copies in 1988 to 522,000 in 1989; and on 16 September 1989, the new daily Respublika – established as a newspaper of Sąjūdis, the Lithuanian Reform Movement – was launched (Balčytienė 2006). More substantial changes in the political and the media landscape occurred only after Lithuanian independence was re‐established in March 1990. According to the constitution adopted by a national referendum in 1992, Lithuania is a semi‐presidential republic. The president and the prime minister share power in the country: the president, elected for five years by direct vote, has substantial constitutional powers, but the prime minister is the executive. The president appoints the prime minister. He also appoints the m ­ inisters (who are nominated by the prime minister) and signs the laws issued by the parliament (Seimas). Unlike other countries in the region except Hungary, Lithuania has a mixed election system. The country has a large number of political parties covering a wide political spectrum (Novagrockienė 2001). This, combined with other  –  historically shaped – conditions contributes to the conflictive character of contemporary Lithuanian politics. Though, theoretically, it seemed that in the beginning and the mid‐1990s, the transforming party system resembled the multi‐party systems of Western Europe, in ­reality, they had no internal ideological or policy coherence and interpreted political life as fierce political battle. Continuance is also observed in today’s politics: though partisan and ideological clashes appear to be a reality in many contemporary democracies, ­the weakness of democratic tradition and conflictual political practices result in lowering institutional trust, public discontent, and rising mainstream and populist promises in the country (Navickas 2017) as well as in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe (Balčytienė 2015b). Political changes in the early 1990s instigated transformations in all other spheres, including the media. Formally, press freedom was introduced by the Press Law of 1990. Censorship was abolished, and a gradual departure from the Soviet propaganda model to one based on free speech and a free‐market economy took place. In these early years of democratization, newspapers were still operating under semi‐private business models, that is, it was common for municipalities to own newspapers. Massive media capitalization started only a few years later. Professionals  –  journalists and other employees  – obtained company shares and privatized the majority of media outlets, although after a few years many of these were sold to large publishing houses, including foreign investors (Balčytienė and Lauk 2005; Balčytienė 2006). While the press market segmented rapidly, the broadcasting sector witnessed the emergence of its first private television channel, TELE‐3, as late as April 1993 (but still quite early compared to most other post‐communist countries). Because of a weak

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advertising market, ineffective management and numerous copyright violations, the channel collapsed financially two years later. In 1995, a subdivision of the Swedish Kinnevik Modern Times Group bought it, renamed it TV3, and incorporated it with other private channels in the Baltic and Scandinavian countries into the Viasat company. The country’s second private channel, LitPoliinter televizija, was established in 1994 and grew rapidly, and with it, the first modern Lithuanian showbiz stars were born. In 1995, it was sold to new owners and renamed Laisvas nepriklausomas kanalas, LNK (Free and Independent Channel). Until December 2003, it was owned by Marieberg Media from Sweden, and later by MG Baltic, a national conglomerate with activities in clothing retail and consumer goods, logistics and real estate, as well as the media business. The professionalization of journalism has been an enduring process. With the political changes in the early 1990s, journalists in Lithuania immediately discarded all taboos of the past, and happily delved into new offers of an imagined “Eldorado,” i.e. new working conditions and new professional practices, which were, on the one hand, free from censorship and regulations from “above,” yet, on the other hand, also seductive and tempting with new offers, namely sensationalist reporting or political influences and manipulations. Journalists soon found themselves in a moral and normative vacuum: as in other young democracies, political freedoms brought significant confusion in a changing public sphere where old patterns did not work and new ones were yet to be introduced (Lauk 2008). Professional ideals among journalists were expressed only vaguely and only poorly understood; in general, there was no overall understanding as to how the newly achieved freedom was to be used and what the new professional guidelines should be (Balčytienė 2011).

The Post‐Transformation Period According to international comparative assessments (such as Varieties of Democracy and Media Pluralism Monitor), formal democracy is well developed in Lithuania. Yet, though the major legislative framework has been established, it occurs to be insufficient to ensure daily democratic practices, and certain aspects of the country’s political performance remain fragile. Most recent research analyses and comparative studies also note a lack of sufficient monitoring action in party and campaign financing, relatively high levels of corruption in the public sector, insufficient media ownership transparency as well as risks associated with growing media concentration, lacking social inclusion and poor media literacy levels (Balčytienė and Juraitė 2017). While economic reforms have been implemented during the integration process into the EU, social welfare ­matters – predominantly those related to public reforms (i.e. systematic reorganizations within the fields of healthcare, education and others)  –  remain largely unresolved (Duvold and Jurkynas 2013). In 1996, parliament adopted a new media law called the “Provision of Information to the Public.” It was to ensure the ideals of democracy, openness, citizenship, independence, national culture, and morality, as well as frame a legislative and self‐regulatory scheme for democratic media and civil society. A liberal legislative framework was introduced along with professional standards, both of which followed Western democratic media models and were most similar to the Swedish media regulatory framework (Balčytienė 2006). As comparative studies revealed, the media in Lithuania still showed weak professionalism, weak accountability, and a weak public service ethos (Trappel, Nieminen, and Nord 2011; Balčytienė and Juraitė 2017).



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The social and cultural visions that shaped people’s thinking at the time of historical change included the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania and the launch of governmental, economic, and social reforms. There was a genuine desire to live better without the planned economy and communist directives (Norkus 2008). Although different types of capitalist reforms were implemented in the Baltic region’s countries, political elites were almost unanimously devoted to minimizing the role of the state in the economy through the privatization of services and industries. Market liberalization and the shift to individualized private capital implied the diversification and localization of power in society. However, this process was not without flaws and was often described as “nomenklatura privatization,” that is, a shady and often corrupt process based on agreements between the old communist and the new anti‐communist elites. This allowed the communists to remain active in new politics by taking part in decision‐making processes and in the privatization of state‐owned property, including the media, on a large scale (Norkus 2011). As a result, many of the social institutions, including state structures, remained intact, since they did not change their internal organizational principles and personnel. Media institutions, and particularly the public service ­ ­broadcasters, were also strongly influenced by these political elites. In consequence of these initial decisions, mainstream private media in Lithuania, including television, radio, the press and online media and networks, became ­increasingly biased and opinionated, which led to a striking loss of public trust in the media. Many audiences, especially the younger ones, switched from mainstream media ­channels to different niche media outlets, such as magazines and online news portals. While they remained loyal to certain mainstream outlets, they supplemented their news diet with a broader spectrum of niche channels, both online and offline (Balčytienė and Vinciūnienė 2014). The media in Lithuania underwent increased concentration processes over the last several years, with purchases of media outlets mainly by domestic firms and some foreign companies. Even though there were strict bans in the media law on the ownership of mainstream media by, for example, banks and political parties, these restrictions were poorly implemented. Many institutions circumvent them through intermediaries, which led to a lack in media ownership transparency (Balčytienė and Juraitė 2017). Media controlled by financial institutions or political actors show bias in favor of their owners (Jastramskis 2012). A significant number of media policy decisions were made in 2014. The Seimas adopted amendments to the law on the Provision of Information to the Public, which was to ensure greater protection for journalists’ sources. Commercial advertising was banned on all public service broadcasting platforms of the national public broadcasting company Lithuanian Radio and Television (LRT) from 2015 onwards. This decision also constituted the liberation of LRT from both political influences and economic insecurity. Changes were also initiated in the self‐regulatory framework of the media. In 2015, the Ethics Commission of Journalists and Editors was replaced by the Association of Public Information Ethics. This new self‐regulatory body put the representation of the public interest into the hands of the media industry, precisely its owners, as the new organization is composed of a number of smaller organizations, of which only two represent journalists (Juraitė, Balčytienė, and Nugaraitė 2018). Currently, media in Lithuania, as in the two other Baltic countries, operate in a highly competitive environment, struggling to reach the biggest audience. Hence, their main aim is to follow on issues that engage with news on political, economic or other issues, but these are not necessarily well‐grounded in facts, research or analysis, but all too often

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fall into the field of scandalous coverage. At the same time, particularly dailies and other newspapers are failing as there are no real professional journalistic values to restore. Generally, journalists are neither very well paid nor highly respected, and there is a consistent movement of professionals between different communication fields ­ (Balčytienė and Juraitė 2017).

Lithuania: Summary and Conclusions Lithuanian media are defined by excessive liberalism and commercialization, moderate (but clearly noticeable) political and social polarization, and weak professionalism and accountability. These are closely related to the country’s political culture: multi‐party politics shaped by confrontation of different elite groups, and by the efforts of political winners to “take it all” to meet political and, often, personal interests. This makes it difficult to find compromises or to agree on rules that would lead to arrangements mutually benefiting the competing sides. The independent state of Lithuania has been restored, and most of the material needs  of the populace are now being met. The marketization of production and the capitalization of economies have developed to an impressive degree. Despite these achievements, drawbacks in contemporary media and society include an absence of day‐to‐day accountability, a lack of awareness of and commitment to the public service ethos, and inactive citizens. The adequate restoration, elaboration, and growth of a daily democratic culture may require more time than just two and a half decades.

­Poland The recent social history of Polish media has been interwoven with turbulent geopolitical and technological changes that marked most of the twentieth century. Thus, understandably, the direction of media development has reflected historical disjunctures and periods that changed trajectories of previous paths. In Poland, World War II was a defining disjuncture that led to a disconnect with previous conditions in at least three ways. First, demographically, Poland lost a substantial part of its population – around 6 million people – including many intellectuals, including writers, poets, and journalists. Almost the entire Jewish population was exterminated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Before the war, Poland was a multi‐ethnic country with minorities comprising around one‐third of the population. In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of newspapers had been published in minority languages, including Hebrew, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and German; most of these ceased publication during the war. Second, territorially, Poland lost its eastern territories (and with them, the minorities inhabiting these regions) and “moved” toward the West. Thus, not only the geographical shape of the country changed, but Poland also lost its multi‐ethnic and multi‐cultural character, leaving the country quite homogenous. Third, politically, the rise of the communist regime and its political instruments, including censorship, propaganda, and state ownership, profoundly restructured the media landscape. Since the mid‐1970s, the Polish media landscape evolved in parallel subsystems: In  addition to dominant state‐controlled media, the oppositional underground press presented a lively alternative to vast circles of readers. With the rise of the Solidarity reform movement after 1980, in particular the underground press proliferated. Catholic



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media also offered alternative views that were absent from the dominant press. It is estimated that around 140 underground newspapers and about 700 print titles were published in Poland after 1982. These publications addressed various groups of readers and were often divided by professional interests (Goban‐Klas 2004). More recent conditions in the evolution of the media system in Poland resulted from a number of exogenous and endogenous factors, among which were population size and economic conditions. Poland’s population of 38 million created a relatively big market for a variety of sectors composing the national media. Poland’s per capita GDP amounted to US$14.422 in 2014, which placed the country below the EU average, but displayed one of the fastest growing economies in the last 20 years (World Bank 2014).

The Political Transformation of 1989–1991 and Its Aftermath In February 1989, round table negotiations – involving representatives of the government, Solidarity leaders, dissidents, and governmental as well as oppositional experts – started an  unprecedented political transformation in Poland. The final document, signed on 5 March 1989, established a new political system that guaranteed political pluralism and freedom of expression. Poland became a multi‐party, semi‐presidential democracy in which the executive power was held mainly by the government. During the transformation years, Polish media were both catalysts for democratic change and the end objective of policy changes (Price, Rozumolowicz, and Verhulst 2002; Ociepka 2003; Goban‐Klas 2004; Jakubowicz 2007). The policy impetus for the fundamental reshaping of the media environment was largely exogenous and imitative, as Poland implemented the institutional and regulatory designs of Western European and North American countries with varying degrees of success (Jakubowicz 2007; Harcourt 2012). At the same time, the media landscape in Poland was not a tabula rasa where completely new media structures could be implemented from scratch. After the collapse of communism, many of the old media institutions continued to operate, often under new ownership and staff while new ones were introduced by domestic and foreign owners. Media policy transformation followed the European tradition in that the regulatory framework established different rules for the press and the broadcasting sectors. The dismantling of the former press monopoly of the party and its control organs started with the elimination of institutionalized censorship in 1990 and the replacement of licensing with court registration. Unlike other countries in the region, such as Hungary, Poland opted for formalized privatization, administered by state institutions that followed patterns established by the law. A reason for this was that the formerly state‐owned publishing enterprise RSW Prasa‐Książka‐Ruch was one of the largest press companies in Europe at that time with hundreds of dailies, periodicals, and magazines. Legally‐grounded practices have certainly made the whole process more transparent and governable. Strategies of press privatization included the transformation of state ownership into staff ownership, the sale of press titles to private, mostly foreign owners, and, in the case of small circulations of often highly specialized publications, the retaining of state property (Klimkiewicz 2004). The policy concept for privatization and for the opening of the press market was based on the idea of a diverse and robust press system that was to offer an unprecedented number of new publications. The 1984 Press Law Act was amended several times during the 1990s and has until recently still not properly addressed questions of media pluralism, ownership and concentration. Thus, only general competition rules regulated the

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­ ergers and acquisitions that quickly followed the initial proliferation of the press. The m widely shared view was that a deregulatory approach would lead to outcomes potentially serving the public interest. Moreover, the issue of journalistic independence  –  from ­owners, in particular  –  has not been adequately addressed in the law. For instance, it obliged and still obliges journalists to follow the internal policy expressed in the statute of the news room or editorial office in which they are employed. Poland did not impose any limitations on foreign ownership in the print media sector. Bound by membership in the Council of Europe, the European pre‐accession negotiations, and a significant geographic proximity to Western Europe, the new Polish press market constituted a relatively attractive ground for foreign investment in media services. Foreign and/or transnational capital brought to Poland the necessary resources needed for reshaping editorial styles and old production routines, and also helped to incorporate Western managerial practices (Jakubowicz 2007). At the same time, however, foreign owners were too cautious in experimenting with genuinely new projects. Instead, they tended to “clone” and bring to Poland products that had met commercial success in their respective countries (Klimkiewicz 2009).

The Post‐Transformation Period More complex forms of regulation were drafted for broadcasting; the goal was to establish a dual system of public and private media supplemented with a few community broadcasters (in Poland defined as “social broadcasters”). Poland was among the first countries in Central and Eastern Europe to adopt a new broadcasting act in December 1992. With respect to subsequent developments, five aspects of this law seem to be ­especially relevant: first, it regulated broadcasters, including public service media and commercial/private outlets, but not the press which was covered by the amended Press Law of 1984. Second, a regulatory body, the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT) was established in 1993. Modeled on the French Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, four of KRRiT’s nine members were appointed by the Sejm (the lower house of the Polish parliament), two by the Senate, and three by the president. Currently, KRRiT is composed of five members (two appointed by the Sejm, two by the president and one by the Senate). Third, the law set up the basic legal conditions for the introduction of public service media, under which Polish Television and Polish Radio were re‐ established in the form of sole‐proprietor joint stock companies of the State Treasury. Fourth, the general requirements of the law stipulated that the transmission of programs other than those on public service media required a license to broadcast. In fact, the license granting scheme formally opened the Polish broadcasting landscape for private commercial broadcasters and introduced the dual system. It also included a special licensing scheme, free of charge, for social broadcasters. Fifth, it specified some basic obligations regarding television programming, including advertising (Broadcasting Act 1992; Klimkiewicz 2014). Public service media in Poland were born with this new regulation but preserved an institutional continuity with the former state media. Polish Radio had been established as a private joint stock company in 1925, and had been nationalized and placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Post and Telegraph in 1935. After World War II, Polish Radio became part, both structurally and ideologically, of communist rule. Polish Television (TVP) started to broadcast its programs in 1953, that is, at the end of the Stalinist era. Unlike radio, television was from the very beginning instrumentally located in the discursive and ideological universe of the communist regime. Interestingly though,



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TVP remained a cardinal player in the national advertising market and in audience share for many years. Until recently, it, thus, posed itself as a main rival to commercial channels. It is worth mentioning that the Broadcasting Act of 1992 had imposed significant limits on the broadcasting market: until 2004, foreign investors were allowed to hold only minority shares of up to 33% in broadcast media in Poland. Consequently, the absence of influential foreign investors contributed to a division of the television market that was controlled by two groups: public service television, and two private companies (Polsat and TVN/ITI). During the past 20 years, the license fee revenues of TVP have oscillated around 30% of its total revenues. Thus, most of its activities have been financed through advertising, sponsoring, and other commercial sources. With Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004 and the subsequent transposition of European audiovisual and telecom regulations, media and communication policies became more complex and grew into new areas such as on‐demand audiovisual services, a larger scope for the protection of minors, media literacy, the digital divide, and media pluralism. In 2005, a new regulatory body called the Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) was established; it has powers to regulate both electronic communication and telecommunication (Klimkiewicz 2007). Since the end of the 1990s, the television and radio sectors have become highly concentrated in ownership. In 2014, the audience shares of TVP, the TVN/ITI Group, and Polsat Group amounted to 75.1%, and the audience shares of Polish Radio, the RMF Group, the Eurozet Group, and ZPR–Time Group totaled 82.6% (KRRiT 2015). In the same year, the audience shares of the largest internet service providers Orange SA, Polkomtel, T‐mobile, and UPC amounted to 53.8% (UKE 2015). By contrast, readership concentration in the daily newspaper market seems to be smaller, with the largest publishing houses Ringier Axel Springer, Agora, VGP, and Murator amounting to only around 40% in the period 2011–2013 (Klimkiewicz 2014, p. 232). The media sector in Poland is still defined by constant ownership changes, in which dominant Polish groups compete with foreign – mainly German, French and American – companies. Media also struggle with political influences and growing pressures at different levels. At the level of regulation and the composition of regulatory bodies, political parties continue to control appointment procedures. While exerting political pressure and control over the public service media in Poland and television in particular, has not been a new phenomenon, recent political alignment, in particular of TVP news genres has reached an unprecedented scale. According to the Eurobarometer (2016) survey, only 29% of respondents agreed with the statement that “Polish public service media are free from political pressure,” thus, a significant majority saw the Polish public service media not free from political pressure (Eurobarometer 2016).

Poland: Summary and Conclusions Few media scholars and professionals in Poland would claim that the new media structures that developed after 1989 decreased media pluralism and democratization. Yet, empirical studies do not depict a steady progress. The Polish example demonstrates that media transformation and the policy choices that guided it were closely interlinked with historical legacies and were limited by a compressed time horizon for change. The shaping of the media environment followed deregulatory and exogenous patterns at the initial stage, with more complex forms of regulation introduced later on, ­especially after accession to the EU. Yet, the principal question has not been adequately addressed: who should be the primary beneficiaries of media transformation? Consumers, citizens,

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or media users? The shape and quality of media and communication environments are always directly linked with the communication needs and rights of citizens that cannot be conceived only in economic, commercial, or political terms.

­Central and Eastern Europe: Summary and Conclusions The transformations that took place after the fall of the Iron Curtain in Central and Eastern Europe challenged all spheres of people’s lives from politics to the economy and culture, including media. Transformations also included multiple, unfinished, and open‐ ended changes in attitudes, views, norms and practices, including journalism, book and newspaper publishing, and broadcasting. Central and Eastern European countries have also encountered external challenges such as globalization and internationalization, Westernization and Europeanization, technological diffusion and innovation, and increasing individualization and consumerism. The brief country descriptions collected in this chapter confirm previous findings of “multiple post‐communisms” or “diverse outcomes,” including differences in press privatization, the sustainability of press markets, the timing of deregulation, the audience shares of public service television, and the levels of media corruption and of media freedom. Yet, a number of recurring patterns become obvious in the four countries studied here. This includes, first and foremost, the mimetic transplantation of Western European media institutions and culture without the anticipated results, especially in the fields of public service broadcasting, deregulation, and journalistic professionalization. Also, while media acted as catalysts for change in all four countries during the political transformations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period now often considered a “golden age” of media freedom, the 1990s and 2000s saw a return to the political instrumentalization of media. This includes, perhaps most importantly, the party capture of public service broadcasters. As a result, these broadcasters have failed to live up to a strong public service ethos, conveying often ideologically biased news coverage. One should add, though, that partisan journalism has persisted or re‐emerged in much of the private media sector, also as a reflection of the often unbridgeable ideological divide within these societies and despite efforts to adopt standards of objective journalism. Excessive commercialization and the primacy of profit over the public interest – direct consequences of foreign media investments – are also similarities shared by all four countries. These occurrences illustrate that the transfer of media institutions and culture from “old” to “young” democracies is not a smooth process but may be corrupted by differences in political culture. Twenty‐five years after the political transformation, it seems safe to suggest that democratic changes in the late twentieth century paved the way for relatively free and plural media systems to emerge in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, in several respects, the performance of media continues to be lacking in comparison to those in most of the established Western European democracies.

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Media Concentration and the Rise of Multinational Companies Juan Pablo Artero, Roderick Flynn, and Damian Guzek

­Introduction Although the extent varies, since 1990, media concentration has tended to increase in most European countries. This was driven by a political shift to more market‐driven economic policies, and the deregulatory role played by national authorities and the supranational institutions of the European Union (EU). As Wheeler (2004) pointed out, in the 1980s, the European Commission identified the fragmented nature of European audiovisual industries (vis‐à‐vis producers from the United States [US]) as a key sectoral weakness, limiting their capacity to exploit economies of scale. Thus, “the EU believed that its role should be to facilitate the unification of the fragmented European television industries” (p. 351). The application of this logic to the media industries supported the creation of larger media firms: thus, increasing concentration of ownership is, among others, a logical consequence of this broader policy objective. The resulting drive within EU media policies to promote the global competitiveness of European media players was reflected in market liberalization. There was some recognition at EU level that liberalization demanded the parallel introduction of measures to protect media pluralism and diversity as well as “core values of cultural identity” (Wheeler 2004, p. 350). Kaitatzi‐Whitlock (1996) delineated a series of efforts to place media pluralism on the EU legislative agenda from the 1990s but concluded that even as media ownership became manifestly more concentrated across Europe, commitments expressed to defend media pluralism and diversity failed to produce any concrete legislative measures. However, if the generally market‐driven approach of national governments and the EU removed a potential obstacle to merger activity, the proximate driver of acquisition activity in the early 2000s was the explosion of advertising expenditure driven by the short‐lived economic boom. Conversely, as the boom collapsed, major media firms began to reassess the wisdom of spreading their activities across too many media sectors. In August 2008, Bertelsmann sold its 50% share in the Sony BMG recorded music company to Sony itself. Two years later, it consolidated its position in the broadcast market by merging in 2000 the broadcast holdings of both Bertelsmann and Pearson. Similarly, The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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in 2013, News Corporation announced that the company was splitting in two, with 21st Century Fox looking after the screen media assets while a new News Corporation took on the print holdings. The end of the communist period in Central and Eastern Europe opened media ­markets of those countries to foreign capital and inaugurated new media regulations. As Wyka (2009, p. 133) claimed “initial assumptions that foreign capital, know‐how and experience would contribute to the development of the East Central European media in terms of their content, quality and professionalism only in a positive way were found to be wrong.” Before the collapse of communist regime, the media landscape of Soviet republic and their satellites was dominated by authoritarian states that monopolized publishing, broadcasting, and the broader circulation of information. Terms of media ownership and financing were also marked by communist oligarchy (Gulyas 1999). The transformation of political systems forcing changes also in domestic media landscapes from the authoritative types to pluralistic ones, introduced concepts such as freedom of speech, press freedom, the notion of media as a political watchdog, as well as some ­regulations of media ownership. EU regulations and the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were not the sole drivers of growing concentration in media industries. From the 1980s, market liberalization increasingly informed the policies of EU member states encouraging extended media commodification and privatization. In addition, there were pervasive (if not universal) economic factors that pushed increased concentration over the prior century, such as economies of scope and scale. The last three decades of media ownership and concentration in Europe have also witnessed the creation of what Arsenault and Castells (2008) have coined “global multi‐ media business networks.” While concentration processes have taken place, European media firms have tended to grow in size while the European and national authorities have been generally receptive to privatization, liberalization and deregulation demands. The public rationale behind such policy decisions has traditionally been the need to strengthen European media groups so as to protect them from US and other international investors. Given that US corporations overwhelmingly dominate other communication industries such as entertainment or advertising, that strategy might allow local players to at least compete in domestic markets and in so doing preserve European ­cultural diversity. The next pages give an analysis of those three key and inter‐related media phenomena: legal deregulation, media concentration, and the rise of multinational companies in  Europe since 1990. Legal deregulation has permitted more media concentration, leading to the creation of new media conglomerates. Countries analyzed include nine representative cases from northern, southern, and eastern Europe. Owing to the limited length of this chapter, the case studies focus on legacy media (newspapers and broadcasting sectors) through the prisms of deregulation, concentration and consolidation.

­Northern Europe: the UK, Germany and Ireland Legal Deregulation The gradual consolidation of print ownership during the twentieth century in the United Kingdom (UK) and the Republic of Ireland owed much to the primacy of market criteria (as opposed to pluralist criteria) for assessing media mergers. In the Federal Republic of Germany, by contrast, a post‐war emphasis on diversity of press ownership to support



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“the democratic re‐education of the German citizenry” (Kaase 2000, p. 376) meant close monitoring of media ownership and a reliance on clearly defined ownership limits. In the 1970s, although a 20% newspaper market share was considered potentially ­dangerous, a 40% share was simply unacceptable (Humphreys 1994, p. 100). The deregulation of UK broadcasting markets was driven by a broad belief in the free market, a perception that public service broadcasters (PBS) were not treating all political parties fairly and pressure from the advertising industry. This prompted the passage of  the 1954 Independent Television Act which created the Independent Television Authority (ITA) to provide commercial television. In Germany too, the legal basis for commercial broadcasting (a 1981 Constitutional Court decision) occurred in a context whereby the Christian Democrat Union believed it was unfairly treated by the public service channels. In 1984, the party introduced commercial radio and television in their Länder (German administrative regions or states), a move replicated by the Social Democrats. The 1984 launch of two national commercial television channels (Sat 1 and RTL Plus) necessitated a new Interstate Broadcasting Treaty in 1987. This maintained the post‐war emphasis on pluralism by limiting individual companies to owning two channels and effectively ensuring that private channels had a minimum of three owners (Holtz‐Bacha 1997, p. 44). In Ireland, the 1988 Radio and Television Act legislated for private radio stations and a commercial television broadcaster. Though competition was a response to manifest demands from audiences and advertisers for a more diverse range of broadcast content, it also meshed with the Fianna Fáil administration’s long‐held mistrust of the public service broadcaster. Section 6(2) of the 1988 act emphasized the importance of media ownership, enjoining the new regulator, the Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC), to consider the “desirability” of allowing any single entity to control “an undue number” of communications media (Radio and Television Act 1988, 6(2)). As the 1990s progressed, however, new rationales emerged across Europe suggesting that regulatory restrictions on the size of media firms were economically damaging the industry. This had a real impact. The 1996 UK Broadcasting Act replaced the previous two‐station limit on independent television ownership with an audience share model (restricting ownership to 15% of the UK audience) which in practice permitted multiple station ownership. The 1996 act also relaxed cross‐media rules thus allowing newspaper groups with a less than 20% newspaper market share to acquire larger shares in broadcasters (Doyle 2002, pp. 104–121). This trend continued in the 2003 Communications Act which removed prohibitions on non‐EU citizens acquiring UK broadcasters and introduced the “Murdoch Clause” permitting larger newspaper groups (i.e. News UK) to acquire Channel 5. Crucially, the legislation also repealed rules blocking the creation of a single Independent Television network (ITV) (Hardy 2012). Amendments to the 1997 German Broadcasting Treaty mirrored UK changes. Henceforth, individual television channels could be entirely owned by a single entity (Holtz‐Bacha 1997, p. 44) while the “two channels per owner rule” was replaced by a market share limit of 30%. Even if owners exceeded that limit they could avoid a shareholding reduction by proposing internal pluralism measures (Holtz‐Bacha 1997). However, the 1997 act was not entirely deregulatory. A new federal body, the Commission on Concentration in the Media (Kommission zur Ermittlung der Konzentration im Medienbereich, KEK), created to consider the impact on pluralism of media merger, actively sought objective metrics to assess cross‐media mergers. The resulting matrix weighted the relative influence of different media holdings, concluding that ownership of a television station was more significant than that of a print or radio outlet (Just 2009, p. 111).

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In Ireland too, 2001 saw the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland introduce a new ownership code contemplating 100% ownership of individual broadcasters by (other) individual firms and multiple station ownership. Although no single entity could own more than 25% of radio stations, no specific limits were proposed for other media. Determination of media ownership limits fell to how the minister for enterprise and the competition authority interpreted the 2002 Competition Act. However, the act’s media provisions did offer clear criteria against which to assess the impact of media mergers on pluralism. Thus, assessments tended to concentrate on the economic consequences (i.e. on advertising markets) of such mergers. A new Competition and Consumer Protection Act in 2014 addressed this by emphasizing the importance of understanding how media mergers affected pluralism and diversity. But in practice, only one of the six major print media, radio and television acquisitions commenced in 2015 and 2016 went beyond a purely market‐based assessment (Horgan and Flynn 2017).

Media Concentration Deregulation resulted in the significant expansion of media acquisitions and merger activities after 1990, resulting in varying degrees of concentration. Though deregulation undoubtedly increased the pace of media ownership concentration in Ireland, it should be acknowledged that the small scale of the market there has never been able to support a multiplicity of competing media firms. The fact that UK media markets are markedly more concentrated than those in Germany, despite roughly similar market sizes, emphasizes how the regulatory environment can influence the precise degree of ownership concentration. Increasing concentration of ownership within the United Kingdom is best exemplified by the examples of the ITV and News International. The relaxation of strict numeric limits on independent television ownership in 1996 saw 12 of the 15 franchises created by the 1954 Independent Television Act incorporated into a single entity – ITV PLC – by 2004. This concentration was dwarfed by that associated with UK companies (News UK and Sky) owned by international media magnate Rupert Murdoch. Between 1979 and 2013, Murdoch had grown News Corporation into a genuinely globe‐spanning, cross‐ media corporate giant. In 2013, that company was split into 21st Century Fox which retained the group’s audiovisual‐related operations and a new News Corporation which mainly held the publishing interests. As of 2016, News Corporation’s News UK subsidiary is the largest UK print media player accounting for 34% of daily and Sunday national newspaper sales and, through a 39% stake in Sky Television, for 45% of total broadcasting revenues (though not audiences). Sky’s circumvention of regulatory prohibitions on its UK activities (achieved by initially broadcasting from Luxembourg) secured a foothold in that market, cemented by the 1992 acquisition of Premier League broadcast rights. However, Sky (and the cable companies that merged to form Virgin Media in 2005) arguably contributed to a reduction in concentration levels within the UK television market by creating platforms for a plethora of new channels. In 1990, UK television audiences were limited to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), ITV and Channel 4 (and Channel 5 after 1996). As of 2014, the explosion in new channels reduced the share of those broadcasters to just 48% (Ofcom 2015, p. 192). News Corporation has also established a presence within UK radio. Although the BBC cumulatively accounted for 53% of the market in 2015 (Ofcom 2015, p. 224), there has been extensive acquisition activity since 2000. Global Radio (18.2% market share) is the largest commercial player, followed by the German periodicals company, Bauer Media



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with 13.3%. Although some way behind in fourth place, News Corporation’s 2016 acquisition of Wireless Group established a foothold in that industry. Ownership concentration in Germany varies according to medium. Although Kleinsteuber and Thomass (2007) asserted that the newspaper market was “dominated by a small number of publishers” (p. 113), concentration here has consistently declined since the 1990s. The Springer group’s 18.8% share of the 2012 market (Bosch et  al. 2016, p. 111) remains well ahead of the Stuttgarter Zeitung Group (9.2% share 2012) and the WAZ Group (5.7% share). Yet, as of 2012, the C4 index (summing the top four market shares) was only 39.2%, supporting Czepek, Hellwig, and Nowak’s (2009) assertion that federal merger law has “so far prevented a high concentration” (p. 241) within this industry. In television, the introduction of commercial competition for the two PBS, Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich‐rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ARD) and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), in 1984 doubled the number of players in the market. Moreover, RTL, Sat 1 and other commercial broadcasters were initially characterized by “a rather diversified” ownership (Kleinsteuber 2003, p.  82). However, this was followed by a period of consolidation in the 1990s during which most of the new commercial channels were acquired by one of two Senderfamilien (broadcaster families): Bertelsmann’s RTL Group and the Kirch Group. Bertelsmann is the largest European‐based media group and is routinely ranked among the top six or seven global media giants. However the Kirch Group collapsed in in 2002, leading to the emergence of a new dual Senderfamilien relationship. Thus, alongside Berterlemann’s RTL, the ProSiebenSat1 Group emerged from the remnants of the Kirch empire. ProSiebenSat1 was owned by Anglo‐American investment funds until 2013 before floating free on the stock exchange (Friedrichsen 2017, p. 90). Together the Senderfamilien accounted for 45% of the German satellite and cable television industries by 2012. Bertelsmann’s RTL also occupies a prominent position in the radio market: by 2008 it held shares in 19 of the 213 private channels operating across the German Länder. The publishers Springer, Burda, and WAZ also own shares in a multiplicity of radio stations (Bosch et al. 2016). Concentration in Irish print media dates back to at least the 1980s. Dublin based Independent News and Media (INM) accounted for nearly 85% of all indigenous Sunday paper sales and nearly 50% of domestic daily sales in 1990. These percentages do not take account of the presence of UK publishers: as of 2015, News UK is the second largest player in the Irish press sector while Daily Mail and General Trust also plays a key role. Even so, INM remains remarkably dominant, accounting for 45% and 50% of all press sales in Ireland (Flynn and Preston 2016). In the radio sector, the local commercial stations created in 1988 were initially characterized by a wide diversity of ownership. However, the 2001 regulatory changes noted above ushered in a wave of acquisitions and mergers. By March 2011, only eight of the 35 commercial radio stations had not been subsumed into larger media groups. Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTE), the Irish public service broadcaster, still accounts for the largest share of radio listeners (32% in 2014) followed by Communicorp, the biggest private player whose five stations account for approximately 19% of all radio listenership. Communicorp’s attempt to acquire three radio stations simultaneously in July 2007 provided a rare example of an Irish regulator limiting media concentration. To avoid a situation whereby Communicorp would own both national commercial broadcasters and two Dublin stations, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) blocked the sale of one of the Dublin licenses. It was instead sold to UTV, the Northern Irish commercial television franchise holder, which built up a chain of Republic of Ireland radio stations in

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the 2000s. However, between 2012 and 2016, UTV’s UK and Irish radio holdings were hived off to a subsidiary, the Wireless Group, which was acquired by News Corporation in 2016 (Horgan and Flynn 2017). Relatively high levels of cross‐media ownership characterize Irish media. RTE is the leading cross‐media group and extends its legacy dominance of broadcasting into online content. In addition to their Irish print and radio holdings, News Corp and 21st Century Fox indirectly account for about 6% of the television market and monopolize satellite television distribution in Ireland. The owner of Communicorp, Denis O’Brien augmented his position in radio by building a personal stake of 29.9% of INM shares between 2007 and 2012. This was permitted by the BAI that concluded that Mr. O’Brien, though the largest single shareholder in INM, did not control of the company.

Multinational Companies Concentration of ownership associated with the groups identified above is not limited by national boundaries. News Corporation (and its various subsidiaries) perfectly exemplifies this: News Corp newspaper‐based operations are concentrated in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. However, the 1980s move into screen media via the acquisitions of Sky and 20th Century Fox made the company truly global. In addition to the US film and television divisions, the Fox Television subsidiary distributes Spanish‐, Portuguese‐, and English‐language content throughout Latin America under the Fox+ banner, and in India, it broadcasts 62 channels via Star India and Tata Sky. Meanwhile, Sky is not only the market leading pay‐TV operator in the United Kingdom and Ireland but also in Germany, Austria, and Italy (Chalaby 2009). Though not operating on quite the same revenue scale, Germany’s RTL (a Bertelsmann subsidiary) holds stakes in 60 television stations and 31 radio stations across 10 countries (mainly in Europe but also in South‐East Asia). It also owns Fremantlemedia, one of the largest producers and distributors of international television formats. Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House is the world’s largest trade book publishing group with offices in every continent, while Gruner and Jahr, Bertelsmann’s magazine publishing division, operates in over 20 countries and earns 45% of revenues from outside Germany (Becker 2017). Ireland’s largest private media group lies far behind the global giants mentioned above with the economic crash having severely contracted IMN’s revenue and international holdings. At its peak, IMN held extensive media stakes in the United Kingdom, India, South Africa and Australasia. However, with the post‐2008 economic recession, IMN was unable to service the debt related to the acquisition of these holdings, especially given the revenue decline from its core Irish operations. As a consequence, starting in 2010, IMN began to divest its international holdings quitting its final major overseas holding, APN News & Media Limited in Australia, in 2015. Although debt‐free by 2016, IMN operations are now mainly limited to Ireland (Horgan and Flynn 2017).

­Southern Europe: France, Italy, and Spain Legal Deregulation Press freedom was one of the early demands during the French Revolution and has been protected by law since 1789. In France today, print media are still regulated by the 1881 law that confirmed freedom of the press as a basic principle (Maarek 2015). The state’s



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radio monopoly ended in 1981 but French television remained a public enterprise until 1982. That same year, the privatization of the public channel Télévision Française 1 (TF1) began and was completed in 1987, while in 1984, the pay‐TV channel Canal Plus was launched (Badillo, Bourgeois, and Lesourd 2016; Scott 2009). The privatization of TF1 remains a regulatory novelty, unusual both in Europe and abroad. French broadcasting is regulated by the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), created after the 1986 Law of Freedom of Communication. That regulatory body has traditionally found discrepancies with the European media policy as well as the communications national regulatory agency ARCEP (Maarek 2015). In Italy, both radio and television were public monopolies until the mid‐1970s at which point both markets were opened to competition. By the 1980s, the television market had become a duopoly constituted by the three public service channels of Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI 1, 2, and 3) and another three channels owned by Fininvest (Canale 5, Italia 1 and Rete 4), led by businessman and later prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (Scott 2009). Regarding pay TV, Sky Italia has been a de facto monopoly since the 2003 merger with its previous competitors Telepiù and Stream. In 2004, the Gasparri Law (named after the minister of telecommunications, and renewed in 2011) set cross‐media ownership limit at 20% based on the total income of the entire Italian media market. In practice, however, the new integrated regulatory body Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM) has found it difficult to establish definitive revenue figures across the seven industries regarded as constituting the complete media market. AGCOM has, thus, tended to address media concentration on a sector‐by‐sector basis (Richeri and Prario 2016). As in France and Italy, Spain lacked cross‐ownership regulations between print media and broadcasting when the radio market underwent significant changes in the 1980s with the allocation of new FM licenses. Until then, the public service network Radio Nacional and the Catholic Church radio channel Cadena Cope were in the lead. The arrival of Antena 3 in 1982 modified the traditional situation and it became the top talk radio network in Spain. Though founded by Catalan group Godó, with a center‐right political position, the center‐left Prisa group soon purchased Antena 3, who merged it with their Cadena Ser stations in 1994 to become the leading radio network. Television had been a public monopoly in Spain since the 1950s. By the end of the Franco regime in 1975, the Spanish enjoyed only two public service television channels (Televisión Española): TVE‐1 and TVE‐2. The new democratic regime brought regional decentralization permitting the creation of regional PBS in regions such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, Madrid, Valencia, and Andalusia since 1983. All joined the Federation of Regional Organizations of Radio and Television (FORTA). But the new Private Television Act of 1988 also permitted the creation of three new commercial channels in 1990: Antena 3, Telecinco, and Canal Plus. The first was originally launched by its sister radio network owned by Godó. The second, launched by Mediaset, Silvio Berlusconi’s TV group, developed Telecinco as an imitation of its successful Canale 5 in Italy. The third was a de facto pay‐TV monopoly of the Prisa group and the French Canal Plus. The National Telecommunications Commission (CMT) had regulated audiovisual industries in Spain since the mid‐1990s. However, in 2013 this regulatory body merged with those of other economic sectors to create the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC). Neither of those regulatory regimes has advanced any significant measures against media consolidation. The Prisa group’s acquisition of Antena 3 Radio was followed by a succession of several authorized operations between the two satellite platforms Canal Satélite Digital (Prisa) and Vía Digital (Telefónica). The same

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thing holds true regarding the recent acquisition of the resulting company Digital Plus by Telefónica and the mergers of commercial broadcasters Telecinco‐Cuatro and Antena 3‐La Sexta in 2010 and 2012.

Media Concentration There has been a significant reduction in the numbers and circulation of national daily newspapers in France in the past decade. Two media groups dominate this segment: Socpresse‐Dassault (publishing the conservative Le Figaro, France‐Soir, and Paris Turf) and Amaury (publishing the independent Le Parisien and the sports paper L’Équipe). Other traditional media outlets include the center‐left dailies Le Monde and Libération, and the finance‐oriented Les Échos owned by the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The list of 11 national papers is completed by three other publications: the Catholic paper La Croix (published by Bayard Group), the economic La Tribune, and the traditional communist daily L’Humanité. The French market remains highly competitive. The newspaper with the highest circulation is the regional Ouest‐France that is owned by an independent foundation. Wealthy investors in search for influence have recently acquired Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Libération (Maarek 2015). The main radio groups in France (in reference to audience shares) are the public service Radio France and the private operators RTL, NRJ, Europe 1 (owned by Lagardère group, see below) and Radio Monte Carlo (RMC). All of them were strong in the market well before the 1980s and nowadays constitute an oligopoly that has dominated the market for decades. French television was a public monopoly until 1982. The privatized TF1 channel is today the leading TV group in contemporary France. Bouygues holds 43% of the whole conglomerate, that also owns TMC, NT1, and HD1. Public service broadcaster France Télévisions is the main competitor for audience shares, owning several channels from France 2 to France 5. The third important free‐to‐air operator is the M6 Group that holds the television channels M6, W9, and 6ter. The Canal+ Group is the leading pay‐TV firm in France. It includes stations such as Canal+, D8, D17, and i‐Télé. Since 2007, French pay television has a duopoly: former competitors in the cable industry merged under the brand Numericable while in 2006, the satellite platforms TPS and CanalSat were authorized to merge within Canal+, a subsidiary of Vivendi. It Italy, the top five newspaper publishers are the L’Espresso Group, Rizzoli‐Corriere della Sera (RCS), Caltagirone, 24 Hore, and Poligrafici. L’Espresso publishes the center‐ left newspaper La Repubblica. RCS publishes the center‐right Corriere della Sera and sports newspaper La Gazetta dello Sport. Caltagirone holds the leading newspapers in Rome (Il Messaggero), Naples (Il Mattino), and Venice (Il Gazzetino). Il Sole 24 Hore is the financial newspaper in Italy and owned by the Italian industry association Cofindustria. Poligrafici publishes several dailies in cities such as Milan and Florence, and it is a subsidiary of the Riffeser Monti family group. Three main players dominate the radio industry sector. Public service broadcaster RAI holds three important national channels and accounts for almost half of the audience. L’Espresso Group is well behind with three important stations: Radio Capital, Radio m20, and Radio Deejay. Finelco RCS owns other channels such as Radio Montecarlo, Radio 105, and Virgin Radio. Finally RTL (not connected to the Bertelsmann subsidiary) and Radio Dimensione Suono (RDS) are also important channels. Public service broadcaster RAI and Berlusconi’s Mediaset have controlled the free‐to‐ air television market for decades, leaving a limited audience share to small and local ­operators (Scott 2009). Also the Italian pay‐TV market has been a duopoly since the 1990s.



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Telepiù, formerly controlled by French group Canal+, and Stream, formerly owned by News Corporation and Telecom Italia, merged in 2003, after several difficult years of negotiation, under the new brand Sky Italia controlled by News Corporation. Given that cable television had been underdeveloped, Sky Italia effectively monopolizes pay‐TV in Italy. After the end of Franco’s dictatorship in 1975, the Spanish print media went through a radical transition. Most of the top national newspapers did not survive the transition to democracy. Of those that did, El País, ABC, and El Mundo have been the top three national quality papers, and substantial media corporations have gradually developed around them. El País has always been the flagship of the center‐left Prisa group that, as noted above, also owns Cadena Ser, the top talk radio network in Spain, and Canal+, the most important pay‐TV platform for decades, in a joint venture with the French firm (recently acquired by Telefónica). ABC has always been the most significant asset of publishing house Prensa Española that, in 2001, merged with the Grupo Correo (the owner of a big chain of regional papers) to form Vocento Group. El Mundo originated a media company around itself, Unidad Editorial, which also acquired the Recoletos group in 2007 and incorporated into its assets top sports and financial papers, Marca and Expansión (Artero and Sánchez‐Tabernero 2015). The radio market has historically been dominated by the Prisa group, which owns several talk radio and music channels accounting for more than 40% of the total audience. The second position in the market swings between Cadena Cope (owned by the Catholic Church) and Onda Cero (a property of Planeta‐Atresmedia, the leading media group in Spain). Finally, public service broadcaster Radio Nacional is the fourth news radio group. In free‐to‐air television, the oligopoly of the two public service national channels (now renamed as La 1 and La 2) and the two commercial networks (Antena 3 and Telecinco) remained untouched until 2005 when several new digital licenses allowed for the ­emergence of new national channels. Two of these, Cuatro and La Sexta, proved to be particularly successful. But the economic crisis of 2008 motivated their mergers with Telecinco and Antena 3 respectively to create Mediaset España in 2010 (owned by the Italian conglomerate) and Atresmedia in 2012 (owned by Planeta). In consequence, the  Spanish free‐to‐air television market is again an oligopoly of four main players (two public service, two commercial broadcasters) as it was in the 1990s (Artero and Sánchez‐Tabernero 2015). With the introduction of a new satellite platform by Spanish telecommunications firm Telefónica in 1997 and several cable operators since 1998, pay‐TV shifted from a Prisa‐ Canal+ monopoly in the early 1990s to a competitive market. Subsequent consolidations created another duopoly: cable operators united around ONO (acquired by Vodafone in 2014), and Telefónica that purchased Prisa’s satellite platform to create Movistar+ in 2015. The third, much smaller player Orange (France Telecom’s brand) also acquired local telecom Jazztel. The market structure of pay TV mirrors that of the mobile and fixed‐line telecommunications industry with key players being Movistar, Vodafone, and Orange (Artero and Sánchez‐Tabernero 2015).

Multinational Companies The main multinational media companies in France are Lagardère, Vivendi, and Bouygues. The first group was created in 1982 with the merger of Matra (aero spatial industry) and Hachette (publishing) and is headed by Arnaud Largardère after the death of Jean‐Luc Lagardère in 2003. It currently operates in 40 countries with 65% of its sales coming from outside of France and is active in book and magazine publishing, and radio

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and television. Vivendi has its origins in water and waste industries and owned Universal Studios from 2000 to 2004 before it was sold to General Electric. Vivendi also owns the pay television group Canal+, Universal Music and the video hosting service Dailymotion. Bouygues was founded in 1952 by Francis Bouygues and has been led by his son Martin since 1989. Being a very diversified corporation located in more than 80 countries, most of Bouygues interests lie in the construction and real estate industries, while less than 10% of its income comes from the media sector, notably being the owner of the TF1 Group and Bouygues Telecom (Maarek 2015). The main Italian multinational media companies are Mediaset, and the RCS MediaGroup. Mediaset started in 1978 when entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi founded his local station Telemilano and started to broadcast nationally (as Canale 5) two years later. The group was completed with two other national private channels acquired from the publishing houses Rusconi (Italia 1) in 1982, and Mondadori (Rete 4) in 1984. In 1990, Mediaset launched Telecinco in Spain and took over a majority of the capital in 2003. In  addition, in 2007, Mediaset acquired a controlling share of Endemol, the Dutch ­television producer and world format leader. Berlusconi’s company holds more than 20 national television channels in Italy and Spain (Richeri and Prario 2016). RCS was founded in 1927 when Angelo Rizzoli acquired four national magazines. It is now co‐owned by some of the most important Italian firms and wealthy families, including those associated with Fiat, Pirelli, or Benetton, and banks such as Mediobanca, Popolare, and Intesa San Paolo. It currently publishes Corriere della Sera and Gazetta dello Sport in Italy (acquired in the 1970s), and the dailies El Mundo, Marca, and Expansión in Spain, since the acquisition of Unidad Editorial in 2007. It also holds a majority share of the radio company Finelco. The biggest media conglomerates in Spain are Planeta, Prisa, Mediaset, Unidad Editorial, and Vocento. Planeta is still owned by its founding family Lara and is the largest Spanish‐language book publisher in the world. It is the leading media group in Spain (controlling the Atresmedia radio and television corporation) and a key player in other markets such as Colombia. Vocento is also owned by several families from Madrid and the Basque Country, owns the largest regional newspaper chain in Spain and is the market leader of print dailies. It previously held interests in the Argentine market but has since divested them. International investors control the other key media conglomerates. Prisa is nowadays owned by Nicolas Berggruen and his companies, the Polanco family, and Telefónica. Jesús de Polanco starting from the publishing house Santillana founded the group. It has important interests not only in Spain but also in Portugal (where it controls Media Capital) and Latin America. Mediaset and Unidad Editorial are dependent on their respective Italian owners.

­Eastern Europe: Poland, Romania and Russia Legal Deregulation The path to a liberal media market in Poland, which began in 1989, was scattered with the typical dilemmas: a lack of capital for investment, technological backwardness in media production, and an inadequate plurality of media ownership. The relative absence of Western democratic political norms (Jakubowicz 2007) saw the ruling party and the ­president liberalize the press market while in a bid to maintain communication power retaining the broadcasting sector in state hands. The end of state press licensing came in 1990. It followed the abolition of censorship and the implementation of the Act on



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Shutting Down the Workers Publishing Cooperative (RSW) (Robotnicza Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza Prasa Książka Ruch) that for two decades had been used by the communist authorities to license and circulate all print media. The new procedure of simply registering a press title with a district court provided free access to publishing. While the initial confusion over regulations regarding broadcasting concessions was finally over in 1993, the competition in the audiovisual market commenced. New regulations allowed a selection of broadcasters to be granted concessions for 10 years; the broadcasters without headquarters in Poland and with at least 51% of Polish capital share were not taken into account. As Filas (2010) claims, the Broadcasting Authority Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji (KRRiT) sought to impose some regulations to shape radio programming and limit concentration processes, but it was prevented from doing so by an imprecise legal framework. In 2004, the Polish accession to the EU opened the domestic media market to foreign investors. The basic restriction for media outlets was  implemented in 2011 in order to ensure the presence of European programs in audiovisual services in at least 51% of the content. The collapse of the Communist regime in Romania started a political transition process that reshaped the media system. In 1992, new regulations were adopted affecting two media issues: autonomy and control, and media ownership (Jakubowicz 2007; Marinescu 1995). Although foreign ownership was forbidden in the 1990s, and media licenses were held by Romanians (Baya 2008), the post‐2002 liberalization of state regulations allowed any company to own a broadcasting license regardless of its origin (Seceleanu 2009). Further, legal provisions could not force media industries to identify their real owners (Preoteasa 2004). In 2004, the newly established audiovisual law (no.  510/2004) adopted a maximum market share of 30% for any company in the audiovisual sector. In 1991, just after the collapse of the USSR when the new Mass Media Act was adopted in Russia, many of the old media outlets were privatized and numerous private media were established. Although the formal framework of political culture changed, no shifts in the informal practices between the media industry and politicians took place (Khvostunova 2015). Moreover, the specific role of the state in the Russian media ­system has been the cause of the media’s simultaneous involvement in the market and in the political arena (Vartanova 2013).

Media Concentration The national press market in Poland clearly shows evidence of press concentration and an inadequate protection of national media ownership, the domination of German media outlets, and the loss of quality content in media. The closure of the press trust RSW has been recognized as a milestone in this development. The RSW liquidation committee, established by the Polish parliament in 1990, was responsible for ­transferring the capital to private owners. Schliep (1996) has pointed to the lack of transparency in the committee’s decisions and the opening of doors to foreign investors while depreciating Polish ones. Years later, German press houses took over a huge part of the national and regional press. Acquisitions and sell‐offs intensified changes in press ownership. According to Klimkiewicz (2004), three tendencies emerged during this process: thematic specialization (introducing new publications covering the same specialization), diversification (setting up or taking over existing titles from new market segments), and regional ­consolidation (taking over regional publications and unifying various forms of press as well as advertising activities).

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Media concentration in the audiovisual sector was more intense than in the press market but has been relatively stable since the 1990s. For two decades, the TV market has been based on the major players called “the big four.” They are the private broadcasters TVN (with a 13.2% audience share in 2013) and Polsat (12.1%), as well as the PBS (Telewizja Polska) TVP 1 (12.9%) and TVP2 (9.9%). In contrast to other countries in the region, the audience share of commercial radio broadcasters (RMF FM, and Radio ZET) with a 40.8% share was larger than that of PBS radio stations. The continuous audience increase of commercial broadcasters has caused news provision by Warsaw as the center of the country to take precedence over the regions (Guzek 2016). There is no clear pattern explaining how concentration, cross‐ownership, and cross‐ border ownership occurred in Romania (Dohnanyi and Möller 2003). Romania’s media “have had a rollercoaster ride since December 1989, when they and the society they are supposed to serve were freed from Communism. They showed promise one day, only to regress the next day and then raise hopes again before once more disappointing expectations” (Gross 2008, p. 125). With regard to concentration processes, the key issues are hidden changes in media ownership and insufficient media regulation. As in Poland, the print media sector was liberalized first, while the first private broadcasting outlets, with Romanians as the official license holders, were set up in 1994. This indirectly led to a lack of ownership transparency in the media sector. Thus, although foreign media outlets like Swiss Ringier or the cross‐national company Central European Media Enterprises (CEM) were involved in developing particular media sectors, their shareholdings were hidden. Moreover, some of the biggest print and broadcasting companies lay in the hands or are under the influence of Romanian politicians. A key example is Dan Voiculescu, the owner of the Intact Media Group, who from 2004 to 2012 was the president of the Conservative Party and a member of the Senate. The case of Russia is different. Thanks to Yeltsin’s presidency, a polycentric media model, based on a balance between the influences of oligarchs, entrepreneurs, and the state administration, was implemented. As Becker (2014, p. 206) notes of the period, “Russia was emerging, the press enjoyed the best of all worlds with a highly engaged ­citizenry, massive state support, and relatively little state/party control.” In such an environment, the first trace of the concentration of capital occurred in 1997 when Vladimir Gusinsky established the large private media group Media‐Most based on domestic ­capital. During that time, foreign media outlets were relatively weak in Russia. Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 2000 reconfigured the media landscape. Paralleling general political changes, the polycentric media market was replaced by a monocentric one. In fact, the Russian media system was referred to as being neo‐authoritarian (Becker 2014) with media industries dominated by loyal members of Putin’s office. The above‐mentioned Media‐Most became part of the state‐owned Gazprom Group in 2001. In general, state agencies took over management positions in around 70% of the electronic media companies, 80% of the regional press, and 20% of the national press. As Anakina (2012) stated, only 5,000 out of 40,000 registered newspapers stayed ­connected with politics.

Multinational Companies Since 1991, there has been a lack of transparency regarding the ownership of major publishing houses in Poland, due to significant gaps in the legal protection of the national press market combined with a naïve openness to foreign capital. Jachimowski (2011)



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cited the sales of press titles from the French Hersant Group to the German Passauer Neue Presse in 1994 as proceeding “according to the principles agreed between two independent companies, and Polish authorities have not even been officially informed” (p. 43). Cross‐national media companies, such as the German Bauer Group, are also present in the Polish market. Bauer’s holdings include magazines, the popular website Interia and the nationwide radio broadcaster RMF FM. Nowadays, Warsaw is the focal point on the media outlet map in the country: four press companies (partly Polish Agora, Bauer, Polskapresse, and Springer) are present in most of the countries in central Europe. Media capital in Romania is spread across domestic owners and a few international media groups. Most of the foreign media houses expanded by implementing diversification strategies, such as Ringier, Edipresse, Sanoma, SBS Broadcasting, Lagardère, and Liberis. In the television sector, the main players remained the same: CME with a market share of 20%, and the Intact Media Group with 19% (European Audiovisual Observatory 2015). As a result of the legal framework adaptation, some of the broadcasters hide their real ownership by registering in foreign tax havens making it difficult to determine the ownership of many Romanian media outlets. The Russian media market shows a rather intermittent and insignificant presence of transnational actors as well as their functioning under high political pressure. The underrepresentation of foreign media production is particularly distinct in broadcasting and exemplified by the disproportional distribution of national (77%) and foreign content (23%) in television (Nikoltchev 2013). According to Rollenberg (2014), “the factual ownership and decision‐making structures reveal that most post‐Soviet media are, above all, geared toward reinforcing the authoritarian status quo while gaining maximum profit” (pp. 176–177). In fact, cross‐ national media outlets operate on the basis of a flexible approach to the regulations of the Russian mass media law that was signed by Putin in October 2014. It was a controversial law limiting foreign ownership share in any Russian media outlet to 20%. Currently, except for the People’s Republic of China, none of the relevant countries bears such a strict legal media framework.

­Conclusions A first basic conclusion from this chapter is that most countries in Europe have gone through deregulation processes that have also permitted a significant expansion in media acquisition and merger activity, particularly in the late 1990s and again in the mid‐2000s. Consequently, media concentration measures have tended to rise in most national markets. Apart from pluralism concerns, this fact has promoted the rise of a significant amount of European multinational media companies. International expansion is at least partially encouraged by the need to evade national regulatory limits on ownership. Yet, even where organizations with supranational regulatory purviews exist, there has been a marked reluctance to limit media ownership concentration. Wheeler’s work (2004) on the European Commission has emphasized how de facto responsibility for protecting pluralism fell to the Directorate‐General for Competition (DG COMP). Although the DG COMP has occasionally blocked mergers (most notably a joint Kirch‐Bertelsmann‐Deutsche Telekom bid between 1994 and 1998 to establish pay TV and interactive services), for the most part it assented to increasing concentration. Major examples of this are Bertelsmann’s acquisition of RTL in 1997,

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a subsequent RTL joint venture with Canal Plus in 2001, and a joint Kirch/BSkyB joint venture. Similarly, the DG COMP approved a 2010 proposal whereby News Corporation would move to acquire the 61% of BSkyB it did not already hold. It was left to the UK regulator Ofcom to subsequently identify public interest concerns for plurality arising from that merger (Ofcom 2010). As illustrated in a recent study by Noam (2016), media concentration has augmented in most European markets if considered from an industry‐specific viewpoint. This is to say that newspapers, magazines, radio and broadcast television have nowadays fewer but stronger players in national markets. But it has to be pointed out that technological innovation has led to the emergence of industries such as the internet, where legacy media and new start‐ups are competing for audiences and advertisers. In other industries, such as pay‐TV, competition throughout a diverse range of technologies (satellite, cable, and Internet Protocol television or IPTV) is more varied today than it was in the past. Thus, from a perspective of information diversity supply, concentration of traditional industries has taken place with a parallel phenomenon of diversification with new technologies. Overall, it is not that easy to conclude that the number of media players today represents a less pluralistic marketplace as a whole and in all cases. At the same time, the open regulatory framework has permitted the creation of bigger multinational European media companies. The presence of non‐EU firms in most national markets is strong in the entertainment and marketing industries but not properly in the news media sector. The obvious exception to this is News Corporation with strong interests in print and audiovisual media in important markets, such as the United Kingdom and Italy. This is also the case for CME, the broadcast market leader in six countries and a subsidiary of Time Warner. Among the top 20 European media conglomerates, the bigger countries tend to dominate the list. This is the case of UK firms ITV, Daily Mail, and General Trust; German companies Bertelsmann, Springer, and ProSiebenSat1; French corporations such as Vivendi, Bouygues, and Lagardère; the Italian Mediaset, RCS or Expresso groups; and Spanish groups such as Prisa, Planeta, and Vocento. These business institutions generally maintain investments in print, broadcast, and interactive industries jointly with a presence in several national markets. In addition, particular companies from other countries are now operating on a significant scale, such as Russian state‐owned Gazprom Media, the Dutch firms Reed Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer, the Norwegian enterprise Schibsted, the Swedish Modern Times Group, and the Finish Sanoma. Apart from such international media companies, European markets are complemented with small and medium‐sized national publishers and the still relevant presence of PBS. But apart from a market‐friendly regulatory environment, a second big factor can explain media concentration and the rise of multinational companies in Europe: the profoundly changing market conditions. In the last few years, new information and communication technologies have impacted media industries and have brought new players to compete for audiences and advertising. Globalization is also transforming the European tastes for content, and along with social change, it is shaping new media consumption patterns. Consequently, assuming that competition erodes profitability, European media groups have been searching to increase size, sales, and audience shares to protect themselves in this new competitive environment.



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EU Democratic Deficits

The EU Project and a European Public Sphere Katharine Sarikakis and Olga Kolokytha

­Introduction This chapter discusses the historical development of the European Union’s (EU) politics of democracy by reviewing the “project” of European integration, on the one hand, and the search for and (possible) emergence of a European public sphere (EPS), on the other. Both concepts, European integration and EPS, are contested and complex, and scholars and citizens do not agree as to its nature or even its existence. European integration has been studied predominantly as a political project rooting in the attempt to avoid another war on the continent. Given the focus of EU legislative work on market integration, however, this polity has been criticized for the lack of attention given to democratic politics, and for “suffering” from a chronic malaise of democratic deficit. Connected to  democratic politics, EPS has been approached in scholarship largely as being non‐ existent or as a compilation of nationalized public spheres. The following discussion aims to provide some insights into the causes and conditions of, as well as the possible influence of media onto, the ways in which the public sphere(s) of Europe are connected with the European project. One issue analyzed is the connection between the European project and the emergence of media and communication policies as means of shaping media environments and industries. Another issue is that of political integration and the role of media in the development of a EPS. In what follows, we first refer to the constitution of the European project and then discuss EPS as a political and normative concept as well as a political aim. We connect this to the political and cultural narrative of Europe and refer to cultural heritage, European film, and European Capitals of Culture as examples of a process of “Eurosphere.” Initiated as a top‐down approach focused on media and cultural spaces, “eurosphering” aims at cultivating affective identities toward Europe. We then refer to democratic deficit(s) from a communication research perspective within the frame of decision‐making‐processes. We discuss Plan D and the European Citizens’ Initiative and look at EPS as being part of the democratic deficit debate. We relate this to the closing of public places and institutions, such as Public Service Broadcasting, and their restructuring and deprivation of resources, as well as the impact of democratic deficits on ­cultural identity and eurosphering.

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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­Constituting the European Project European integration has fascinated scholars for decades and gave boost to some of the most innovative epistemological pursuits, such as the development of the concept of governance (Sarikakis 2012a, b, c). Perhaps indicatively, the concept has come to characterize the ways in which EU politics is being understood and analyzed, but also increasingly implemented. Governance, broadly understood, refers to the multiple levels and stakeholders involved in decision‐making processes, including civil society and private actors. European governance, due to the EU’s setup, exhibits characteristics of both, intergovernmental and supranational modes of governance. The EU consists of (­currently 27) member states and their representatives in the Council of Ministers, an intergovernmental body, that is joined by the European Parliament (EP), a supranational body elected by European citizens. The European Commission, also a supranational administration, is appointed by national governments after the approval of the EP. The  European Court of Justice completes the picture of a polity that is constituted according to state‐like institutions. A closer look at the roles and jurisdictions of these institutions in law‐making, and the respective roles of national governments and citizens reveals a complex history. It has been ridden by conflicts whose underpinnings are visions of what an integrated Europe should look like: a Europe of financial markets, or a Europe of political integration. In 1950, the Schuman Declaration (Schuman 1950) kick‐started a process of cooperation among European states that led to the European Coal and Steel Community (Treaty Constituting the European Coal and Steel Community 1951), the predecessor of the EU. The widely cited reason for the construction of that community was the need to unite European countries, in particular France and Germany, to eliminate hostilities between them and to prevent another war. It was also to avert American economic dominance and the presence of the Soviet Union (Calhoun 2003; de Beus 2010). The control of economic markets by the West, in particular of coal and steel resources, was a strong motivator for the lifting of trade barriers. The treaty expired in July 2002, introducing today’s European institutions (European Commission 2002). The treaties, namely the Maastricht Treaty (European Communities 1992), the Amsterdam Treaty (European Communities 1997), the Treaty of Nice (European Communities 2001) and the Treaty of Lisbon (European Union 2007) function as the EU’s constitutional law. Each polity expansion (1986, 1995, 2004, 2007 and 2013), however, came along with a critique of lacking democratic accountability. This criticism was based, first, on the degree of democracy guaranteed by the polity in relation to decision‐making processes for nation states, and, second, on the level of involvement and participation of citizens with regard to EU institutions. The only institution directly elected by European citizens is the EP, which initially started as a consulting assembly with no legislative powers. The legislative powers of the EP increased with each treaty and eventually reached a balance with the Council of Ministers in crucial policy areas in the Lisbon Treaty (European Union 2007; Ripoll Servent 2010, 2014; Wisniewski 2013). The referenda in France and the Netherlands, objecting to a European Constitution in 2005, indicated the extent to which citizens were skeptical of more concentrated political power on the EU level. The Lisbon Treaty in 2007, also known as the Reform Treaty (European Union 2007), focused on strengthening EU institutions without convincing its critics that it offered any additional benefits for political integration (Bradbury 2009).



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The core criticism regarding the building of the European Union has been its e­ conomic emphasis, and the priority of market logics over cultural and political unity. The emergence of the European project also brought forward the claim that Europe needs media to talk about Europe. “Integration” became an important, much used and contested political claim in the making of the EU, perceived not just in market terms but in the political, social, and cultural coexistence of institutions, and the seamless mobility of people, goods, and services. This included the sharing of aspects of a European ­identity as well as of an affirmative understanding of fundamental democratic values (Sarikakis 2004; Tretter 2011). Any attempt to create a political and cultural unity, however, requires a form of public sphere, or a constellation of public spheres that allows civil society and political institutions to interact in ways that enhance and guarantee accountability and legitimacy of the polity. Ultimately, both are to be derived from the citizens. Habermas (2012) argues that what is being tested in a Europe in crisis is the will of citizens, politicians, and mass media to continue with the process of integration. One can argue that what is being tested in Europe today is the direction Europe will take in the future, and the extent to which EU decisions represent the aims of the common good.

­The European Public Sphere: A Condition for a United Europe? With a developing EU, EPS became a central idea not only among scholarly circles, but also as an EU policy aim. As an analytical and action‐oriented axis, EPS connects the critiques of democratic deficit with the pursuit of a deeper and more sustainable integration while encapsulating the need for a legitimized and accountable polity (Lodge and Sarikakis 2013). EPS derives from the concept of the “public sphere” that is associated with Jürgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989). The term, broadly defined, refers to a space where society’s problems can be identified and discussed, and where something like a public opinion is being formed. It is thought to provide the link between civil society and the state. The initial aim in understanding the public sphere was to explore the development of reason, free from superstition and power in the expression of ideas. It was an attempt to provide a historical account for the ways in which structural factors of industrialization have contributed to a new character of the human being in public, that of the citizen, who is concerned with, and can have opinions about, issues of common concern. Although Habermas’ work focused on western nation states, a substantial amount of scholarly work has since developed referring to Europe as a transnational public space.1 Fraser (1990) argues that the Habermasian concept of public sphere does not offer a sufficient critique of existing democracies plagued by intersectional inequalities that impede participation in the public domain. Fraser, also questioning the clear distinction between the public sphere and the private, argues that public spheres are being made in subaltern counter‐publics. The notion of public sphere has shifted to the idea of transnational public spheres (McLaughlin 2004). Globalization has put on the table the issue of transnational public spheres by forcing us to rethink the concept from a transnational point of view. For Fraser (2007), public spheres are transnational or post‐national as to the “who,” “what,”

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“where” and “how” of communication. While citizenry was formerly defined by interest based on an economy, territory, and print media, this has shifted to dispersed participants, dispersed interests, cyberspace, and different visual cultures. Rethinking the ­concept of public sphere also demands to ask what kind of changes are necessary for transnational public spaces to gain a critical and democratizing role. For Habermas (2012) the increased power of international organizations undermines national sovereignty and democracy, and forces a transfer of national functions to transnational ­governance. For Fraser (2007), it is about the “need to construct new addressees for public opinion, in the sense of new, transnational public powers that possess the administrative capacity to solve transnational problems. The challenge, accordingly, is twofold: on the one, hand, to create new, transnational public powers; on the other, to make them accountable to new, transnational public spheres” (p. 23). Across these two points, one being institution‐focused and one being citizen‐focused, scholars studying media and/or European integration have attempted to explore the ­question whether or not there is a EPS; and if not, whether there is a potential for its creation. Some argue that what has been developed historically is the Europeanization of different national public spheres (Eriksen 2005; Gerhards 2000; Risse 2010; de Vreese 2007). Three major approaches can be identified in the study of EPS. According to the first, there are too many differences in Europe to reach a common public sphere. Hence, particular attention must be paid to cultural and/or other common grounds as a ­prerequisite or significant factor for the construction of a common deliberative space (Brüggemann 2005; Eriksen 2005; Grimm 1995). Second, EPS can be created as a top‐down policy independent of national governments (Koopmans, Neidhardt, and Pfetsch 2000), and, third, national public spheres are changing and are being Europeanized in the process (Gerhards 2000; Risse 2010; Risse and Van der Steeg 2003b; de Vreese 2007). The empirical‐theoretical literature appears, as de Beus (2010) argues, to “ignore mutual feedback between European integration and the Europeanisation of public spheres within the member States of the EU” (p. 31). Citizenship, seen as an inclusive frame for the members of a polity, defines Europe as a transnational and global cultural sphere, one in which citizens (can) relate to each other, not only with reference to territory but as a transnational community. Public spheres are organisms; they emerge during the process of public debate and discourse (Risse and Van der Steeg 2003a). Hence, Lodge and Sarikakis (2013) argue that we need to understand the EPS as a continuous process that entails transformation and social processes on multiple levels. Furthermore, EPS consists of many public spheres located in different institutions and settings, including citizenship, media, and polity. It has been viewed mainly as a space within which positive affirmation, through more information and, thus, a better understanding of the EU’s relevance in citizens’ everyday life, can be cultivated. This became increasingly important during the crisis of the EU and its institutions after the rejection of a European Constitution in 2005.

­… Ridden by a Democratic Deficit? There is a tension between the actual situation in the EU and current scholarship as to whether there is one EPS or many. One EPS would imply a focus on one common European identity, whereas the existence of many EPSs implies various identities. The EU has aimed to create and reinforce a notion of European citizenship based on a European identity mainly through policy initiatives in the cultural domain.



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Scholarship on the EPS emerged in the 1990s partly in response to finding answers for the democratic deficit of the EU (Brüggemann and Schulz‐Forberg 2009). Despite integration efforts, EU institutions have remained little transparent and open to the civil society in addition to rising inequalities between the EU elite and citizens (Calhoun 2003). To Follesdal and Hix (2006), the EU democratic deficit manifests itself in five interrelated ways. First, the decrease in the national parliamentary power and increase of executive power as a result of European integration (Andersen and Burns 1996; Raunio 1999). Second, the limited power of the EP compared to the executive power of the EU, coming along with, third, the absence of real European elections in the sense of citizens voting for parties on a European level. Fourth, the distance of the EU from its citizens, both institutionally and psychologically, and finally, the fact that governments of member states can follow policies implemented by the EU without the national support of its citizens. As Kaelble (2010) argues, a strong EPS and a full‐scale European integration do not necessarily go hand‐in‐hand. The democratic deficit thesis draws on these phenomena to show and critique the ways in which EU polity has systemically failed democratic expectations. This has developed historically through a combination of factors: the complexity of EU policy‐making processes and their inaccessibility to EU citizens, the distant and static EU institutions as well as the loss of national sovereignty. These issues concern the political and administrative processes of the EU but are not limited to them. Several scholars (Kaitatzi‐Whitlock 2007; Lodge and Sarikakis 2013) raise the point that the democratic deficit derives from a lack of communicating EU polity to, and consulting with EU citizens. This line of argument adds a new perspective to the question of EU legitimacy by focusing on the role of information (inadequate information policies) and by addressing a combination of factors that affect citizens. In other words, a communication‐focused approach to the democratic deficit shows that it is not simply a result of citizens’ passivity but it is a matter of conflicting messages about the polity’s raison d’être and EU information policy. These communicative dimensions are connected to political claims for a more substantial participation of citizens in the future of the EU. We argue that rather than referring to a democratic deficit, it is more appropriate to approach Europe’s various and distinct, yet interconnected democratic deficits because the areas affected by weakened democratic practices have separate spheres of influence. It is not simply or only a matter of “numbers,” for example, whether the low turnout of voters at EP elections, a mere 42.61% in 2014 (European Parliament 2016), signals a loss of trust in, and legitimacy of the EU. The European democratic deficit can be both, qualitative and quantitative (Souliotis 2013). Limited public communication in Europe about Europe by the EU in combination with a lack of an interpretative frameworks of European issues in media (Preston 2009) have been identified as the core problems. Communication scholarship has, therefore, significantly enriched the debate about Europe’s lack in democratic rigor for it connected the role of information as an immaterial good to the underpinning structural and institutional dimensions of the EU. One of the reasons behind loose communication ties between EU institutions and EU citizens has been a chronic lack of investment, echoing in a lack of belief, in structures and resources that would allow for the development of substantial mechanisms of dialog and feedback (Lodge and Sarikakis 2013). Democratic deficits manifest themselves on multiple levels and impact the quality of public debate about common issues across Europe. At the time of writing, the political, institutional and economic deficits compound to catastrophic outcomes. The financial, and the refugee crisis have been met by a divided Europe and a polarized press that predominantly follows national political elites. Increasingly, Eurosceptic and largely ­

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­ opulistic politics are dominating European national political landscapes, as can be seen p in the rise of right extremism, the Brexit vote, the pledge for more “Exit” referenda by far‐right political parties and the rise of racist politics. One cannot help but think of the very hegemonic powers of the EU that gave authority to such political discourse by ­having generated a “Grexit debate” through pressures on the Greek government and its citizens to comply with Troika demands for austerity policies. According to Seoane Pérez (2013), two parallel processes underpin the democratic deficit: first, “domesticization,” the lack of identity, and, second, “politicization,” the lack of ideological conflict central to any democracy. This hiatus results from the fact that EU issues are dealt with mostly by elite groups and networks. Decisions are being made behind “closed doors” without transparency or public dialog. It is this gap between Europe’s institutional development and the supremacy of national political space that affects notions of European citizenship and identity. In an attempt to respond to the issue of democratic deficit, the European Commission released a White Paper on European Governance in 2001. In it, the Commission aimed to increase the inclusiveness and accountability of EU policy (Schmidt 2013) and the involvement and participation of civil society actors in EU processes (European Commission 2001). Another direct response to the continuous problems relating to the lack of clear communication about, understanding of and interest in EU affairs, was the EU’s short lived Plan D for Democracy, Dialog and Debate. This top‐down approach was initiated by the European Commission in 2005 and involved considerable resources. It was to foster local debates about Europe, and to encourage initiatives strengthening dialog and citizens’ participation. Plan D was an attempt to increase the level of knowledge about Europe and to raise its procedural transparency. It involved a pro‐active information provision strategy and was launched after the negative referendum on a European Constitution as a means to provide a platform for the voices of European citizens on the future of Europe. It was an effort to restore the profile of the EU, to assist in minimizing Euro‐skepticism, and to help address some of the critiques of the democratic deficit (Lodge and Sarikakis 2013). Plan D was followed by a pan‐European Citizens’ Consultation before the elections in 2009. It was a means to increase in particular audiovisual media coverage about the EU (Lodge and Sarikakis 2013) and was followed by the Communicating Europe through Audiovisual Media strategy. The claimed purpose of the European Citizens’ Initiative in 2010 was to bestow citizens with some power in initiating legislative measures through institutionalized processes, such as the collection of signatures across the continent. All of these initiatives were referred to as mediators between the EU and civil society by offering transparency of EU institutions by encouraging participation and dialog, by creating an EPS and by promoting participatory democracy (Lodge and Sarikakis 2013). Yet, despite their symbolic significance, in practice there have been significant drawbacks. The success of the European Citizens’ Initiative requires the mobilization of enormous resources across Europe. Grassroots movements or citizen initiatives, however, lack the means of securing those resources necessary to campaign across 27 countries and to successfully collect 1 million signatures proportionally divided by state. And despite the logic of such proportionality in relation to the country’s population, the problem remains that one would expect to find better‐resourced grassroots or civil society organizations in economically strong countries. In addition, due to the crisis, economic disparities have risen in recent years, which led to enormous burdens on civil society actors that took over functions abandoned by the state, such as health care, education, and the integration of migrants.



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The critique of the EU’s democratic deficit remains. It is in particular the lack of adequate means of disseminating information and adequate communication channels on a European level of civil society that add a particular dimension to the democratic deficit argument. In the complex mechanism of the EU, media have (or should have) their role in providing transparency and in including the people in decision‐making processes. However, several problems of accountability and diversity define Europe’s media environments: an increased concentration of ownership combined with a lack of a common European space. With national media maintaining their national lenses in their reports about European topics, the latter are covered only if they touch upon national interests while they also “tend to comprise only a small proportion of the totality of the stories they tell” (Preston 2009, p. 120). For communication scholars, there are no genuine European transnational media that may function as an umbrella embracing a Europe‐ centered debate. Hence, the image of the EU is that of a distant institution interfering with national affairs (Kaitatzi‐Whitlock 2007). In response, cultural projects and initiatives as well as the creation of European symbols (the European anthem, Europe Day, and European Capitals of Culture) are being used as policy instruments to create a European identity and a communicative space  ̶ a public sphere for European citizens (Brüggemann 2005).

­Cultural Dimensions of an (Evolving) European Public Sphere Taking into consideration the politics of culture and identity shaping the European landscape, we may conclude that what has been termed “European public sphere” is primarily an issue of power. In this context, the question of a common (shared) European identity in relation to a national (particular) identity is complex. In the following, we take a closer look at concrete examples in the domain of cultural policy, or in what can be termed a European public (political) sphere. Aiming to shed light on those tendencies that suggest progress in the cultural dimension of EPS in relation to EU member states, we briefly discuss European (or Europeanized) cultural contents and their dynamics in spreading throughout and within the loose conglomerate of EPS(s). What seems to unite Europe is culture, for it is considered a sphere able to provide people with a common European identity. The term “identity” started circulating in EU discourse in the 1970s (Sassatelli 2009) and came along with attempts to create a European identity and a European cultural space. The debate on what both concepts entail is diverse. Sassatelli (2009) proposes three approaches with regard to a European cultural identity, all of which are based on the discourse, the history and the practice of European integration. The first, unity, is based on Europe’s common past in Greek ­antiquity being the cradle of European civilization and is created through a blend of old traditions. The second is that of diversity, based on the idea that there is no such thing as one European culture. Instead, there are many cultures. Thus, culture cannot be a ­connecting point for European integration, for one European identity would endanger cultural diversity. The last approach is unity through diversity, merging both of the above. It has been argued that European cultural policy has been created in order to facilitate the making of a pan‐European identity and the creation of a European state (Sarikakis 2014; Tretter 2011). Culture was introduced as an instrument to EU policy in 1993 with Article 128 of the Treaty of Maastricht. This article underlines the EU contributing to the flourishing of cultures of the member states while respecting their national and

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regional diversity, and highlighting their common cultural heritage (European Communities 1992). The emphasis and importance placed on culture in this treaty ­differed from the role attributed to culture in the Lisbon Treaty (European Union 2007). The preamble of the latter traces its roots to “drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law” (European Union 2007, Article 1, Preamble 1). In 2007, the European Commission established the European Agenda for Culture (Council of the European Union 2007) linking culture to creativity, international relations as well as more pragmatic aims such as the fostering of jobs. The now largely abandoned slogan “United in Diversity” was adopted by the EU in 2000. It became an essential part of policies and debates about Europe for most of the decade, and was used to evoke a common understanding of a European citizenship while allowing for different cultures and traditions (Sassatelli 2009). Cultural eurosphering started as a strategic top‐down approach. It focused on cultural Europeanization by giving life to cultural organizations that aimed at connecting publics with polity through the process of constructing a European identity. Cultural policy initiatives, parallel to institutional and financial integration processes, served also as a strategy to facilitate a form of cultural public sphere and to strengthen an imaginary of a European cultural identity (Psychogiopoulou 2015). The European Commission ­developed cultural policy schemes that aimed at utilizing European cultural diversity and heritage, and fostered forms of intercultural dialog while also serving the economic drive of a single European market. The Commission supported the creation and distribution of film and increased the circulation of European audiovisual works. Despite the crisis, cultural funding did not diminish. The Culture program (2007–2013) had a budget of €400 million (European Parliament 2006a), and was followed by the MEDIA program (2007–2013) with a budget of €755 million (European Parliament 2006b). The new Creative Europe program, incorporating a Culture and a MEDIA strand, has a budget of €1.46 billion (European Union 2013).

­Urban Spaces: European Capitals of Culture The continuum of cultural heritage, popular culture, and the high arts found an expression in policy in the now well‐established institution of European Capitals of Culture. The initiative started in 1985 under the leadership of the then Greek Minister of Culture Melina Merkouri, with Athens as the first Capital of Culture. Since then, the initiative has become one of the oldest and most stable in the EU (Sassatelli 2009), not the least because it started long before culture became an official policy instrument with the Maastricht Treaty (Immler and Sakkers 2014). During the early years, the title was awarded annually to one European city, which later was increased to two. The initiative had two objectives. On the one hand, it was to boost the social, economic, and cultural life of the city itself, to enhance its restoration and visibility. On the other hand, it aimed at promoting European cultural diversity by highlighting national cultures and particularities, bringing to the fore also a common history and heritage (European Commission 2016). For the past years, the initiative has been viewed not only as an attempt to promote “Europeanness” within Europe, but also as a vehicle to advance Europe on the global cultural scene with high‐quality events that take place



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in  every Capital of Culture throughout the year. The European Commission has ­criticized, however, that up to 2010, some Capitals of Culture, rather than promoting European awareness, focused on generating their own interests (Immler and Sakkers 2014). Over the years, several studies aimed at evaluating different aspects of this “mega‐event.” Criticism rose with regard to the oversimplification and homogenization of identities and cultural complexities of contemporary urban centers by appealing, for example, to historical or monolithic views of what they (might) represent. On the one hand, the active making of an EPS through such cultural programs in urban spaces has simultaneously created more pragmatic as well as ideal meanings of Europeanness. Urban spaces come to entail the lived experience of citizens. This combines the restoration of cities, the access to cultural programs, as well as internal and external communication. The European Capitals of Culture’s possibilities for urban revival is underlined in literature (Deffner and Labrianidis 2005; Herrero et al. 2006) as well as in the EP study of examples such as Glasgow, Salamanca, and Genoa (European Parliament 2013). On the other hand, many have raised concerns about what is being left out in these makings of Europeanness. This includes official, legitimate, and celebratory statements of national as well as European identity (Kohli 2000; Scalise 2015; Smith 1992).

­Audiovisual Spaces: European Film When looking at cultural eurosphering in the construction of Europe, it is important to recognize the role of European film. Film belongs to the cultural domain but has historically been strongly associated with media environments, international negotiations, and EU strategies in creating a European identity via cultural policy initiatives (Pauwels, De Vinck, and Van Rompuy 2007). Public service broadcasters (PSBs) in particular have stood at the forefront of supporting the production and dissemination of what is being called “European film” (Council of the European Communities 1989; European Parliament 2010). It would be an exaggeration to claim that, in strictly aesthetic terms, there is a genuine European cinematography or cinematographic content. National cinematographic and artistic traditions of EU member states are too diverse. However, if Hollywood is known for its spectacular blockbusters, and Bollywood for its well‐tuned, colorful pictures, European film might be, to a relevant extent, be defined by the origin of its production capital. The European cinematographic industry is substantially supported by commonly developed instruments of co‐production and distribution. The European Commission supported film, first, through the MEDIA programs and, now, through the Creative Europe MEDIA strand. All programs support the European film market by funding productions and distribution, and by promoting access to, and encouragement of interests in film and European audiovisual works. They also aim at fostering cultural diversity and support for European culture. Since its launch in 1991, the MEDIA program (and now the Creative Europe MEDIA strand) has supported around 2,000 audiovisual projects, such as films and television series with an overall investment of over €2.4 billion in “European creativity and cultural diversity” (European Documentary Network 2016). Since its establishment in 1989 by the Council of Europe, the European Support Fund for the co‐production and distribution of creative cinematographic and audiovisual works, known as Eurimages, has sponsored 1,771 European co‐productions. For this, its total expenditure approximated to €530 million (Eurimages  2016). While the basic

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funding aim of Eurimages is the promotion of European co‐productions, it has expanded its interest also to the distribution of European cinema. The Distribution Support Program is aimed at strengthening the distribution of European films and at increasing their audiences (Council of Europe 2016). For this reason, the progress in European cinematographic production, cooperation, and distribution, deserves mentioning when dealing with the creation of a European (filmic) cultural sphere.

­Communication and Media in the Project Europe As with the domain of culture, media, treated largely as an industry, became one of the core policy objectives in the construction of a single European market. The integration process has facilitated not only EU regulatory mechanisms but also transnational ownership (Preston 2009). With its first directive on cross‐border broadcasting, the Television Without Frontiers directive of 1989 (Council of the European Communities 1989), the EU took its boldest step toward a free European media market. This is significant because media and cultural policies have developed at simultaneous pace with the jurisdiction of the European Union and have, thus, helped shape the integration process of the EU since the mid‐1980s. Hence, the directive’s revisions for audiovisual services in 1997 (European Parliament 1997) and 2007 (European Parliament 2007) came along with the expansion of the legislative powers of the EP, the continuing integration and expansion of a single European market, the growth in member states and the increasing global presence of the EU in media and communication technology policy regimes. This means that historically, the sector of media and culture has been influenced by, and has responded to, developments in all these spheres accompanied by long‐standing conflicts tracing their ways through different revisions of policy documents. These conflicts are rooted in the struggle over priorities in the envisioning of polity. As in the case of cultural policy, this concerns the prioritization of economic goals versus social aims, the economizing of social values of audiovisual content, or the role of the state in supporting (or withdrawing from) independent and non‐commercial communicative spaces. At the same time, while the traffic of audiovisual services was regulated slowly but successfully, regulations concerning media pluralism and media ownership concentration never developed into a directive. The reasons for this are manifold. They relate to disagreements as to what constitutes concentration and how to measure pluralism, but also to market interests of the media industry that benefits from cross‐border and cross‐ industrial ownership. The political interest to regulate media ownership concentration has developed in the early 1980s with the first mentioning of the potential role of media in European integration (Sarikakis 2004). Since 2013, a new attempt is being made to debate the ways in which media concentration may be problematic and in need of ­regulatory intervention. This inadequate response to phenomena of concentration and control, especially across Eastern Europe, must be placed next to another phenomenon, which is the role of public service media in Europe. For the past 40 years, European public broadcasters had to adjust to significant changes. On the one hand, their funding and guaranteed budget support vanished, on the other hand, their “self‐evident” role in society came under intense scrutiny. PSBs very likely suffered most due to the integration of national markets. The Protocol on the system of public broadcasting in the Member States, annexed to the Treaty of Amsterdam, remains the first and only international agreement of constitutional value that outlines the role of PSBs in European member states



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(European Communities 1997). Reality, however, is somewhat different. PSBs across Europe, but especially in the periphery, had to deal with successive restructuring, a loss of resources, state interferences and market pressures, as well as growing demands placed on content and on the accessibility of services not expected by the private sector. In addition, PSBs face a more hostile political climate fostered by corporate media as well as neoliberal political elites (Bardoel and d’Haenens 2008; Donders and Pauwels 2008). Discussions about the raison d’être of PSBs shifted to debates about the full dismantling of public broadcast media across Europe as is the case of Portugal, the Netherlands, and Spain. In addition, changes in legislation between 2010 and 2013 opened the door for the privatizing of public service radio and television. Media and cultural policies on the European level combined with national ones shape European integration. Its overall path is reflected in the dominant policies in the media sector. Concentration of ownership and the diminishing of public spaces and institutions, as is the case for PSB, fostered mediated public spheres dominated by commercialized political content. This colonization of public spaces by private interests suffocates debates about the possibilities for Europe to manage a financial crisis without entering a political one.

­Crisis in Europe: Europe in Crisis According to Koopmans and Erbe (2004), mass media have four main functions with regard to European policy: they make visible European policies and issues, offer an exchange of information between European institutions and citizens; they help to frame opinions of citizens about EU institutions, and they encourage citizens to participate in the policy process. Thus, even with a nation‐centered press and media on European issues, there is a minimum in EPS dealing with European issues that are of concern and relevance to the whole of Europe. In times of crises, media redefine the boundaries of “European” (Risse 2010). Recent research shows that the tone of news can influence citizens’ evaluation of EU institutions and policies (Desmet, van Spanje, and de Vreese 2015). Europe is currently experiencing the two worst crises in its history, a financial and a refugee crisis, at a time when there are discussions about inclusion and exclusion and with the United Kingdom leaving the EU. These events have triggered debates about the EU within which media, as communicative spaces, are key actors in the transmission and exchange of ideas and opinions. The coverage of the financial crisis in the European press highlights, first, the existence of a (mediated) EPS, regardless of national contexts and, second, the complexity of debating, understanding, and negotiating issues of common concern (Sarikakis 2014). In fact, press coverage across national boundaries shows remarkable similarities in its ­narrative of the crisis and in its separate treatment of Europe and its member states. Observations include the simultaneous polarization and convergence of politics. While mainstream media concentrate on elites, social media provide spaces for grassroots and transnational solidarity projects. The crisis gave rise to the emergence of oppositional public spheres. The latter, though by no means separate, serve as an antithetical proposition to dominant narratives of the crisis, its management and, ultimately, to the question what constitutes Europe (Picard 2015; Sarikakis 2014). Surveys show a decline in trust in national and European institutions but a generally stable and positive response rate of citizens identifying as Europeans (European Commission 2015). These seemingly contradictory outcomes point to the more

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­eneral  crisis of top‐down approaches in the governance of European integration. g In consequence, even European institutions have contradicted normative approaches: the EP, for example, has raised concerns about human rights violations in relation to the demands drawn by the Troika, while also national governments have found certain austerity measures anti‐constitutional (European Parliament News 2014; European ­ Parliament 2015). What does this mean for cultural identity given how much of cultural eurosphering depends on EU institutions? The trust in European institutions is declining while the parties of extremism and xenophobia gain in popularity (Kuhn and Stoeckel 2014). Freedom of movement, although a fundamental principle of the EU, is being challenged in response to external migration flows. Historical battles take place not only in the streets, at the polling stations, or in EU institutions, but, crucially, in media and through cultural contents and the ways in which communicative democracies deal with threats to their existence. Public protests against austerity became a visible reminder of the disconnect between EU citizens and European institutions. Crisis has led to less unity and more diversity in the EU. At the same time, it has given rise to public spheres that emerged beyond and away from established ­institutions. NGOs, such as Greenpeace, facilitate international debates through their online presence (Eriksen 2005) but also right‐wing parties exploit and create silos of information about Europe. The latter happens without emancipatory, solidarity‐based agendas but by creating public spheres that aim to undermine democracy. The internet and social media have facilitated the flow of information and communication between people but there is no consensus among scholars as to whether they constitute a public sphere (Gil de Zúñiga 2015). Movements such as Los Indignados and Nuit debout, which emerged in France but has since spread across Europe, have created new communicative spaces that connect citizens of different backgrounds and encourage public debate (Riemer 2016). Although these movements have been criticized for not having clear political agendas (Martín Rojo 2016), they have created a national as well as transnational offline and online public sphere outside mainstream media. Legitimacy is an important condition for the construction of a social consensus in Europe. In times of crisis, when unpopular and often anti‐democratic decisions are taken by normalizing exemption, emergency, and autocracy, social upheaval and discontent can prove challenging to established cultural and discursive hegemonies. Media play a paramount role as intermediaries between European institutions and citizens. Since mainstream media have lost their monopoly power of facilitating and sustaining ­public spheres, social media and a “return to the squares” have served as platforms in revitalizing more immediate participation in political discourse. In the meantime, EU institutions with their leniency toward economic priorities do not provide satisfactory answers when other notions of unification, such as solidarity, democracy, identity, and citizenship, are left behind. The financial crisis, thus, turned into an actual identity crisis of the EU posing the question what kind of EU do we actually want.

Note 1 A substantial body of work on the public sphere originates in the Anglo‐American context in the 1990s as Habermas’ original work was published in 1962 but was not translated into English until 1989.



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The Emergence of the Internet and the End of Journalism? Christian Oggolder, Niels Brügger, Monika Metyková, Ramón Salaverría, and Eugenia Siapera

­Introduction Since the mid‐1990s the internet and the web have become increasingly important pillars in the communicative infrastructure of most societies, and their impact on traditional, existing print and audiovisual media and journalism has been fundamental. During almost the same period “the number of persons employed in newspaper ­publishing has declined in most OECD countries by somewhere between 10 and 30 percent” (Peters 2011, p. 38). Thus, there appears to be an obvious link between these two facts. With regard to journalism, Kramp (2015), for instance, has argued that “fundamental questions arise about the transformation of journalism as a profession and cultural ­practice,” including “the socio‐cultural challenges of journalism in our rapidly changing digital media culture” and whether these “are based on general societal transformation processes in people’s information behaviour and their media use” (p. 24). More than a decade ago, Hallin and Mancini (2004) claimed that the increasing replacement of the written word “by multimedia forms of presentation” leads to the blurring of “the boundaries between production and journalistic labor” (p. 261) and to the increasing importance of technology in journalistic practice. “In this context it matters less what a journalist has to say about politics than whether she or he can create a compelling television narrative or an appealing visual display on a computer screen” (Hallin and Mancini 2004). However, both the internet and digital media are a much broader phenomenon than journalism, both online and offline. Hence, this chapter first provides a brief overview of the genesis of the internet and the breadth of the use of the web, with a focus on four main clusters of users, namely organizations (i.e. governmental), companies, civil society, and the media. Based on this framework, we develop an analysis of changes in journalism since the early 1990s in six European countries: the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The selected cases include countries from different European regions and with different political, cultural and technological backgrounds. They also vary according to the influential model developed by Hallin and Mancini (2004). While the latter is not devoid of problems (i.e. Humphreys 2011), it The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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nevertheless has considerable value as a heuristic typology. We take into account the state of the media systems and journalism prior to the ascent of the web in each country and then discuss further developments and changes in journalism.

­The Emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web The internet emerged as a network of computer networks in the early 1980s, but it was not until the advent of a specific set of technical protocols and software in the early 1990s, namely the World Wide Web – or just the web – that the internet in the form of the web gained currency. In order to fully understand how and why the internet came to be the web, two historical transformations were crucial. First, the move from isolated and often nationally based computer networks to the international internet, and, second, the move from text and directory based networks to the web’s multi‐semiotic and hyperlinked texts (on the history of the internet and the web see Abbate 2000; Anderson 2005; Banks 2008; Berners‐Lee 1999; Brügger 2010; Gillies and Cailliau 2000; Poole 2005; Wolinsky 1999).

From Computer Networks to the Internet In the late 1960s, before the advent of the personal computer, computers were big and very expensive (Abbate 2000, pp. 1–2). Thus, only universities, large corporations, or governmental bodies could afford to buy computers. These computers were usually not connected to each other, but with a view to distributing a workload or to accessing a computer without having to pay for the entire machine, computer networks started to emerge within academia and the military. Since the different computer networks very often used different “languages,” so‐called protocols that regulated how computers communicated, it was a major challenge to communicate across networks (see Quarterman 1990, pp. 227–635). Overcoming this obstacle was one of the cornerstones of the invention of the internet. A milestone in this endeavor was the invention of the protocol called TCP/IP outlined in 1974 by researchers at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the USA (Abbate 2000, pp. 113–145). However, this work was also influenced by the ideas and work of European researchers, largely funded by British and French military programs (Abbate 2000, pp.  123–127; Griset and Schafer 2011, pp. 355–358; Schafer and Thierry 2012, pp. 156–166). A test of the TCP/IP protocol in 1977 allowed one data packet to travel through three different computer networks in the United States and in Europe without any data loss (Abbate 2000, p. 131). From this point on, computer networks using the TCP/IP protocol became the “inter‐net,” a network of networks. However, for technical, industrial, and political reasons, some European computer networks were reluctant to adopt the TCP/IP protocol, and until the mid‐1990s, Europe witnessed a “battle of protocols” (Badouard and Schafer 2013, p. 71).

From Text and Directories to the World Wide Web In the early 1990s, the main way of communicating on the internet was by using written text, even graphics were made up of a crude assemblage of letters. In addition, to access a document on another computer in the network, one had to move up and down in



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hierarchical menu structures and file directories, much the same way as in the case of folders on most personal computers. And, finally, users had to use a variety of software types to do different things: Internet Relay Chat for chatting, e‐mail programs for electronic mail, newsgroups and listservs for knowledge sharing, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) for transferring files. While the internet opened up new ways of communicating, from a user’s point of view, the three issues discussed above constituted a limitation. In August 1991, the English software developer Tim Berners‐Lee, at the time employed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, released his ideas of and the source code to the World Wide Web (Berners‐Lee 1999). The advantage of the World Wide Web was that it allowed for the use of sound, images and moving images. In 1993, this was supported by the release of the graphical browser Mosaic, which introduced a feature – the hyperlink – that was hitherto only used on one computer to jump from one piece of text to another. Now, it could be used on a global scale, allowing users to jump from one location in a text on one computer to any location in a text on any computer anywhere in the network. Further, the open structure of the web also made it possible to integrate the many software types previously used for specific purposes. Together, these three fundamental features constituted a very powerful new tool of communication on top of the already known internet (for a brief history of the hyperlink, see Brügger 2017). In 1992, the internet was opened to commercial use (Abbate 2000, pp. 195–200; Poole 2005, vol. 3, pp. 99–100, 106–107), and, hence, the road was paved for the general public’s widespread access to the internet and for the web’s rapid and global spread: from 130 websites in June 1993 to 23,500 websites only two years later (Gray 1996).

­Country Specific Trends in Media Development Within the media typology of Hallin and Mancini (2004, pp. 198–248), both Ireland and the United Kingdom are understood as part of the North Atlantic or Liberal model with a high degree of market penetration, a low degree of political parallelism, high professionalism, and a weak role of the state. However, it is necessary to add the role of new technologies to these parameters, as well as the rise of social media corporations and their involvement in the field. The media systems of Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, fit Hallin and Mancini’s Polarized Pluralist model (pp. 89–142). By the time this model was developed, it was characterized by low readership rates of newspapers, the dominance of audiovisual media, a high degree of political parallelism in public broadcasting, and a tendency toward political and corporate favoritism in media. These features have broadly continued in the 2000s, although the landscape of the media industry has ­somewhat transformed due to the impact of digital technologies (Salaverría 2007). According to the Association of Spanish Newspaper Publishers (Asociación de Editores de Diarios Españoles 2016), some 107 newspapers were published in Spain in 2015, with a total circulation of around 2 million copies a day. Ten years earlier, in 2006, the Spanish press sold 4 million copies a day. That is, in just a decade, Spanish newspapers almost halved their circulation. A similar development happened in Portugal. In 2008, at the beginning of the economic crisis, the aggregated circulation of Portuguese newspapers amounted to 0.82 million copies a day; in 2015 the circulation was just 0.52 million (OberCom 2016). While print media underwent dramatic declines in sales and circulation over the past decade or more, Mediterranean countries have experienced a slower diffusion of digital media compared to their northern neighbors. Since the 1990s,

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Table 18.1  Percentage of households with internet access at home. geo\time

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

EU 27

48

49

55

60

66

70

73

76

79

81

83

85

UK

60

63

67

71

77

80

83

87

88

90

91

93

Ireland

47

50

57

63

67

72

78

81

82

82

85

87

Czech Rep.

19

29

35

46

54

61

67

65

73

78

79

82

Slovakia

23

27

46

58

62

67

71

75

78

78

79

81

Spain

36

38

43

50

53

58

63

67

70

74

79

82

Portugal

31

35

40

46

48

54

58

61

62

65

70

74

All forms of internet use are included. The population considered is aged 16–74. Source: Eurostat (retrieved on 10 November 2017). Reproduced with permission of Eurostat.

the development of digital technologies in these countries and, in particular, internet usage rates have been consistently lower than those in northern countries. Today, most southern countries remain below the European average (see Table 18.1). Czechoslovakia embarked on a process of democratization and the introduction of a market economy after the fall of communism in the autumn of 1989. The reform of state owned media that had served as tools of government propaganda formed an important part of this process. Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993; developments in Czech and Slovak media and journalism are characteristic of those in other post‐communist countries. In Hallin and Mancini’s typology of media systems, however, they too are closest to the Polarized Pluralist model.

Decline of Newspaper Circulation Both the media sectors in the United Kingdom and Ireland have been relatively well studied, with a plethora of studies shedding light on the state of the field and its problems. The UK media sector is characterized by concentration and a high degree of competition. Traditionally, print media have been partisan, and are thought to yield a high degree of cultural and political influence, for example, the surprise Conservative win in the 1992 elections is attributed to The Sun newspaper (Curtice 1999). While the UK national press consists of over 20 titles, these are controlled by eight companies. According to the Media Reform Coalition (2015), 70% of the UK press is controlled by three families, Murdoch, Rothermere, and Barclay; among others, they own The Times, The Sun, the Daily Mail, and The Daily Telegraph. In the last 10 years, the most important trend has been the decline in newspaper circulation, which has led to heightened competition, newspaper closures and increased concentration. In August 2015, the year‐ on‐year decline for most newspapers was in the double digits, with the Sunday People losing a record 18% followed by the Sunday Mirror that lost 13.5%. The best performing newspapers were The Times and Sunday Times, with losses of 1 and 4.7% respectively (Ponsford 2015). Taylor (2014) reported a decline of 42.5% in the years 2001–2014 with projections for a further 50% decline in the next five years. In terms of broadcasting, the main division has been between public service and commercial broadcasting. The United Kingdom has a long tradition of cutting‐edge public service broadcasting via the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) characterized by a



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strong ethos of addressing the public’s needs and wants. Until the 1980s, the terrestrial broadcasting landscape in the United Kingdom comprised only three channels: BBC1, BBC2 and the commercial broadcaster ITV. This altered drastically in the 1980s with the introduction of liberalizing regulatory policies, which led to the introduction of Channel 4 in 1982 and to Channel 5 (now Five) in 1997. The key change in the United Kingdom and Ireland, has been the rise of satellite television, more particularly Sky PLC (formerly BSkyB), which operates across the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy. The majority shareholder in Sky PLC is Twenty‐First Century Fox with 39% of the shares; at the time of writing, Fox launched a bid to buy out the remaining shares, but this is still undergoing clearance by the regulatory authorities. If the bid is successful, it will mean that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire will be the most powerful media actor in the United Kingdom controlling a large part of the press and broadcasting. Parallel developments can be observed in Ireland where UK media have had a foothold in the market since the mid‐1990s through the publishing of Irish editions (Foley 2009). This coincided with the rise of the so‐called “Celtic Tiger” in the years 1995 until 2007, which saw the Irish gross domestic product (GDP) grow by an average of 6% (O’Toole 2009). Foley (2009) estimated that about a quarter of all newspaper sales in Ireland went to UK‐based companies. The Irish press also experienced pressures due to falling circulations, with sales down by 5.4% in the first half of 2015 (Slattery 2015), and increasing concentration, with Denis O′ Brien, the chairman of Independent News and Media, announcing an investment of €100 million in more media titles, including the broadcaster TV3 (O’Toole 2015). Broadcasting also operated in very similar terms to the United Kingdom, with RTE1, RTE2, and TG4 (Irish language channel) having been the public service channels and TV3 the commercial broadcaster.

Liberalization of Audiovisual Markets In both Spain and in Portugal the media markets structures have evolved rather similarly in the past 25 years. After having joined the European Union (EU) in 1986, both ­countries started a process of liberalizing their respective audiovisual markets that had previously been public monopolies. The licensing of private television and radio networks by the governments favored the creation and/or strengthening of multimedia corporations (Artero and Sánchez‐Tabernero 2015; Arrese, Artero, and Herrero‐Subías 2009). Often, these companies also enjoyed a leading position in the newspaper and magazine markets. In Spain, some corporations were consolidated entities, such as Prisa (owner of the newspaper El País, the SER radio network, and Canal+ television, among other media), Planeta (Antena 3 television, and the newspaper La Razón), Mediaset (Telecinco), Grupo Godó (La Vanguardia), Grupo Zeta (El Periódico), Unidad Editorial (El Mundo) and Vocento (ABC, and a dozen leading regional newspapers). Similarly, in Portugal, the dominant media companies were multimedia groups such as Impresa (Expresso, SIC TV), Media Capital (TVI), Cofina (Correio da Manhã, Record, Jornal de Negócios, and many magazines) Grupo Renascença (mainly focused on radio), Sonaecom (Público newspaper, and Rádio Nova) and Controlinveste (Jornal de Notícias, Diário de Notícias, and the sports newspaper O Jogo, among other print and broadcast media). Thanks to the diversification and strength of these corporations, the digital media outlets launched by them throughout the second half of the 1990s quickly reached leading positions in their national markets. The online editions of newspapers such as El Mundo and El País in Spain, or Público, Jornal de Notícias, and Diário de Notícias in

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Portugal, became the most popular news sources for internet users in their respective countries. Also the specialized newspapers of these companies were successful online, particularly those focusing on sports and business (Bastos 2016; Salaverría 2016.)

Democratization and Foreign Investments In the 1990s, the Czech and Slovak media landscapes and journalism underwent massive changes. First, the role of media in society changed significantly, freedom of speech was introduced, and state control of media came to an end. A series of legislative changes affecting media were introduced. While these presented a major development, in some cases, they were protracted and politicized; this related in particular to the introduction of laws governing the establishment of public service broadcasters (see Metyková 2004; Pavlik and Shields 1999). A dual broadcasting system (with privately owned and public service broadcasters) was introduced in the early 1990s. Between 1990 and 1992, print media entities were privatized by their editorial staff for symbolic sums of money and subsequently sought foreign investors, which resulted in the rapid internationalization of the print media market with the majority of print media sold to foreign investors (mainly German, French, and Swiss). Thus, by the mid‐1990s, foreign owners were well established on the Czech and Slovak media markets and concerns about concentration of ownership in the local and regional press gained momentum (see i.e. Metyková and Waschková Císařová 2009; Šipoš 2004; Šmíd 2004). Media profits also depended on the development of advertising markets, which took until the mid‐1990s. While the journalistic profession and its conduct changed significantly in these countries during the 1990s, so did the expectations of audiences and their relationship with media professionals. Forms of journalism that have long been established in democratic societies were new to the region and spread rapidly in the 1990s, including the first tabloid newspaper Blesk that was launched in 1992 by the Swiss‐based Ringier publishing house. New (or indeed renewed/transformed) genres gradually found their place in the Czech and Slovak media landscape. Some genres were adopted from Western media, for example, the editorial and diary items while others gained a new life  –  under the communist regime, comment pieces had followed strict ideological guidelines and ­ now revived (Čuřík et al. 2012). Gradually, Czech and Slovak journalists embarked on adopting the values and standards more akin to the Anglo‐American model of ­journalism, while foreign owners and their investment in the training of Czech and Slovak journalists played a significant role in shaping professional journalism in both countries (Čuřík et al. 2012). Significant changes in media ownership occurred in the second half of the 2000s, especially when the economic crisis led a number of foreign media owners to leave the Czech and Slovak media markets. Like in other countries, several key factors played a role in these changes, such as declining circulation numbers (and increasing online readership that, however, remained free‐of‐charge) and decreasing advertising revenues. For example, between 2005 and 2009, the sales of the best‐selling Czech tabloid Blesk declined by 21.4% compared to a 14.5% decline of the best‐selling broadsheet Mladá Fronta Dnes. Czech regional dailies were hit worst; their sales went down by 38.5%. Also, advertising income suffered in consequence of the 2008/2009 financial crisis but these trends continued further into the 2010s (Publishers’ Union 2017). In 2013, the largest publishing house in the Czech Republic, Mafra, publisher of two national quality dailies Mladá Fronta Dnes and Lidové noviny, was bought by billionaire businessman Andrej Babiš, who has also been active in Czech national politics and



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became the country’s first deputy prime minister for economics, and minister of finance in early 2014. In Slovakia in 2014, the German owners of the quality daily SME sold a substantial stake of the company to Penta Investments, a financial group that had been the subject of the daily’s investigations. Both purchases resulted in journalists’ resignations: in all cases, the editors‐in‐chief resigned, and in the case of SME, as many as 50 out of 80 staff members (see Lyman 2014). They also resulted in the creation of new media outlets, in Slovakia, the daily Denník N (print and online), and in the Czech Republic, the monthly Reportér and the news website Echo24, with a weekly print version (see Hájek 2014; Waschková Císařová and Metyková 2015). However, already in the 1990 and 2000s political interference had jeopardized professional journalism and the fulfillment of the democratic role of media. In the mid‐1990s, the US‐based watchdog organization Freedom House repeatedly rated Slovakia’s press freedom as only partly free (Messick 1996), while in 1996, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) included Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar on its “enemies of the press” list due to the systematic repression of Slovak media (see Committee to Protect Journalists Report 1996; Human Rights Watch Report 1994). Politicians’ attempts at interfering with public service broadcasters were highly visible well into the 2000s (see i.e. Šmíd 2003 on the so‐called Czech Television crisis that involved public demonstrations in support of its independence). Overall, commercial as well as political influences remained influential on Czech and Slovak journalists, and their professional practices and values (see i.e. Preston 2009, pp. 31–48; Metyková and Waschková Císařová 2016).

­When Traditional Media Went Online The nexus of the internet’s globally interconnected computer networks and the web’s multi‐semiotic features, its use of hyperlinks, and its ability to integrate a variety of previously separate software types opened up new forms of mediated communication: first, the flexible and dynamic combination of multi‐semiotic content hyperlinked within a website and between websites on a local, regional, national, or transnational scale opened up an array of new ways of “writing,” including new ways of expression and layout, of connecting content to other content, and of continuously editing the text. Second, the web allowed for new forms of interaction. The previously predominant form of ­traditional mass media  –  “one‐to‐many”  –  was supplemented with other patterns of interaction, such as “one‐to‐one,” “one‐to‐few,” “few‐to‐few,” “many‐to‐one,” and “many‐to‐many,” just as delayed communication was supplemented with real‐time interaction – all within the same technological framework. Third, the web lowered the barrier for becoming a communicative actor. Since anyone with a networked computer could access and publish on the web, the latter enabled uncensored citizen to citizen communication on a large scale, working alongside communicative actors who had previously marked the communicative landscape, such as organizations, companies, and media outlets. And fourth, the web in its totality constituted a new media environment where well‐known features and activities came in new automated and powerful forms, such as search, recommendations, rankings, and the syndication of content – again within the same technical and h ­ yperlinked media infrastructure. Hence, the combination of the communicative changes outlined above has opened up a new array of possible ways of communicating and, thereby, ­enabled a fundamental shift in the media landscape. However, this general characterization of the internet and the web has to be ­clarified in two respects: first, the web was not invented in the form we know it in today.

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Table 18.2  All individuals using the Internet for reading/downloading online newspapers/news. geo\time EU 27 UK

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

:

:

17

17

18

21

25

31

34

40

45

13

23

18

24

23

22

37

43

43

45

51

Ireland

:

5

5

4

8

10

17

19

21

29

33

Spain

:

9

10

12

19

22

33

43

44

53

62

Portugal

:

:

23

23

25

25

34

35

37

44

48

Czech Rep.

9

18

21

:

:

23

27

37

39

44

52

Slovakia

:

13

15

16

16

15

20

28

29

32

40

Source: Eurostat (retrieved on 10 November 2017). Reproduced with permission of Eurostat.

It has undergone not only significant economic, institutional, and organizational changes since the early 1990s, when, for example, scientists and engineers ruled the web, and advertising and large corporations were not yet present in exploiting this new communication platform for commercial ends. Also, a number of technological developments have changed the ways in which users can interact with and via the web. These include the shift from modems to Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) connections, the streaming of audio (1995) and video (1997), the advent of search engines and rankings (1995, Google in 1998), syndication in the form of RSS‐feeds (1999), and recommendation features, most notably Facebook’s Like button (2009). Thus, the web’s new forms of mediated communication were not the same in 1995 as they were in 2005 or in 2015. Second, the array of possibilities of mediated communication on the web are but possibilities; what is important from a historical perspective is how these possibilities have been transformed into a configuration of actual forms of use. In addition, all of this has taken place in interaction with existing media and communication forms and infrastructures, be that as a replacement (the old is replaced by the new) or in co‐existence (the old and the new co‐exist and adapt to each other) (Table 18.2). The internet was used for journalistic purposes in the form of online newspapers for a number of years before the advent of the web (Boczkowski 2005, pp. 19–50; Poole 2005 vol. 2, pp. 166–167), but the web opened up a new era of online news. However, the web and its new possibilities of mediated communication are only one part of the equation; the other part relates to the different national settings in which the development of the web as an online medium has occurred. Although the web is global in ­principle, it is always national (and even local or regional) in practice (Slater 2003). Therefore, the use of the web in journalism is always a negotiation of the tensions between national media systems, technological possibilities, and journalistic cultures and institutions originating from traditional media, on the one hand, and the web and its specific communicative features, on the other. The latter are national and transnational at the same time, and traditional media constitute only one actor among many others.

The Game Changer Both the United Kingdom and Ireland have very highly developed Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sectors and high levels of internet diffusion with 89.8% of the UK, and 78.3% of the Irish population using the internet. Both have a



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t­ radition of early adoption, with about 75% of the population in the United Kingdom and 59% in Ireland owing a smartphone and using it to go online in 2015 (Burke‐Kennedy 2014; Ofcom 2015). This culture of early adoption finds its reflection in the practices of media corporations: The Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and the Irish Times were among the first print newspapers to appear on the web (1994), followed by The Guardian (1995) and the BBC (1997), (Shedden 2014). The impetus for this online presence was in the first instance commercial (Bishton 2001). The Daily Telegraph has been a digital pioneer; in 2006, it set up one of the first integrated newsrooms (Kiss 2006) where print and online journalists all worked together in the same open‐plan newsroom reflecting developments understood as media convergence (Infotendencias Group 2012). However, it was The Guardian that has changed the game for online journalism with its innovative approach to journalism. In 2006, it started the “Comment is Free” section based on the format and spirit of blogs and, thereby, opened up journalism to a variety of ideas, opinions, and writers (see also Oggolder 2015). As Matheson (2004) has pointed out, weblogs have fundamentally challenged the very epistemology of journalism, and The Guardian has been instrumental in this, albeit under conditions that retain a degree of editorial control. Nevertheless, The Guardian has become a champion of the idea of open journalism, which opens up journalism to a variety of perspectives (Myers 2012), and it has managed to establish itself as a major player in global journalism, for instance by winning a Pulitzer Prize for the Edward Snowden story. In addition to The Guardian, also the Daily Mail/Mail Online has been extremely s­uccessful in globalizing its brand of lifestyle and celebrity journalism. The Guardian and the Daily Mail ranked at 141 and 104 in the Alexa (2016) global website rankings respectively. While Ireland cannot match the global influence of UK news outlets, its focus on technology has fed into a start‐up entrepreneurial culture that in turn has given rise to interesting partnerships between technology and journalism, such as Storyful. The main idea behind Storyful is the use of proprietary software along with journalistic techniques to fact‐check and verify news and videos produced by citizens and amateur journalists. Storyful was developed by Mark Little, a former RTE journalist, who sold it to Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2013. In this manner, Storyful, which began as an alternative journalistic initiative based in Ireland that operated globally, became corporate (Deans 2013).

Audiovisual Media Overtaking Print Spain and Portugal are good examples of how online journalism has evolved in southern Europe. In both countries the first news websites appeared, almost simultaneously, at an early date (Bastos 2016; Salaverría 2016). In Spain, the pioneering publication was the Catalan‐written magazine El Temps, launched in a local network called Servicom in June 1994; five months later, it became available also on the web. The first daily newspapers with a digital edition were El Periódico de Catalunya in Barcelona (on Servicom since November 1994, and on the web since May 1995), El Mundo in Madrid (on Servicom since November 1994, and on the web since September 1995), and El Comercio in Gijón, the first Spanish daily newspaper launched on the web in January 1995. In Portugal, the first experience in digital publishing came also with a magazine: Blitz, a weekly specialized in music and popular culture; in 1994, it launched a full text edition in Bulletin Board System (BBS). Months later, the first Portuguese publications on the web appeared and were boosted by newspapers: the first, Jornal de Notícias in Porto (July 1995), was followed by Público in Lisbon (September 1995) and by Diário de Notícias also in Lisbon (December 1995). This dominance of online newspapers with

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print origin started to weaken at the turn of the century, partly because audiovisual media companies realized that they could no longer continue to neglect the internet. Radio networks such as Cadena SER, COPE and Onda Cero in Spain, and especially Radio Renascença in Portugal, began to strengthen their presence on the web (Longhi and Júnior 2014). Similarly, the major television networks in the two countries, both public and private, developed their online presence, although granting only a secondary role to their websites. Another factor that contributed to the diversification of the online news market was the multiplication of digital native media. While both Portugal and Spain already had some online only media outlets since the 1990s, it was in the next decade when they really developed. In Spain, this process resulted in a specific type of an online medium: the so‐called “confidentials” (Apezarena 2005). Dozens of native online media adopted this name, suggesting that they had exclusive news but, in many cases, these amounted merely to opinion. A few years later, most of these “confidentials” disappeared but some managed to consolidate by refocusing their content on more informative journalism (Arrese and Kaufmann 2016). The most prominent example was ElConfidencial.com, founded in 2001. According to data from ComScore, by the end of 2016, this publication stood as the third most visited general news site in Spain, ranking just behind Elmundo.es and ElPaís.com (El Confidencial 2016). In fact, according to a study of the Reuters Institute, by 2016, ElConfidencial.com was the largest “digital‐born news media” in Europe, both in terms of audience and number of journalists (Nicholls, Shabbir, and Nielsen 2016, p. 10).

Online Gaining Autonomy Czech online media began to appear in the mid‐1990s with the weekly magazine Mladý sve ̌t that started to replicate its print content online in spring 1995. It was followed by the daily newspapers Slovo and Lidové noviny. Šmíd (2005, p. 28) has argued that these were rather amateurish efforts and a major change occurred once commercial companies realized the value of online information, such as the Czech company Newton Information Technology that began monitoring, collating, and distributing offline and online media contents in 1995. The beginnings of the first Czech search engine seznam.cz – founded by the Czech entrepreneur Ivo Lukačovič  – date back to the spring of 1996. The first Czech online only news and current affairs daily – Ondřej Neff’s Neviditelný pes – began to appear in April 1996. Interestingly it used the agenda‐setting power of traditional news media to secure more affordable pricing of internet access in the late 1990s. In the second half of the 1990s, the presence of established print and broadcast media on the web became more significant in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and importantly, the content of the websites became more original; they did not merely replicate offline contents or advertised broadcast programs. Developments were, however, uneven. Regional dailies owned by Vltava‐Labe‐Press, the Czech subsidiary of the German publishing house Verlagsgruppe Passau, were more or less replicating their offline content online up until 2007 (see Čuřík et al. 2012, p. 169). According to the 2014 annual report of NetMonitor (2015), Czech news websites were the third most frequently accessed category of Czech web content in 2014 (predictably, the most visited were search engines, followed by online databases and catalogs). Among the most visited news websites were novinky.cz, run by the daily Právo in co‐operation with the already ­mentioned search engine seznam.cz; idnes.cz, by the daily Mladá Fronta Dnes and the



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first Czech online news website founded in 1998, aktualne.cz, which is not linked to a single print or broadcast medium and is owned by the Czech publishing house Economia; nova.cz, the website of the commercial television station Nova and blesk.cz, the news website of the already mentioned tabloid daily Blesk (for monthly reports on the number of unique visitors of online news websites see Net Monitor 2015). Thus, out of the five most popular online news sites, only one does not have an offline equivalent. Although developments in the Czech Republic and Slovakia share similarities, it is important to single out the case of the Slovak daily SME. In some respects, SME has been ahead of its Slovak as well as Czech counterparts. Already in 1994, it launched its online version on the portal of the Slovak Academy of Sciences as part of a project called Logos, and, thus, became one of the early online dailies in the east central European region. SME has continued to play a leading role in online news innovation in Slovakia (and the broader region). In 1996, its online version went beyond the replication of offline content and became a fully‐fledged news website (publishing up‐to‐date news from news agencies in addition to its own contents). Already in 2000, it established a dedicated online team and began incorporating user generated content (i.e. comments sections, discussion fora as well as book reviews written by readers), and it introduced non‐news related online and e‐commerce contents. In 2004, it introduced unpaid access to blogs, only two weeks after the French newspaper Le Monde (which was the first one to do so in Europe, however, its blogs were accessible only to subscribers). In 2015, the SME blog was the most visited blog in Slovakia (SME 2016).

­Changing Practices and Challenges The relative lack of influential alternative media in the United Kingdom can be explained by a combination of factors, including the highly competitive media sector, concentration processes, and the role of The Guardian as a focal point for liberal journalism. While there is a highly developed blogosphere that includes a multitude of small alternative outlets, this sphere is very fragmented and initiatives are very rarely – if ever – of scale. There is a great variation of alternative media covering a very wide range of themes, from political, such as Open Democracy, to parenting, such as Mumsnet. The same can be said for Ireland, where there is a multitude of small online publications, but they tend to be very narrow, very focused and localized. Two alternative initiatives that have managed to scale primarily through social media include Rabble, which in some ways is the successor to the Irish Indymedia, and Waterford Whispers News, a satirical news website. While the sphere in both countries is vibrant, it has not made any inroads into mainstream journalism. For both the United Kingdom and Ireland, the main challenge comes from social media, which have altered the field by monopolizing citizens’ attention and by imposing their own criteria for visibility (Siapera 2013). While all UK and Irish media, both traditional and alternative, have a noticeable social media presence, they have all been under considerable pressure by social media, losing advertisers to them and losing control over the distribution of news. Moreover, as social media platforms announce plans to enter the field of news production and journalism, the competition is going to be fierce and the conflicts of interest more pronounced (Kiss 2015). Related to this is the continuous loss of readers and the associated loss of income, both from advertising and from subscriptions. This has led some companies, most notably Murdoch’s News Corporation, to impose paywalls on some of their online publications, such as The Times and The Sun.

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The Irish Times has also introduced a paywall, albeit a very “leaky” one that allows access through the search engine Google. However, there is no evidence that paywalls have been successful in securing income, especially in an environment of high quality free news. The quest for a viable revenue model for online journalism is crucial, as even highly successful and innovative media such as The Guardian are not sustainable. On the other hand, experiments with alternative revenue sources, such as native advertising, that is advertising made to look like an article. This is used, for example, by the Daily Mail under the tag “sponsored contents.” Native advertising poses important ethical dilemmas and may further undermine trust in journalism. In conclusion, journalism in the United Kingdom and Ireland has had a long and successful career, and a tradition of both investigation and innovation. However, it is currently facing serious challenges that affect not only its viability and sustainability but also its very core identity and socio‐ political and cultural functions. In contrast to the United Kingdom, in both Spain and Portugal the multiplication of digital native media played an important role in the diversification of the online news market. Seriously affected by the economic crisis and increasing unemployment, both legacy media companies and experienced journalists have been forced to find new paths for their activity. Mainly in Spain, the way toward alternative forms of journalism has been led by online native news publications (Arrese and Kaufmann 2016). After two decades of evolution of digital journalism, Spain is one of the European countries where native internet media have reached their widest diversity and, above all, greatest influence in public opinion (Nicholls, Shabbir, and Nielsen 2016). The increasing consolidation of digital native media has, indeed, been one of the ­hallmarks of the first two decades of online journalism history in Spain and Portugal. The deep and long lasting economic crisis experienced by both countries since 2008 (with a severe impact on their public sector finances and a dramatic increase in unemployment), has contributed to this process of consolidation. Media corporations were affected by the adverse economic context, which exacerbated the abrupt technological change and led citizens to rapidly substitute traditional media with new digital outlets. As a result, various media outlets had to close, leaving behind thousands of unemployed journalists in both countries. In Spain, between November of 2008 and March of 2014, the Observatory of the Crisis of the Spanish Journalists’ Federation (Federación de Asociaciones de Periodistas de España, FAPE) counted 11,145 dismissed journalists in the country. According to the same source, before the outbreak of the crisis, the number of working journalists in the country had been 50,000 (Díaz Nosty 2011). Interestingly, this large job loss in the media sector had a positive side effect on online journalism: it fostered the launch of new digital projects by unemployed journalists who became entrepreneurs. In Spain, the Press Association of Madrid counted 440 digital only and multi‐platform media outlets launched by journalists between January 2008 and October 2015 (Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid 2015, pp. 82–91). In Portugal, while there are no similar statistics available, this phenomenon of launching new digital publications also took place, at least to some extent (Bastos 2016). Of course, not all these media consolidated, partly because many of them had very limited scope and structure. However, some of these digital media outlets achieved a leading position in their respective national markets, such as Eldiario.es (2012) and El Español (2015) in Spain, and Observador (2014) in Portugal, among others (del Arco Bravo, Yunquera Nieto, and Pérez Bahón 2016). In addition to this phenomenon, other factors contributed to the development of digital media in these two countries: the emergence of news blogs and the branching of



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international media franchises. In Spain and Portugal, the first personal blogs appeared in 2001, but it was not until a couple of years later that news media began to present them as part of their news offer. The first Spanish newspaper to do so was La Voz de Galicia, which in September 2003 launched a blog by its war correspondent in Iraq. Since 2004, other digital media, especially Elmundo.es, began offering specialized news blogs. The formula became so popular that blog publishing companies were created: the most successful was Weblogs SL, founded in 2004; 10 years later, this Spanish company had more than 35 million unique users per month for its pool of thematic news blogs (Salaverría 2016). Another factor that contributed to the expansion of online journalism was the branching of some foreign media franchises. For instance, in 2012, the Spanish edition of The Huffington Post was launched as a result of an agreement with the Prisa publishing group. In 2013, the Swedish online network The Local also launched its Spanish edition, and the same happened in 2015 with Vice News. Just a few months later, Vice News opened also an office in Lisbon and launched its edition in Portugal (Oliveira Marques 2015). By the time of writing this chapter, no other international digital media franchise has been established in Portugal, as they have prioritized Brazil, a more attractive market thanks to more than 200 million Portuguese speakers (Salaverría 2014). In the Czech Republic and Slovakia user generated content has been incorporated by some news websites since the mid‐2000s, but the extent of such incorporation varies greatly, taking the form of comments, discussion fora or – as in the cases of SME and idnes.cz – blogs. With regard to the merging of online and offline newsrooms, the year 2007 marked the merging of newsrooms at the Czech dailies Hospodářské noviny, and Mladá fronta Dnes. In 2008, SME merged its print and online newsrooms, and in 2010, it became the first Slovak news provider to introduce a paywall working with the Slovakia‐ based paywall technology company Piano Media. There are no significant independent blog websites that could be classified as alternative media in the Czech Republic or Slovakia. However, several non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), and groups of activists have used online media as part of civil society activism. As in other countries, the greatest competitors for advertising revenues, still the main source of income for Czech and Slovak (offline and online) media, are social networking sites. In both countries, Facebook is the most popular social networking site with 43% penetration (Internetworldstats 2015) while Twitter is lagging behind. There are also local social networking sites available.

­Conclusion Returning to the rather provocative title of this chapter, the findings have shown that the emergence of the internet and the World Wide Web certainly did not bring about the end of journalism because they are not linked exclusively neither to traditional media nor to traditional media practices. However, being primarily a technical medium used for data transmission, the World Wide Web has also become a news medium, or expressed more precisely: it likewise “has developed services which doubtlessly have the potential to challenge and to change traditional media” (Oggolder 2012, p. 142). These challenges are connected with country specific preconditions of given media systems. Referring to Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) framework on media systems, we were able to discover typical “behaviors” of media and journalism that correspond to its categories. Hence, the UK and Irish media landscape conform to the liberal model with

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a high degree of market penetration and professionalism that was affected by a massive decline in newspaper circulation, on the one hand, but reacted appropriately to these challenges, on the other. Especially The Guardian became something of a role model for acting constructively and successfully within the digital media environment. The southern European countries, not having had a large amount of newspaper readers prior to the emergence of the internet, reacted adequately by fostering the audiovisual media on the internet. In addition, the lack of economically powerful media enterprises and the massive economic crises from 2008 onwards opened up new possibilities on the web. Although facing a hostile economic context, digital native media gain further ground: they continue to increase their audiences but, as it happens in other regions of Europe covered in this chapter, the problems of consolidating a sustainable business model remain. Despite these business‐related uncertainties, after its first 20 years of existence, digital journalism in southern Europe is a highly consolidated ­reality. In terms of audience, the internet is already the second medium, only behind television, slightly ahead of radio and far ahead of newspapers and magazines (Asociación para la Investigación de Medios de Comunicación 2015). In the former communist countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the internet was not the dominant medium and only considered a threat to journalism. After a period of democratic rearrangement of the media systems – with a different pace in each country – an international sale of Czech and Slovak media outlets took place. In consequence of the economic crisis in 2008, this was followed by a subsequent resale to partly rather questionable entrepreneurs. Thus, technological change has been only one aspect of changes that have taken place in the media and journalism sector in these countries. The media markets (including their online segments) have diversified significantly since the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Czech and Slovak journalism has undergone a significant shift toward the Anglo‐American model of journalism. Being rather new in the free market economy, journalism in these countries is focused especially on new business models on the internet. It, therefore, is not a coincidence that a leading paywall technology company is located in Slovakia. Without a doubt, the modern or Western model of professional journalism is facing a fundamental crisis today (i.e. Trappel, Steemers, and Thomass 2015). However, the emergence of the internet only shows one aspect of the whole story. In addition to economic challenges caused by a culture of free or subsidized content  –  not exclusively online – and the shift of advertising revenues toward web media, professional journalism also faces a dramatic loss of credibility. The reasons for that are manifold and go hand in hand with “a profound crisis of representation and a massive distrust of conventional democratic politics, and in the elites who have traditionally been in charge of it” (Nolte 2016, p. 5).

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Professionalisms and Journalism History Lessons from European Variations Risto Kunelius, Olivier Baisnée, and Sergio Splendore

­Introduction Professionalism is a concept burdened with a dual task. It needs to provide both a specific description and a general justification for a given occupation. The description of specific skills establishes boundaries and distinguishes professionals from laymen and outsiders. The justification offers legitimation for privileges that come with membership. Professions are different; a lawyer’s know‐how is different from that of a doctor. Professionalism, as a belief that privileged expert autonomy ultimately serves general public interests, cuts across these differences. A journalist can claim to be committed to practices and routines of “objectivity” and a doctor to protecting human life by following latest evidence‐based medical knowledge. They claim to be masters of the best practices of their fields, and assert that the general public should trust them do this without much interfering. While theoretically all professional boundaries are constructed and somewhat flexible, journalism is a particularly tricky case. It is far from self‐evident what the core skills or specialist knowledge are that define journalism. But more importantly, its specific tasks are entangled with representations and constructions of the public itself. This has blessed journalism with an extra layer of reflexivity and a sense of challenge to its status (cf. Carey 1969; Zelizer 1993; Waisbord 2013). As a concept, professionalism has a narrative structure. It situates occupations in a historical trajectory of modernity within which they realize their “true” nature, core values, and destined autonomy. Such a narrative always runs the risk of teleological explanation missing contingencies and variations. It can place too much attention to the independence of the profession and miss the larger context of social and institutional relations. A too dominant storyline can both obstruct us from seeing the transformations of values or practices, the archaeological layers of the professional culture, and the influences that enter the field from the outside. Narrow narratives of journalism can sometimes be useful in pointing out key issues at stake, such as the challenge of “fake news,” “objectivity” and “free press.” But they also limit our judgment on how to tackle the

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developments that threaten public interest. The stories of journalism history shape also the discursive landscape within which changing journalism has to be justified. European journalism history offers a useful test terrain to flesh out some of these critical problems and potentials. It reminds us that with all its shared history, values, and traditions, European journalism shows considerable diversity in time and place. At the same time, contingencies are interlinked and embedded in broader historical developments of global capitalism. Appreciation of the diversity of local professionalisms is particularly important in current conditions of intensified globalization. It reminds us of the contingency of change, and it highlights the importance of the broader constellation of social forces that shape journalism. A nuanced history, then, should also help us identify the challenges that will test and shape the future capacities of journalism. This chapter argues for further enrichment of the history of professional journalism in Europe. We can offer no comparative map of the empirical and ideological realities of Europe, nor do we suggest new comprehensive models of explanation. That would demand depths of local knowledge, experience, and cultural sensitivity beyond our reach. Our more modest aim is to develop an approach that would help capture the diversity of journalism history – in particular as it is shaped in relation to politics. We do this in three steps. First, we underline the dualism of practice and ideals as the core of professionalism. Second, we develop a critique of the role of dominant narratives in the history of journalism. Third, we offer examples of the variations of journalistic professionalism in Europe in three national contexts: France, Finland, and Italy. These interconnected points sketch a matrix for what a sociologically and historically sound, yet still purposefully comparative history of professionalism might entail.

­Tension of Practices and Ideals Professionalism refers both to material skills that true professionals master and to the social value of the restricted access to these skills. These two dimensions (practices and ideals) open different perspectives to journalism.

A History of Practice A search for the distinctive skills of a journalist does not provide clear a point of departure. In Europe, the news develops from personal correspondence and information networks linked to political and commercial interests of elites. Gradually, this spills over from private circles to public, creating a nascent but unstable base for some independent writers and brokers of news. As news and commerce are intertwined from the outset, the forefront of European capitalism defines the cutting edge of journalism history in a given moment. In sixteenth‐century Venice the novellisti and poligrafi could make a living without submitting to the patronage of particular persons (Burke 2000, p. 397, 2001, p. 23). In late seventeenth‐century Amsterdam, the “oversupply” of unemployed Protestant clergymen (mostly from France) made some of them try their fortune as full‐ time “men‐of‐letters” (Burke 2000, pp. 162–165). Eighteenth‐century London saw newspaper editors who “managed the whole business, building their reputation through collecting and redacting the news, and personally writing the master copy” (Pettegree 2014, p. 309). While some papers also hired “reporters,” the skills of such news gatherers were neither very distinct nor well‐respected. Such first symptoms of professional newsmen were sporadic, and early European newspapers were mostly collections and



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composition of letters and bits of news (Pettegree 2014; Nerone 2015a, pp. 15–18) with little investment on editing. Journalism began as a rather indiscriminate distribution of the printed word  –  not unlike the internet. Parallel to the (often foreign) news, two other interrelated streams are noteworthy: the market‐driven production of libels and scandals (Darnton 2009; Thompson 2000, pp. 41–50; Pettegree 2014, p. 191ff.), and the intense politicization of journalism during periods of political upheaval. But the appearance of political pamphlet writers, and their momentary independence from state and censorship can hardly be seen as signs of a journalistic occupational identity. It is not until the end of the eighteenth century, then, that newspapers began to become recognized actors in the construction of public opinion. In addition to skills, the organizational settings of early European communication work offers clues to the history of professional practices. Early news‐gathering was nested in the physical nodal points of information networks: in cloisters as part of the information network of the Catholic church (Pettegree 2014, pp. 21–26), in houses of commerce, such as often cited example of the Fugger‐newsletters (Pettegree 2014, pp. 113–116) or the Dutch East India Company (Burke 2001, pp. 157–159), and in the diplomatic contexts of states and rulers. Such settings partly defined the repertoire of early journalism. Organizationally, the workshops of printers link journalism to the general history of guilds and European craftsmanship. The medieval workshop system – with their masters, journeymen, and apprentices – negotiated relations of authority related to specific skills. Internally, the workshops reproduced a culture of occupations, as particular skills functioned as a “source of the legitimacy of command or the dignity of obedience” (Sennett 2008, p. 54). A recognized craftsman had to learn his skills through a (long) period of imitation, rising (slowly) through the hierarchy of the craft and reaching autonomy (as a master) within the circle of one’s peers, privileged and sanctioned by the crown. Externally, the guild system was also a way of controlling labor under the growing market demands for printed matter. At first, as a rule, printing was a royal privilege, literally defined as private law, or an exemption. Such license systems eventually broke down under the pressure of intertwined political and commercial demand for often un‐ licensed reading material as early printers were driven at least as much by profits as by political or religious affinities. The first newspapers inherited this external organizational tension, being linked both to politics (often with restrictions) and to the market (audience demand). Being directly linked to printing press, journalism also inherited some of the culture of craftsmanship. The nineteenth century industrialized press produced news contents organized in editorial offices, with their editors‐in‐chief taking the place of masters. Later, during the twentieth century, big newsrooms brought journalists together to workshops where key professional routines were forged and reproduced, such as recognizing “events” that have news value (political or market or both), effectiveness of gathering information (working on a particular beat), functional presentation techniques (the strategic rituals of objectivity), and so on. A long line of ethnographic work in newsrooms has illuminated the structures, tensions, changes, and continuities of these contexts (Tuchman 1978; Boczkowski 2004; Usher 2014).

A History of Ideals In all specialized occupations, the exclusive “secrets of the trade” need a heavy dose of public trust as a counter weight. Etymologically, the term profess means vowing to people outside the occupation, while the professional uses the skills with utmost care and according to best his knowledge (Pietilä 2011). However, professionalism defined as discourse

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of legitimation, took shape properly only when the nineteenth‐century dual revolution of capitalist industrialization and bourgeois democracy in Western Europe gave rise to a modern social imagination (Larsson 1977, p. 80). Classic sociology itself (from Tönnies to Durkheim to Weber) was an attempt to conceptualize this “great transformation” (Polanyi 1944) and its dual movement within. On the one hand, traditional social structures were broken by the market forces of capitalism. On the other hand, this provoked counter‐movements and the search for new kinds of integrating social forces. Modern professionalism can be seen as a part of such “self‐defensive” reactions. Two things come together in this simultaneously centripetal and centrifugal move toward professionalization: first, the identification of new kinds of occupations (such as journalism) that can help manage (bring together) increasingly complex societies, and, second, the struggle to build symbolic resources that support these professions as specific, autonomous, and legitimate agents (which, in turn, support their position in the labor market and in relation to the state). Academic debate about modern professionalism has been lively (Larsson 1977; Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001), but the main ideas of the concept are clear. Professional self‐ understanding distinguishes knowledge from skills, calling for an explicit (scientific) knowledge base that informs the practice (officially, professionals do not act on a gut feeling). The system of knowledge implies institutions of education, or at least some kind of explicit merit based entrance or accreditation to the field. This yields membership in a collective that enjoys professional autonomy and privileges. While this is often officially sanctioned by the state, the autonomy is also protected by science: this signals that professionals redeem their privileges accountability not in the eyes of the state but in front of the “public” at large. This is often articulated in ethical principles that justify the privileges of profession. This ideal form, the ideology of professionalism, identifies a “third logic” (Freidson 2001) that differs both from the bureaucratized state power and brutal market forces. Against this ideal logic of professionalism, even a quick comparison of European journalism history offers a somewhat patchy picture. If one looks for a collective effort of journalists to control the entry to the profession, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a wave of emerging trade unions and professional associations: the United Kingdom and France in the 1880s are early examples, Sweden (1901), Greece (1914), and Finland (1921) represent a more common, later trend. European journalists began to organize as the industrialization of the press began to create new mass audiences. The scale of production demanded new workers, and often the field journalism was flooded with people from new social classes and backgrounds. At the same time, though, the developing representative political institutions ensured that political affiliations were another powerful structuring force of the press corps, often keeping journalism subsumed to the political system. The educational aspect of professionalism took root in the wake of professional associations. Specific courses for educating journalists were organized in the late nineteenth century, but professional schools (often linked to universities) were established after World War I, for instance Finland, Germany, France, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and sometimes only after World War II. Codes of professional ethics followed usually in pace after the emergence of unions and formal education. The first wave of ethical codes appeared after World War I (France [1918], Austria [1921]). It reflected the concern for both the commercialization and industrialization of the press (and the wider social profile of journalists), and the hard lessons learned from World War I propaganda. Another wave of ethical codes follows from the 1950s and 1960s, for instance the Netherlands (1954), Finland (1968), Sweden (1974), and Germany (1973),



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supported also by the post‐World War II discussions on the social responsibility of journalism (e.g. the Hutchins Commission report, Leigh 1947). The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) principles date back to 1954, articulating also a sense pride: “Journalists worthy of the name … shall recognize in professional matters the jurisdiction of colleagues only, to the exclusion of every kind of interference by governments or others” (IFJ Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists, 1954, article 9). First articulated in this ethical terrain on self‐jurisdiction, the idea on offering legal protection to confidential sources emerged relatively late in many European countries. While Sweden (1949) seems to have been an early example, many European countries adopted an explicit legal source protection late (i.e. France [2010], Finland [2004]).

­The Weight of a Dominant Narrative As professionalism is publicly anchored in science, also writing journalism history has become burdened with legitimizing journalism in modern societies. Such narratives serve important purposes but also carry some risks. An influential example for a dominant history is Michael Schudson’s (1978) Discovering the News, upon which some journalism scholars have crafted a global interpretation of the invention and spread of modern journalism. In a shorthand version of this narrative, “true” journalism was first invented in the US penny papers of the 1830s. After having spread through the US press by end of the century, it was “progressively imported and adapted” in the United Kingdom and to continental Europe (Chalaby 1996, p. 304). There is, of course, some truth to this thesis. In particular the argument regarding the decisive break in media practices in the late nineteenth century is important. This is when a sense of journalism as a distinct set of practices that denoted a distinct group of people emerged, even if the words “journalism” and “journalists” existed well before (Nerone, 2015b). It is also true that the international circulation of journalistic formats suggests many transnational connections and diffusion of practices (i.e. Höyer and Pöttker 2005; Broersma 2007). Yet, bearing in mind that journalism history is part of the discourse of professionalism, it is important to keep some distance to a too hegemonic story. For instance, one should recognize that in the late nineteenth century a break in the field this took place, both in the United States and in Europe (particularly in France), as a consequence of the industrialization and commercialization of the press. Also, the idea of a particular essence of journalism oversimplifies history on both sides of the Atlantic: the claim that standards of objectivity in reporting clearly characterized American journalism is too straightforward an interpretation. Schudson (2001) himself has offered a much more subtle description of the rise of objectivity in American journalism (cf. Nerone 2012). This narrative further underestimates the degree of politicization of US newspapers in the beginning of the twentieth century (Kaplan 2002, 2013; Nerone 1987; Pasley 2001). Crucially, such interpretations divert attention from how professionalism began its rise in the era of intensively political journalism, as a public reaction to a such a “heteronomous” field (Bourdieu 2005). It also takes journalism in major cities as an accurate representation for the vast majority of the (US) press of the time (i.e. Tucher 2001, 2013). Chalaby’s (1996) point on the “co‐invention” of journalism by British newspapers has also been criticized (Hampton 2004) for too much emphasis on the “pauper press” in redefining general British journalistic standards. The intellectual trap of such storytelling is the narrowing of the normative definition of journalism that defines “professional journalism as a discipline of verification … exercised

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by professional journalists working in industrially organized newsrooms under the supervision of editors” (Nerone 2013, p. 17). This meant seeing “other forms, such as tabloid news or more assertive and partisan journalism as deviations from professionalism” (Nerone 2013). Historically, one needs to recognize the diverse political and commercial forces at play during a period when the definition of professional journalism was in the making (see Hampton 2004). More generally, this also tends to put the legitimacy of the profession on only one of its aspects. Following Kaplan’s (1997) criticism of the “insulated” (yet dominant) US perspective on journalism studies, highlighting the diversity of European journalism history may help sustain a more complex memory of journalism, its practices, genres, and justifying values. It serves us well to bear in mind that in particular the latter part of the twentieth century was awash with journalism reform movements, from “new journalism,” and “peace journalism” to “civic or public journalism.” These movements developed in opposition to the hegemonic news ideology showcasing diverse potentiality within the professional culture (see Hanitzsch 2007). It is also vital not to oversimplify the changing historical political and social conjuncture within which seemingly dominating values were articulated. Again, Schudson’s (1978) original insight is a case in point. To him, objectivity became a core factor of professional ideology only when a more straightforward belief in a progressive realism fell into crisis. While nineteenth‐century journalism in the US (and elsewhere) was characterized by the emergence of “realist” social reporting, it was often a form of journalism where facts seemed to speak with inherent moral and political value (i.e. in social reportage, muckraking, in realist novels). Against this background, the crafting of early twentieth‐century objectivity as a separation between facts and values was, in fact, a response to external criticism of such morally loaded, naïve realism. Objectivity, protected the emerging profession by modifying its truth claims and, thus, helped to sustain the industrialized institutions of mass media. Equally important, objectivity in the latter context of the mid‐ and late twentieth century, in the context of high modern welfare societies, was again redefined as a more cooperative practice between experts and journalists. At the time of writing, the lesson to be learned is that truth and objectivity claims of journalism in the post‐factual era of public discourse must be situated in a yet another, new conjuncture.

­The Long Century of European Journalism: Variations of Time and Context To enrich the role of journalism history demands letting go of the premise of an essential, singular core form of journalism and the subsequent narrative of journalism as its teleological realization. Of course, some European countries may have had rather similar phases of journalism history. Such similarities, however, point to the shared context of larger structural processes: the rise of industrial capitalism and political liberalism, the spread of literacy and urbanization, or the diffusion of technological progress. These processes created similar conditions to support journalism as a particular social activity, but as emerging press industries and the profession of journalism were differently bound to different social spaces and social formations, things played out differently. Yet, in opening a more nuanced history of journalism, a shared historical framework can be helpful. Historical sociology offers various ways of identifying key periods and shifts, but the overall historical shifts of Western capitalism are not much in doubt. Karl Polanyi (1944) offers one starting point for explaining professionalism as a modern ideology. He describes



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nineteenth century as a “great transformation” (a wave of globalization) when global capitalism, industrial production and national competition started what Giovanni Arrighi (1994) calls the “long twentieth century.”1 Urbanization, mobility of people, unprotected and market‐ruled labor markets, the breaking of traditions and earlier forms of social cohesion, then, sparked “self‐defensive” political reactions. Journalism, too, is an example of this simultaneous dual movement. One the one, hand market imperatives commercialized the public sphere in the nineteenth century and created journalists as a recognizable occupational group. On the other hand, this transformation gave rise to intellectual currents that aimed to control and manage the consequences of market imperatives. Various radicalisms and progressive initiatives of the nineteenth century were part of a broader collective reaction, often articulated in journalism too (from the Chartist press in the United Kingdom to progressive muckrakers in the United States). Comparative modeling of the role of media (and journalism) has been an important topic in the communication studies canon since the mid‐twentieth century at least (i.e. Siebert et  al. 1956; Nerone 1995; Hallin and Mancini 2004; Christians et  al. 2009). Ideally, this chapter now offered a full, comparative matrix of professional journalism across Europe during the last 150 years, situating it in the deeper undercurrents of the history of capitalism while identifying how economic, technological, political, and socio‐ cultural factors were articulated in local conditions. However, we have to settle for looking at three different corners of Europe, France, Finland, and Italy, and three temporal snapshots on professionalism during the “long twentieth century” that begins in the late nineteenth century (Arrighi 1994). We look, first, at the emerging professional field (at the zenith of European global capitalism, ending with World War I), second, at the search for public interest journalism (during the building of European Cold War welfare states), and, third, the contradictory moment of “high modernity” (Hallin 1992) when journalism enjoyed a period of autonomy which was at the same time shadowed by a more troubling future.

The Emerging Profession In Eric Hobsbawm’s (1995) effective prose, late nineteenth‐century Europe was “capitalist in its economy; liberal in its legal and constitutional structure; bourgeois in the image of its characteristic hegemonic class, glorying in the advance of science, knowledge and education, material and moral progress, and profoundly convinced of the centrality of Europe” (p. 6). This is the historical setting in which newspapers began to reach mass audiences and make claims for public attention and opinion, partly by political, partly by commercial appeal. The example of France offers a rich entry point to the diversity of this era. A country where journalism was well developed, newspapers gained a national mass audience early on, for instance Le Petit Journal (1863–1944). In this conjuncture, commercial and political competitions over mass audiences were strongly intertwined. Until the 1880s, the right to chronicle politics was restricted to bourgeois broadsheets through taxes that made political dailies affordable only to the wealthy. Since organized political parties barely existed (until the early twentieth century), the main dividing issue was the proper organization of state power. Newspapers identified as Bonapartist (in favor of the Empire) or republican (with different subdivisions from the right to the left). The crucial role of public opinion as a factor in this loosely organized political field became evident in some key historical moments, notably the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906) that dramatically divided politicians, intellectuals, and the press. Combining the political with the scandalous, the

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affair illustrated well the political‐commercial dynamics of the period. Literature was covered and discussed in similar ways, offering ample space for debates both between literary schools, and moral scandals and trials surrounding books, for instance Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Literature was a key topic of journalism and politics and it spoke about key social questions. At the same time, the success of the mass press had divided the field of journalism internally early on. The popular, and the elite poles of the field offered two different entry points to the professional space, which made the field of French journalism very combatant and lively. Many public debates would literally end in duels; some newspapers even had armories where journalists could learn fencing and shooting. The public sphere stretched from newspapers to courts, and people active in them often ended up in jail. In Paris, for instance, the prison of Sainte‐Pelagie even had a special quarter for journalists. It was from such an extremely conflicted field – where actors with cultural, political, and economic capital collided – that journalism as a profession first emerged in France. Following the very liberal press bill of 1881 (Loi sur la liberté de la presse du 29 juillet 1881) journalists’ unions were established in the 1880s, and first courses of journalism were offered in 1900. Working in journalism began to appear more as a full‐time position and a career, not merely a hobby or a route to (literary or political) fame. In this process the much debated term “reporter” entered French language, carried proudly by younger, less literate journalists – and scorned by the older, literary cadre of pressmen. As this struggle about what journalism was all about was fought in the field shaped by the old guard, French journalism remained strongly attached to a more “literary” dimension (Clark 1987), alongside factual reporting. In Italy, the so‐called Liberal Italy period (1861–1922) saw an increasing number of newspapers and growing circulations. Some of the most important and still circulating newspapers date back to this period, such as La Stampa in Turin (1867), Il Mattino in Naples (1892), and Il Corriere della Sera in Milan (1876). They renounced all government dependency and offered its collaborators decent payment early on (Licata 1976, pp. 11–17). This growth of the press, however, was modest compared to France, due to both illiteracy and low‐income levels. Consequently, “journalists” were more clearly defined through their political alliances even when working full time. They also often came from other “classic” professional elites (lawyers, notaries, doctors, and scholars) (Castronovo 1976, pp. 10–13). Thus, the slower development of the mass press weakened the emergence of the professional field in late nineteenth‐century Italy. This, however, should not blind us to the interesting history of journalism in an earlier period. During the process of Italian unification (starting with the Congress of Vienna in 1815), the press, unlike in France, was deeply involved in state building. This led to somewhat different claims about the relationship between the public and the press. An illustrative figure is Giuseppe Mazzini, a pan‐European political activist, who founded and funded 26 papers during his career, all aimed at supporting Italian unification, such as L’Apostolato Popolare, Il Popolo d’Italia, and La Giovane Italia. Such a press was also pedagogical in its orientation (L’Educatore, Pensiero e Azione) (Ravenna 1967). Indeed, Mazzini himself was acutely aware of the specific nature of journalism, and he even imposed some ethical principles and rules on his collaborators, such as bylines. Early on, in the Jeune Suisse (1836), writing about the “mission of periodical press” (“Sulla missione della stampa periodica”) he defined the specific power of journalism: “The press is powerful … it is the only power of our modern times … because it talks to everyone, to multitudes and individuals; to each social class; and because it discusses each issue” (Ravenna 1967, p. 2).



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In Finland, similar to Italy, the history of the late nineteenth‐century journalism was deeply entangled with the project of nation‐building. Finland was then developing as a special, autonomous area within the Russian empire and Finnish newspapers spread and multiplied rapidly during the last decades of the century (Salokangas 1997). Politically energizing issues dealt with official language politics (Swedish vs. Finnish), the relationship to Russia (principled legal liberalism vs. political pragmatism) and class questions. Although sporadic debates about press ethics and the quality of journalism appeared already after the mid‐nineteenth century, professional tendencies were not dominant. Already in 1906, the strong party‐affiliation of newspapers was cemented by the early adoption of universal political franchise. Party‐loyalism largely dictated journalism in the early decades that led to national independence after a short but bloody civil war in 1918. This tragic political history might appear as a delaying factor to professionalism, but it is important to recognize that the intense political struggle was a major factor in the development of the field by providing an influx of writers from new social backgrounds (Munck 2015). Equally importantly, as political mobilization and newspapering progressed hand in hand, both also introduced a deep cultural sense of daily readership as a civic duty. This was a crucial base for later phases of professionalism.

­The Search for Public Interest Journalism The economic competition between European powers plunged the continent into World War I and the consequent period of economic and political unrest. On the one hand, electoral liberal democracy made progress. On the other hand, it proved too slow for its own virtues: national reactions against economic and political instability brought about a wave of fascism and other collective, state‐directed, or corporatist movements. In this conjuncture, the new medium of the day, broadcasting, was organized under the guardianship of states, contrasting with developments in the United States. After the mass mobilizations of World War II, political impetus of social planning grew stronger in Western democracies. It geared politics toward a more equal distribution of wealth, driven by experts and rationalized politics. The post‐war era of mass production and consumption demanded big industrial investments, which, is turn, called for a capacity to calculate profits and interests into the far future. This ushered in the alleviation of social differences and of political promises for a better future. As populations became targets of positive policy and control measures, societies became the objects of development. With the bureaucracies of the welfare state, journalism also entered a more symbiotic relationship with other modern expert organizations. A mutual affinity of professionalisms played its role in that a developing journalistic professionalism depended on other variants of professionalism in economics, social policy, education, and so on. By reporting on the systems and practices of social negotiation, journalism became a recognized part of the welfare social system and carved out an increasingly independent and de‐politicized role for itself. If “objectivity” in the early twentieth century was coined as a defense to journalism in the context of volatile politics, in the era of welfare expertise this reliance on acts and knowledge resulted in a more symbiotic relationship with the “primary definers” (Hall et al. 1978) of the dominant social system. Objective, neutral reporting and the build‐up of vast modern systems of expertise and administration were mutually reinforcing. Underneath the seemingly competitive relationship between commercial and public service forms of journalism, this ethos of expert‐driven

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planning of social progress provided the base for the social ascendancy of the profession. Journalism was considered a business, but a particular one. The Nordic countries offer a good example for this welfare modernism of journalism. In Finland, the post‐World War II development of the field was characterized by the simultaneous emergence of practical provincial monopolies for omnibus newspapering, and a strong development of public service broadcasting. The 1950s and 1960s newspapers distributed the voice of the established social institutions describing the progressive building of society and solving its emerging problems. The news informed the citizenry about what these key, often professional, social actors said and thought. As it emerged from the damages of the war and struggles with the late urbanization process (throughout the 1960s), Finland was a follower rather than frontrunner in such corporatist, cooperative, reformist professionalism where the idea of political consensus and agreement on shared interests play key roles. Other Nordic countries, in particular Sweden, led the way (for Sweden, see Ekecrantz 2005; for Denmark, see Hjarvard 2013). In accordance with the era’s ethos, professional associations also began to take the role of labor unions whose memberships and loyalties cut across political affiliations of media outlets. At the same time, the importance of university education and enhanced academic research on journalism and mass media grew (Koljonen 2013). In Italy, the process of professionalization of journalism was dramatically interrupted by the Fascist regime (1922–1943). Although the nation became a republic in 1946 and press freedom was re‐established, the Fascist period had long‐lasting consequences in that governments tried to control the press by different (and much criticized) initiatives. In this atmosphere, for instance, Radio Televisione Italiana, a public institution, ended up being controlled by the government. Such tendencies during the 1950s provoked Enzo Forcella, a respected political journalist, to write a famous critical pamphlet in 1959. In Millecnquecento lettori, he stressed how journalism operated only for politicians, the media, and the ruling classes (the number 1,500 referring to this small elite). This politically oriented elite press slowed down the development of a more autonomous professional field. Indicating the weak state of professionalism, in 1963, a highly criticized national system, called the Order of Journalists, was established. It was a highly selective association that acted as an accreditation system based on a low level of professionalism (weak education patterns, absence of shared identity). During this time, and officially even today, the order regulated access to the profession by deciding who is being recognized as a journalist. The key criteria for this was evidence of 18 months of paid work in newsrooms and a final examination. In France, political journalism was deeply institutional during the 1950s and early 1960s. The central political arena of coverage was the parliament, while the executive branch and political parties were hardly covered. After World War II, French state policy in relation to the media took two directions. The first was the aim to regulate the sector more effectively due to repeated scandals that had hit the press during the interwar period. Regulation was to prevent excessive commercialization, with the state protecting the field and recognizing the need for a public interest driven journalism. The second trend was the rise of a public‐sector monopoly over radio (and later television), both seen as purveyors of education and culture. Rather than providing immediate support for an improved professional status of journalists, this intervention of the state weighed heavily on the debate about professionalism and the question of who was a journalist. The case of television was an example in point. Until the 1980s, French television was a state monopoly and the professional status of its employees was somewhat uncertain. They were most often called “speakers” or “anchormen” rather than journalists, and



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their formal professional (peer) recognition came rather late. The first TV news bulletin was broadcast in 1949, but the group of young people working in television news production had to wait until the 1960s to be acknowledged as professional journalists. Controlled by political powers and considered more a medium of entertainment, television was also not regarded a similar kind of medium for journalism as the press. During the 1960s, De Gaulle allegedly said: “The whole press is against me. I have the TV, I keep it.” President Georges Pompidou said television journalists were not “journalists just like the others,” and they had “specific responsibilities” being “the voice of France.” The belated professional recognition was also linked to the backgrounds of these first television journalists. Many came from the cinema and theater rather than the press. The journalism of 1970s France was well illustrated by the fact that Le Monde was the undisputed professional reference point; it was an austere but reliable newspaper with a high‐brow conception of newsworthiness. Illustrating the weak effects of commercialism on this kind of journalism, editor‐in‐chief Hubert Beuve‐Méry allegedly said to his journalists: “Be boring!”

­The Late High Moment of Professionalism During the post‐war era, Western Europe was dominated by politics of progressive taxes, inclusive social security and social planning supported the building of social‐security systems. This came along with a need for various fields of expertise and stable careers within them. Universities were transformed into institutions of mass education providing public servants for the system. Once this welfare society social imagination had been established, however, the historical material base for it started to crumble. The economic and ideological problems had already begun in the 1970s, and neoliberal politics gained an increasing foothold, first in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s, moving into the rest of the Europe as the Cold War came to a (temporary) end in the 1990s. The global economy experienced a period of high financialization. Nation‐based welfare states were no longer able to offer lucrative investment environments for capitalist profit‐making (Arrighi 1994; Mann 2013). The long‐term, solid imagination of welfare capitalism began to give way to a more “liquid” version of modernity (Bauman 2000) where expert knowledge had less authority and citizenship was increasingly replaced by consumerism. In addition to the economic‐political challenge from the right, the welfare systems of the West also became the target of cultural critique from the left. This ideological cross‐fire provided an important backcloth for recent developments also in professional journalism. In France, the transformation toward a late modern professionalism can be illustrated by three successive generations of political journalists (Kaciaf 2013). The “Gaullian ­generation,” having started their careers between 1955 and 1970, were journalists ­confronted with Fourth Republic’s regime (1946–1958). Political journalism was parliament‐centered, and prominent political columnists considered themselves political actors. As this generation gained editorial leadership, they redefined political coverage. They introduced public opinion polls as an instrument for interpreting politics as well as a sense of social responsibility by taking politics seriously. Their successors, having started between 1970 and 1984, had a more militant background. They often had been members of political organizations in their youth, and many were shaped by the events of 1968. Maturing into professionals, they promoted a political journalism focused on individuals, backstage, and communication strategies. Compared to their predecessors,

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their social and educational background was closer to that of politicians, but they still favored a more critical, investigative, and ironic culture of political journalism. The latest generation, having entered the field between 1985 and 2000, took and takes an even sharper distance from politics by criticizing the lukewarm politician relationship of their elders. They rarely have personal backgrounds in politics, and they observe politicians the same way entomologists observe insects. They also give more room to alternative forms of politics such as social movements and local initiatives. Trained at journalism schools, they consider themselves more as technicians and professional journalists and politics as just another object of journalism. With some local nuances, a similar story of professional generations can be told about Finland (cf. Kantola 2013; Koljonen 2013). Here, the turn from welfare modernism to a more system‐critical late modernism has provided for, and opened up a more powerful and distinct institution of journalism. Several studies have shown how journalists have taken a more active role in the framing of news coverage (Ekecrantz 2005; Benson and Hallin 2007; Fink and Schudson 2014; Barnhurst 2016), leading also to a distinct debate about the mediatization of politics, i.e. the increased power and importance of media and journalism in the field of politics (cf. Strömbäck and Esser 2014). A paradox of this moment lies, however, in the fact that journalism is simultaneously blamed for being too powerful (the mediatization lament from politicians and other public actors), and it is seen as being in a severe crisis, losing its audiences and in need of new business models (cf. Kunelius and Reunanen 2016). If France and Finland exhibit some similarities with late modernism, Italy offers a point of entry into other recent paradox tendencies. Italian journalism never quite reached the mature form of public interest journalism. Instead, an aspect of instrumentalization remained (Mazzoleni 1987, p. 4; Hallin and Mancini 2004, pp. 113–119). This is illustrated by regulations on public broadcasting that have been “colonized” (lottizzata) by coalitions: each change of political power and alliances affected not only the appointments of the top management of public broadcasting institutions but also the anchors and the allocation of time given to news and public affairs programs – even the contracting of entertainment shows. After an uncontrolled commercialization of broadcasting, the system has been defined as a duopoly, pointing to the dominance of the public service broadcaster RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) and the commercial Mediaset, each controlling three channels. In the press, mass‐circulation of commercially oriented newspapers never really came about, but important national elite newspapers have remained (Murialdi 1994). As a general consequence, Italy has been characterized by a weaker state of professionalism – an anomaly in comparison to many other European countries. This has increased since Silvio Berlusconi, owner of a key media company, Mediaset, ruled the country as prime minister on three occasions. This can be seen as an early signal for the currently emerging challenges professional journalism is facing. Berlusconi’s media populist political success tends to illustrate one dominant trend and perhaps reflects a profound “mediatization of politics.”

­Concluding Remarks The “long century” of professionalism we have sketched stretches from the late nineteenth century to the new millennium. It saw the first formation of professionalism, driven by urbanization, industrialization, and a mass press, followed by democratic tensions and the crisis between the world wars, to the zenith of mass media with a high,



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modern professionalism in the welfare states of the late twentieth century – often with simultaneous commercial success and the widely accepted public service role of journalism. All through this period, professional journalism developed as a part of centralized, large organizations. Their size and relatively secure market positions enabled professional journalists to carve out a legitimate space of relative independence against the immediate forces of commercial and political pressures. Large newsrooms cultivated journalism as a highly regarded, relatively autonomous profession that claimed a vital place in the social order. Seeing the story of professionalism as a narrative concept underlines the importance of journalism history. As we see the dismantling the mass media imagination under the forces of digitalization, commercialization, and new forms of public participation, journalism research has been flooded with books and articles about “re‐thinking” the profession and its boundaries (cf. Deuze and Witschge 2007; Carlsson and Lewis 2015; Ahva and Steensen 2017). In this context, diverse histories of journalistic practices can help us appreciate the achievements of earlier phases of professional journalism. They let us see more clearly how earlier autonomy and the public legitimation of particular skills and privileges were hard earned merits. They also offer a healthy bulwark against simplified future projections ranging from an uncritical optimism of “everyone becoming a journalist” to the lament for the end of the profession. Defining professionalism as something that hinges on the public display of the tension between its practices and the discourses that justify these practices, sets the stage for key questions about the future. A crucial one is: Who will enjoy what kind of privileges in the democratic communication processes? Who, for instance, has the right to protect the identity their sources? (cf. Revers 2014; UNESCO 2017). Where do deliberations about journalism take place, as the professional milieus of large newsrooms are being thinned out (McChesney and Pickard 2011)? Will algorithmic logics lead to echo chambers and weakening public forums for deliberations – or will publics be able to engage with journalists more intensively? Earlier narrative transformations of professionalism saw journalism, among other developments, detach itself from political patronage (through commercial dependence on mass audiences), breaking free from audience prejudices and tastes (through notions of objectivity and expert knowledge), and, at least partly, distance itself from modern expertise (through the role of a professional system‐critic). In retrospect, this last phase may have made the profession again somewhat vulnerable to political pressures, as the abstract and often performative critique of political power may have served as a fertile ground to support more media‐savvy populism in politics. In searching for a new foothold, one lesson to be learned from the multiple histories of professional journalism is to recognize that professionalism has always been shaped within an relational space between politics and journalism. After all, it is hard to imagine a more political question than the quest and demand for “objectivity.” Perhaps journalism history can serve its purpose more by looking at how professionalism became possible not in spite of politics, but because of it, and how its power has been linked to discourses about democracy in its actual conditions. Situating professionalism into broader crises of global history can also provoke our imagination on a different dimension. Here, troubling fundamental developments challenge European societies and their journalists: climate change poses challenges as to the limits of constant economic growth and concepts of knowledge; migration and human mobility demand new thinking about identities and inherited values; imperatives of security (surveillance and privacy) shape national public debates and pose disturbing

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questions of citizenship and loyalty. History teaches at least this: political reactions to these issues, for better and worse, will shape the environment within which journalism defends its own accountability.

Note 1 Arrighi’s “long” twentieth century categorizes history differently from, for instance, Hobsbawm (1995) whose twentieth century is “short” (1914–1991). Our choice of terminology is not meant to take issue with the latter, rather Arrighi’s vocabulary seems to better grasp the period that is crucial for professionalism.

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Murialdi, P. (1994). La stampa Italiana. Dalla Liberazione alla crisi di fine secolo. Bari: Laterza. Nerone, J. (1987). The mythology of the penny press. Critical Studies in Mass Mommunication 4 (4): 376–404. Nerone, J. (ed.) (1995). Last Rights: Revisiting Four Theories of the Press. Urbana, IL: University of Chicago Press. Nerone, J. (2012). The historical roots of the normative model of journalism. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 14 (4): 446–458. Nerone, J. (2013). Why journalism history matters to journalism studies. American Journalism 30 (1): 7–27. Nerone, J. (2015a). The Media and Public Life: A History. Cambridge: Polity. Nerone, J. (2015b). Journalism’s crisis of hegemony. Javnost/The Public 22 (4): 313–327. Pasley, J. (2001). “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Pettegree, A. (2014). The Invention of News. How the World Came to Know about itself. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pietilä, K. (2011). The Reason of Sociology. Georg Simmel and beyond. London: Sage. Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of our Time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Ravenna, L. (1967). Il giornalismo mazziniano. Florence: Le Monnier. Revers, M. (2014). Journalistic professionalism as performance and boundary work: source relations at the state house. Journalism 15 (1): 37–52. Salokangas, R. (1997). From political to national, regional and local. The newspaper structure in Finland. Nordicom Review, Special issue 1: 77–105. Schudson, M. (1978). Discovering the News. New York: Basic Books. Schudson, M. (2001). The objectivity norm in American journalism. Journalism 2 (2): 149–170. Sennett, R. (2008). The Craftsman. New York: Allen Lane. Siebert, S., Peterson, T., and Schramm, W. (1956). Four Theories of the Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Strömbäck, J. and Esser, F. (2014). Mediatization of Politics: Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Thompson, J.B. (2000). Political Scandal. Power and Visibility in the Media Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Tucher, A. (2001). In search of Jenkins. Taste, style, and credibility in gilded‐age journalism. Journalism History 27 (2): 50–55. Tucher, A. (2013). The true, the false, and the «not exactly lying». Making fakes and telling stories in the age of the real thing. In: Literature and Journalism (ed. M. Canada), 91–118. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Tuchman, G. (1978). Making news. New York: The Free Press. UNESCO (2017). Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age. Paris: UNESCO. Accessed 15 August 2017. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002480/248054E.pdf. Usher, N. (2014). Making News at the New York Times. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Waisbord, S. (2013). Reinventing Professionalism: Journalism and the News in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Polity Press. Zelizer, B. (1993). Journalists as interpretive communities. Critical Studies in Media Communication 10 (3): 219–237.

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The Development of Journalism Education in Europe Carlos Barrera and Michael Harnischmacher

­Introduction: National Traditions and Different Ways of Training Aspiring Journalists Journalism as a profession is a relatively new phenomenon. In its origins, it was an ­occupation associated with printers or writers who published daily occurrences for the public. They did not need any special requirements but only the ability to print and distribute their newspapers, to write letters and articles aimed at generating discussion to influence public opinion. Work conditions, social recognition, and other factors gradually turned journalism into an occupation whose reputation has developed in such ways that it can be regarded as similar to that of other liberal professions, especially in Europe and other developed countries. The profession of journalism has changed parallel to the evolution and modernization of mass media as an industry or a business. Consequently, the training of aspiring journalists has been an object of discussion in all countries, regardless of the system adopted for this purpose. Media history cannot be understood without taking into account three parallel processes: first, how journalists learned and developed the profession of journalism, second, the influence of politics and business in different periods, and, third, universities’ growing interest in offering programs in journalism and mass communication. Different national traditions have existed and still exist. As in many other developing professions throughout history, the first “school” was the workplace itself with experienced journalists and city editors as teachers of those intending to learn the tricks of the trade. At the beginning of the profession, especially with the development of mass newspapers at the end of the nineteenth century, the apprenticeship system was assumed to be the most efficient way to practice journalism through learning by doing. In many countries such as Great Britain, France, and Germany, the strength of trade unions, employers’ associations and publishers allowed these groups to organize systems of control to regulate access to the profession. Consequently, most reporters were recruited directly by editors. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, journalism schools were being established at universities as specialized centers devoted to the training

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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of journalists. At the beginning of the twentieth century, after only two or three decades, the academic training had become the most common way to become a journalist in the United States. Such higher education programs, however, did not significantly develop in Europe until the last third of the twentieth century. The special features of European journalism partially explain why the recruitment of journalists differed from that of the college‐based system established in the United States. Publishers and editors regarded journalism as a vocation rather than a profession that could be learned and taught. However, new conditions favored the integration of journalism into university curricula in Europe after World War II: increasing demands from the public, the outstanding role played by political propaganda and the use of mass media during the war, and the development and consolidation of other media such as radio and television. As a result, political authorities and press‐related organizations became aware of the new challenges that journalists had to face in their daily work. Complexity of the new environment demanded from aspiring journalists a better understanding of the world in which they lived. In practical terms, this meant a broader, more thorough education in the humanities and the social sciences. In this chapter, we do not describe the entire historical evolution of European journalism education nor do we adopt an international comparative perspective. Instead, we aim to provide a “transnational” view that embraces some points often neglected when trying to understand the dynamics of introduced changes throughout time: the extent and accuracy of knowledge of foreign experiences in journalism education; influences received from other systems, especially from the United States; and the variations that resulted from the evolution of media themselves. Despite diversity in different periods and countries, two parallel trends in journalism education can be seen throughout: professionaliza­ tion and integration into academia. The countries discussed in this chapter have been selected according to three factors: first, the importance of their newspapers and magazines in national circulation and influence (Great Britain, Germany, and France); second, the extent of their achievements in the field of journalism education, for instance Spain and Finland where university‐based programs were established early on; and, third, the influence of communist countries that adopted varied journalism education models after 1945. Following a chronological order, we consider World War II a crucial turning point for an increasing international awareness of the importance of training journalists. Two phases or “waves” can be distinguished in the growth of university programs in Europe: one in the late 1960s and the other in the 1990s. A series of contextual factors, which are described below, explain why these waves took place in those decades; the fall of the Berlin Wall was undoubtedly one of them.

­US Journalism Schools and Their Influence on Some European Countries The first journalism schools in United States appeared as a sort of natural by‐product of the professional ideals and values that US reporters held by the end of the nineteenth century, different from those held by previous generations. As Schudson (1978) wrote, “the growing marketability of a college degree in journalism was an indicator of the reporter’s new status …, marked and promoted by steadily rising income” (pp. 68–69). Folkerts (2014) pointed out that “the conflict over journalism education occurred within a society that turned increasingly toward professionalization through university matriculation,



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an important avenue of upward mobility” (p. 230). Thus, after several pioneering attempts carried out by some forerunners at a number of universities during the last third of the nineteenth century, the first undergraduate programs were initiated at the University of Illinois in 1905, and the University of Wisconsin in 1906 (O’Dell 1935). In 1908, Walter Williams created the first school of journalism at the University of Missouri. In 1912, Columbia University’s journalism school in New York was launched thanks to a large endowment from Joseph Pulitzer who had promised it years earlier, and made a vigorous public defense on the necessity of founding university‐based schools of journalism. Williams and Pulitzer shared the idea that by training better journalists, both the public and the state would be served better. The number of schools or institutions of higher learning offering four‐year degrees in journalism grew especially during the second and third decade of the new century: 74 were launched between 1910 and 1920, and 175 between 1920 and 1930. By 1929, a total of 190 institutions taught journalism to 5,108 students. By 1940, the figures amounted to 542 institutions (Sutton 1945). The development of journalism education in the United States had to overcome the initial skepticism and criticism on vast parts of society. Journalism schools also had to convince newspapermen, editors, and publishers that they were the best places for training aspiring journalists. Beside the Williams practical‐leaning approach, Willard Bleyer at the University of Wisconsin soon tried to establish a more “academic” journalism curriculum that was more akin to what we nowadays call journalism studies integrating theory and practice. Still, US journalism schools developed strongly in the direction of Williams’ idea of journalism education emphasizing practical skills and practitioners teaching, while Bleyer’s idea laid the groundwork for the much broader developing field of communication studies (Harnischmacher 2010; Mirando 2002). The result was a highly influential, but ultimately somewhat non‐academic, university‐based journalism education in US higher education throughout most of the twentieth century. Before World War II, the influence of the US school model was limited to a few countries such as France, Norway, New Zealand, the Philippines, China, and Japan; countries that were given money, books, and even faculty members for service and general advice (Desmond 1949; Murphy 1922). Also, the United Kingdom and Spain were influenced by the US model but more so in inspiration in isolated cases. In Europe, journalism education generally did not follow this model. While US universities, more recent than those established in Europe, were more flexible in accepting “a responsibility for meeting the practical as well as the intellectual demands of the rapidly developing society of which they were part,” European universities “tended to regard their role as the perpetuation of academic excellence and the enhancement of academic knowledge” (Stephenson and Mory 1990, p. 31). In the United States, journalism was regarded an academic discipline to teach trainees, whereas in Europe it was not. Besides, the modular system of US universities was more suitable to integrate journalism subjects than the more rigid systems in Europe. France was also reluctant to provide academic training for journalists. In 1931, George Bourdon, a very active secretary general of the French journalist union, publicly expressed his pessimism about the future of professional schools. A private school had offered courses in journalism in Paris since 1899 but they were purely theoretical and only lasted two years. The Higher School of Journalism established at the Catholic University of Lille in 1924 followed a curriculum with some practical knowledge, such as techniques of writing (Charon 2003).

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The overwhelming predominance of apprenticeship training in the United Kingdom only allowed for one reform initiative before World War II: the two‐year diploma course in journalism at King’s College, University of London, from 1919 to 1939. The origins of this course lay in a visit of John W. Cunliffe (then associate director of Columbia University’s School of Journalism) to the British Institute of Journalists in December 1918, as one of his promoters, Colonel Lawson publicly recalled during the World Press Congress of 1921 (Williams 1922). The course mainly addressed young men whose careers had been interrupted by the war and was met with considerable criticism. In 1930, one of the professors summarized the experience of these pioneering university‐based courses in the United Kingdom: “The syllabus is a happy blend of the academic and the practical,” the latter in the charge of “competent and experienced members of London newspaper staffs, taking the form of lectures and news‐writing” (Knapp 1930, p. 305). In Spain, Ángel Herrera, editor of the Catholic newspaper El Debate, founded the first school of journalism in 1926, after having sent three members of his newspaper staff to the United States to study both American journalism and schools of journalism. After their return, one of the staff members, Manuel Graña, organized a first intensive “Course on News Writing,” in preparation for the regular one‐year course that began in October. In his inaugural address, he did not hide the direct influence of his stay in the United States, “where journalism is a university degree as worthy of honor and as lucrative as the best” (Graña 1930, p. 31) (authors’ translation).1 In sum, unlike in the United States, “in European education [the] development of a combination of vocational training and academic study in one institution did not generally take place” (Stephenson and Mory 1990, p. 31). On‐the‐job systems, based on “learning by doing,” still prevailed over others despite the progress made by the US schools of journalism.

­The Role of the German Zeitungswissenschaft The foundation of the Institut für Zeitungskunde (Institute for Newspaper Research) at the University of Leipzig in 1916 was the first milestone of modern journalism education in Germany. Its director, Karl Bücher (1915), had given some lectures on journalism at the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 1884, as had other pioneers of the field around the same time, such as professor Adolf Koch at Heidelberg in 1895. By 1903, with the support of some professional organizations, courses on journalism had been established at other Swiss universities such as Zurich and Bern, as well as at the University of Vienna (Desmond 1949). However, there had been no institutionalized field, yet. The new discipline of Zeitungskunde (the study of newspapers) emerged thanks to two converging factors: the interest of university scholars coming from fields such as political economy and history of newspapers, and the attention paid to the latter by professional organizations. In addition, a major motivation for Bücher to push Zeitungskunde as a field was his conviction that, under the impression of the ongoing World War I, wartime had brought about a “low point of the press” (quoted in Bruch 1980, p. 604). Thus, academically educated journalists would be beneficial in promoting cultural change in peacetime, which in his view was one of “the most difficult cultural challenges” of the era (quoted in Bruch 1980, p. 607). Bücher was convinced that the profession of journalism had developed to a point that made academic education necessary to prepare journalists for these “great challenges” in “scientific, technical, and ethical regard”



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(Bruch 1980). Nevertheless, since its beginning, the institute primarily focused on research so that its education was regarded “as only a preparatory training; the professional qualifications were to be acquired on the job” (Fröhlich and Holtz‐Bacha 2003, p. 190). Following the example of Leipzig, other universities created their own institutes, although the discipline’s name changed to the more appropriate Zeitungswissenschaft (newspaper or press science). By 1933, 12 universities had established such centers. Internationally, the German research‐driven approach received considerable attention. In June 1929, the US‐based Journalism Quarterly published a review of the German professor Otto Groth’s book Die Zeitung. The reviewer compared US and German journalism research favoring the broader German scope in contrast to the defects or deficiencies noted in US research (Dickinson 1929). Just one year earlier, the same journal had covered the visit of Ernst Esch, general manager of the International Press Exhibition at Cologne, to the United States where he aimed to attract interest in participating. The report stated that “Dr. Esch was considerably surprised at the extent to which education for journalism on a professional basis has attained in this country as compared with other countries” (Journalism Quarterly 1928, p. 42). Both testimonies give early evidence of both a mutual admiration and disregard for each other journalism education and research. While Americans seemed to “discover” the work of the German research institutes, Germans “admired” the progress of professional education at US university‐based schools (Barrera 2012). In addition, in June 1930, Journalism Quarterly appointed German professor Emil Dovifat as associate editor of the journal. This meant a positive assessment of German scientific research regardless of its roots and nature, and also a recognition of its advanced position in Europe: “an arresting phenomenon,” according to the note announcing the appointment (Journalism Quarterly 1930, p. 203). German institutes also inspired the creation of the Institut des Sciences de la Presse (Institute for the Science of the Press) at the Sorbonne in Paris. One of its achievements was the carefully edited journal Cahiers de la Presse (1938–1939), of which six numbers were issued. A review of its first edition in Journalism Quarterly appraised the journal as “superior to any periodical ever attempted in this field” (Mott 1938, p. 61). In sum, during the interwar period, German institutes placed emphasis primarily on research, the two existing French schools the press as a sociological phenomenon, while the only British school provided a cultural program in the social sciences, literature, and languages, together with practical writing skills. Although the influences of the pioneering German Zeitunskunde and Zeitungs­ wissenschaft were evident in the early twentieth century, their emphasis on research and lack of practical training was also criticized. Ángel Herrera visited the main German institutes in 1927. While he appraised their tradition, he argued that US journalism schools prepared students for newspaper work better than those in Germany because “a solid philosophical and humanistic basis is often not enough,” and his analysis led him to conclude that “[German] journalism institutes are not journalism schools; the latter intend to train journalists, the former deal with the newspaper scientifically” (Herrera 1963, pp. 240–244). As with many scientific disciplines in Germany, the Nazi regime was soon to end the overall development of the discipline by narrowing the freedom of research considerably and by favoring a heavily ideological practical training for journalists. Journalism education had an essential orientation to propaganda (Barlow 1936). Indeed, some kind of formal education was established through guiding standards for training in publishing houses and even the creation of one state‐run journalism school, the so‐called Reichspresseschule (Imperial School of Press) (Wilke 1990).

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­Changes in the European Training Schemes After World War II The shortage of trained journalists after World War II caused many outside the US context to think more seriously about the problems of journalism (Casey 1948), which led to a number of new initiatives in the field of journalism education in many countries around the world. Given the outstanding role of political propaganda and the use of mass media during World War II, officials in many countries realized “the importance of the press as an agent of public information and guidance” (Desmond 1949, p. 20). According to this author’s calculations, different kinds of training centers for journalism existed in more than 30 countries worldwide, and 8 or 10 more had plans to establish them. Other factors that undoubtedly influenced this growing interest in journalism education were the rise of other mass media, such as radio and television also requiring trained personnel, and increasing demands of society. In this regard, as Stephenson and Mory (1990) put it, “the perception that free and professionally competent media were an important part of a reliable democratic process … led to a number of institutions in the 1950s to improve the quality of entrants into journalism” (p. 32). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had an active role in promoting the exchange of information on the training of journalists, and it encouraged the creation of journalism schools or specialized centers around the world. According to its press sub‐commission, a good professional training should include “a good liberal education, a thorough understanding of the social responsibilities of the journalist, and a fundamental knowledge of journalistic techniques and procedures,” and “wherever possible the training unit should be related to an established university, college, or other institution of learning” (Casey 1948, p. 388). Initially, US delegates were highly involved in the work of UNESCO’s commissions on issues related to press, media, and journalism education. The atmosphere of the meetings and conferences organized in the late 1940s allowed them to be optimistic regarding the general direction of the recommendations and guidelines on the training of journalists. One of the most active US representatives in those meetings, Professor Raymond Nixon (1958b) pointed out that the last worldwide survey published “clearly indicates that in most areas of the world the trend is toward university programs of the type developed in the United States,” adding that this was “true on both sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’” (p. 488). Examples of this were countries such as the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland, and Czechoslovakia which also launched university‐ based journalism courses. Between 1956 and 1957, UNESCO also gathered a group of experts in journalism education representing 25 countries. They agreed on the necessity of a more thorough education and training of journalists in all media to improve the quality of news, and stressed the importance of universities in providing facilities for this purpose, in cooperation with news companies and organizations (UNESCO 1958, p. 12). This also was the starting point for the development of regional training centers for teaching staff, and refresher courses for teachers of journalism and practicing journalists. An International Center for Advanced Training in Journalism in Strasbourg (France) was established in 1956, covering Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Similarly, in 1959, another center was founded in Quito (Ecuador) for Latin American countries. Within this spirit of international collaboration, the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) was established at the end of 1957 (Terrou 1958).



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In any case, models of journalism education in Western Europe, although revitalized to some extent, remained generally reluctant to observe US guidelines. For many years, each country preferred to follow its own scheme. Increasingly, journalism education took the shape of training programs that were largely vocational in character. Managed by unions, or editorial, and management organizations, they operated separately from the mass communication research centers that had sprung up in several Western European countries (Nixon 1958a). Furthermore, the enthusiasm and willingness of cooperation with US educators to UNESCO initiatives decreased in the late 1950s and the 1960s. The “free‐press crusade” conceived by the United States in the United Nations as a political and diplomatic operation, failed due to the prevalence of each nation’s responsibility to develop its own press system, which also included journalism education (Blanchard 1986). In Germany, only the Werner Friedmann Institut at Munich, founded in 1949 and endowed by Werner Friedmann, editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, offered practical instruction thanks to the support from journalist trade unions and the cooperation of the newspaper staff and publishers as instructors. The school provided a somewhat preparatory training for the Volontariat, a two‐year training program in the newsroom established in 1913, rather than an alternative route to it (UNESCO 1958). The school had a limited impact due the number of students admitted  –  a dozen young people each year – and the short duration of 12 months. Journalism education in France basically followed the footsteps of Germany. As Bourquin (1958) wrote, “journalistic training and newspaper science are covered by separate institutions,” remarking that “the university has only recently and indirectly become associated with the professional training of journalists” (p. 63). The only university‐based program accredited by the professional organizations in 1956 continued to be that offered by the School of Journalism at the Catholic University of Lille. Another initiative was the Center for the Training of Journalists, created in Paris in 1946 initially to remedy the lack of professionalism in newspaper staff that had come from the resistance movement during the war. With the passage of time, however, it became the largest institution to provide technical training, and it was strongly supported by employers’ associations and journalist unions. For several decades, the center was “something like the melting pot of journalist training in France” (Charon 2003, p. 144). The previously mentioned journalism course at the University of London that had been established in 1919 did not resume after World War II as the British newspaper industry considered it too theoretical and similar to US schools. Besides, the powerful professional organizations and unions were working on a new national training scheme in which regional or local newspapers or news companies provided direct training. Finally, the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) was set up in 1952. It was the organ in charge of designing a system to recruit and train aspiring journalists, which, in the end, continued to be a more centralized apprenticeship system.

­Spain and Finland as Surprising Exceptions in Southern and Northern Europe Despite their cultural and political differences, and their geographical distances, Spain and Finland stood out in their early academic traditions in the training of journalists. In fact, Fröhlich and Holtz‐Bacha (2003) included both in their analysis of varied models

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of journalism education in Europe and North America, together with the United States and Canada. After the Spanish Civil War, to work in media, aspiring journalists had to obtain a license from the Escuela Oficial de Periodismo (Official School of Journalism) founded in 1941. Access to the profession was under government control in a dictatorship that, in its beginning, was strongly influenced by fascist ideology. With the passing of time, these mechanisms of control loosened and a number of graduated journalists did not need to publicly demonstrate their political affinity to get a license. The school, as the only authorized center for the training of journalists, had the monopoly over journalism education until 1958 when the Instituto de Periodismo (Institute of Journalism) at the University of Navarra, a Catholic institution, was founded. For the first time in Spain, a university offered academic training for prospective journalists, providing them with cultural background at university level (Barrera 2010). The first director of the Institute, Antonio Fontán, was a full university professor who had maintained frequent relations with German universities, and he was, thus, familiar with Zeitungswissenschaft. Consequently, this approach became a prominent theoretical foundation for the first classes taught at the Institute. He asserted that the aim was not only “to discover the secrets and techniques of this trade” but also “to address the meaning and establish the role that the press must play in our society” promoting the scientific study of journalism as a social phenomenon (quoted in Barrera 2009, pp. 20–21). For the teaching of more practical skills such as news writing, reporting, editing, etc., the institute followed the US model in that professors mostly used US handbooks as the basis for their teaching. It achieved international recognition thanks to the successful organization of the 1968 IAMCR conference that took place with participants from 15 countries and focused on a topic of high interest for the association: journalism professors (Barrera 2009). The institute remained the only university‐based center in Spain for 13 years. A new education law in 1971 and subsequent decrees permitted the official building of so‐ called faculties of information sciences in Madrid, Barcelona, and Navarra, that offered bachelor’s degrees in journalism, broadcasting, and advertising and public relations. Spain, thus, became the first country in Western Europe to create full‐fledged university‐ based schools for the training of journalists and other communication professionals (Barrera 2012). Among the southern European countries, the case of Spain was indeed salient. In Italy, despite the work done by professors such Francesco Fattorello in the 1960s and the early 1970s, the first school of journalism was established in Milan in 1977. In Portugal, the first university program began in 1979 at the New University of Lisbon. It was “influenced by Portuguese professors educated abroad, particularly at the Catholic University of Louvain” (Pinto and Marinho 2009, p. 303). Only in 1991, however, a program exclusively centered on journalism was developed at Coimbra University. Greece did not have specific schools of communication or journalism education until 1990 (Siomos 2009). In northern Europe, even Finland, though with some variation of Spain, introduced journalism education at universities. A first step in formal education at the higher level was the so‐called Civic College in Helsinki in 1925 (later renamed as College for Social Affairs), which ran a newspaper course for prospective civil servants, in an attempt to provide them with knowledge and skills “for certain fields that the universities or other colleges neglected” (Salokangas 2003, p. 8). Within the college, a university chair – the first in the Nordic countries – was established in 1947, although it remained vacant until



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1956. This college was given full university status in 1960, at the same time that it was moved to the industrial city of Tampere. The low number of degrees awarded was one of the reasons behind the change. Under its new status, two currents emerged: on the one hand, the journalist examination inherited from the old newspaper examination “was placed in the so‐called Education Division and it led to a special bachelor’s degree,” whereas the studies in the new Faculty of Social Sciences led to a master’s degree; the first track being a vocational one and the second developing “into an academic journalism and mass communication department” (Salokangas 2003, p. 9), strongly influenced by the US approach. As a consequence, the until then dominant German tradition of Zeitungswissenschaft was abandoned throughout the 1960s. Both vocational and academic courses coexisted for decades at Finnish universities, but a bachelor’s degree in journalism became part of the new department in the mid‐1970s despite being still administratively tied to the Education Division. In any case, in the late 1970s “a rather broad consensus on keeping journalism education in the university” (Salokangas 2003, p. 12) was achieved despite the controversies raised by different political and academic actors, especially between those of leftist leaning in the department versus non‐leftist in the division.

­Heterogeneity and Ideological Biased Education in Communist Countries After World War II, some countries in communist Europe opted to create university‐level schools for journalism training. Many of them followed the model imposed by Moscow, but others had their own traditions that influenced these processes as was the case with Czechoslovakia and Poland. As Pisarek (1990) wrote, “the specificity of the socialist system of education in journalism certainly does not lie in a uniform organizational model” (p. 95). He referred to to the fact that some countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and the USSR) were closer to university‐ based education for journalism while others (Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia) organized professional courses that were promoted by national associations of journalists. Educators from these countries played an active role in international forums and organizations that drew attention to journalism education such as UNESCO and IAMCR. Here, they discussed their problems and challenges as being similar to those in Western countries, and they used UNESCO as a neutral or impartial shield to underline their professional perspective while minimizing their ideological bias (Khudiakov 1958). After the end of World War II, the Soviet Union established journalism education with the foundation of the Faculty of Journalism at the Lomonossov University in Moscow. Along with the inevitable influence of this faculty on many schools’ curricula in communist Europe, the German tradition of Zeitungwissenschaft, especially via the University of Leipzig, was also somewhat influential. However, ideological and political factors prevailed, and its ultimate dependence on Moscow also turned the Leipzig Institute into a propaganda‐oriented center (Blaum 1985). Czechoslovakia and Poland were especially active in the promotion of university‐based centers for journalism training both before and after World War II. A school for working journalists started at the Free School of Political Studies in Prague in 1928. Its curriculum was based on “a sort of journalism sociology mixed with social and cultural history, developed by social and humanities scholars inspired by the German Zeitungwissenschaft” (Jirák and Köpplová 2009, p. 386). During Nazi occupation, these studies were abolished, and

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between the end of World War II and the communist rule in the late 1940s, some positions for lecturers in journalism were filled at two Czech universities, the Charles University in Prague and the Palacky University in Olomouc. And while a Faculty of Journalism was established at Charles University in 1972, any such academic training did not imply emancipation from political control. Pioneer initiatives in journalism education were also undertaken in Poland. First, the Scientific Courses Association launched a journalism course in Warsaw in 1917. As this association became the Free Polish University one year later, a vocational‐oriented Faculty of Journalism was created within the School of Political Science. Later, between 1927 and 1939, the faculty became the Higher School of Journalism with a three‐year curriculum and many educators and practitioners in teaching positions. After World War II, in 1950, journalism units were set up at Warsaw and the Jagiellonian universities, which offered four‐year degree programs that provided theoretical knowledge as well as practical skills (Szot 2009). Journalists in Central and Eastern Europe were generally regarded as socio‐political workers, and their course curricula was strongly based on Marxist‐Leninist doctrines. Prior to 1990, Soviet universities offered courses for aspiring journalists on the fundamentals of Marxist‐Leninist ethics and aesthetics, the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, historical materialism, and criticism of bourgeois philosophy (Hiebert and Gross 2003). Attempts to introduce variations to this program usually failed. In the German Democratic Republic, the only existing institute of journalism was at Leipzig, and it was soon denounced for teaching “bourgeois journalism.” In 1954, it was replaced by a new Fakultät für Journalistik (Faculty of Journalism), a school for socialist journalism science that imitated the examples in Moscow and Kiev so that it was nicknamed “The Red Monastery” (Fröhlich and Holtz‐Bacha 2003). In Hungary, the only university department related to journalism education was closed in 1957 after some professors and students had been convicted for their involvement in the uprising of 1956 (Bajomi‐ Lázár 2009). Exceptions to this Soviet‐oriented system were found, for instance, in Estonia where Tartu University offered an acceptable curriculum of Estonian philology for journalism students “to avoid teaching propaganda journalism by building up journalism courses on linguistics, the mother tongue, the history of the Estonian language and culture and the traditions of the national press” (Lauk 2009, p. 397). In Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia, the University of Ljubljana also developed a relatively independent program, in which professors from Western Europe and the United States were invited as guest lecturers, and students had access to books and journals from those countries (Milosavljevic 2009).

­First Wave of University‐Based Programs in Journalism in Western Europe In the mid‐1960s, the necessity of making some changes to improve journalism education was felt even by those in charge of the in‐house systems (Barrera 2012). In the United Kingdom, the president of the NCTJ noticed that the number of seniors in charge of training juniors had diminished, and both newspaper readers and the industry had become more demanding with regard to the quality of journalism. This led to the organization of 12‐hours a day “week‐long courses” under professional supervision as part of an attempt to recreate the conditions of actual newspaper work (Dodge 1965).



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This is one example of how, in the late 1960s, directors in both management and e­ ditorial offices noticed the weaknesses of the apprenticeship system: a lower educational level of young journalists and deficiencies in part‐time courses that were not as comprehensive and intense as university degree courses. Increasing concerns were raised for the future of journalism. In 1968, Holmgren proclaimed that “change is in the air,” which he detected in “a mood of experimentation, a desire to try out new approaches, and incidentally an interest in exploring the possibility of adapting the American system to Europe’s needs and institutions” (pp. 9–12). Jacques Léauté (1967), director of the International Center for Advanced Training in Journalism in Strasbourg, noted that other countries were following an intermediate way between academic and professional training, based on teaching offered by universities with the cooperation of journalists, as was the case of the Netherlands and Denmark, and even in the USSR. There was a general trend toward formal education at a university level in Germany, France, and Great Britain. After World War II, journalism schools developed and journalism courses were offered at universities such as Bordeaux (1967), Cologne (1968), and Cardiff (1970). Following their steps, other schools were created during the 1970s. This latter wave of European initiatives regarding journalism education had a greater impact both in numbers and quality, partly because it was not limited to university‐based programs. Also other institutions or centers, supported by the industry or educational authorities, began to offer specific courses on journalism or other branches of mass communication (Stephenson and Mory 1990). As Fröhlich and Holtz‐Bacha (2003) put it, “it was only at the end of the 1960s that the discussion about some kind of formalized education of journalists came up again in Germany” (p. 191). Since World War II, there had been a strong tendency to reject any attempt of organizing or regulating journalism education in the Federal Republic of Germany. More than two decades later, this opinion gradually changed, however, and two memoranda of the Deutscher Presserat (German Press Council) in 1971 and 1973, after it had reflected on the role of the press and communications in modern society, called for an academic university education for journalists while maintaining the principle of free access to the profession. The Deutscher Journalisten‐Verband (German Federation of Journalists) also recommended this change (Hömberg 2010). Apart from the program in Cologne in 1968, other programs were established in Munich (1973), Dortmund (1976), and Hohenheim (1976). Following different models, they all tried to combine academic education with practical training and internships outside the university. These new centers, different in orientation, coexisted with those devoted to theory‐driven research on communications. While these successful experiences encouraged the Catholic University of Eichstätt to launch a similar program a few years later (Harnischmacher 2003), other universities opted for two‐year postgraduate programs, for example Mainz and Hannover. This increasing “academization” of journalism, however, did not mean the end of the Volontariat system. In France, the new university departments founded in the late 1960s in Bordeaux and Tours also reflected a growing acceptance of academic training for journalists, although these departments had to compete with the preexisting organizations in charge of journalism education and seek the accreditation of their programs. Similar to Germany, these university institutes, without neglecting their orientation toward research, also aimed at providing practical education for future journalists and were supported by French politicians aware of the new demands of postindustrial society (Averbeck 2008). At the same time, the British newspaper industry also began to consider university‐ based training as a possibility. Some editors considered higher education an option to

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help the profession improve its standards of knowledge and cover the necessity of specialized journalists, and, thus, they expressed “interest in a journalism‐oriented curriculum in English universities” (Stewart 1968, p. 112). However, others rejected any US‐style journalism curriculum as useless due to the peculiarities of the British press. The British publishers commissioned Tom Hopkinson, an experienced newsman, to write a report on the state of journalism education in Great Britain and other countries. For this, he went to the United States where he stayed for two months and visited seven schools and departments of journalism. In his final report, he was inclined to introduce journalism training at universities and, more specifically, recommended to open centers at Sussex and St. Andrews. In the end, Hopkinson himself launched a one‐year journalism course at the University of Wales at Cardiff, which started in 1970 (Brown 1971). Some years later, in 1976, a similar postgraduate one‐year course started at City University in London. In this way, without breaking up the centralized system organized by the NCTJ, Great Britain opened the door for journalism courses at colleges and universities. According to Esser (2003), however, “neither media employers nor media trade unions responded with much enthusiasm” (p. 225) to these initiatives. Nevertheless, despite this initial skepticism, both programs were successful and were eventually recognized as pre‐entry courses by the NCTJ (Stephenson and Mory 1990). The main differences between Spain and the other European countries analyzed lay in the extent, nature, and legal status of journalism and communication education during the 1970s. In Spain, a state law created full‐fledged university‐based schools that offered five‐year bachelor’s degrees in journalism, broadcasting, and advertising and public relations. They became the common path into working as a journalist or in other communication‐related jobs. In Germany, France, and Great Britain, on the other hand, where access to the profession was open, the new schools, institutes, or programs had a heavier vocational content and purpose, were mostly aimed at postgraduate students, and had to compete with other private or public institutions.

­A Second Wave in the 1990s In 1990, Jürgen Wilke affirmed that “the training of journalists at [German] universities has … a longer tradition, but it really gained importance only in the past ten to fifteen years” (p. 31). Nobody doubted the strong tradition of research in communication in Germany, but Wilke noted “the lack of reference to journalistic practice … is criticized,” and that criticism “gave reason for the development of new training concepts which integrate theory and practice in a more adequate manner” (Wilke 1990, p. 31). Since the mid‐1990s, Germany experienced a flourishing of media‐related university‐ level programs, and by 2009, there were approximately 400 of such programs out of which around 35 were distinctly related to journalism (Harnischmacher 2010). The 1990s was “a period of expansion and differentiation” (Fröhlich and Holtz‐Bacha 2009, p. 143) in the development of academic journalism education. Most of these initiatives were run by the so‐called Fachhochschulen (universities of applied sciences) comparable to the British advanced technical colleges or polytechnics. They were practical‐oriented schools of journalism that coexisted with university programs in communication offering a more theoretical approach. The latter were the heirs of the German research traditions of Zeitungswissenschaft and later Publizistik, a German version of mass communication. According to Tulloch (1990), in the 1990s, journalism education in the Great Britain had “a confusing structure” between the tradition of workplace training and the attempts



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to recognize journalism “as a valid field for study at university level” (p. 53). There were no degrees in journalism offered at universities or polytechnics “on American or European lines” (Tulloch 1990). Nevertheless, Tulloch observed some radical changes due to two significant trends: first, the fact that a high percentage of new entrants to journalism were “increasingly graduates rather than school‐leavers,” and, second, as he put it then, “journalism education is slowly moving away from purely on‐the‐job training to be integrated into a higher education system that delivers degrees and other qualifications at universities or polytechnics” (Tulloch 1990, pp. 48–52). The first‐degree program in media studies (not in journalism) had started at the Polytechnic of Central London in 1975, while five more had developed before 1990. Although on‐the‐job training was still firmly rooted in the British media tradition, an explosion of undergraduate courses at universities took place in the 1990s. This amounted to 331 programs firmly based in journalism in 2001. Many of them, however, were of low quality and only six had been recognized by the NCTJ by then (Esser 2003). Estimated numbers of students enrolled on media‐related courses amounted to more than 40,000 by 2008, while there had only been 3,000 in 2000 (Bromley 2009). This mushrooming of media studies coincided with the crisis of in‐house training schemes that were closed down by many British media companies aiming to cut costs, and the launching of a new apprenticeship model called National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) that received government support and economic incentives for employers. As a result, fragmentation and confusion began to prevail in journalism training. In both Germany and the Great Britain, the development of journalism education resulted in a fragmented field with “a variety of part‐time and full‐time programs, specialized courses, university and college level programs, undergraduate and graduate as well as continuing programs, technical‐oriented versus content‐oriented programs, etc.” (Fröhlich and Holtz‐Bacha 2009, p. 137). In France, the developments over three or four decades have been quite similar. In 2009, Le Bohec described the landscape of journalism education in France as “anarchical, controversial, fragmented, paradoxical, etc.,” underlining that “in fact the individual routes [to becoming a journalist] are very heterogeneous” (p. 249). Paths to journalism under the principle of open access were numerous, with or without accreditation of the Ministry of National Education. University graduates, although not necessarily in journalism or media‐related studies, constituted the majority of those entering the job market. In 2008, 12 journalism schools – eight public and four private  –  were officially registered, while in the research sector, there were several Infocom departments located at universities (Le Bohec 2009). Infocom is the abbreviation of the phrase “information et communication,” largely used in French universities. Spain, on the other hand, did not change its educational model but the number of universities offering undergraduate programs in journalism, broadcasting, and advertising and public relations experienced a dramatic increase: 33 in 2008 of which 45% were public and 55% private universities (Salaverría and Barrera 2009).

­After the Fall of the Berlin Wall The political changes in Central and Eastern European countries since 1989 led to dramatic transitions in their media systems, and, consequently, also in journalism education. From these circumstances originated a certain normative vacuum in media policy issues so that the situation became an ideal opportunity to redefine, among other issues, the

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professional role of journalists in a democratic society (Lauk 2009). Market forces and foreign investment became, however, conditioning factors in this re‐shaping of mass media, and often, they imposed their internal logic onto the training of journalists. Along with this process of increasing commercialization, Jakubowicz (2009) pointed out other factors that hindered a healthy re‐definition of the media system as such: a lack of consensus among journalists themselves about their role in the new period; the transformation of media landscapes into battlegrounds for partisan and politically‐engaged newspapers and other media; a limited impact of Anglo‐American patterns of professional journalism; limited capabilities of universities to offer high‐quality journalism education; and strong pressures of the industry on journalists to serve its own rather than the public interest. These constraints often impeded the development of Western‐oriented journalism practices in spite of economic and professional aid received from the United States and the European Union. By 1997, approximately 40 institutions in the United States and Europe collaborated in programs to assist journalism training in Central and Eastern Europe (Hiebert and Gross 2003). The “old guard” of the faculty was considered part of the propaganda apparatus of the former regime and, thus, suffered from a low academic reputation. Besides, journalism educators were unable to define new journalism curricula partly because they “had no starting point or background for radically transforming professional education/training in their classrooms” (Hiebert and Gross 2003, p. 263). Changes in politics and in media landscapes meant new challenges for journalism education with regards to curricula, entry requirements, and required practical skills. The growing dominance of Western media corporations, especially from Germany and Scandinavian countries, on the Central and Eastern European media markets outpaced the changes taking place in journalism schools. The ability of educational institutions to train journalists for the new media environments did not always match market needs, where tabloidization of news often prevailed over other approaches. The classic dilemma between theoretical knowledge and practical skills reappeared, and academia and media industries generally remained two separate worlds (Jakubowicz 2009). Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, some progress was made in journalism education: The standards and principles of objectivity, usually related to US‐style journalism, were soon adapted due to the high degree of political media bias especially in the early stages of the post‐communist period. Moreover, the aid provided by Western European countries, including visiting professors from Germany, France, Sweden and other countries, made the new emerging models of journalism education more inclined to adopt their educational philosophies than those of from US schools (Hiebert and Gross 2003). The lack of financial resources, books, equipment, and appropriate classrooms were common in journalism schools. Along with the renewal of their teaching staff, academic programs in journalism and communication faced serious battles for public acceptance. Almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jakubowicz (2009) concluded: “Journalism education actually has made some, but limited contribution to shaping a new understanding of the professional role and definition of journalism, and to raising the professional skills of journalists” (p. 355). In any case, since then, a flourishing of new initiatives has taken place in the field of journalism education, and academic training programs have continued at universities in Russia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Poland, and other countries, next to those offered by new private or public institutions.



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­Concluding Remarks Journalism education in Europe has evolved from “learning by doing” practices at the beginning of the twentieth century to more formal systems of both academic instruction and vocational training. The process of modernization undergone by media brought about changes in what was once a craft and has now become a profession. Society, industry, employers and journalists’ associations put increasingly higher demands on aspiring journalists. In these formal systems, diversity of journalism education providers depended, and still depends, on several factors such as professional traditions, political context, and experiences either made throughout time or imported from other countries. This trend toward professionalization through education gradually replaced the old system of professionalization through practice with education being offered by universities, journalists’ unions or associations, and even media institutions. Nevertheless, the practical component has not disappeared, but it has continued to be a key factor for the recruiting of journalists in countries where actual practice in media work has remained essential. Even academic or university‐based training has generally tried to reproduce workplace conditions for their students. Before World War II, the influence of the US journalism school model on European educational systems was rather limited. On‐the‐job training prevailed across Europe, and despite some admiration of US experiences in journalism education, there was a common mix of ignorance and disdain among European educators and editors. Only after World War II, in the late 1950s and the 1960s, a growing worldwide concern for journalism education led to the establishment of departments and schools in northern European countries. It took until the 1990s, however, for these initiatives to spread more thoroughly. After the fall of Berlin Wall, Central and Eastern European countries also developed this kind of journalism education. A recurring debate throughout the twentieth century was that of the ideal journalism curriculum: what subjects and classes were relevant for the training of journalists. University‐based education has generally tended to stress the theoretical and fundamental aspects, but media pressures have led to an increasing number of practice‐related classes on the curriculum. Programs offered by journalists’ associations and media companies, on the other hand, have put heavy emphasis on practical skills. The proportional share assigned to either these two is an indicator for the nature of a program. This is but a result of the ever‐present tension between academe and journalism that has characterized journalism education throughout its history. Since the 1960s, the growing complexity of media in both technological and socio‐ political terms has challenged traditional in‐house training programs that often only provided instruction on basic skills. However, this system of entering the profession has not disappeared as it is firmly rooted in the educational traditions of many Western European countries. Europe has always been a mosaic in the field of journalism education, and although formal education especially at universities has gained ground over the years, diversity is still its dominant characteristic.

Note 1 All German and Spanish language quotes were translated by the authors, if not indicated differently.

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New Media and Audience Behavior Susanne Eichner, Yeşim Kaptan, Elizabeth Prommer, and Yulia Yurtaeva‐Martens

­Introduction Doing media history from the perspective of the audience is undoubtedly a challenging task. It is commonly recognized in media research that the audience is a discursive ­construct. Audiences are either nowhere or everywhere (Allor 1988). They are “people formerly known as the audience” (Rosen 2008) that have been transformed into users (e.g. Lievrouw and Livingstone 2002, p. 10) or into prosumers (Toffler 1980) and, albeit for different reasons, media scholars and media professionals in unison are “desperately seeking the audience” (Ang 1991). Conceptualizing audience activities within a broader social context presupposes the recognition of these activities as a form of social practice, embedded in other social practices or “doings” (Eichner and Prommer 2014). Defining national media audiences and their media use is an additional challenge since it is a scientific attempt to categorize heterogeneous, cluttered, and constantly changing groups. This challenge is further complicated when considering not only national audiences but also a broader, Pan‐European network of inter‐dependencies and developments. More than ever before, in the global media market economy audiences are becoming segmented into niche categories, based on demographics, geography, geodemographics, psychographics, and behavior. Beyond theoretical considerations, the methodological challenges occur in the face of the variety of valid data and the partial lack of systematic data collection. Mihelj and Bourdon (2015) rightly point out that it is more often institutions and content that are analyzed rather than audiences, since they constitute “safer fields” for research (p. 3). The history of audiences, as we propose here, is a history of interaction between media and their users. A history of audiences, in our understanding, examines the specific functions of a certain medium at a certain time for its specific audience. A history of audiences is, thus, occupied with the societal impact the introduction of new media, as well as the changing ways of using old media, has on audiences. The recent and distant history of media audiences has been shaped by social, political, and economic developments The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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in the different European regions. This chapter, therefore, explores the evolution of media audiences in history in the context of the formation of larger socio‐political structures in Europe, the establishment of nation states, and the acceleration of media technologies and global flows in the twentieth century. Since an extensive report would reach beyond the scope of a book chapter, we draw on specific developments to clarify motives and modes of media use and capture the big shifts in audience behavior with regard to the implementation of former and contemporary “new media.” We particularly emphasize disjunctions of time and nonlinearities in the use of media during the development of media systems in four selected countries. While the focus lies on more recent changes resulting from digitalization and the internet, this development is framed by a historical depiction of former “new media” and their audiences, involving newspapers, radio, cinema, and television. Four case studies from the north, south, east, and west (specifically Denmark, Turkey, Russia, and Germany) shed light on the particularities of regulated national media landscapes. The choice of countries represented in the case studies problematizes center/periphery conceptions of Europe in relation to religious and political identities, and questions of openness and exclusion. Finally, research in audience history faces the difficulty of drawing on data and early accounts that differ considerably among countries and media. Comprehensive, comparable data is not available for all of the four countries. For instance, television is measured by distinct systems and an internet user is defined differently in each country. Since no consistent comparable account is possible for all media, the discussion highlights the particularities of use by including as much comparable data as possible: when comparing online use, we use open‐source data from the World Bank, the United Nations (UN) (ITU Report), or the European Union (EU). For the particular case studies, we use the more specific country‐oriented data from national research institutions, which may differ slightly in terms of definitions and parameters.

­Old “New Media” and Their Audiences When considering the advent of new media compared to existing old media, McLuhan and his categorization of four epochs of history (into oral tribe culture, manuscript culture, the Gutenberg Galaxy and the electronic age) is seminal (McLuhan 2011 [1962]). McLuhan’s general assumptions remain persuasive: each epoch aligns with major changes in society. Most influential, from the current point of view, is the epoch of the Gutenberg Galaxy, which laid the foundation for public literacy in Europe and for modernity as such. The development within McLuhan’s epoch of the Gutenberg Galaxy unified fields of exchange and communication “below” Latin, gave a new fixity to language, and created “languages of power” (Anderson 1983, p. 57). However, this impact was possible only because of the massive reception of print media by audiences. Stöber (2003) argues that the distribution of the press and public literacy mutually increased one another (p. 106).

Print: The Advent of Newspaper Readers New media technology alone proved insufficient to herald the start of a new era. Other factors, such as overall cultural conditions, the political climate, and governmental laws influenced by religion (for instance in orthodox Christian countries or in Muslim regions)



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affected the pace and the general direction of the “Gutenberg era.” The first German newspaper dates back to 1605 (Weber 2006, Wilke 2000, p. 42, see also Chapter 1), and in Copenhagen the first newspapers was published in 1634. Owing to the presence of a large German minority living in Copenhagen at the time they were printed in German, and only in 1675, when the Scanian war sparked the need for more war news, the first Danish‐language newspaper, Dansk Advjs, was launched (Jensen 1997a, p. 69). In Germany, Martin Luther’s influence was pivotal in triggering the development of public literacy and nation building, resulting in one of Europe’s richest newspaper cultures. Elsewhere the development was not as rapid. In Russia, where printing technology was introduced as early as 1553, the first newspapers did not appear until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Differing from Germany’s rich, diverse newspaper culture, newspapers in Russia were to a large extent a political instrument of the ruling powers. While a number of revolutionary leaflets helped to spark the October Revolution, newspapers were subject to constant censorship, and the “free” press was supposed to disseminate the regime’s definition of the “truth” (Paulu 1974, pp. 37–38, see also Chapter 8). Similarly to the development in Russia, the advent of newspapers in Turkey was quite late. Nearly 200 years after Germany’s first newspaper the Bulletin des Nouvelles (1795) became the first newspaper in the Ottoman Empire. Published in French and distributed throughout the Empire, its readers were well‐educated bilingual members of the Ottoman elite, such as administrators, clergy, and school teachers. Due to low levels of literacy, however, newspaper sales were not as desired. In 1927, only one‐tenth of the population was literate (Kocabaşoğlu 1981, p. 114) while Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark had already reached a rate of almost 100%. On the initiative of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Perso‐Arabic script was replaced by the Latin alphabet in 1929 and literacy gradually increased up to the 90% prevailing in Turkey today (Aytaç and Rankin 2004; Doğançay‐Aktuna 1995). With regard to Germany, historians speak of a “saturation of the society with newspaper communication” (Wilke 2000, p. 175) by around 1910, having reached a circulation of over 17 million newspapers that attracted a heterogeneous readership. According to Koenen (2015) German newspaper readership included all segments of German society. This result challenged the previous and dominant assumption that members of the early twentieth‐century working class had no spare time for leisure activities such as reading (Koenen 2015, p. 202). The motives for reading newspapers were entertainment and learning, but, like today, local news was most important (Meyen 2000, p. 49). The origin of newspapers as commercial institutions dedicated to “information, record, advertising, diversion and gossip” (McQuail 2011, p. 28) can be regarded as highly influential, since they opened a public sphere for mass audiences beyond (although not free of) direct governmental influence and propaganda. Specific socio‐cultural conditions and specific events thereby muted or accelerated the speed with which newspaper as a popular medium and literacy developed in mutual dependence.

Electrification: Listeners and Viewers Electrification allowed for a series of new technological developments that were constitutional for the development of cinema, radio, and later television. Reyner Banham refers to electrification as “the greatest environmental revolution in history since the domestication of fire” (Briggs and Burke 2009, p. 117), which led to an era of a plurimedial

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environment (Koenen 2015, p. 203). Cinema quickly found a big audience with local movie theaters in almost every major city from the 1910s on (see Chapter 3 in this book). By 1930, the number of cinemas worldwide was approximately 58,000 (Stöber 2003, p. 18). Cinema started off as an attraction at funfairs and has preserved its event character for audiences in many respects until today. When it developed into a more stable dispositif, cinema offered its audiences the mix of entertainment and information that had previously been provided by the diverse print media. Different socio‐political systems encouraged the institutionalization of cinema to a greater or lesser degree. In fascist regimes, such as Germany or Italy, cinema was used as a propaganda tool, which included mandatory screenings of specific propaganda films, including newsreels in classrooms or at the battlefront. Also in occupied countries such as Denmark audiences had no choice but to watch the German newsreel “Wochenschau” (Jensen 1997b, p. 233). When given a choice, however, European audiences tried to escape blunt propaganda and went to the movies for entertainment. In Germany, love stories and musicals helped people to forget the hardship of World War II (Prommer 1999, p. 82), and in Denmark comedy was one the most popular movie genres. Cinema audiences had diverse socio‐economic backgrounds but were dominated by the younger generation (including children) who loved Westerns and love stories (Altenloh 1914; Prommer 1999). The medium enabled audiences to spend their new and increasing leisure time in an enjoyable and affordable way. In Russia, the Bolsheviks exploited cinema for propaganda purposes but, as elsewhere, people preferred action, romance, and comedy, that were, nevertheless, often fused with political messages (Miller 2010, p. 154). In the 1950s, domestic as well as European imports of melodrama and light comedy became popular before Bollywood cinema proved to be a sustainable box‐office success from the 1960s to the 1980s (Desai 2004, p. 40). In Turkey, partly due to the slow growth of the domestic film industry, audiences watched mainly French, Italian, German, and American productions that were dubbed into Turkish from the 1930s onwards. When Turkish film and Turkish “Hollywood” (Yesilcam) started to flourish from the 1940s onwards, Turkish movies became extremely popular. Turkish genre films, such as melodramas, Westerns, musicals, detective stories, science fiction and historical epics, attracted big audiences, and the Turkish film industry and audiences steadily increased. This development reached its peak in the mid‐1970s, outlasting the European and American golden age of cinema (Abazov 2009, p. 81). Between 1965 and 1975 approximately 3,000 movie theaters spread across the country (Yilmazok 2012, pp. 29–30). Slightly later than cinema, radio broadcasting expanded rapidly across the world from the 1920s onwards (see Chapter 4 in this book). In Germany, radio was established in the early 1920s and within the first six years over 4 million radios were registered, reaching an estimated 11 million Germans who gathered around the radio with their families, friends, and neighbors, or in radio communities. With German and other European radio soon being controlled and exploited by the Nazis, there was a need for more independent news across Europe. This need was met by the BBC in up to 45 languages, with the BBC hosting many European exile organizations (see also Chapter 9). In Russia the Bolsheviks strove to exploit the new mass medium for their own purposes. In an era still shaken by the consequences of World War I, the technology and its possibilities ran up against an ambivalent situation: on the one hand Lenin and his regime were interested in an effective propaganda machine, on the other hand he also aimed at keeping out influences from other countries. Despite political intentions to seal off the country, the development of radio was prompted and the first regularly scheduled radio transmissions from Moscow were broadcast in October 1922 (Yilmazok 2012, p. 35). State‐controlled



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radio broadcasts in close connection with a monopolistic programming infrastructure were promoted more forcefully in the Soviet Union than anywhere else and concurrently with this effort audiences increased: the number of “wire sets” grew from about 6 million in 1940 to 46 million by 1970 (Paulu 1974, p. 36). State radio broadcasting was disrupted or used for propaganda purposes in many European countries due to World War II. In Denmark, however, state radio developed continuously from 1925 with Statsradiofonien (renamed Danmarks Radio in 1959) as the first public broadcaster, holding its monopolist position as a publicly owned broadcasting institution until 1988 (Søndergaard and Jauert 2007). As in Denmark, developments in Turkey continued throughout World War II due to Turkey’s neutrality as well as to Atatürk’s endeavors to transform Turkey into a laicistic and modern republic. Radio broadcasting first started in 1927, and was turned into state‐controlled public radio in 1936. Between 1936 and 1937, the number of radio devices in Turkish households increased rapidly (Kocabaşoğlu 2010, p. 183). Kocabaşoğlu (2010) claims that due to the low radio penetration in rural areas, most listeners belonged to the urban bourgeoisie or petit‐bourgeoisie. But despite the low number of radio receivers, the actual number of listeners was far higher with listeners gathering in listening communities, similar to Germany’s rural radio communities, until 1933 (Wilke 2000, p. 339). Radio provided entertainment and news for the Turkish audiences who liked “radio theater” shows and their prominent characters (Yazgan 2006, pp. 38–39). And despite being criticized by the elite and being banned from radio, traditional forms like “alaturka” music1 remained popular among audiences that could just tune into Egypt Radio to enjoy this more traditional music (Pohlit 2010). In contrast to cinema and its commercial origin, radio broadcasting in Europe started off being state regulated and is, thus, distinguished by a public‐service tradition. While people had to leave their houses to enjoy the attraction of cinema, radio was a domesticated daily medium for entertainment and information. Once established, it soon became a concomitant medium with increasing program variety and duration. The reason for the triumphant advance of radio was not least its usability by a non‐literate audience, for instance in rural Turkish areas.

Television Revolution and Home Audiences Television for mass audiences, introduced globally between the 1940s and 1960s, impacted heavily the consumption behaviors of moviegoers and radio listeners. Although the technological prerequisites for television were available much earlier, due to World War II and due to the absence of common technological standards, television for mass audiences in Europe only began in the early 1950s (see also Chapter 13 in this book). As one of the first countries in Europe, Russia started programming in 1945 with its public broadcaster Moscow TV. After a trial period, Denmark’s Statsradiofonien launched its first public broadcast television channel in 1951. In West Germany the ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich‐rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland) started daily broadcasting in 1952, while the East‐German DFF (Deutscher Fernsehfunk) started its regular programs in 1956, after a four‐year trial period. In Turkey nationwide television was introduced more than a decade later: in 1968 TRT, the Turkish Radio and Television Authority, superseded the Istanbul‐based experimental operating University channel ITU TV (Istanbul Technical University) as Turkey’s state‐ owned public broadcaster.

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While institutionally “late adopters,” the Turkish audience quickly embraced local and global television series, including global US television series such as Dallas, and Latin‐American soap operas such as Los ricos también lloran (Zenginler de aglar), as well as Turkish productions such as Bizimkiler, Bugünün Saraylısı, and Çalıkuşu. According to Ünsal Oskay (1998), the main difference between Western and Turkish audiences lay in the fact that the former had experienced a long history of “print civilization,” while the latter had to deal with a rapidly changing media landscape in addition to a lack of print culture and reading habits (p. 12). The Turkish audience embraced visual culture, and, hence, rapidly and enthusiastically engaged with private and cable television channels. In contrast to Turkey’s late television endeavors, Russia had been one of the first countries to start a television service after World War II. As state‐owned institution, Russian television formed a state monopoly with the mandate to inform, educate, and entertain its viewers beyond blunt propaganda. The downfall of the Soviet Union (USSR) and the rise of a free economy in the 1990s, together with social changes such as the pluralization of lifestyles, was accompanied by a changing role of media, especially television. The restructuring of the national USSR Gosteleradio into Russian Public Television (ORT) (1994–1995) and, thus, its reorganization into a profit‐generating business, resulted in changes of programming structures, an increasing advertising market, more diversity in the existing programs, and new private stations. Russian television experienced a phase of “Westernization,” and, as elsewhere in Europe, low‐priced program imports such as old soap operas, serials, and game and talk shows became highly popular among audiences (Trautmann 2002, p. 265). In most European countries, the number of privatelyowned television sets rose exponentially until it reached an approximate 90% saturation in the 1980s (Nielsen and Halling 2006, p. 338). Like radio, television was highly regulated from the outset, and, after an introductory phase of public viewing in television rooms, was domesticated within people’s homes. While viewing preferences developed slightly differently in the various European regions, the general development of television audiences followed a similar pattern. From the start of television until its peak around 2010/11, viewing time steadily increased from an estimated 73 to 87 min/day in the early 1960s to more than 200 minutes in 2010 (Krupp and Breunig 2016; Nielsen and Halling 2006, p. 342).2 In Denmark, for instance, this rapid development corresponded with the number of registered television licenses: while in 1953 only 303 households had a TV‐set, the number increased to nearly 400,000 in 1960 and reached 1 million in 1965. But while television was quickly adopted to the homes, the daily amount of time spent watching television in Denmark is below European average. At its peak in 2010, Danes spent an average of 201 minutes a day watching television, which has slowly decreased since to 172 minutes on average per day (DR Research 2015, p. 6). In comparison, in 2015 Turks spent 244 minutes, Russians 246, and Germans 223 minutes on average every day watching television (Table 21.1). According to Nielsen and Halling (2006, p. 354), Denmark’s specific social circumstances result in less time spent watching television than elsewhere: high employment rates, the majority of women working with state provided day care for children can be considered as reasons for low viewing rates. When television was introduced and spread, cinema audiences decreased to about a tenth of their original share in most European and industrial countries (Prommer 1999, p. 98). This dramatic decline of cinema audiences from the 1950s to the end of the 1960s is often explained by the wide distribution of television, offering a competing form of entertainment. However, such focus on entertainment neglects the fact that cinema



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Table 21.1  Development of average viewing times across Europe. Early TV use

1990

2010

2014

2015

Denmark

85 min (1964)

157 min

201 min

173 min

172 min

Germany

73 min (1964)

135 min

223 min

221 min

223 min

Russia

87 min (1965/66)

n/a

225 min

244 min

246 min

Turkey

180 min (1968)

n/a

240 min

247 min

244 min

Sources: Statista (all countries for 2014 and 2015); TUIK (Turkey); Krupp and Breunig (2016) (Germany); Nielsen and Halling (2006) (Denmark); Wartanova et al. (2016); Paulu (1974) (Russia).

did not only offer entertainment but was also a regular source of audiovisual news. The Wochenschau in Germany, the Pathé‐Journal in France, the Paramount News in the USA, or other newsreels were common features of any cinema program, and had been the only source for audiovisual news. This changed with early television. It did not show movies, but it became the new key source of audiovisual news delivered into everyone’s living room. Even today, and despite its reputation as an entertainment medium, television remains the main and most reliable source of news and information. Just as cinema had to face the competition of television from the 1950s onwards, television is now confronted with the internet and with it new challenges emerge such as the decline of broadcast television audiences which is most noticeable in Scandinavian countries such as Denmark (DR Research 2015).

­The New “New Media”: Computerization and the Internet Digitalization and online services have caused the recent big shift in media use and audience practices. The wide use of personal computers, smartphones, and the internet has changed not only audience behavior and channels of communication, but also the media structure. Formerly separate media such as text, picture, moving pictures, sound, and language joined up to create new forms of communication (Wilke 2009, p. 329). But it was the establishment of the internet that allowed the development of a true net medium (Neverla 1998). The unification of mass and individual communication within one, now mostly mobile, device comprises a large communication potential. Consequently, research often considers the internet not as a new medium but as a space of communication, including mass and individual communication. The rapid technical developments cause new applications to be outdated just one year later. However, it can be argued that the internet did not develop any faster than other new media in the early twentieth century. From the invention of film in 1895 it took less than 20 years to establish cinema attendance as a common habit (Prommer 1999, p. 57). And since Tim Berners‐Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 until today’s partial saturation a similar timespan has passed. Table  21.2 shows that between 1995 and 2000 internet usage in Germany and Denmark grew rapidly from 2% to 30%, respectively from 4% to 39%, and that the internet is now used by almost everyone in those countries. In Denmark today over 80% of the population uses the internet on an almost daily basis, accessing it increasingly via mobile devices (DR Research 2015). 57% in Turkey and 71% in Russia are online, mostly concentrated in the big cities. Regardless of the global increase of internet saturation, the “digital divide” still exists. Though over 70% of all Europeans are online, the world

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Table 21.2  Development of internet use across Europe (percentage of population). 1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

Europe

No data

31*

46

67

73

Denmark

4

39

83

89

96

Germany

2

30

69

82

86

Russia

0.1

2

15

43

71

Turkey

0.1

4

15

40

57

Sources: World Bank “Indicators Internet” 2015 and Internet World Stats (2015); (* ITU Report 2015).

98

Internet Users in Europe 2014

92

Adults in percent 96

71 84

93

76 96

72

80

59 92 93

67 86

85

43 80

95 84

81

87

92 65

80

95

72

54

69 54

61

62

47

76

56

61

96 76

60 68 63

51

73

Figure 21.1  Online users in Europe 2014 (Map of Europe). Reproduced with permission of Susanne Eichner.

average is a remote 42% and even within Europe specific segments of the population remain offline. The divide is even more distinct when comparing European regions, as figure 21.1 shows: While the Scandinavian countries are almost completely online (96% in Norway and Denmark, 93% in Sweden), southern Europe has a far lower distribution of the internet at around 60% (Italy 62%, Greece 59%). In Eastern Europe about half of the population was still offline in 2015 (57% in the Ukraine, 47% in Serbia and Armenia, and up to 40% in Belarus) (Internet World Stats 2015).



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The data regarding internet use clearly shows that the further south and east we look, the more offliners we find. However, the development is neither even nor consistent. Internet use in Russia and the Ukraine has increased rapidly during the last five years from 43% in 2010 to 71% in 2015. And while more people are online in general, the younger generation is more likely to use mobile devices to access the internet. At the beginning of 2015, 80% of Russian internet users over the age of 12 were smartphone users and 52% used tablets (TNS Web Index Report 2015, p. 20). With mobile devices, internet access is no longer dependent on cable infrastructure, making it easier than before for the more rural and less developed areas to gain access. The uneven global distribution of the internet described above depends on a variety of social and political circumstances: the net is not always free from censorship and control, and in some countries specific websites or words are censored and cannot be searched via Google. Economic aspects also influence access and mode of access. Even within high‐income countries, internet access is not universal. In Germany, for instance, 14% of the population are completely offline, often women over 60 with a low educational background (Frees and Koch 2015, p. 367). In Russia and Turkey the rural areas are still significantly less connected than the urban centers. We, therefore, still speak of a “social digital divide.”

Case Study Turkey: Embracing Social Media3 Turkey is one of the most dynamic countries in the world in terms of its media audience: almost half of the population is under 30 years old and the young audiences are quick to embrace new technological developments. The country has a vibrant media environment with currently over 40 national and 6,800 local newspapers and magazines, 263 television stations (20 of them national), and 1,058 radio stations (Bir bakışta Türk medyası 2013). The media, however, are controlled and dominated by a small number of local and global conglomerates.4 The number of internet users has increased very rapidly in Turkey in the last decade. From 2 million internet users in the year 2000, internet penetration has reached 16 million users in 2006 (Barış 2007, p. 294) and 46 million (57%) in 2015 (Internet World Stats 2015). In 2011, social media were highly popular in Turkey, which ranks fourth largest in global usage for Facebook, and eighth for Twitter. In the last quarter of 2014, 52% of Turkey’s population were active on social media, mainly Facebook. With a 26% penetration rate, Facebook is the most popular social network, followed by WhatsApp (23%), Twitter (17%), Skype (13%), and Instagram (12%) (Statista 2016). According to the Turkish Statistical Institute, 81% of Turkish users reported activity in the internet social networks, such as creating user profiles, posting messages and other contributions. In the first quarter of 2015, 70% of all users (72% male and 67% female) used the internet to read online news, newspapers, or news magazines. For example, 66% of Turkish internet users sought health‐related information about injuries, illness, nutrition, and ways of improving health. It is noteworthy that women used the internet more efficiently than men for information about education, training, and courses, as well as consulting wikis, while at the same time general internet use in Turkey shows a distinctive gender gap with 71% regular male internet users but only 52% regular female internet users (TUIK). While online media are important to gain access to information and news, users do not consider it as an obvious instrument for political participation. Based on TUIK’s survey, many users would not regard new media as crucial tools for democracy or the cultivation of a public dialog. Between January and March 2014, 22% of Turkish users posted their

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opinions on civic or political issues online, and only 12% took part in online consultation or voting to define civic or political issues (TUIK). The Gezi Park protests in 2013 were exceptional with regard to the use of the internet as a political platform. The protests started on 27 May 2013, with the goal of stopping the demolition of a public park in one of the main squares of Istanbul. During the protest, a significant increase of new media use could be documented. The next day, Gezi Park was the number‐one topic on social media (a Facebook page and the Twitter campaign #GeziParkıİçinTaksime – To Taksim Square For Gezi Park). On the morning of 31 May, more than 3,000 people gathered in Gezi Park, and the number of protesters increased with every protest action and spread to other cities including Ankara, Izmir, Adana, Denizli, and smaller towns. Since some mainstream television stations hesitated to broadcast any news about the protests, social media were the major source of news and information. On 31 May between 4 p.m. and midnight, more than 2 million protest‐related tweets were sent. After midnight, 3,000 tweets were published per minute (SMaPP Data Report 2013). This was the peoples’ response to the lack of mainstream media coverage.

Case Study Russia: RuNet and RuTube Media in Russia have a history of state ownership and state control that has only changed owing to the more diverse and pluralistic environment prevailing since the 1990s. Today’s Russian media landscape features a vast variety of media products and media channels. In 2016, there were 25,781 newspapers, 31,714 magazines, 6,943 operating radio licenses (of which 3,182 licenses for broadcasting) registered and an estimated number of 1,070 television channels available (Wartanova 2016). However, many of these media are subject to state control – for instance the newspapers Rossijskaja Gaseta (430,000 copies, state owned), or Iswestija (130.000 copies, owned by Gazprom‐Media, part of Gazprom, which in turn is also largely owned by the government). At present, Russia is experiencing an enormous leap forward in online development and mobile online access. In 2014, the online community celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the internet in Russia: The first website domain ending in .ru went online in 1994. Since then, the RuNet has taken a different path from that of the global internet community. On the one hand, due to a lack of funding, the development of the RuNet has progressed noticeably more slowly compared to leading Western European countries and the United States. On the other hand, the state’s lack of interest in the new technologies allowed the RuNet to unfold as the “place for a true pluralism of opinions” during the 1990s (Brunmeier 2005, p. 38). The RuNet had the reputation of being “one of the freest in the world” (Atai 2016) but after 2000 this changed when the government started to get interested in the internet and its regulation, and implemented censorship and surveillance (Brunmeier 2005, p. 44ff.). This development was accelerated in July 2016 with the Anti‐Terror‐Law‐Enforcements that makes it mandatory for providers to store all communication for at least six months. Despite growing control, internet usage is increasing rapidly. In 2010, 31.9 million over‐18‐year‐old Russians were online; five years later, the number of daily users has doubled to 63.9 million (Internet in Russia 2015). Also the daily time spent online has increased from 100 minutes in 2013 to 126 minutes in 2015 (of which 86 minutes is mobile internet use). The greatest amount of this time was spent on social networks (26%), followed by the use of online videos (12%) (Kazarjan et al. 2014, p. 50). VKontakte (abbreviated to VK, “in contact”) and Odnoklassniki



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(Classmates) are by far the most popular social networks in Russia. They maintain their top position, enjoying the widest monthly audience and the most active contributors (TNS Web Index Report 2015). Online videos are very popular with 44% of the population watching online videos on a regular basis (TNS Connected Life 2014). The Russian video platform RuTube, which was conceived as an alternative to YouTube, went online in 2006 (Telemultimedia 2014). It provides services for the reproduction, storage and delivery of video content, including Russian television programs that cater for 62% of the overall content. The videos on RuTube are freely accessible and content is financed by advertising alone. The majority of Russians access content via a PC (77%), but a growing number (23%) use other devices, including Smart TV and mobile applications. Between January and October 2014, 25 million unique users were registered at RuTube and monthly an average of 300 million viewings nationwide and 500 million viewings worldwide make RuTube the leader among Russian video services (TNS Connected Life 2014). However, RuTube is challenged by a number of legal and illegal internet platforms on RuNet with internet piracy representing a part of contemporary media culture in Russia (Wartanova et  al. 2014, p. 51). For the Russian media user, it is often difficult to determine which platforms are illegal, as most are professionally designed. But more importantly, the cultural practice and legitimization of using illegal streaming services is best presented in the following quote on tvfee.in: “Shows should belong to the people, not the media magnates!”, a belief that is shared by both platform managers and users.

Case Study Germany: Media Audiences and Motives In the past 100 years, Germany has experienced two World Wars and several political systems ranging from the Weimar Republic to fascism, socialism, and democracy. It was also a divided nation from 1945 to 1990. This turbulent past makes it difficult to gather comprehensive data and compare different stages in history, since the size and borders of Germany have varied. The public broadcasters publish a long‐term audience study “Massenkommunikation” (Krupp and Breunig 2016) every five years for the past 50 years, that extensively documents the changes and developments of audience behavior with regard to newspapers, television, radio, and the internet. The data for the earlier years between 1900 and 1950 is dispersed and located in various sources. Today the average German spends over nine hours daily with media consumption, including radio, television, newspapers, magazines, books, videos, music, and online media. The time spent on media has grown constantly every year from 1964 to 2005: from slightly above 3 hours a day to over nine hours a day (Engel and Breuning 2015, p. 312). For the past 10 years, media consumption time has been stable and the most popular medium is still television: most Germans (85%) watch television every day. However, there are distinctive differences in terms of age groups: the average German over 50 years of age watches more than five hours a day, while the average German under 29 watches two hours a day. This is reversed when we consider online use. Here, the 14–29 year‐olds are online about four hours daily, while the over 50‐year‐olds are online for only 46 minutes. Overall, the time spent on the internet has increased rapidly within the last 15 years: in the year 2000 the average German was online for 17 minutes a day. This has increased to approximately 107 minutes today (Engel and Breuning 2015, p. 312). Different media are used for different purposes: in 2015, the most important motives for watching television were to “gain information,” “because it is fun” and “relaxation.”

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Similarly, “fun” is the leading motive for radio use. Newspapers are read for different reasons: to gain information, to get help for daily life, and to be able to talk about the news. Using the internet combines fun and useful information: 90% of German users use the internet for gathering information and useful help, and 75% use it for fun. These motives have not changed within the last 15 years (Engel and Breuning 2015). Applying a historical perspective, there is evidence that the uses and gratifications of old media are usually substituted by new: in the early 1950s, the newspaper was gradually replaced by the radio as the main source of information. In the 1960s, television assumed this role as the main information provider (Meyen 2000). Now, the internet is challenging television as the most important site for entertainment, raising the question as to whether broadcast television might soon be outdated. But television has proved to be astonishingly resilient. The overall viewing time of broadcast television has not decreased within the last few years; top drama like the crime series Tatort and the daily news still reach a regular viewership of over 10 million. Live sporting events can have an even bigger viewership of up to 20–30 million viewers. By contrast, only 3% use time‐shifted streaming television on a regular basis and only 15% of the population subscribe to streaming platforms (Kupferschmitt 2015, p. 385). The use of broadcast television by the younger generation, however, is decreasing. Almost three out of four within the 12–19 age group watch and download videos on their computers, laptops, smart phones, and portable devices daily (MPFS 2015). Young users watch YouTube videos and video snaps from various platforms. Their changing media use is also reflected in their access to political information, which is far more likely to be accessed online than via a traditional print newspaper or broadcast television (Hasebrink and Schmidt 2013, p. 10).

Case Study Denmark: The “Early Adopters” Denmark is the smallest of the four countries in this study with an overall population of only 5.6 million. In terms of media audience Denmark can be regarded as a country of technique‐affine early adopters. In 2015, it ranked in second place on the worldwide ICT development index with 96% internet penetration and 116% active mobile online subscriptions (ITU Report 2015).5 As in Germany, media use in Denmark is very well documented in an annual report on media use conducted by DR, the Danish public broadcaster, as well as by the yearly Media Development Report by the Ministry of Culture (SLKS 2016). Denmark’s media landscape is characterized by its strong public broadcast sector with television broadcaster DR (fee‐funded) and TV2 (advertisement and subscription funded) covering approximately 69% of the overall television range. According to DR’s Media Development Report 2014, in 2013, “streaming went mainstream” in Denmark (DR Research 2014, p. 4). While the overall time spent daily on television dropped slightly from 180 to 172 min/day (TNS Gallup TV Meter), 17% of the viewing time now consists of streaming instead of broadcast television. If screen time is added up regardless of its origin, however, we see that the overall screen time increases. For instance, teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19 spend a total amount of 7 hours and 14 minutes in front of a screen each day. But even in Denmark, where new technologies have been adopted at higher speed than in other European countries, traditional broadcast television is still the most widely used medium: 59% of all Danes are still broadcast television viewers (34% are cross viewers, 5% dedicated streamers and 3% non‐viewers), and the majority of Danes prefer television for news and background information (DR



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Research 2015, pp. 40, 62). Age is, as in Germany, the factor that influences media use the most: the older the audience, the more extensively they watch broadcast television. On the other hand, the younger audiences are, the more likely they use streaming television (34% of 16–24 year old Danes use streaming television on daily basis) (SLKS 2016, pp. 3–4). Although less engaged than the young, Denmark’s older population is ahead of other countries with regards to the use of new media and new devices. In 2011 only 3% of older people used a tablet, but currently 42% in the age group 60–74 years possess a tablet. Not only the older, also the very young generation displays a distinctively different media behavior from many of their European neighbors: Danish children are truly early adopters with a majority (90%) having access to a tablet at home, and even more than 90% having access to a smartphone. With 30% of all children aged 3–6 owning a tablet, it constitutes the most common device in this age group (DR Research 2014, p.  26). For the older children, aged 7–12, the smartphone becomes more important (56% in this age group own a smartphone). At the age of 12, 77% of all Danish children possess their own smartphone. Television is still the most popular medium for younger children (aged three to six), but the tablet is gaining ground. Qualitative research shows that parents are less reluctant to let their children use a tablet than the television, since they consider the tablet to be more of a learning device than the television. With Denmark being characterized as a media society of “early adopters,” the significant increase of online mobile media, the increase of streaming television, and the decrease of traditional broadcast television viewing might be regarded as trend‐setting for the rest of Europe.

­Conclusion Comparing four countries with different political systems, different sizes and stages of economic development, and religious orientation reveals differences but also many similarities with regard to audience behavior. In the past 100 years, it took about 20 years for each new medium to become an integrated part of people’s regular media use. Print media could not become a mass medium across classes before a certain degree of literacy was achieved while newspapers simultaneously supported the process of literacy. The historical outline of the last 100 years as well as the case studies have shown that it would be overly simplistic to assume a common media use due to geographic or cultural proximity. The neighboring countries Denmark and Germany show some similarities, but there are also incongruences. When looking at the development of internet user behavior in Germany and Denmark, there is a similar user pattern up to the year 2000. After that date, internet penetration and the use of new technologies have been increasing much faster in Denmark than in Germany. While there is no single or definite explanation for this, a number of influential factors need to be considered. First, Denmark (along with other Scandinavian countries and the United Kingdom) had a political priority plan to cater for area‐wide saturation with high‐speed internet. Furthermore, the idea of equality within the Danish welfare state is supported by most political parties, which allows for reliable and ongoing developments in infrastructure, despite changes of government. The appreciation for online technology and the fundamental right of all citizens to access this infrastructure together with an overall open‐mindedness toward new technologies have been taken up by a centralistic political system, which resulted in today’s Danish progressive and presumably trend‐setting media environment. Germany, on the other

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hand, with its federal system and its less egalitarian society has been less decisive and less effective in implementing the necessary infrastructure. Likewise, we find differences and similarities in media use between central European countries and Turkey and Russia. Considering the development of early film audiences indicates that Turkey and West European countries have shared many common features in audience behavior in the first half of the last century. The arrival of the new technologies came, however, often with a delay. With regards to internet, both countries lack the necessary infrastructure to facilitate a similar user density as in other European countries. Yet, the reason for distinct user practices are multilayered: while Russia faced severe restrictions and censorship until the 1990s, Turkey was characterized by modernization and openness despite periods of political instability and military interventions in the late twentieth century. Accordingly, the press in Turkey offered a greater plurality of voices and opinions that differed from the restricted media in Russia. It was only the internet and the RuNet that allowed Russian users to access information with far fewer restrictions and less control. Owing to political and societal developments during the last decade, however, the increasing censorship of online content in Turkey and Russia increasingly threatens the means of people of gaining access to independent and critical information (Freedom House 2016, p. 17). Also economic considerations influence peoples’ ability and willingness to spend money on entertainment and communication technology. Denmark, with the highest national income per capita (US$58,550), has also the highest ICT Development Index in Europe and ranks second worldwide. Of the four countries, Turkey has the lowest national income per capita (US$9,950) and also the lowest use of online media (World Bank 2015).6 But with similar income levels in Denmark and Germany the economic situation alone cannot explain the differing behavior of specific audience segments. Older audiences in Denmark adapt the internet much faster than older audiences in Germany; and Danish children use tablets more frequently than any other children in Europe. The four examples have shown that a combination of technological development, political systems, as well as a cultural attitude toward media are the driving forces behind the development of audience and user behavior. While it was beyond the scope of this chapter to examine these similarities and differences in detail, it can be assumed that the interplay of an array of factors are responsible for the particularities of media use. Our account has shown that the introduction of each new medium led to adjustments in content and reception habits. Media history proved a long time ago that new media do not necessarily replace old media. The combination of a historical with a contemporary perspective has generated a more multifaceted comprehension of the entangled correlations between all media in question. The advent of a new medium does not only affect the medium that it replaces. It also changes the whole dynamics of the existing media landscape. Cinema, for example, has undergone several changes and developments over the course of the last 115 years, with the rise of television and digitalization being just two of these. And changing audience behavior has had again a major influence on these developments. It has been argued that different media fulfill different functions for their audience. For instance, cinema is regarded as serving entertainment purposes whilst the press is information oriented (Wilke 2000, p. 323). However, as the long‐term study mentioned in the German case study indicates, audiences have always searched for a mix of information, distraction, and entertainment in various media, but to differing degrees. As new media evolve, the balance between these needs shifts and adjusts, depending on the technological and institutional settings within a specific socio‐political environment as well as on the media practices of the people in question.



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Notes 1 Alaturka refers to “an orientalist conception of Turkish style” and how it was “appropriated in Turkey during the nineteenth century to define a musical tradition (Turkish, alaturka) and to differentiate it from Western musical practice (Turkish, alafranga)” (O’Connell 2005, p. 177). 2 According to Eurodata TV Worldwide (2016), the worldwide average viewing time reached its peak in 2012 with an average of 235 min/day. 3 The present chapter focuses on developments until 2015 only. 4 The biggest multisector multimedia groups are Doğan Group, Cukurove Group, Doğuş Group and İhlas Group. These groups collaborate with global conglomerates such as Doğan Group and Time Warner (CCN Turk), Doğan Group‐Turner Broadcasting Systems (Cartoon Network, TNT), and Doğuş Group‐CNBC (CNBC‐E, later NTVMSNBC). 5 The ITU Development Index measures access, use and skills of ICT (information and communication technology). The country rankings in the ITU report are: Denmark 2; Germany 14; Russia 45; Turkey 69 (out of 167). 6 World Bank numbers on gross national income per capita (Atlas method) in 2015: Denmark US$58,550; Germany US$45,940; Russian Federation US$11,450; Turkey US$9,950.

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Americanization, or: The Rhetoric of Modernity

How European Journalism Adapted US Norms, Practices and Conventions Marcel Broersma

­Introduction Mark Twain (1880) was most certainly not impressed by the German press when he visited the country in 1879. The great American writer and journalist used more words to list what was not included in the newspapers than to tell what was actually in there. In a bantering tone, he compared the German press to its US counterpart. The latter offered an abundance of up‐to‐the‐minute news and entertainment, and reporters frequented the police‐court, high society banquets, or dog fights, and spiced up their reporting with floating facts, curiosities, rumors, and disclosures about public officials. According to Twain, however, German journalists were definitively “not overworked” (p. 397). They filled their papers with letters and telegrams announcing that some king was to go to Vienna and the tsar had returned from St. Petersburg. Even more striking, they filled them with criticism and essays that were more than capable of putting even the most interested reader to sleep. “A German daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the inventions of man. Our own dailies infuriate the reader, pretty often; the German daily only stupefies him,” Twain (1880, p. 394) concluded. “I think a German daily journal doesn’t do any good to speak of, but at the same time it doesn’t do any harm. That is a very large merit, and should not be lightly weighted nor lightly thought of ” (p. 398). Twain’s encounter with German newspapers (cf. Wilke 2007) more or less reflected the unflattering impression most American visitors had of the European press before World War II. There are numerous accounts of journalists, politicians, or other guests from the New World that characterized journalism in any European country as backward, perverted by opinions or simply insignificant. The other way around, Europeans who visited the United States were often struck by the vitality and modern vibe of American journalism. But they also despised the commercial logic that guided newspapers and resulted in, what they considered, a poor intellectual level. US dailies contained “crude compilations, weighty accumulations of false or veritable facts, ridiculous hoaxes, The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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childish declamation, without judgment, wit, or intellect,” a British magazine wrote in 1862 (quoted in Palmegiano 2012, p. 13). The commercial nature of the press and its focus on the newest sensational disclosures were detested by European opinion leaders. Moreover, they disliked the “indecent” and assertive behavior of reporters that seemed to be part and parcel of American news journalism. US journalists did not hesitate to publish about issues that were considered private in Europe. In spite of this initial opposition, the influence of US journalism and American culture in general rose during the course of the twentieth century to a level at which scholars even declared “the media” to be American (Tunstall 1977). Indeed, whether the professional ideology of journalism, the form and style of television news, or the popularity of films and television series, US influences seem to have become abundant as W.T. Stead already predicted aptly in his 1901 book The Americanization of the World. Many of the cultural forms that constitute media nowadays not only have American roots but are also predominantly defined in American terms. Of course, the level and impact of “Americanization” differs among media industries, platforms, and products as well as by national context. And it would be overly ambitious trying to sketch this development comprehensively, trying to give an all‐inclusive account of this development, especially now that digital media have become so much interwoven with our daily lives. But it is clear that something has definitely changed over the century when it comes to the acceptance, adaptation, and appraisal of the American way of doing journalism. It has turned from a specter into an example worthy of imitation. This chapter provides a historical perspective on the influence of US cultural forms, norms, practices, and textual conventions on European journalism since the rise of the  mass press in the 1880s.1 It critically discusses and challenges the notion of “Americanization.” While in the fields of media and popular culture a range of studies have focused on “Americanization” as a form of cultural imperialism, I suggest that it makes more sense to start at the receiving end by analyzing it as the appropriation of American culture by another (cf. van Elteren 2006; Bondebjerg et al. 2009). In other words, my point of departure is not the question if and how the US has Americanized Europe, but how European news media have Americanized themselves. How were American examples perceived, incorporated, and adapted in various national contexts around Europe? For this, it makes sense to discuss “Americanization” as a discursive label that was used to deal with the up‐ and downsides of modernity and mass society, and should be considered part of a trend toward a globalization of cultures and consumer markets or “an increasing interconnectedness of the world” (Hannerz 1992, p. 10). Attention is paid particularly to the United Kingdom, northern European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries) and France. Journalism in these countries was affected most by American influences while particularly French and British journalism also inspired the development of the press around Europe. Although institutional media histories sketching the structure and organization of media landscapes and providing the first steps into a history of professional practice and reporting can be found in most European countries, a transnational perspective on journalism history is largely absent. Studies are guided by nation‐state paradigms and usually highlight changing norms, practices, and conventions as autonomous developments ascribed to national peculiarities (Broersma 2010). I argue, however, that there is an implicit common interpretive framework in European scholarship on journalism history (Broersma 2010, 2011). This transnational grand narrative, which James Carey (1997) called the “Whig interpretation of journalism history”



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and James Curran (2002, 2009) the “liberal narrative” is, ironically, itself a result of the Americanization of journalism. It frames the development of journalism since the nineteenth century as a long road from a partisan press to press freedom. This includes the establishment of an autonomous profession that, independent from political and economic powers, obeys more or less to the objectivity regime, and the practices and formal conventions resulting from it (cf. Broersma 2007a, 2010; Harbers 2014). In other words, “Americanization” is used here as a synonym for professionalization and modernization. This chapter critically engages with this framework, on the one hand, to show how influential this normative perspective has been over time and how it impacted journalism, on the other hand, to make a plea for understanding European traditions of journalism in their own right. I first discuss “Americanization” as a concept, then move on to the development of different styles of journalism in Europe, and then discuss how these relate to news values, on‐the‐spot reporting and the objectivity regime, all of which are the cornerstones of American journalism. In the conclusion, I propose a more nuanced perspective on “Americanization” than commonly found in journalism history.

­Americanization as a Two‐Sided Concept American journalism was “partly unrestrictedly admired, partly presumptuously condemned,” wrote the German press scholar Emil Dovifat in 1927 (quoted in Requate 1995, p. 33). This was not unique to Germany but almost a common trait of all European countries. To understand both the positive and negative connotations associated with Americanization, we have to realize that from the mid‐nineteenth century on, the United States was mainly associated with democratization, mass culture and “the technological and scientific project of modernity” (van Elteren 2006, p. 20). Ultimately, in the 1930s Americanization came to represent: a pragmatic, optimist outlook on life, a peaceful, rational compromise of political differences; an efficient, modern way of organizing work that emphasized machines and mass assembly production; rising standards of living with declining class antagonisms; scientific use of statistics and other information; and the predominance of mass society (this meant democratic politics, widespread consumption, and popular entertainment). (Costigliola 1984, p. 20)

This provoked both a utopian, and a dystopian discourse. As Costigliola (1984) put it, Americanization was used to refer to both “the United States’ cultural penetration of Europe and the overlapping process of Europe’s indigenous modernization” (p. 22). Cultural critics on the old continent, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Jacob Burckhardt, Charles Baudelaire and Matthew Arnold, believed that the technological rationalization and the egalitarianism that dominated the relatively open society made it fall short on intellectual and cultural achievements. The United States was ruled by the indecencies of the material and the banal, by barbarism and bad taste, and a focus on quantity instead of quality. The industrial and technological progress of the young nation that wholeheartedly embraced modernity went hand in hand with social and cultural degeneration (van Elteren 2006). In short, the United States was seen as a country without Kultur, as an example of bad taste, and, as a German commentator wrote in the 1930s, “a Philistine polyglot mongrelised community descended from convicts and the unwanted dregs of other societies” (quoted in Willett 1989, p. 12).

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The conservatism and nostalgia of cultural critics who wanted to keep the clear boundaries between high and low culture and who considered the egalitarian mass culture as a threat to the hierarchical stability of society was paralleled, however, by a discourse that embraced modernity. Here, the United States was considered a technological frontrunner making the economy prosper (van Elteren 2006). The speed and energy of the American way of life were admired for they conveyed a clear sense of progress. The “modern American” was seen as a “dynamo of energy,” and the “virgin continent” offered almost unlimited opportunities to those who were willing to work very hard (Stead 1901, p. 381). This was particularly appealing to the lower and middle classes who believed the open, egalitarian, and progressive nature of the New World offered opportunities to get ahead in life. It is illuminating to interpret both the romanticizing and the dismissive use of the term “Americanization” in relation to modernity. Ever since the 1880s, the term offered both critics and adherents a discourse to deal with societal change. The long‐term transformation of journalism was the product of these changes in culture and society. At the turn of the twentieth century, a “democratic market society” (Schudson 1978) came into being on both sides of the Atlantic. Education and living standards improved, and more citizens were granted the right to vote and participate in formal politics. At the same time, technological innovations boomed and consumer societies developed that allowed industrial producers to sell their products on mass markets. However, the pace of this societal transformation differed from country to country. The United Kingdom was clearly a frontrunner with northern Europe and France in its slipstream. In southern Europe literacy levels, economic growth and the rise of democracy took longer, in some countries even until the last decades of the twentieth century. Repressive regimes and censorship curbed the press in Greece, Spain, and Portugal (De Mateo 1989; Sousa et al. 2014). While, therefore, a mass press never fully developed in southern Europe (Hallin and Mancini 2004, pp. 90–97), newspaper publishers and editors in the United Kingdom and Northern Europe anticipated this new situation and leaped to fill the needs of a wide audience of readers and advertisers. Journalism had to reach out to as many people as possible. It had to find “modern” ways to cater to their demands for various kinds of information and make news attractive in content and form. US journalism seemed to master this craft like no other. “The press of the great Republic has much that our own may imitate with advantage, and which is so imitated by some of the most successful of the English papers,” wrote John Oldcastle in 1880 (pp. 93–94). Undoubtedly, the British and the French press first reached a mass audience with the other, northern European countries following their lead. In the application and adaptation of American examples, however, the United Kingdom was clearly a frontrunner. Cultural proximity and a shared language seemed to be the primary reasons that these were met with far less resistance than on the continent. The end of World War II accelerated the processes of Americanization across Europe. The leading role of the United States in ending the war against Nazi‐Germany and its allies, and its dominant involvement in the reconstruction of post‐war Europe clearly left its mark. The US military forces effectively governed (part of) the defeated countries, most importantly West Germany, where they imposed a process of “re‐education.” They wanted to “make over the thinking of a nation that is so badly infected with arrogant nationalism as Germany was,” as stated by the director of education and religious affairs of the US Military Government (quoted in Willett 1989, p. 16). Besides schools, media were seen as important means to reset the minds of the people, and to promote



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democracy – although anti‐communism quickly became dominant – and the American way of life in general. All across Europe a fascination for American (cultural) products ranging from cigarettes and Coca‐Cola to music and film took hold. This was actively stimulated by the US government and its various activities employed in the context of the Marshall Plan. Exhibitions, films, and educational programs propagated the American way of thinking while exchange programs (such as Fulbright fellowships) allowed Europeans to visit the United States and experience it themselves. One of the target groups were newspaper and broadcast editors who were invited to tour the country and to learn about the American way of informing the people. Although the US government actively promoted the American way of life for political and economic reasons in the decade following World War II, it did not follow that it could simply impose its way, not even in Germany where it was de facto governing during the first post‐war years. A major question then is, how American norms, practices, and textual conventions made it across the Atlantic – but even more important, how they got adapted and re‐appropriated in different national contexts. To study such transnational exchange, the concepts of diffusion and transfer are useful (Broersma 2010). Diffusion theory, developed to study “the linear diffusion of a concrete product from the centre to the periphery” (te Velde 2005, p. 208) conceptualizes this as a semi‐autonomous process that is hard to trace down to specific moments and actors. While it assumes that diffusion only starts when innovation is finished, scholars have argued for a more dynamic understanding in which products, practices, and ideas are adapted to specific national contexts. In addition, they emphasize that similar innovations can be done in different countries at the same time (Høyer and Pöttker 2005; te Velde 2005). The field of transfer studies explores the intentional use of foreign examples in another national context. It studies how ideas or practices “invented” in one country are introduced, transmitted, and applied in another. It cautiously reconstructs processes of transfer that start from clearly defined objects and agents, and it sharply distinguishes between the national singularities of the sending and receiving contexts (te Velde 2005). What we see in the transformation of journalism is that agents were indeed important. Journalists who worked in the United States, which was not uncommon especially for British journalists, came back home with new ideas and new reporting skills. Publishers and editors went on trips and internships with US news companies to copy the tricks of the trade. And reporters visiting the United States wrote reports in which they showed the particularities of American journalism, thus introducing their readers to these foreign habits. However, although the concept of transfer makes us sensitive to the mediation of knowledge through media and social networks, it also tends to reduce complex dialectic processes of exchange and reciprocity to a rather straightforward transposition of concrete ideas and practices by one agent, and from one country to another (Broersma 2010). Elsewhere, I have argued that both approaches offer valuable insights, but that “it might be wise to avoid the linearity that transfer and diffusion studies embody and take the more complex hybridization of practices and ideas into account” (Broersma 2010, p. 13). This is particularly important in the case of such broad and complex concept as Americanization. Indeed, there was a strong influence of US examples on journalism, first, in the United Kingdom, then northern Europe, and later in France and southern Europe (Hallin and Mancini 2004; Broersma 2007a). But as I have shown above, Americanization does not only have very strong normative connotations, but it also tends to overestimate the one‐directional power of “the American imperial project.” Moreover, it molds very diverse cases and processes under one general label that hides more than it reveals. Accepting that ideas, norms, practices, and textual conventions are

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not static but hybrid objects that continuously change as a result of cultural interactions, appropriation, and adaptation provides us with a more fruitful lens to study the “Americanization” of journalism.

­Different Styles of Journalism In reference to journalism, “Americanization” mainly refers to the paradigmatic shift that took place during the twentieth century from a reflective and interpretative style of journalism to an event‐centered news style (Høyer and Pöttker 2005; Broersma 2007a). The former was prevalent all over Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. It emphasized on analysis and opinion pieces, and on writing that reflected on current affairs. While it provided information and covered events, it did so by merely recording them and presenting them to the readers in the form of a daily chronicle. The term “newspaper of record” aptly summarized this kind of journalism as did the French term journal d’opinion. Above all, newspapers that adhered to the reflective style of journalism aimed to educate, instruct, or persuade their readers of certain political or socio‐ cultural views. The “mediating subjectivity of the journalist” was central. Journalists were men of letters who added intelligence raisonnée to the news. They “did not only wrap information into their own observations but constructed their articles according to their interpretations of the related events, thus mediating between readers and reality” (Chalaby 1996, pp. 311–312). Newspapers that used this reflective style did not first and foremost aim for the general public, but they were happy to serve an elite or niche audience. There was a close link to advocacy journalism where partisanship offered the ideological fundament for journalism, and newspapers were seen as an “instrument for controversy, a sharp and convenient means to communicate ideas and to defend principles,” as a French commentator wrote (quoted in Palmer 1976, p. 210).2 Newspapers were often owned by political parties or had very strong ties to them, which often resulted in interlocking directorates of prominent politicians also being newspaper editors (Hallin and Mancini 2004; Høyer 2005). In most European countries, a party press emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and held strong positions until the end of the 1960s (the Netherlands), the 1980s (Scandinavia), or the 1990s (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece). Even when there was no political parallelism involved, as often was the case with liberal outlets, most papers still tried to culturally educate their readers and guide them politically (Hampton 2004). The news style entered Europe via the United Kingdom in the 1880s. Resulting from the transformation to a mass press, commercial publishers embraced this style that had successfully been developed and used in the United States to build a broad reader base. It was first labeled “the Americanisation of English journalism,” but later became known as “the new journalism” (Bourne 1887, p. 343). To attract a broad audience, newspapers felt the need to take a more neutral position rather than being organized according to particular ideological views. The news style was fact‐centered while news values offered the central organizing principle. It appealed to the sense of speed that seemed to characterize modernity and the positivist aspirations of science and technology. Reporting news, instead of evaluating the world from a political, social, or cultural standpoint, became the most important and valued activity for journalists (Høyer and Pöttker 2005; Broersma 2007a; Wiener 2011). The news style was first and foremost applied by popular papers. Press barons such as Lord Northcliffe in the United Kingdom, Henrik Cavling in Denmark, and Hak Holdert



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in the Netherlands adopted it wholeheartedly, while in Germany the Berliner Lokal‐ Anzeiger, in Sweden Dagens Nyheter, in Portugal O Século, and in France Le Matin took the lead (Ferenczi 1993; Bjork 2007; Broersma 2007a; Gustafsson and Rydén 2010; Sousa et al. 2014). First, these papers had to conquer the market of new readers and, thus, had to find new features to cater the demands of a mass audience Second, they had more leeway to innovate because they did not have the cultural legacy of the “old” journalism. The dynamic and modern image of American journalism appealed to these new papers and their audiences. As a result, quality papers also started to introduce new topics, design features and textual conventions in the context of broadsheet news. According to Hampton (2004), a new “representative ideal” of the press came into being. By mirroring events, issues, and opinions, journalists believed to serve best the interests of their readers and society at large. The “quick, accurate presentation of the world’s news in the form of a careful digest,” in the words of Northcliffe, became the new ideal (quoted in Hampton (2004), p. 77). The adoption of the news style or the “Americanization” of journalism took place in waves. Around the 1880s, it first occurred in the United Kingdom where legal and fiscal constraints for the press had been released and a democratic market society had developed relatively early. This resulted in a matured press market. The cultural and linguistic proximity of the United States also helped. Owing to its grammar and structure, and its use of shorter sentences, English is an effective language for the fact‐ and event‐centered news style (cf. Pells 2005, p. 191). Moreover, the shared language made it easier for British journalists to work in the United States which happened frequently. Back in the United Kingdom, they became agents of transfer, translating American norms, routines, and conventions to the British newspaper market. The Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands were relatively open to international influences and adopted the news style a few decades later. Germany only fully followed after World War II due to cultural and political resistance. France is an interesting case because it developed a mass press with the quatre grands, the four biggest Paris‐based popular dailies, each reaching an audience of over 1 million readers in the first decade of the twentieth century. But newspapers remained limited to only four pages, the advertisement market never fully developed, and journalism remained largely intertwined with both politics and literature. Although French newspapers adopted American techniques, they integrated them in a specific style of journalism that became a second source of inspiration for journalism in many European countries, especially in southern Europe, but certainly also in northern Europe and even the United Kingdom. Cultural resistance against the news style was common all over the continent but probably strongest in France. The introduction of this style and its features was met with horror by the societal elite, including the journalists who worked in the tradition of the reflective style. They despised the emphasis on news and “brutal facts,” which they considered sensational and superficial. They shunned the light tone and likewise the topics that were being covered and considered factual news articles poor in style and unattractive. As the French writer Émile Zola wrote in 1894: “the uncontrolled flow of information pushed to the extreme … has transformed journalism, killed the great articles of discussion, killed literary critique, and increasingly gives more importance to news dispatches, trivial news, and to articles of reporters and interviewers” (quoted in Chalaby 1996, p. 309). Critics detested the “American ways” of appealing to the reader’s emotions and impulses instead of guiding the “half‐educated” (Hampton 2004). Moreover, they detested the supposed commercial nature of the new American‐ inspired news style. As the German critic Walter Hammer wrote, in the United States

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advertising impacted editorial content to such an extent that “everything, from the editorial to the smallest local news item” was sold (quoted in Bjork 2007, p. 136). This contrasted sharply with the ideological aims of the prevailing reflective style of journalism, critics argued. Nevertheless, features that were common in the news style would be included and adapted broadly in Europe over the course of the twentieth century. But the reflective tradition did not vanish. The mainstream press, which was commercial by nature and proclaimed itself to be politically liberal or neutral (the latter often a synonym for liberal), still had a strong market share. Upcoming socialist, Protestant, and Catholic newspapers also embraced the principles of the reflective tradition, wanting to educate their readers (Broersma 2007a). This strong foundation remained influential in European journalism, although this is commonly overlooked in the dominant grand narrative of journalism history that tends to focus on change and neglects “that what preceded the advent of Anglo‐American journalism” (Williams 2007, p. 3).

­News Values and Active On‐the‐Spot Reporting The most important difference between American and European journalism at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century was that US news centered on events. Reporting facts became the leading principle in journalism. This did not mean that analysis and opinion disappeared from newspapers, but they became clearly separated from news articles and mainly provided the context that allowed readers to interpret the news. Journalists were expected to get out on the streets, observe events, and gather quotes, and report the news as it had happened in a factual way. “His feet are a much more important part of a reporter’s body than his head,” an important American columnist wrote in the late 1950s (quoted in Hallin and Mancini 2004, p. 29). In US news rooms, the various tasks in the editorial process became divided. A reporter roamed the streets as “a sportsman, an adventurer” and brought “its pulse into the columns of the paper,” as the Svenska Dagbladet wrote in 1906 (quoted in Jarlbrink 2016, p. 64). Subsequently, sub‐editors turned their observations into stories or edited incoming copy to fit the paper. Columnists wrote analytical pieces and commentaries. US newspaper editors were obsessed by speed. They wanted to have the news as quickly as possible, and definitively ahead of their competitors. Scoops were not only a mark of quality but also had a distinct commercial value in a newspaper culture in which papers were mainly sold in the streets (Wiener 2011). News judgment, rooted in news values, became the leading principle in the gathering, selection, and presentation of press coverage (cf. Høyer and Pöttker 2005; Broersma 2007a; Pöttker 2003). Prominence of the news was the leading principle in structuring the content of the newspaper. The most important news was presented on top of the front page; articles that were considered less important followed. A similar structure was applied to consecutive pages. A newspaper, thus, clearly showed its readers what it considered the most important events and developments of the day – and what they should spend time on. Headlines summarized the most important news fact of each article, which allowed readers to quickly skim the pages and decide what they wanted to read. With regard to textual structure, the inverted pyramid and “summary leads” were increasingly used after 1880 to structure news texts, and became standard in the US after 1900 (Stensaas 2005; Wiener 2011). Again, the focus here lay on presenting the most important information in the first sentences for readers to understand immediately what the news was.



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Conversely, news judgment was clearly not the guiding principle in European journalism. Newspapers had a vertical layout: the successive columns were filled with text from top to bottom. They were organized thematically (national news, foreign news, etc.) and chronologically, following the sequence of events. This iron logic was applied day after day and was not disrupted by news incidents. Front pages were often dominated by advertisements (such as in the United Kingdom), editorials and opinion pieces, analytical articles such as all‐compassing overviews of foreign politics, or even literary feuilletons. Items were separated by a short line, the first word in bold letters or spaced type, or with a dash before the first sentence. Some papers used headings, usually bold but in regular font and over one column, that only broadly touched upon the topic of each story. They would read “The War,” “The Paris Conference,” or “Meditation on the start of the Spring,” which left readers guessing what the gist of a story was. They were expected to read their paper systematically from the first to the last page following the consecutive columns, which were “stuffed like a sausage” (Broersma 2007b, p. 180). However, during the interwar years the “American system” of presenting the news was adopted all over Europe, although not always wholeheartedly and often only partially. In the United Kingdom, papers became organized around news values around the turn of the century when newsy headlines and summary leads became common. It took more time on the continent, but in the 1920s and 1930s most papers started to use headlines. Still, papers would not always “open” with the most important news, but they would start with a reflection on current events or simply follow the iron sectional logic of the paper. Writing was often prosaic or even verbose, and the inverted pyramid was barely used. Moreover, until after 1945, journalists often did not extract the news from an event. A Dutch regional paper, for example, had to instruct its correspondents in 1947 to “drop the traditional style of reporting” and “pick out the main decision of the meeting and use it as an introduction”; it now wanted “short, matter‐of‐fact, appetizing report, stripped of most of the official trimmings” that immediately told the readers what the most important information was (quoted in Broersma 2007b, p. 187). It would still take decades, though, before the papers fully followed the “American way” of organizing the news according to news values. While active reporting was the key for American journalism, most European journalists had sedentary jobs. In 1893, a visitor to the Stockhoms‐Tidningen met, for example, an editor “sitting behind his desk, overloaded with books, letters, papers, manuscripts, proofs and newspapers” (quoted in Jarlbrink 2016, p. 281). These “men of letters,” or “publicists” as they were called in Scandinavia and Germany (Meyer and Lund 2014), got the world in through letters, the wires, and other newspapers. They wanted to inform and educate their public through well‐reasoned commentary that mixed facts, analysis, and opinion. Professional journalists considered themselves rather (literary) artists, politicians, or intellectuals than craftsmen. For many, journalism was not a vocation in itself but just a stepping stone to a career in either literature or politics (or both), and the literary style was valued highly as was the intellectual level of an article. Preferably written in the form of essays, articles were usually signed with the name of the author which brought both esteem to the publication and economic value to the author. For most French journalists gathering news was a “pointless effort,” as Collins (2007, p. 82) phrased it. “It could wield no power to sway governments or voters. It could not educate or influence the elite who read the papers” (Collins 2007). In most European countries the reporter for long was a “marginal figure” (Bjork 2007, p. 129). When journalists went out “attired in frock coats and top hats” (Wiener 2011, p. 134) to cover parliamentary debates, court hearings, or other official meetings, they did not

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focus on actively gathering information. They merely recorded what was being said by officials and reproduced this public speech in their articles. These would, for instance, start with a chairman opening a meeting, than report on the contributions made by the consecutive speakers and end with the chairman closing the meeting. Readers had to find the news themselves – if there was any. In the United States, this passive way of reporting speech was replaced by the new practice of interviewing that was “invented” in the 1850s but spread like wildfire in the 1870s and 1880s. It emphasized that a good reporter was an investigator rather than a scribe and anticipated the desire for speed and exclusivity. Reporters now actively approached sources and asked them for specific information. One‐way communication was replaced by a dialog which provided the opportunity for journalists to intervene, change the subject or take the lead in the conversation. Moreover, well‐chosen quotations made news stories more attractive and the attribution of speech increased their credibility. It gave journalists more control over public discourse. In addition, it enabled them to enlarge the public sphere and gain professional autonomy and authority, as well as commercial success (Chalaby 1998; Matheson 2000; Broersma 2008). The interview came about first in the United Kingdom, where newspapers began to use it more frequently in the 1880s. Countries such as France, Germany, and Austria followed in the 1890s, while in the Netherlands the genre gained prominence around 1900. After World War I, the interview came to be widely used in Europe. However, as an American invention, the interview met a lot of cultural resistance. A Dutch textbook on journalism stated disapprovingly that the interview was born out of “a strange feature in the American national character that is the general curiosity about details of private life and the opinions of public persons” (quoted in Broersma 2008, p. 149). And the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote in 1886: “the interview is the worst feature of the new [journalism] – it is degrading to the interviewer, disgusting to the interviewee, and tiresome to the public” (Silvester 1993, p. vii). In Europe where class distinctions were far more prevalent than in the United States and the lines between the private and the public sphere much stricter, it was considered inappropriate that “journalists often forced themselves aggressively into the private lives of individuals, extracting interviews from people against their will and writing about them in offensive terms” (Wiener 2011, p. 116). A young German reporter, for example, who in the first decade of the twentieth century suggested doing an interview with a minister was jeered by his colleagues: “I gradually learned that it was really unusual for a reporter to be received by a person in Harnack’s position and even more amazing to be granted an interview” (quoted in Requate 1995, p. 390). This leads to another important difference between the American and British perception of interviewing, and its development in continental Europe. The emphasis on active reporting and investigation turned the US‐style interview first and foremost into a tool for interrogating public officials, celebrities, and other sources. Journalism started to position itself as an important and indispensable institution in a democracy, as a watchdog for the people that critically questioned the powerful on the public’s behalf. Contestation, thus, became the leading principle in the journalist‐source relation. Good journalism was investigative reporting or “muckraking” that took off in the early twentieth century in the US. Reporters had to expose the “dirt” the powerful wanted to keep hidden from the public. In contrast, the continental practice of interviewing mainly followed the French tradition of the visite that gained popularity in the fin de siècle. Here, a reporter met an interviewee on appointment. The result of these “visits” was a respectful representation of an exchange of thoughts embedded in a scenic description of the



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visit itself and the scenery in which it took place. Strikingly, the French word for interview is entretien, a conversation. Journalists were not so much interested in revealing facts a source wanted to keep private, but in having an interesting conversation. Thus, although the interview was an accepted cultural form in Europe around the turn of the twentieth century, it was shaped very differently in different contexts (Kött 2004; Broersma 2008).

­The Objectivity Regime In the course of the twentieth century, journalism developed into a profession that claimed autonomy from other fields in society such as politics and business. It wanted to distinguish itself from PR, literature, and other information suppliers and claim a position as “the principle sense‐making practice of modernity” (Hartley 1996). In the United States, the objectivity regime successfully developed as a coherent ideological framework to guide and support journalism’s professional project and to turn it into the most authoritative voice on current affairs. As a cohesive set of norms, routines, and textual conventions, it also offered opportunities to discipline and socialize journalists in the age of the mass press (Schudson 2001). As Mark Hampton (2008) aptly notes, it took “the truth value of journalistic statements out of untrustworthy hands” (p. 478). Now, an expanding number of pages had to be produced in a limited amount of time on a daily basis, and journalism became increasing driven by an industrial logic focused on scale, speed, and efficiency (Broersma and Peters 2013). The objectivity regime promoted independent and neutral journalism. Standing aloof was therefore a necessary precondition: journalists should not be members of any political or societal organization nor engage in public debates (Chalaby 1998). Moreover, routines developed that were linked to scientific positivism and disinterested rationalism. They guided reporting and ensured that news coverage was as objective as possible. To reach this goal, news production had to be standardized and depersonalized – the personality, (political) opinions, feelings, and impressions of the reporter was not to affect his or her work. Journalism had increasingly less to do with intellectual capacities, personal qualities or literary talents. It was organized according to industrial patterns, and it became formularized: “a skill anyone could learn” (Roggenkamp 2005, p. 126). As the American journalist Lincoln Steffens (1931) wrote in his autobiography: “Humor or any sign of personality in our reports was caught, rebuked, and, in time, suppressed” (p. 179). The intense editing process and the division of labor in US and later British newsrooms enhanced this process of uniformization. Sub‐editing was to guarantee that information in news texts was disconnected from the reporting process and the experiences of reporters. They were “supposed to verify information, balance sources from different sides, separate facts from opinion, and refrain from any opinions, value‐laden statements and emotions” (Harbers and Broersma 2016). Reporters delivered news facts, sub‐editors turned them into stories that were proofread and checked, and then lay‐out editors fitted them onto pages. If they all followed the norms, routines, and conventions of the objectivity regime, it did – in theory – not matter who worked on a news story. As long as they applied the right procedures, stories should be alike and represent reality interchangeably. In Europe, the objectivity regime was met with criticism and was never imposed as rigorously as it was in the United States. Although objectivity often structured national debates about professionalization of journalism, it can best be interpreted as an “essentially

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contested concept” (Broersma 2015). Journalists positioned themselves vis‐à‐vis this ideal and exploited it strategically for it helped to strengthen journalism’s cultural authority and autonomy (Ruellan 2007; Williams 2007; Harbers and Broersma 2016). However, the American notion of objectivity grounded in a coherent regime was not simply transferred as such, but adapted to the various European national and cultural contexts. Even the United Kingdom remained “a kind of half‐way house between American professionalism and continental traditions of party‐governed journalism with high literary aspirations” (Schudson 2001, p. 167). Although norms as impartiality and fairness were introduced to news reporting, especially when the ties with political parties loosened after World War II, a focus on bare facts was considered unsatisfying. “The taste for quick, dry, clear information is Anglo‐ American. It appeals to the French taste but it does not completely satisfy it…,” a French commentator noted (quoted in Albert 1972, p. 278). Reporters were expected to convey social reality in a descriptive manner avoiding explicit political and ideological views, and their coverage was expected to be accurate and truthful. But while partisanship was gradually considered less desirable, informed analysis and subjective contextualizing of news in the best traditions of reflective journalism still remained influential. Especially in the German, Scandinavian, and central European tradition, the intellectual and analytical capacities of journalists were highly valued. Similarly, the features of the objectivity regime that aimed to depersonalize journalism practice were broadly dismissed. News coverage became increasingly active and event‐ centered in the 1920s and 1930s, but an impersonal, detached and concise style was considered unattractive. A French editor stated that his countrymen were “too refined to be satisfied with a totally dry reportage” (Palmer 1983, p. 89). Instead, in France but also other continental countries the “mediating subjectivity” of the reporter was embraced. Reporting, as Ruellan (2007) argued “is not one of the last manifestations of a positivist world view resting on the belief that a definitive understanding of complexity can be found in a devotion to facts. On the contrary, it is a creative work on which the author leaves his mark, in which subjectivity is a basic element of the productive process – and is unavoidable and inescapable” (p. 115). Factuality was not necessarily defined as information without any subjective elements. The personal experiences of a journalist, his direct observations and impressions, and an evocative literary style remained to play a pivotal role in reporting (Harbers and Broersma 2016). In continental journalism, news production was not primarily seen as a collective endeavor as it was in the United States and the United Kingdom. Reporters valued their creative autonomy. Moreover, their authority resided mainly with their intellectual capacities, their stylistic qualities, and their independence that came to guide their mediated subjectivity. Reporters were not considered mere machines but human beings who used their personal qualities to understand social reality to report and reflect on it. This essential difference from the US based objectivity regime is still characteristic of news work and the organization of news rooms in European journalism. Germany offers an interesting case here because after 1945 the allied Military Government imposed a license system for the publication of newspapers. This enabled them to recruit the editors and to influence the editorial line and system of the press that was to support the new democratic political system. To make this happen, the US forces actively enforced the principles of American journalism, which meant a clear break with the German tradition of doing journalism. Facts now needed to be separated from opinion, and news texts were structured according to the inverted pyramid containing a lead and a body. However, the introduction of the Anglo‐American copy‐desk system did not



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succeed because it violated the autonomy of the writer and the individual departmental division in German newsrooms (Wilke 2003). At least until very recently, German journalists rejected editorial control and considered themselves all‐round professionals: “News reporting, writing editorials, editing, and technical production are all regarded as equally relevant for the job profile of the German redakteur” (Esser 1998, p. 379). Although German journalism adapted the Anglo‐American news style, it only did so in formal terms, that is, in its presentation of news. In its norms, routines, and editorial work processes, it still resembles the reflective style (Wilke 2007).

­Conclusion It is useful to distinguish between “Americanization” as a process and as a discourse. At both levels, “Americanization” offered journalism a framework to cope with modernity and the upcoming “democratic market society.” The normative and practical underpinnings of the American press offered valuable strategies to make journalism more attractive and accessible for a mass audience while providing it with autonomy and authority. The rise of the news style and the accompanying transformation of routines and textual conventions met a growing demand for information in a quickly changing society. On the discursive level, the positive and negative rhetoric that surrounded “Americanization” functioned to legitimize the transformation of journalism in a societal context that distrusted the US example but was also deeply fascinated by it. Journalism’s modernist professional project benefited from the example of the admired (and at the same time despised mirror image) on the other side of the Atlantic. While European journalism actively borrowed American norms, routines, and textual conventions during the course of the twentieth century, it adapted these in the national context and emphasized how it differed from its US counterpart. This chapter focused on the press but similar tendencies arose when other media had to cater for a mass audience or adapt to societal change. The rise of television in the 1950s and 1960s, for example, evoked similar debates as we saw around the rise of the mass press. As Bourdon (2008) argued: “the influence of advertisers, the transformation of presenters into show‐business stars (especially in news), the cultural poverty, were constantly under attack” (p. 96). Just like half a century earlier with the rise of the mass press, critics complained about the poor influence of television on national culture, on the youth and on the cultural level of civilization. However, here too, US cultural forms proved to be attractive. Series and films were massively acquired and broadcasted while US genres and formats were being imported. American style news casts with an anchor, for example, were adapted in public broadcasting all across Europe (Bondebjerg et al. 2009). The grand narrative of journalism history offered both journalists and scholars a compelling framework to deal with modernity and professionalization. It emphasized the normative ideal of a free and independent press that reported on social reality without bias and prejudice, and managed to represent it objectively and in a detached manner. On the basis of this dominant trope, one could easily conclude that modern journalism indeed is an “Anglo‐American invention” (Chalaby 1996). Nowadays, active reporting is common, news judgment guides the gathering and selection of news, and many design features that were typical for US journalism have been adopted. Indeed, many of these features are predominantly defined in American terms. However, a closer look at the development of journalism in the twentieth century shows that it is more complicated than professional and academic rhetoric suggests.

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Most of the norms, practices, and textual conventions that were part and parcel of the  American objectivity regime were only partially adopted to a European context. Moreover, this process was much slower than is often assumed in scholarship. Although influential frontrunners (now often included in the professional and scholarly canon) used reporting practices and textual conventions, these only gradually manifested in mainstream journalism (Harbers 2014). Many features that were typical for the reflective style of journalism that had long been prevalent on the continent remained vividly in use. Analysis and interpretation were still cherished in most countries while the mediating subjectivity of the reporter (instead of a rational and depersonalized approach) continued to guide reporting. Thus, while the terminology “European journalism” used to describe its professional standards might have been similar, notions such as objectivity or the interview had very different connotations in Europe and in the United States, and also in various European countries (cf. Donsbach and Klett 1993; Broersma 2015). European journalism largely remained more centered on the exposition of ideas than straightforward reporting of bare facts. It was, to some extent, rather “a journalism of expression than a journalism of observation” (Albert 2008, p. 47). While in the course of the twentieth century, European journalism organized around news, embraced active reporting, and became more accessible and attractive, it still cherished the creative autonomy of the journalist. Much more than in the US context, the added value of a reporter – and journalism in extension – is still found to this day in the fact that they add intelligence raisonnée to the news: they do not so much balance opinions and let the facts speak for themselves, but they contextualize and interpret information for their readers. This might be even more important in the age of abounding (digital) information where facts and opinions are free but intelligent interpretation is scarce and sacred.

Notes 1 I will use the terms United States and America, and US and American synonymously throughout this chapter. This reflects the historical discourse related to Americanization in Europe. 2 Unless otherwise noted, all translations of quotations are my own.

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Gender, Media, and Modernity Adrian Bingham, Matilde Eiroa, Susanne Kinnebrock, and Claire McCallum

­Introduction Gender  –  the fluid, contested and historically specific cultural understandings of ­masculinity and femininity in any given society (Scott 1986) – provides one of the central structuring categories of the modern media environment. Since the eighteenth century, media producers have used gender to construct their markets, aiming content either simply at women or men, or at carefully defined subcategories, such as the “housewife,” “mother,” or “businessman.” This gendering process was most obvious in the magazine and periodical market. Distinct genres of “women’s” and “men’s” magazines developed initially in Britain and France in the eighteenth century, and soon spread throughout Europe, remaining recognizable to the present day. Newspapers were aimed predominantly at male audiences, but from the late nineteenth century they started to address female readers directly by incorporating “women’s sections” and by increasing the visibility of female journalists. The new media of the twentieth century – cinema, radio, and television broadcasting – also developed or adapted genres that were implicitly or explicitly gendered, such as romance films, soap operas and chat shows for women, and action thrillers and sports programs for men. Whether seeking to educate, moralize, entertain, or investigate, media brought into focus ideas and assumptions about the behavior of, and relationships between, men and women. In so doing they reinforced, and sometimes reshaped, notions of masculinity and femininity. As the media sector was dominated by  men, moreover, these notions were heavily informed by male preoccupations and perspectives. The profound political, social, economic, and technological changes of the late nineteenth and twentieth century significantly challenged traditional models of gender based on the belief that men were suited to the public sphere, and women to the private. Media recorded and interpreted these transformations, thereby acting as a source of imagery for, and a forum of debate about, gender roles and identities. Newspaper and periodical journalism, and later radio and television broadcasting, scrutinized, discussed and judged shifts in the expression of gender (particularly femininity), for example, the “new

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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woman” of the 1890s, the “flapper” or “modern woman” of the 1920s, the “working woman” of the post‐1945 period, and the “new man” of the 1980s. The gradual processes of equalizing political and civil rights, and of admitting women into political institutions and professional occupations, were recorded, championed, or contested in a variety of ways. New medical, psychological, and cultural understandings of sexuality were addressed and debated. Gender and sexuality were often the prisms through which media sought to understand the wider political, social, and cultural shifts of modernity: the figure of the “modern woman,” in particular, was a way of simplifying and personalizing a range of complex social developments for a mass audience. Across Europe, media markets were regulated by watchful states and shaped by ­powerful interests. In some countries, stringent censorship prevented the expression of radical views, in others, the workings of capitalist economies led to markets being dominated by a handful of wealthy proprietors or successful corporations. With the exception of the most authoritarian societies, however, it was difficult to prevent oppositional groups from using print, and later other media, to communicate resistance. From the mid‐nineteenth century, the women’s movement and a range of socialist, anarchist, and free‐thinking organizations used specialist, minority, or alternative media to challenge and reform dominant ideas about gender and to campaign for an expansion of political opportunity, legal rights or social provision. In the final decades of the twentieth century, there were similar attempts to draw attention to the demands of lesbian, gay, and transgender groups. These alternative media usually had small audiences and struggled to achieve financial viability. Over time, however, their content often influenced and informed mainstream media, and many ideas and experiments were later taken up elsewhere. This chapter explores the gendering of media markets, media debates about changing gender roles brought about by modernity, and the attempts to challenge and resist traditional gender ideologies from the mid‐nineteenth century to the present. It focuses on six European countries – Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Russia – in order to identify the variations created by different levels of economic development, contrasting political frameworks (democracy, fascism, communism and dictatorship) and alternative religious systems (Protestantism, Catholicism, and atheism), as well as a multitude of social and cultural permutations. The chapter is structured around three chronological sections  –  the mid‐nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War I, 1914 to the 1960s, and the 1970s to the present – which, while not neatly fitting every national case study, do capture some of the most important shifts across the period. Despite notable changes over the decades and variations across Europe, the resilience of many assumptions about gender and sexuality remains striking.

­Mid‐nineteenth Century to 1914 In the mid‐nineteenth century, European media environments were still tightly constrained by state censorship, economic inequalities, low levels of literacy, and poor transport networks. The press and periodical markets flourished mainly in areas where industrialization, urbanization, and political liberalism were furthest advanced, particularly in Britain and France. Media production and consumption was dominated by men. Women had less political, social, and cultural power than men, lower rates of literacy and less spending power, and were therefore generally marginal in the considerations of proprietors, editors, and journalists.



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In the second half of the nineteenth century, a number of political, economic, and technological developments transformed national media environments. In a number of countries, the state adopted a more liberal attitude toward the press. In Britain, for example, taxes on publications, paper, and advertisements  –  the so‐called “taxes on knowledge” – were removed between 1853 and 1861, leading to lower prices and rapid growth in the number of newspapers. Between 1856 and 1914, the number of newspapers published in Britain and Ireland rocketed from 274 to over 2,200 (Williams 2010). In Russia, Alexander II’s reformist legislative program of the 1860s encouraged the emergence of a thriving press culture. By the eve of World War I, there were more than 700 Russian‐language newspapers published across the empire, and more than 1,700 different newspapers published each week, including non‐Russian language publications (Brooks 1985, p. 112; McReynolds 1991). There was a similar liberalization in Spain with the Ley Sagasta de Prensa e Imprenta of 1883, while the unification of Italy and Germany created larger national markets with constitutions that enabled a flourishing press debate. Wilke (2000, p. 276) calculates that there were around 4,000 newspaper titles in Germany in 1914, with a combined circulation of some 18–25 million copies (Stöber 2000, p. 147). If changing state attitudes to the public sphere created such new opportunities, economic improvement, driven by industrialization, urbanization, and the growth of global commerce, ensured that there was a growing market for news and entertainment. The middle classes expanded with the growth of professional, administrative and commercial opportunities, and literacy rates improved among the urban working classes as states invested in their education systems. In the final decades of the century, a recognizably modern consumer culture emerged, based on branded advertising and new retailing developments, such the department store, and often aimed largely at women. Technological developments, including the introduction of the telegraph, photography, the telephone, rotary printing, and the railway, enabled news and information to be collected, printed, and circulated more rapidly and efficiently than ever before. By the end of the nineteenth century, the pre‐conditions for the modern media environment had been put in place across much of Europe. These developments encouraged media producers to develop new business models and try different ways of reaching mass audiences. Rethinking the gender dynamics of certain publication forms would play a central role in this process of experimentation. The mid‐nineteenth century media sector had long been defined by gender. Traditional dualistic notions of gender, reinforced by religious and scientific patterns of thought, led publishers to target different types of content at men and women. The Ladies Mercury, launched in London in 1693, was perhaps the earliest identification of women as a separate, and coherent, market for periodicals. In the eighteenth century, several women’s magazines were established across Europe that focused predominantly on the domestic world, fashion, beauty, health, and cookery, and catered for elite or middle‐class readers. The first German women’s magazines – Die Patriotinn (The Female Patriot, 1724) and Die vernünftigen Tadlerinnen (The Reasonable Female Criticizers, 1725–1726) – were launched in the 1720s to support the moral and aesthetic education of their female readership. Over the century, more than 100 different German‐speaking women’s magazines were founded, addressing somewhat small and regional audiences (Brandes 1988; Mix 1999; Schuhmann 1980; Weckel 1998, pp. 599–605). The possibility of including engraved fashion plates, displayed in the influential British publication Lady’s Magazine (1770), led to the emergence of an important and long‐lasting genre of fashion and style magazines. This included Modne ezhemesiachnoe izdanie, ili Biblioteka dlia damskogo

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tualeto (Fashion monthly, or Reading for Ladies Couture, 1779) in Russia, Cabinet des Modes (1785), La Belle Assemblée (1806), and Petit Courrier des Dames (1821) in France, Allgemeine Moden‐Zeitung (1799) in Leipzig, the Corriere delle Dame (1804) in Italy, Wiener Modenzeitung (1816) in Vienna, and El Correo de las Damas (1833) in Spain. These publications served a small urban audience of elite women with the money and leisure to follow the latest fashions coming from Paris. From the mid‐nineteenth century, the women’s magazine market diversified and commercialized as the market for periodicals grew and an expansion of consumer advertising provided new sources of revenue. Improved printing techniques enabled illustrations to be reproduced more cheaply and efficiently, and pictures of fashions, interior spaces, and domestic goods reinforced the consumerist ethos of the magazines, as did the increasingly elaborate advertisements from the new department stores and high street retailers. Serialized fiction and advice columns became important features. Most women’s magazines worked within conventional expectations of femininity, while tailoring their content to the class and status positions of their imagined readers. In some publications, the moral and instructional dimension was particularly strong. The Catholic periodicals of Spain and Italy, such as La Madre Católica and La Figlia dell’Inmaculata, sought to encourage religious devotion and social stability, and offered fashion advice that conformed to Christian teaching and the conventions of modesty. Yet, if the general tendency of commercial women’s magazines in this period was to consolidate notions of gender difference, they could, at times, broaden the horizons of their readers and offer educational content. As the historian Christine Ruane (2001) has observed, the Russian women’s fashion periodical Moda: Zhurnal dlia svetskikh liudei (Fashion: A Journal for Society People), published in St Petersburg between 1851 and 1861, framed its discussion of fashion within the wider political and philosophical debates of the day, such as the links between Russia and “the West,” and the place of women within modern society. Likewise, Carolyn Marks (2001) has noted that Russian women’s magazines of the 1880s offered their readership a plurality of images of the modern Russian woman, such as the female doctor or student. They thus helped “to legitimise a pro‐education and pro‐equality agenda” (Marks 2001, p. 113). “Family magazines,” which addressed women as part of a wider domestic audience, also provided women with information that exceeded their narrow, conventional sphere. The influential German publication Die Gartenlaube (The Arbor, 1853–1944), whose circulation reached almost 400,000 copies in the 1870s, provided coverage of foreign countries, technological developments, and social problems, and thereby helped partly to compensate for the poor education received by women at that time (Wischermann 1983). Die Gartenlaube also put a variety of gender issues on its agenda, often with a progressive tendency, for example, in supporting gainful employment for women (Kinnebrock 1996; Wischermann 1983). The flourishing magazine market also opened up new job opportunities. Since only women were expected to be familiar with the female sphere and able to give proper advice to female audiences, women’s magazines were increasingly edited by female writers. More far‐reaching, in terms of wider cultural prominence, was the gradual incorporation of women, and “women’s issues,” into previously male‐dominated newspapers. As financial investment in the newspaper business increased, in response to the growth of markets and the integration of new technologies, competition intensified. Neglected female readers offered an obvious means of boosting circulation, especially as they were, or were perceived to be, the major spenders of the domestic budget. They became the prime targets for advertisers. The first daily newspaper proprietors to commercialize the female market were the Frenchmen Alphonse and Moïse Millaud, who launched Le Petit



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Journal in 1863. As Jane Chapman (2013) has shown, Le Petit Journal’s “pioneering popularism” was characterized by the introduction of “feature style content that had previously been the reserve of women’s magazines and other weekly periodicals,” and was written in an accessible, conversational, and intimate style (p. 31). The paper included human interest stories, gossip columns and serialized fiction as part of the drive to appeal to a female audience. By 1886, the paper had reached the unprecedented circulation of 1 million copies a day (Schwarz 1998, p. 29) and inspired a range of imitators, such as Le Matin (1884). A similarly successful example of what the noted English critic Matthew Arnold described as the “new journalism” was Alfred Harmsworth’s Daily Mail. It was launched in Britain on 4 May 1896, and Harmsworth was determined to broaden the traditional remit of the British newspaper, for instance by including a page of features. This was heralded as the “Daily Magazine, An Entirely New Idea in Morning Journalism,” which would provide every week “matter equivalent to a sixpenny monthly.” Harmsworth ensured that space was explicitly marked out for women’s interests. “A Note from the Editor” in the first issue made a firm commitment to female readers: “Movements in a woman’s world – that is to say, changes in dress, toilet matters, cookery, and home matters generally – are as much entitled to receive attention as nine out of ten of the matters which are treated of in the ordinary daily paper. Therefore, two columns are set aside exclusively for ladies.” All over Europe, proprietors, and editors tried new formats and approaches to tap the potential of an expanded reading public, and to incorporate women into the audience. In Germany, this process of popularization was led by the so‐called “general advertiser” (General‐Anzeiger) a mass‐based newspaper format that broadened its range of topics, avoided controversial political issues, and offered extremely low subscription rates (Koszyk 1966). These and other papers launched supplements covering women’s interests. In Russia, the magazine Ogonek, launched in 1908 with a diet of fiction, photographs, illustrations, and news, particularly of a sensational or unusual nature, soon reached a circulation of 700,000 copies. This was higher than even the most popular daily newspaper (Brooks 1985, pp. 115–116). In Spain, El Imparcial reached impressive sales by providing varied, useful, and easy to understand information that was partly focused on leisure and entertainment. Middle‐class women were able to read about education, daily life, marriage, and new fashions coming from Paris and London. There was, in short, a widespread blurring of the boundaries between the magazine and the newspaper, with an associated mixing of audiences. These attempts at creating a female market for newspapers culminated in the establishment of newspapers targeted exclusively at women. La Fronde, established by the feminist journalist Marguerite Durand in Paris in 1897, was written, edited, and typeset entirely by women and for a female audience. It reported broadly on politics, society, and culture, with a special interest in “women’s issues” and “women’s perspectives.” Supported by a seven‐million‐franc donation by the prominent Jewish financier Gustave de Rothschild, the paper could afford to experiment, and, thus, offered challenging and varied content, written by a range of talented female journalists (Chapman 2013, pp. 80–81). While encouraging a reconsideration of the standard representation of women’s issues in French journalism, the paper ultimately struggled and closed in 1905 (it was briefly revived in 1914 and 1926.) La Fronde’s example inspired Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) to establish a similar but more commercial venture in Britain. The Daily Mirror launched on 2 November 1903 with an all‐female staff under the original editor of the Mail’s women’s columns, Mary Howarth. The first issue declared that the paper would not be “a mere bulletin of fashion, but a reflection of women’s interests, women’s thought, women’s work,” covering “the daily news of the world” and “literature and art,” as well

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as the “sane and healthy occupations of domestic life.” The mainstream market, however, was not yet ready for a women’s daily newspaper, at least not in this form. The Mirror struggled to find a consistent tone and identity, and seemed caught between being a magazine and a newspaper. As its circulation plummeted, the Mirror was rescued only when Northcliffe removed the female staff, handed over the editorship to the experienced journalist Hamilton Fyfe, and turned it into an illustrated paper. It became a major success and was the first daily to rival the readership levels of the Mail. Although no longer written by women, or marketed exclusively to them, the Mirror maintained a distinctly “feminine” identity and continued to attract a much higher percentage of female readers than any other British paper until well into the 1930s (Bingham 2004). If newspapers written by and for women proved difficult to sustain in the commercial mainstream, the principle of explicitly appealing to female readers had become well established by the early decades of the twentieth century. Other publications targeted female readers for ideological rather than commercial reasons. From the mid‐nineteenth century, the emergence in many countries of a women’s movement demanding greater political and civil rights, led to the establishment of numerous periodicals challenging conventional gender ideas. Some of the earliest publications emerged in Britain. Between the 1850s and 1930s female proprietors published over 150 political periodicals aimed at women readers in Britain, including publications such as the English Woman’s Journal, Women’s Suffrage Journal, Votes for Women and Common Cause. As Michelle Tusan (2005) has shown, this press played an important role in creating and supporting a “modern female political culture,” in transmitting information and ideas to their politically active and engaged audience, and in shaping the  identities of the women who read them (p. 148). The suffrage periodicals of the Edwardian period were the most successful examples of the genre, with editors adopting some of the techniques of the “new journalism” and embracing “the sensibility of the commercial marketplace” (Tusan 2005, p. 148) to obtain a wider readership and raise the profile of the movement. Votes for Women was the most widely read with a peak circulation of around 50,000 copies a week in the first decade of the twentieth century. By the final quarter of the nineteenth century, there was a similar proliferation of advocacy writing across much of Europe. In Germany, the women’s movement was organized in many associations ranging from feminist suffrage organizations and small labor unions to Catholic and Protestant charity clubs. Many of these associations created their own advocacy journals: between the foundation of the German Empire in 1871 and the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933 at least 366 different advocacy journals existed, and 85 of them (25%) were feminist magazines (Kinnebrock 2008, p. 141). However, the thematic focus of these journals was bound to the aims of the association publishing them. In consequence, most of the advocacy journals covered only a single issue and circulated mainly among interested association members. Significant circulation and public impact were reserved only to those advocacy journals that covered a wide range of female issues and obtained some financial support. A notable example is the journal Die Gleichheit (The Equality, 1892–1923) that was financed by the Socialist party and reached a circulation of more than 100 000 copies at the beginning of the twentieth century (Gerhard and Wischermann 1988, Kinnebrock 1999). In Italy, La Donna was another significant forum for the women’s movement, providing particularly valuable space to school teachers and educationalists in their fight for equality. As the movement spread across Europe, advocacy journals were one of the main channels for the dissemination of ideas and activism. In Italy, for example, publications such as Vita Femminile and Tribuna Ilustrada often reported on struggles over voting rights, equal



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pay, and education in other countries. By 1905, a twofold movement had emerged also in Russia, with one focus on women’s suffrage and the other connected to socialism. The suffrage movement took to writing collective letters to the mainstream press, such as the one sent in the aftermath of “Bloody Sunday” – when imperial forces killed people who were demonstrating against Tsar Nicholas II – to Russkiia vedomosti (Russian News) in February 1905. It also launched its own journals, such as Zhenskii vestnik (The Women’s Messenger), the first journal dedicated to the discussion of the “woman question,” and Soiuz zhenshchin (Union of Women), the publication of the Russian Union for Women’s Equality that ran for only two years between 1907 and 1909, and the weekly Zhenskoe delo (The Women’s Cause) that replaced the defunct union publication (Stites 1990). If the women’s movement had only limited legislative success before 1914, the vibrant periodical culture did much to define, disseminate, and make acceptable, ideas of gender equality. The political and social turbulence created by World War I would shift these ideas into often radically new political and social environments.

­1914 to the 1960s World War I and its aftermath unleashed a range of ideological forces – ethnic nationalism, communism, fascism, anti‐imperialism – that would both redraw the map of Europe and alter the political and social dynamics of all European nations. The war itself destabilized gender hierarchies, if only temporarily, as many women undertook new roles while men moved to the front‐lines. More lasting was the introduction of new constitutions and the establishment of a range of new political regimes. In many places women were enfranchised for the first time and obtained long‐sought political and civic rights. The “flapper,” meanwhile, personified the social and sexual opportunities that were opening up for some women. The spread of fascist systems, by contrast, saw a fresh veneration of women’s domestic and maternal roles. If fascism was largely destroyed by the Allied victory during World War II, ideological conflict remained during the Cold War when competing notions of gender, family, and sexuality were interwoven with political debate. This period also witnessed the emergence of the modern mass media environment. In many places, daily newspapers reached their peak circulations as the habit of press readership spread throughout the working classes. The primacy of print was finally challenged with the emergence of new media forms: cinema, radio and, later, television. Media producers sought to adapt traditionally gendered genres to these new media. At the same time, media encouraged, and provided a forum for, the rethinking of gender identities. Political parties, civic associations and social movements all used these new media opportunities to defend and disseminate their visions of modernity, and in the process, extend the debate about gender. Nowhere was the relationship between political change and the establishment of new gender practices more distinct than in the former Russian Empire. After seizing power in October 1917, the new Bolshevik government faced the enormous task of creating the world’s first socialist state from the remnants of what had previously been a rather underdeveloped capitalist country. This was a project that was not simply about the reorganization of government, economics, and social relations, but it was the reforging of humanity to create the ideal “new Soviet person.” Women were of particular concern for, and therefore a target of, the Bolshevik regime because they were seen to be the bastions of superstition, folk lore and “irrational” religious belief. They were also regarded

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slaves of the domestic sphere, constrained by traditional gender roles, and the victims of capitalism that had forced them into loveless marriages for the sake of financial stability. The poster was a key medium for re‐educating women, and it had an ubiquitous presence in factories, schools, and clubs across the Soviet Union, for instance, in specific anti‐religious campaigns, and the organized efforts to encourage hospital births and breast feeding. As the 1920s progressed and literacy rates increased, a number of magazines were produced that were aimed specifically at a female readership, most notably Rabotnitsa (The Woman Worker) and Krest’ianka (The Peasant Woman). Both magazines were full of articles, stories, photographs, and features designed to help the average woman to turn from a formerly tsarist subject to fully‐fledged Soviet citizen (Attwood 1999, p. 26). Unlike contemporary publications in Western societies that often focused on the home and treated the domestic space as a specifically female sphere, Soviet magazines aimed to break down the distinction between public and private. If women were to be engaged in the task of building socialism, they would have to participate fully in the world of work and political activism, and, in turn, be released from the “slavery” of domestic chores. These chores would, according to the rhetoric, become shared responsibilities, as childcare, laundry, and dining were transformed into communal activities rather than being the burden of individual women. Cinema was another tool used by the state in its effort to create its perfect female citizen (Attwood and Kelly 1998). A typical example from this era was Ioganson’s and Ermler’s 1926 film Kat’ka the Reinette (Apple Seller). It told the story of a young woman who, recently arrived in Leningrad, falls pregnant by a cad, only to reach a stage by the end of the movie in which she has secured her dream job in a factory, and has become an independent woman, not needing men to support herself or her child. Yet, by the mid‐1930s, media were advocating a very different model of femininity as greater attention was paid to the woman’s role as a mother, as on the private space more generally. Behavior that had previously been discounted as bourgeois, such as an interest in fashion and cosmetics, became wrapped up with new ideas of idealized femininity. In line with Stalin’s declaration in 1935 that life had become better, publications became increasingly concerned with advocating the joys of living in the Soviet Union. They advocated representations of women workers who lived in well‐ appointed, new apartments with their families, or smiling and well‐fed rural women who had seized the opportunities offered by the state to become tractor drivers on the collective farm. In such cases, these ideal women seamlessly negotiated the dual roles of being an exemplary Soviet worker and the perfect Soviet mother, both of which were now cast as integral parts of a woman’s social duty. In Germany, too, gender was intimately bound up with political debates and discourses of modernity. Many advocacy journals closed after 1919 when the new Weimar Republic granted women the vote; the post‐war economic crisis and the hyperinflation of 1923 led to a further wave of closures. At the same time, having been enfranchised, women were increasingly targeted as voters. The political parties put considerable investment into new women’s magazines which covered a wide range of (popular) topics, using modern journalistic formats and photography. The feminist discourse, however, which had originally evolved through debates within associations, no longer developed from the grassroots; instead, the party line was communicated “top down” in these magazines (Kinnebrock 2009, p. 293). In the period of relative economic and social stability between 1924 and 1929, moreover, a number of popular women’s magazines embraced the principles of modernity concerning layout (Rössler 2009) and gender representations (Wilhelms 1994). They advocated new role models like “the new women” or “the flapper,” young, economically independent women with a lot of leisure



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time and who challenged gender norms by drinking, smoking, and being sexually active – even though, in reality, with the severe gender pay gap, the majority of lower‐ and middle‐class women could not afford the lifestyle of a flapper and conformed, often with some reluctance, to traditional gender conceptions. (Frevert 1986, pp. 176–177). A few special interest magazines moved into more daring territory, such as Die Freundin (The Girlfriend, 1924–1932), aimed at lesbians in Berlin. Such periodicals addressed issues of homosexuality and emancipation, although the majority of their space was devoted to fiction and event notes (Kokula 1994, p. 131). There was a similar preoccupation with female equality and modernity during the  Spanish Second Republic (1931–1939). The republican constitution recognized numerous women’s rights, such as suffrage, the right to work, and divorce, and this was reflected in extensive debates about “modern women” in the Spanish mass media. Women’s inclusion in newspapers, magazines, radio, cinema, and advertising was an expression of their unprecedented participation in public life. Women, such as María Luz Morales and Josefina Carabias, became important voices on the radio, and commercial producers updated traditional genres to the format of romance films and broadcast soap operas. The “modern woman” was subject to considerable criticism too, not only in conservative and Catholic media but also in some anarchist publications such as La Revista Blanca. The latter considered the “new woman” to be bourgeois in her interests and inclinations rather than a worker or a revolutionary seeking radical social change. Radical positions were also endorsed by a proliferation of feminist and advocacy journals, such as Pensamiento Femenino, Mundo Femenino and Cultura Integral y Femenina. The anarchist publication Mujeres Libres was produced completely by women who felt marginalized even within a movement that vindicated civil rights and greater social justice. Such publications opposed the consumerist focus of commercial media aimed at “modern women,” and debated revolution, emancipation, and worker control. In Italy, Germany, and Spain, fascist or dictatorial regimes eventually closed down debates about gender equality, and marginalized positive portrayals of the “modern woman.” In Italy, Catholic publications, such as La Donna Italiana, celebrated submissive and family‐centered femininity, while regime‐approved magazines such as Eva or Lei focused on uncontroversial aspects of leisure and entertainment, rather than politics; Grazia, introduced in 1938, concentrated on fashion and style. In Germany, the National Socialist Party’s (NSDAP) very traditional role conceptions excluding women from party positions and, theoretically, also from professional work and gainful employment, set the tone for the media environment after 1933 (Frevert 1986, pp. 200–211). Franco’s victory over the forces of the Spanish Second Republic in 1939 ended the pluralistic media culture and led to the introduction of very strict forms of censorship in Spain. The ultraconservative ideology of the new regime promoted the return of women to the home and the private sphere. The women’s organization of the far‐right, Falange Española, the Sección Femenina produced publications such as Medina or Teresa, dedicated to the exaltation of traditional values and the idea of being “el ángel del hogar.” Spanish radio, cinema, and advertising likewise foregrounded messages of subordination, both to the church and to masculine authority. The magazine ¡Hola!, established in 1944, encouraged a mass readership to admire the lifestyles of those with power and status. These conservative gender representations were designed to counter not only the ideals of political and social equality espoused by feminist and leftist organizations, but also the alluring notions of feminine glamor, sexuality, and independence portrayed in Hollywood cinema, embodied by global stars such as Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, and Mae West.

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While censorship and media control could contain such ideas in the short term, it became increasingly difficult to deny their power once political circumstances altered. The defeat of the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany during World War II enabled the return of a more pluralistic and commercialized media culture in those territories, although the emergence of the Cold War and the division of Europe into “East” and “West” brought new political and ideological divisions, again with gendered dimensions. In the West, modernity was increasingly envisioned in terms of unprecedented material affluence and individual ownership. While in many nations a greater number of women moved into the labor market, they were still routinely addressed either in their private roles as housewives, mothers, and consumers, or as fans of the growing celebrity and gossip cultures that surrounded cinema, and later television. In Britain, the women’s magazine sector reached its circulation peak in the late 1950s: five out of every six women read at least one woman’s magazine a week, and many were reading several (Pugh 1992, pp. 209–210). Advertising, which helped underpin the spectacular post‐war economic revival, found new channels in particular with the rise of commercial television, and remained a powerful source for conservative representations of the family. In East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) and the Soviet Union, media worked to mobilize their audiences for the socialist system and were critical of the consumerism and individualism of the capitalist West (Tonscheidt 1996, pp. 168– 170). Yet, for all their ideological differences, both, East, and West, witnessed an idealization of the family after the almost incomprehensible violence and turmoil of World War II. In the Soviet Union there was a fundamental shift in notions of masculinity in the late 1940s and 1950s, away from the veneration of military values to an increasing focus on the Soviet man’s role as a father. The relationship between a man and his children came to be cast as both a way of demonstrating the resilience of the Soviet people (after all, here were men who were unbrutalized by their experiences at the front), and a shorthand for indicating just how effectively society had returned to its pre‐war standing. The visual culture of the popular magazines of this period documented this change. Photographs of men interacting with their children, playing games, teaching them sports, or doing gardening together, became commonplace, as did reproductions of fine art that also focused on the place of the man in the home in the aftermath of demobilization. During the 1960s, this post‐war conservatism gradually receded and media environments in different states were transformed by the emergence of a flourishing youth culture that was, based around popular music, more overtly sexualized and critical of authority. British bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones generated a global following and embodied new models of masculinity based on irreverence and creativity. New youth subcultures emerged, such as the “mods,” that involved smart, modern Italian fashion, scooters, and the use of amphetamines. Even in Franco’s Spain, the repercussions of the 1960s cultural change were felt, and calls for social liberalization and modernization became louder. A sign of this gradual shift was the launch of the magazine Telva. While still adhering to traditional values (religion, marriage etc.), the magazine suggested in its first editorial that it also had a duty to inform women of their rights. In spite of these shifts in Spain and elsewhere, gender equality remained very distant. Women often remained marginalized, both in leading popular music groups and in the high‐profile subcultures. Invited to wear modern fashion, such as the “mini‐ skirt,” they were all often judged by their appearance and sexuality. Despite the progress made over the previous century, the rethinking of gender and sexual identities was painfully slow.



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­1970s to the Present It was only in the 1970s that a reinvigorated women’s movement made strong and lasting challenges to traditional notions of gender and sexuality, and fostered a thriving alternative media sector. In this period there also emerged a greater freedom in the discussion of sexuality, and high‐profile campaigns against the repression of “alternative” sexualities. This greater pluralism was reflected in, and encouraged by, the proliferation of media channels, notably radio and television broadcasting with the rise of cable and satellite transmission, followed by the emergence of the internet. More women entered mainstream media, although middle‐class men continued to dominate positions of power. The resurgence of feminism in the 1970s was based on a widespread dissatisfaction with the slow progress toward gender equality after the legislative victories achieved in the early decades of the century. One of the defining features of this phase of the women’s movement was a preoccupation with generating cultural and attitudinal change, rather than just securing legal and civil equality. This brought to the fore the role of the media in entrenching stereotyped views of masculinity and femininity. Betty Friedan’s hugely influential The Feminine Mystique, published in the United States in 1963, soon obtained considerable publicity across Western countries. It identified a dangerous disparity between the idealization of domesticity and motherhood found in women’s magazines and advertising, and the tedious and unfulfilling reality experienced by many women: this yawning gap left many women deeply frustrated and unhappy. A journalist herself, Friedan portrayed women’s magazines as a potential danger rather than a source of entertainment and support. Other feminists focused on media’s objectification of the female body, protesting against the pin‐up and beauty contest culture that had become entrenched in mainstream culture during the post‐war decades. The disruption of the televised “Miss World contest” in London in November 1970, when feminists flour‐bombed the host Bob Hope, was an early example of activists trying to create “media events” to communicate their messages. Mainstream media often responded with hostility and suspicion, mobilizing the image of the “bra‐burner” to ridicule female campaigners. Throughout the 1970s, a wide range of feminist groups across Europe developed searching critiques of mainstream media, campaigned for media organizations to change their policy on the coverage of women and women’s issues, and demanded that journalists give a higher profile to issues such as rape and sexual violence. Deeply entrenched sexist practices, such as the “male gaze” mainstream cinema, and the unthinking use of male pronouns, were exposed (Mulvey 1975). As in the late nineteenth century, there also emerged a proliferation of activist, advocacy, and alternative publications to provide a space for radical thought and fresh perspectives. In Germany, for example, Courage (1976–1984) and Emma (since 1977) reached impressive circulations of around 70,000 readers (Geiger and Weigel 1981, p. 231). Although competitors, the thematic foci of the two advocacy journals were similar: they addressed different forms of discrimination (in the public as well as the private sphere), domestic violence, the legalization of abortion, self‐determined sexuality and female health, and the development of a “truly female” culture and way of life. Alongside these feminist issues, topics raised by other social movements were also debated, including environmental damage, peace, human rights and exploitation under capitalist rule. The editorial approaches of the two journals differed, however: whereas Courage tried to be an open forum for women (and therefore articles were often written by laywomen), Emma was produced by professional female journalists and used strategies of campaign journalism like sensationalism (Geiger and Weigel 1981, pp. 231–232). Similar magazines emerged across Europe. In Britain, Spare

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Rib (1972–1993) was the most influential and reached a peak circulation of 20 000 copies. It combined news reporting with features on a broad range of topics, from feminist ­history to hair care to putting up shelves. In Spain, Franco’s death in 1975 heralded the emergence of new, more progressive publishing ventures. Vindicación feminista, published in Barcelona between 1976 and 1979, explored feminism in all its aspects. Dunia magazine, established the year before, aimed at a mainstream audience but nevertheless covered many feminist topics and insisted that intelligence and femininity were two concepts that must never be separated. Unlike previous generations, feminist media activity was not restricted to print ­anymore. Numerous feminist films and documentaries were produced. Notable early examples were the Italian film L’aggettivo donna (1971) that explored women’s “double burden” as workers and housewives, and Für Frauen. 1 Kapitel (1971), directed by Christina Perincioli, examined a women’s strike in Berlin. In the Soviet Union, where feminist activity remained restricted, cinema provided a forum for an influential examination of conflicting pressures faced by Soviet women. Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, which became the country’s first Oscar‐winning picture in 1980, told the tale of three women who moved to the capital in 1957 – during the heyday of Soviet optimism – and who proceed to gain an education, fall in love, and start their careers. Let down by the men in their lives, it soon becomes clear that for all their success at work, education, and having a career, it was not a path to self‐fulfillment. As James von Geldern (2015) noted, Katya, the lead character, “had to carry the load at work and at home, cooking, cleaning, coping with inadequate day care and inadequate food and consumer supplies … she had the right to succeed, but not the support to do so.” Despite differences of their political systems, Western and Eastern European women still shared many frustrations. Alongside, and often in partnership with these feminist movements, emerged a gay and lesbian (and later transgender) rights movement that created a print and visual culture of its own. Often taking inspiration from the “Stonewall riots” in the United States in 1969, a range of “gay liberation” movements emerged across Europe in the early 1970s. As with feminism, periodicals and advocacy journals provided vital means for debate, for disseminating ideas, and for consolidating shared identities. In Britain, Gay News, established in 1972, provided a focal point for the movement. It soon had a circulation of over 20,000 copies, was filled with several pages of advertising and listings of events for the gay community, and was stocked by the nation’s leading mainstream newsagent, W.H. Smith (Weeks 1990, pp. 220–222). During the 1980s, its position was taken up by the Gay Times that, at the time of writing, is still thriving. Despite a solid tradition of gay and lesbian magazines in the Weimar Republic and in West Germany, it was a movie that initiated public debates on gay rights in Germany. Rosa von Praunheim’s taboo‐breaking documentary It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives (1970) was a milestone in the organization of the gay liberation movement in West Germany and processes of consciousness‐raising within West German society. Slowly but surely, the ideas of feminist and LGBT movements transformed mainstream media. Commercial women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan, a successful US import with editions across Europe, increasingly assumed their readers wanted (and expected) to pursue careers and gain control over their sexuality. Strong, independent female characters became more prominent in television shows and films while artists such as Madonna created new opportunities for assertive and sexually provocative women in the popular music industry. Newspapers broadened the remit of their women’s pages and provided more detailed and nuanced coverage of domestic violence, sexual harassment and women’s health. These tendencies were reinforced by the growing number of women in the media industry and their gradual rise into positions of authority. In 1976, the Italian



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screenwriter and director Lina Wertmuller became the first woman to be nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards for the film Pasqualino Settebellezze (although there would be no female recipient until Kathryn Bigelow in 2009, for The Hurt Locker). In the late 1980s, Wendy Henry and Rosie Boycott became the first female editors of British newspapers since the all‐female Daily Mirror in 1903. Gay characters and themes took longer to emerge, although by the end of the twentieth century, television programs such Queer as Folk (Great Britain, 1999) brought explicit gay sex to mainstream audiences, while the Oscar‐winning Brokeback Mountain (2005) knocked down further barriers. For all the transformative impact of feminism and the gay rights campaign, however, another prominent development of the final decades of the century was the sexualization of the media environment and the spread of pornography, generally aimed at a male, heterosexual gaze. The gradual liberalization of censorship regimes, and the increasingly intense competition for popular markets led to a gradual pushing back of boundaries limiting sexual content. Nude pin‐ups entered the mainstream: by the mid‐1970s, the British soft‐pornography magazines Mayfair, Penthouse and Men Only, all had circulations of over 400,000 copies while the topless “Page 3 girl” became the inescapable visual symbol of The Sun, Britain’s best‐selling tabloid daily paper (Bingham 2014; Collins 1999). There was a similar tendency in post‐Franco Spain with Interviú magazine. Established in 1976, it regularly featured nudity on its front pages. At the cinema, mainstream films such as Last Tango in Paris (1971), Straw Dogs (1971), and Emmanuelle (1974) featured graphic sexuality while pornographic films, and later videos, circulated widely in more restricted circles. Along with such explicit sexual imagery came an increasingly insistent idealization of the slim, toned, and hairless female body in visual media, fashion, advertising, and celebrity culture. Many women felt increasing pressure to aspire to a barely sustainable body image, and women’s magazines filled their pages with advice about dieting, exercise, and the management of appearance, often in the service of following the latest celebrity trend. For all the new freedoms obtained by women, and represented in media, new burdens were imposed too. The proliferation of television channels and print media publications in the final decades of the twentieth century was taken to an entirely new level by the emergence of the internet, the first truly global media network. In the early twenty‐first century, there is a dazzling diversity of media content, and almost every interest and campaign finds its niche. The impact of feminism has led mainstream media to finally embrace notions of gender equality and sexual pluralism at various levels. Women have greater visibility and authority in media industries than ever before. Yet the residual power of entrenched gender stereotypes is considerable. Genres based on dualistic notions of gender have often remained profitable for media producers, and the sexualization of the female body remains a defining characteristic of the media and advertising. Men still outnumber women in the most prestigious and influential areas of the media. For all the media’s fascination with modernity and change, in the field of gender it is difficult to ignore the troubling echoes of the past.

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Ethnic Minorities and the Media

A Struggle for Voice, Self, and Community? Christian Schwarzenegger, Gabriele Falböck, Merja Ellefson, Irati Agirreazkuenaga, Alicia Ferrández Ferrer, Heike Graf, and Marina Yanglyaeva ­Introduction – An Incomplete History of a Fragmented and Moving Target Minority media, their use and production, and the representation of minorities in media have a long history. Also, the scholarship on minority media has a rich tradition and has intensified keeping pace with the increase of the phenomenon. Browne and Uribe‐ Jongbloed (2013) describe how scholarship on minority media has intensified in corre­ spondence to social developments such as the civil rights movements, increased transnational migration, and the greater availability of inexpensive technologies: “Simply put, the existence of more and more minority media, combined with a growing recogni­ tion of the minority presence in various societies, has alerted scholars to a form of com­ munication that demands greater attention” (p. 1; see also Brantner and Herczeg 2013; Deuze 2006; Johnson 2010). In this chapter, we examine the emergence, development, and social role of minority media in various European countries. In doing so, the lens through which we read minority media is their communicative function as a platform for minorities’ self‐ articulation and its consequences for expression of cultural and political identities. Furthermore, we illustrate that minority media serve both as a voice of minor­ ity communities for a more inclusive and just representation (Georgiou 2013) while also contributing to a sense of community, and cultural and political belonging. Doing so allows one to focus on commonalities of the media genre under investigation and to, then, identify peculiar strategies to achieve the goals related to minority media under specific historical and political constellations. However, by default, such a chapter has to remain incomplete. We do not intend to and cannot cover the entirety of minority media in European communication history. Instead, this chapter draws on selective findings on minority media in Spain, the UK, Germany, Austria, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. These countries offer a selec­ tion from the south through central to northern and eastern Europe. They include the

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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special case of the UK, with its rich colonial past and many spoken minority voices, as well as Russia which despite being a part of Europe simultaneously remained its adver­ sary in previous historical constellations. Additionally, we stress the case of a temporary minority status as a politically active and motivated minority group of Europeans abroad during times of crisis: minority media in exile. The political and cultural frameworks for the minority media in question are divergent, heterogeneous, and make visible the diver­ sity of political realities in the European context. The term “minority,” however, comes with historical baggage and poses challenges for its analytical application. Minority is used to describe different social groups based on their ethnicity, language, religion, gender, or sexual orientation to name a few poten­ tial markers for minority status. Some definitions also differentiate between “visible minorities,” foremost in the context of ethnicity, and not ostensibly visible ones. The term minority is neither used coherently in European countries nor throughout time. Furthermore, there is an important difference between formally recognized minorities in a legal and political sense and a rather colloquial attribution of minority status. Citizenship, residency, or formal minority/indigenous status are linked to rights and opportunities, including the access to media (Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed 2013; Deuze 2006; Georgiou 2013; Weber‐Menges 2006). Another important aspect is whether or not members of a minority assert themselves as such and voice their status by demanding rights and recognition or whether the “minority label” is applied to a group of people by the majority. According to Georgiou (2003), invisibility and non‐ recognition increase symbolic exclusion and decrease social and cultural service provi­ sion toward such groups. Further, in research, it is common to distinguish between sub‐categories of indigenous people, national minorities, and migrants. For example, in historic Spain, the term minority was mainly used for the Roma, while in 1920s Estonia, it covered all non‐Estonians. Sweden, Finland, and Estonia have been perceived as homogeneous societies, despite their multiple ethnic minorities with long historical roots. Ethnicity in Russia, by contrast, is a more complicated matter. In imperial Russia, state identity depended primarily on religion and loyalty to the tsar, whereas language or culture were secondary factors. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in turn, was not based on ethnicity but on communist ideology containing elements of internationalism (Shirokogorov 1923). The colonial past of European states, changing state formations and political systems have disrupted and altered states’ ethnic composition several times. The countries dis­ cussed in this chapter have gone through multiple transitions i.e. from former empires, colonial powers, or colonies to multi‐ethnic states, nation‐states with large ethnic majori­ ties, and authoritarian as well as democratic regimes. Some countries have experienced multiple regime changes. The collapse of the Habsburg Empire after World War I reversed the (com)position of majorities and minorities in the now sovereign successor states of the former empire. Shifting borders affected the ethnic composition and increased the number of Russians from the pre‐Soviet Empire’s almost 50% to the cur­ rent Russian federation’s roughly 80% (Pearson 1983; Zakharov 2008). However, with its 176 nationalities (146 in 1989), 21 of which are national‐state entities, Russia is still characterized by ethnic diversity. European countries are affected differently by migra­ tion within and from outside of Europe and are, thus, characterized by consequences of a variety of diasporas. Hence, “majority” and “minority” are moving targets for analysis and reading contemporary sources or literature from specific national contexts requires sensitive and rigorous scrutiny.



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­Emergence and Development of Minority Media Media markets are still largely congruent with the borders of nation‐states. This holds true in particular in relation to the pre‐digital and pre‐satellite media era. Benedict Anderson (2006) links the formation of national identities and the imagination of com­ munity within nations to the national circulation of media. Simon Cottle (2000) sum­ marizes that media even occupy a key role in the play of cultural power as it is in and through representations … that members of the media audience are variously invited to construct a sense of who “we” are in relation to who “we” are not, whether as “us” and “them,” “insider” and “outsider,” “colonizer” and “colonized,” “citizen” (p. 2). The increase of transnational migration from the 1960s onwards and the official rec­ ognition of national minorities put the idea of homogenous nations and coherently imagined communities in them to a test. Challenging nation‐states’ imagined homoge­ neity, they turn migration debates about minority rights into battles of collective memo­ ries and into struggles over interpretations of common pasts. In today’s multicultural and multi‐ethnic societies, this is a quite obvious  –  yet, by some, heavily contested  – observation, but it also holds true for societies of the past. Arnold and Schneider (2007) conclude that ethnic minority media provide the opportunity for minorities and immi­ grants to maintain their cultural heritage, identity, and language, and to obtain a sense of orientation in the host country. Seen from this perspective, ethnic media serve as a safe haven from social hostility (Brantner and Herczeg 2013, p. 215). They can become vessels in a struggle for authentic, inclusive, or pluralistic representation, not only to be seen through the others’ – or the majorities’– eye. “Ethnic minority media can, there­ fore, be taken to stand as an example of the developments in late‐modern cultures, including the negotiations and contestations of citizenship, politics of identity and the roles, possibilities and limitations of journalism. The relationship of ethnic minorities with the state, with the dominant national groups in that state and with the media is at the cutting edge of the conceptualization of citizenship and identity in postmodern, mediated society” (Pietikäinen 2008, p. 174). The type of media referred to in this chapter receives several labels in the literature. While there are some overlaps and common features, the concepts of “ethnic media,” “migrant media,” “minority media,” “minority‐language media” and “diaspora media” highlight different features in the same broader concept of minority groups’ articulation in the public sphere. They differ with regard to the status and features of the minorities involved, and the audience they target. The lines between these categories are blurred. Despite systemic differences and differences in the degree of diversity, minority media’s problems are similar. Referring to Moring’s (2007) concept of a media market’s func­ tional and institutional completeness, minority media often have fewer outlets and may consist only of limited content formats, such as news and children’s programs. Therefore, they tend to be institutionally and functionally less complete than majority media. Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed (2013) identify five major factors that have shaped the development of minority media over the last century, all of which are still relevant today and will – in different degrees – become visible in the historical examples discussed in this chapter: technology, economic support, social movements, perceived utility and suspicion. Technology was particularly important with regard to the increase of media outlets and the expansion of broadcasting reception capability (Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed 2013, p. 5). Historically, most minority media were print media. This is not surprising. Since the dawn of mass communication and for the most part of European media history, print

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was the only available means of long‐distance public expression. The comparatively new media of broadcast radio and television were more difficult to access, to command, and to finance. With equipment becoming less expensive and more intuitive to use, and with the spread of cable television, which drastically decreased transmission costs (Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed 2013, p. 5), electronic media became more accessible. The inter­ net revolution since the 1990s and especially the proliferation of digital online commu­ nication in Web 2.0 brought significant changes once again. The lowered threshold of accessing the public made it easier to reach out but also more challenging to find and sustain public attention. Web publishing has enabled the creation of online newspapers, radio, and video services by and for ethnic minorities, and made it easier to reach out to an audience. “Personal” media social networking sites have broadened the possibilities for those communities to enter into a wide range of public forums allowing for more interactions over long distances. Economic support. Historically, minority media have often been short‐lived and under‐ financed; endeavors depended on the devotion of a committed few. This holds true for both print and radio. Television, for the most part, was not affordable to most linguistic minority service operators. Minorities, just as majorities, are fragmented by age, gender, class, political affiliations and, at times, even by language, which diminishes economic viability in a commercial media system. Audiences may be small or too marginal to attract advertisers, and publishers may not be able to provide the reliable circulation numbers required by advertisers. Only when a minority becomes “economically attractive,” as Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed (2013) put it, thanks to its size – i.e. Turks in Germany, Arabic speakers in France  –  advertisers could be interested in supporting a minority group, yet, often not with sufficient means. High production and distribution costs due to dispersed populations and limited revenue posed economic obstacles to the prolifera­ tion of minority media, leading to the use of volunteers, hourly‐paid staff, and freelanc­ ers (Husband 2005). Since minority media production is not financially rewarding, journalists in these media are often only able to work as semi‐professionals and need to have other jobs. This is the economic dilemma of minority media. As they are often not self‐sustaining, for minorities to voice their legitimate positions, they depend on the sup­ port and acquiescence of the majority. And though economic profitability played no role in the USSR (Lauk 2005; Wolfe 2005), this only proves the rule. The example of Spain is typical for the development of minority media in Western European immigration states. The growing number of migrants and favorable economic conditions promoted interest of transnational and national corporations’ in minority‐oriented businesses. With this shift, advertising patterns in minority media changed. Advertisements for large national and transnational companies seeking migrant consumers replaced advertise­ ments for small local ethnic businesses (Ferrández Ferrer 2014). Government support for ethnic and linguistic minority newspapers and, even more so, broadcasting has increased in the last couple of decades (Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed 2013, p. 6) and became an important economic factor. This is true both for national governments and for the European Union or the Council of Europe. However, govern­ ment funding also has a possible downside: the more prominent it becomes for the financial survival of minority media, the more vulnerable they may be to changes in the political climate and of political sentiments. Social movements have been of great importance in their support for the development of media outlets for “the voiceless,” which has included linguistic minority groups. The establishment of community radio services in the 1970s and 1980s was frequently brought about in part by means of pressure applied by various “power to the people”



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groups that had become disenchanted with the scant and (in their eyes) often biased coverage of their activities by mainstream media. Perceived utility, as a factor for the development of minority media, refers to the rela­ tion between minority media and their perception by “mainstream” society. Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed (2013) highlight that minority media were of minor interest in most nations and their utility was not even considered an issue throughout most of their his­ tory. But with the growth of minority media services in recent decades, accompanied by claims from their supporters for public (usually government) financial assistance, also increased public awareness of their existence, which has led to questions regarding the need for any such support. Such questioning often appears to rest on two assumptions: that the services reach relatively few people and that minority languages themselves are of little use in the “modern” world – especially the economic world. Furthermore, the availability of such services might actually hinder the integration or “assimilation” of minority groups. This argument clearly speaks from a majority perspective. Historical examples show that minorities are vulnerable to political changes, as regimes may foster, discourage, or suppress the use of minority languages, and hinder or facilitate minority media production. Authoritarian regimes may ban minority media, whereas assimilation­ ist policies in democracies may work more indirectly by stigmatizing the use of minority languages (i.e. Ellefson 2007; Glaser 2007). Political sentiments toward minorities, and the fear of parallel societies and social disintegration result in political positions in favor of the legitimacy of minority media and of minority voices in the public sphere. Suspicion, is a factor which has affected many minorities at various times. Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed (2013) build the factor suspicion on examples from the United States where, due to the spread of communism, Russian language media were under suspicion during the Cold War, which culminated in McCarthyism. However, similar attitudes can be found also in the European context with regard to the use of minority languages and the fear that minorities will not only voice their opinions but also actively undermine the rule of the state by acting as agents of subversion. This was especially true for Jewish publications or Basque‐language minority publications in Spain.

­ he Beginning of a Long History of Identity T Management: the Representation of the “We” in Disintegrating Empires Ethnic, indigenous, and linguistic minority media have been present, if not all that visi­ ble, for more than 200 years. For instance, from 1735 onward, various periodicals in Welsh appeared in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century in Wales (Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed 2013, p. 1). In the long history of minority (language) media, however, the social positions, and the role of minorities and their mediated artic­ ulation have never been stable, but they reflected the diversity of cultural melting pots and political transformations. Gustafsson (1998) sees the nineteenth‐century states as conglomerate states, consisting of territories annexed at different periods of time and governed by different rules. In such states, hegemony or dominance did not necessarily stem from a majority population, and it was not necessarily minorities that were sup­ pressed: the Baltic Germans and Finnish Swedes, despite their small numbers, did not struggle to have their voices heard. They were the ruling elites, and in their imperial provinces, their papers dominated local press markets until the turn of the century. When

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Estonia and Finland became independent in 1917/1918, these former elites had the resources to protect their interests, to be transformed into formally recognized minority positions and to sustain their own publications (Tommila and Salokangas 2000). The Jews and the Sami, on the other hand, are examples of marginalized groups living dispersed among several majority populations. In northern Europe and Russia, the first Jewish and Sami periodicals were founded at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite a harsh tsarist censorship, the Jewish press established itself successfully. Sami publica­ tions in Sweden‐Norway by contrast were short‐lived due to a small population, linguis­ tic diversity, long distances, and limited economic resources (Ijäs 2011, 2012). A minority press was not economically sustainable at the time. Linguistic diversity, how­ ever, also existed among Jews. The first Jewish newspapers were printed in Russian and Hebrew, since the authorities were initially reluctant to license Yiddish publications. However, the Yiddish press in Russia soon outgrew other minority press markets. For example, Der fraynd, the first daily founded in 1903, reached 400,000 readers. A couple of other dailies sold over 100,000 copies, and periodicals were produced even outside the Pale, the western region of imperial Russia (Shneer 2004; Stein 2004). Sami periodi­ cals, on the other hand, sold a mere 200 copies, and the first daily was founded a century later, in 2008, in Norway (Ijäs 2011). However, this is unsurprising as it closely relates to the potential audience size. The Jewish population in the Pale consisted of around 4 to 5 million people, whereas the Sami were counted in the tens of thousands (the current estimate is a total of around 80,000 Sami). As the Russian empire disintegrated, the Pale was divided between several new states. The publishing of Yiddish newspapers continued in the USSR, but the Jewish intelligentsia met the same fate as many others during purges of the 1930s (Veidlinger 2009). The Nazi occupation during World War II shat­ tered Jewish communities and made Yiddish an endangered language. The rise of authoritarian regimes in Spain, Germany, and Estonia during the 1930s put an end to press freedom and had a severe, yet different impact on existing minority media in these countries. In the Third Reich, in particular Jewish and Roma minorities and their media were targeted, next to publications of any prior political opposition groups. However, the Nazi terror in Germany and Austria, and, later, over vast parts of Europe had unforeseen side effects on minority media abroad and caused a temporary proliferation of a special type of minority media – exile publications. For this chapter, we reflect on the example of Austrian German‐language exile media in the USA. In general, exile publications were produced in foreign countries during a period of exile, by and mostly for people in exile. Usually, these publications were written in the language of the homeland while small parts or single columns were published in the language of the host country. The goal of these media was to facilitate the communicative exchange among people in exile (Hardt 1976), to provide information on the lost homeland (e.g. if under Nazi‐repression), to plan the reconstruction and a better future for the homeland, and to observe and provide orientation for living in the host country (Langenbucher and Hausjell 1995; Maas 1990). Since the loss of homeland and the experience of seeking asylum caused dramatic changes of the life‐world, exile publications can be seen as platforms for identity manage­ ment. “We and the others” – the core differentiation in the process of identity formation is negotiated in exile papers and writing became a testimony of their own existence for the authors who faced uncertain futures in foreign lands. Their public voices not only demonstrated that they were “still here” but that there was confidence in a better future. The urge to speak out publicly was strong, hence, no less than 19 exile papers by Austrian émigrés were published in New York City alone.



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Gaby Falböck (2009), using the example of the Austro American Tribune, shows how exile journals map the process of transformation of Austrians in exile and refugees from Austria turning into immigrants in America. In this exile paper published from 1943 until 1948, the sense of belonging shifted. During World War II and the first post‐war year, the authors presented themselves as Austrians. Until 1946, their discourse gave an impression of the struggle of changing identities. With the beginning of 1947, the authors of the Austro American Tribune labeled themselves as emigrants – their hopes for a new and better Austria were dashed, their connection and sense of belonging to Austria broken. Finally, they did not belong to any group but felt like they were sitting in a waiting room, living in an in‐between world (Falböck 2009). This perspective on exile publications and such historical cases provide a template for understanding contem­ porary challenges of (refugee) migration and expatriation, and for people living their lives in in‐between worlds. Meanwhile in Europe, the beginning of Franco’s dictatorship brought an end to the minority press in Spain. The Basque case made the henceforth struggle for minority articulation visible. The Basque‐language (Euskera) publication Escual Herrico Gaseta was founded in 1848 in France, and at the turn of the century, other periodicals appeared also in Spain. These publications were important because Euskera was a spoken lan­ guage, and only Spanish and French were used in writing. Similar to Yiddish, Basque also developed into a literary and media language with the help of newspapers (Sannino 2006; Stein 2004). The development of the Euskera press in Spain was aided by the 1936 approval of the Statute of Autonomy, making Euskera an official language in the Basque country. The first newspaper published entirely in Euskera appeared in 1937, but Franco’s dictatorship put an end to all minority press soon after. Konstantin Päts’ authoritarian regime in Estonia did not target minorities. The Baltic German press as well as other minority‐language publications founded in the 1920s sur­ vived the coup d’état in 1934 – but not World War II. These periodicals disappeared with their people: Baltic Germans left for Germany, Swedes for Sweden, Jews liquidated, Finns relocated to Finland and “repatriated” according to the 1944 Peace Treaty (Verschik 2005). The Sovietization of Estonia in 1940 and 1945 turned all media into Soviet minority media, and the share of ethnic Estonians decreased from nearly 90% to roughly 70% (Verschik 2005). The USSR invested in developing minority press and journalism, since the media were an important ideological tool in fostering loyalty to the new state. Oral languages in the Caucasus were alphabetized and based on Cyrillic script to unify writing, to ensure cen­ tral publishing, and to cover preferably all languages. For example, investments in the Turkic press increased the number of Turkic‐Tatar language newspapers from 62 in 1917 to 881 titles in 1987. Also small languages in remote regions were covered. However, newspaper circulation in Uighur, Nogai, and Altai, for example, did not reach more than 1,000–5,000 copies per edition (Iskhakov 2009). In the Soviet Republic of Karelia, bor­ dering south‐eastern Finland, Finnish‐ and Karelian‐language publishing blossomed until purges occurred during the 1930s. There were also the so‐called “duplicate” or “clone” newspapers that were translated versions of Russian language editions, targeting minority audiences not fluent in Russian. State‐owned Soviet media operated at all union/federal and regional/local levels. With resources being allocated by the state, profits and economic viability were not as important as they are in a commercial media system (Lauk 2005; Wolfe 2005). After the disintegration of the USSR, Russian scholars such as Tishkov (1997) and Alpatov (2000) continued to study sociolinguistic problems, but the development of minority media remains practically unexplored. The most recent

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data shows that at the time of the establishment of the Russian Federation, there were 289 periodicals in 40 different languages. The 1990s were characterized by the resur­ gence of an ethnic press, and during the early twenty‐first century, the number of minority‐ language publications has risen from 390 to 556 (Iskhakov 2009). The democracies in Finland, the UK, and Sweden did not formally oppose minority‐ language publishing in the early twentieth century. Yet, assimilationist policies, schooling systems based on the majority language, social stigma, and harassment for speaking the “wrong” language (e.g. Gaelic or Sami) made minority languages structurally impracti­ cal (cf. Derrida 1999). The absence of a language in public life made it less necessary and important to learn it. Thus, publishing in Welsh, Gaelic, Sami, and other minority lan­ guages was allowed but it was not profitable, neither symbolically for potential audiences nor economically for publishers. In Sweden, the Finnish newspaper Haparandabladet/ Haaparannan lehti, founded in 1882, has survived on the merit of being bilingual. A Welsh‐language press, on the other hand, barely exists; a fate today shared by the Gaelic press (Cormack 2011; Hughes 2011). The only all‐Gaelic magazines Gairm (1951– 2002) and its successor Gath (2003–2008) sold merely a few hundred copies per edition and it was eventually closed down (Glaser 2007). These examples illustrate common impediments for minority print media, which can also be observed in other countries. Print is economically challenging because it requires expertise, equipment, and costly distribution networks. The success of minority newspa­ pers – often their mere survival – depends on the numbers of potential readers, and the goodwill or, at best, support of those in power. Political climates, repressive toward minorities, also enhance the challenges for minorities to articulate themselves, as they do for deviant and opposing voices in general. Historically, minority newspapers generally appeared weekly or less often, and in editions of four to eight pages (Browne and Uribe‐ Jongbloed 2013, p. 3). Common features were news from the homeland, community activities, personal profiles of important community members, or community events from births and weddings to obituaries (Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed 2013). Over the past decades, minority newspapers have increasingly moved to daily editions, generally with one to two dozen pages. As Browne and Uribe‐Jongbloed (2013) point out, the European Association of Daily Newspapers in Minority and Regional Languages (MIDAS) lists over 100 such papers on its website. “Some minority media cover international and national ‘mainstream’ events, sometimes including minority angles, sometimes not” (p. 3). Reasons for the expansion of minority newspapers are transnational migrations, technological pro­ gress (hence, less expensive print technologies) and an increasing diversity in societies. Online‐only minority‐language newspapers are still a rather new phenomenon. Their last­ ing impact on print minority papers remains to be seen, but online publishing clearly helps to overcome some of the more structural obstacles for minority publications.

­The 1960s: Broadcasting Debates on Inclusion and Exclusion Broadcasting on radio and television is a different story. While radio emerged in the 1920s, and the first experimental television broadcasts appeared in the 1930s, minority‐ language radio and television programs remained rare. Owing to high production and transmission costs, a state monopoly on broadcasting and a lack of regional or local broadcasting infrastructures, minority broadcasting developed slowly. Its growth began in the 1960s. Jones (2007) identifies different categories of broadcasters that allowed



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minority voices to be heard: local stations, dedicated channel(s) either as part of public services or privately‐owned companies, and specific slots or individual programs in exist­ ing networks. These categories, with the exception of those under private ownership, were also to be found in Soviet broadcast media. Francoist Spain (1939–1975) had fairly large minority groups (e.g. roughly 1 million Basques, roughly 5 million Catalan speakers and around 2.5 million Galician speakers), but they faced severe repression. Rising Basque nationalism nevertheless led to some initiatives: In the 1960s, a clandestine movement arose supporting the building of Basque‐language schools. Basque activists believed that using Euskera in the media and the public sphere would improve its status. Although Euskera had no standard‐orthography, Basque journalists tried to standardize the language and make it mutually intelligible to all Basque‐speaking communities (Agirreazkuenaga 2012). Radio stations, such as Popular Radio of Loyola and San Sebastián, were means of cultural resistance by spread­ ing Euskera in an oppressive political framework. Although only 30% of the daily pro­ grams were in Basque, they were successful in creating Euskera‐language production and consumption habits, and thereby laid the foundation for future Euskera media produc­ tion. After the ending of the Franco regime and once the Basque Parliament was estab­ lished in 1980, the possibility of broadcasting exclusively in Basque was being discussed. With an already existing audience and a pool of professionals, a radio station was initially thought to be a more viable option than television. The first exclusive Basque‐language radio station was founded in 1982, followed by several television channels (Agirreazkuenaga 2012). At the time, only 25% of the population spoke Euskera, but its popularity has risen ever since. Minority‐language channels were also established in Galicia, Valencia, and Catalonia. In the 1990s, with the establishment of Catalan dailies and the use of Catalan in broadcast media, the language became a regularly used media language. Today, there are several Catalan regional dailies and both public service and private radio and television stations (Piulats 2007; Van Jacob and Vose 2010). Basque, Catalan, and Galician media are functionally (e.g. speakers of a language do not need to resort to other languages for everyday matters, in this particular case the use of media) and institutionally (e.g. there are media platforms available in the language for each type of media) complete. In the UK, the growth of minority media began in the 1960s and 1970s with the demands of the Welsh‐ and Gaelic‐language societies for minority‐language program­ ming. By means of civil disobedience, direct action, and courtroom dramas, Welsh‐­ language campaigners successfully fought for the establishment of the dedicated Welsh channel S4C in 1982. The Scottish campaign never reached the same intensity, and Gaelic‐language advocates opted for special funding for slot programs within existing networks. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established Radio Highland in 1976. Its private competitors were Grampian Television and Scottish Television, each covering its own geographic area in the Gaelic‐language region. They merged in the 1990s and were rebranded as STV in 2006 (Cormack 1993; Hourigan 2007). In 2003, the Gaelic Media Service was established, and since 2008, MG Alba provides Gaelic tel­ evision, radio, and online services in partnership with the BBC. With regard to print media, the initial surge was followed by a decline. Although Welsh and Gaelic are suc­ cessful in some areas, their media is not institutionally complete. Whereas Gaelic and Welsh media are relevant for the discussion of UK minority media, media diversity in the United Kingdom in general relates closely to the country’s long immigration history and sizable migrant communities. A concentration of migrants in the capital makes London an important production site. Although ethnic communities with long diaspora experi­ ences also have long publishing histories, English is often preferred to native languages

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particularly by Africans and Asians (Georgiou 2002). This use of English as a publication language may be an attempt to attract younger audiences or audiences beyond a specific ethnic or linguistic group. In the USSR, functional and institutional completeness of the media sector was achieved by major nations in the Soviet republics. For example, Caucasian and Baltic republics had not only their own newspapers, but also radio and television channels that were part of the State Central Television of the USSR. For smaller populations, there were slot pro­ grams on existing channels. Although the media generally served ideological purposes, it cannot be dismissed as mere propaganda. For example, Estonian‐language media were popular and helped to preserve cultural identity. Although journalists learned to use trans­ lated “Soviet‐speak,” – according to Chatterjee (1999) best described as “cumbersome, repetitive, and over‐laden with jargon. At the same time it was simple to master, and the ideology was so elastic that even those unacquainted with Marxist theory could comfort­ ably converse within its perimeter” (p. 23) – it remained an alien element in the Estonian language that could easily be ignored (Lauk and Kreegipuu 2010). Non‐political media had generally more leeway, and were not as closely monitored by the control system.

­Migrant Movements and the Extension of the Term “Minority Media” In the 1960s, migration in Europe increased, and the demand for media for emergent migrant communities rose. In consequence, the meaning of the term minority media broadened in academic research: henceforth, minority media included media for migrants and was partly transformed to ethnic (minority) media. According to Weber‐Menges (2006), the evolution of ethnic media is deeply connected to (migration) politics and the developments in media technologies. In Germany, at the beginning of the 1960s and 1970s, the state offered practical help for so‐called “Gastarbeiter” (guest workers) who were to fill gaps in the labor market but were expected to return home after a short period of time. They were supported with bridging media that connected migrants to their homelands and provided orientation in their host country. Eventually, the borrowed workforce remained in Germany turning “Gastarbeiter” into migrants. During the 1980s, the rise of media technologies such as cable and satellite TV enabled these migrants to watch television programs from their homelands (Weber‐Menges 2006). These programs, linked to their culture and language of origin, partly secluded them from the majority culture and partly blended into new spaces of identity (Aksoy and Robins 2002; Morley and Robins 1995). A rising number of newspapers from migration countries such as Turkey also published special editions for Germany or Europe, thus, making migrants’ media use vastly independent from the respective majority media. During the 1970s, ethnic media – mostly print or open chan­ nel broadcasts – produced by (mostly semi‐professional) migrants for other migrants was thriving. These ethnic media provided platforms to voice concerns of migrant communi­ ties. Meanwhile, new generations of migrants, often the third generation living in Germany, merged different influences into more transnational identities. Feeling con­ nected both to the cultural heritage of their parents and to the society into which they were born, they still lacked a representation of their lives in‐between. In consequence, transcultural ethnic media began to proliferate (Weber‐Menges 2006). Also, in Austria, politics initiated “Gastarbeiter” migration during the 1970s. A second phase of migration followed the Balkan Wars and the collapse of the former Eastern bloc



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during the 1980s and 1990s. Public service broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) offered a weekly 25‐minutes program specifically for migrants and migrant cul­ tures. Still running today, the program’s focus has shifted from providing orientation to the representation of migrant communities. In addition, two open radio stations (1476, and Radio Orange) and one open television channel (OKTO TV) provided space for the self‐representation of migrants. In contrast to these relatively small slots claimed by migrants on television and radio, the print market is well established. In Vienna, where over 40% of Austria’s immigrant population live, the large ethnic communities – Turks, Serbs, Poles, Bulgarians, Chinese, and Russians  –  have at least one ethnic weekly or monthly journal produced by migrants for migrants. While historically minority media audiences were mostly minority members, third‐generation migrants’ transcultural maga­ zines such as Biber target a young audience from migrant minorities as well as an Austrian readership with and without migrant backgrounds (Brantner and Herczeg 2013). The described patterns of migrant broadcasting media are similar across Europe. Characteristic forms that can be found are Public Broadcasting Stations (PBS) slots, open channels, and other non‐commercial alternatives for migrants. In the 1990s, migrant media in Spain appeared especially in Madrid and Barcelona. Between 2003 and 2008, the number of periodicals grew from 23 to more than 300. More than two‐thirds of migrant media target Latin American audiences, but there are also foreign‐language outlets for Chinese, Moroccan, Russian, Eastern European, African, and Pakistani audiences (Ferrández Ferrer 2009). Several factors enabled the growth of migrant media. The lack of regulation, especially with regard to independent and alternative media, allowed for the development of several pirate radio stations. With the number of migrants growing, also their perception changed: migrants were increas­ ingly seen as consumers rather than merely labor force. Also, institutional advertising brought in new revenue streams as political parties, targeting new voters, turned to minority media (Ferrández Ferrer 2014). Economic crises hit media across Europe and harmed the proliferation of minority media. Moving production to less cost‐intensive online publications was perceived a potential exit from negative economic developments.

­ hrough the Lens of the Others: Representation T of Minorities and Diversity in Mainstream Media Negative media representation of minorities, foreigners, and migrants is a common theme of communication research. Here, the criticism with regard to the representation of minorities and migrants is twofold. One line of critique addresses the invisibility of migrant and minority lives in everyday situations. The other line stresses that mainstream media tend to represent both migrants and minorities in biased ways. These tendencies and cri­ tiques relate to media in most European countries. Migration is associated with social problems such as unemployment, poverty, and risks to the welfare system, and metaphors relating to illnesses or natural catastrophes are common (Butterwegge 2009; Santamaría 2002). Some migrant groups are considered more dangerous and are being associated with violence and crime. In recent years, this particularly relates to Muslims but has his­ torically been applied in various ways to different groups. Despite internal regulations and manuals such as the guidelines of the Presserat (Press Council) in Germany and Austria, or the Pressombudsmannen (press ombudsman) in Sweden, providing for a fair represen­ tation of minorities, biased coverage prevails (Ferrández Ferrer 2012; Santamaría 2002).

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Diversity in Newsrooms The stereotypical representation of minorities in media may partly result from a lack of minority journalists and news sources. Thus, the idea to increase diverse media represen­ tations by increasing the diversity in newsrooms is not new. In the mid‐1960s, the US Kerner‐Commission suggested that more African American journalists and editors should be trained and hired to lower racial bias in the news. Minority staff and reporters were thought to bring new perspectives to the newsrooms (Wilson 2000, p. 86). The constantly low percentage of journalists with minority backgrounds (Djerf‐Pierre 2012; Graf 2011) was also a concerns of the European Union (EU) project “Online/More Colour in the Media” founded in 1995. The aim was to create a more diverse workforce in broadcasting by offering journalistic training specifically to migrant journalists. A European network of broadcasters, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), training institutes, and researchers became involved in several transnational projects (Graf 2011). In Germany, migrant journalists now constitute roughly 3% of the workforce. Large corporations usually have diversity boards, and PSBs have various institutionalized forms of diversity management. Research has shown that generally there are two main approaches concerning such diversity efforts: first, the belief that diversity in newsrooms is, in fact, not an issue, which is based on prevailing beliefs in an ethnically homogeneous audience; second, the idea that diversity efforts in media companies are needed, which is based on the general acknowledgement of ethnic diversity (Graf 2016). An exemplary survey among media managers in Germany’s largest province North Rhine‐Westphalia showed that though the need for more diversity in German media is acknowledged, the willingness to employ journalists with migrant backgrounds is low, despite qualification and experience. Contributing factors are lack of language skills and intercultural compe­ tences, differences in work ethics, and low numbers of applicants (Pöttker, Kiesewetter, and Lohfink 2016). According to Husband (2005) the merging of ethnic identity with professional identity is difficult as ethnicity is only part of the professional practice, and the workplace may perceive belonging to a minority a problem. For instance, Ferrández Ferrer (2012, 2014) shows how migrant journalists working for Spanish mainstream media felt trapped in covering only migration issues. Furthermore, a more multicultural workforce does not automatically lead to more diverse perspectives. The representation of minorities in mainstream media may just be a glance from the center to the periphery and not enough to grasp the complexities and manifold realities of diversified societies in a globalized world. It is, thus, a comprehensible impulse to refrain from a do‐it‐yourself mentality and to have minority media outlets with minority journalists outweigh this perceived imbalance. These good intentions might actually backfire: the media ghetto hypothesis (Brantner and Herczeg 2013, p. 215) claims that the existence of media dedicated only to and staffed only by minority members may actu­ ally result in their views and qualities being confined to such spaces. Given the fact that voice only matters if it is being heard and finds resonance (Couldry 2010), it can be problematic if minority voices and minority views are relegated to “their own” media exclusively. This, in fact, can harm and hinder plurality.

­Conclusion This chapter provided a glimpse into the history of minority media in Europe. Using examples from diverse European settings and time periods, we have discussed the role of minority media as platforms to voice the legitimate struggle of minorities in everyday life



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and to reinforce and negotiate identities. In highly diverse societies, with fragmented public spheres and highly compartmentalized environments of individuals, the role of voice and the chance to participate in public life are crucial to secure social coherence. They are further important to make visible the multiple perspectives and legitimate posi­ tions within a diverse society. Throughout time, the factors that shape, enable, or hinder the proliferation of minority media have largely remained the same. Changes in political systems affect the media, and minorities are particularly vulnerable to human rights vio­ lations. Political and legal restrictions (e.g. language rights or the lack thereof), eco­ nomic factors (e.g. size of the audience), the level of press freedom, and perceptions of media’s societal role set limits to what is possible. These factors also determine minority media’s functional and institutional completeness (cf. Moring 2007). The formal recognition of minorities or the lack thereof has a crucial impact on the existence, form, and contents of minority media. Changes in technologies allow for easier media production. Media technologies, however, do not determine their use, and for minority media to be successful, they still need a social climate of emancipation, of participation and involvement. Digitization and digital communication opened up whole new possibilities for minor­ ity participation in the public sphere but also for segregation and for extracting minority bubbles out of the mainstream. The long‐term impact of these practices on minority media production is yet unclear. Other possible factors, such as suspicion, distrust, and envy of others, if minorities gain political or social support also influence the participa­ tion of minorities in public spheres or sphericules. Technological developments have eased economic pressures in some ways, but economic sustainability is still a major con­ cern for minority media in Europe. Public funding or cooperations with public service media can only be part of a solution, for those sources too exist in competitive markets and need audience approval, and, thus, favor mainstream content reflecting the majority population’s opinions (Kretzschmar 2007). Since migrants are a heterogeneous group and lack official status, public service broadcasters have less of an incentive to offer pro­ grams for migrants, particularly in migrant languages. Apart from PSBs and transnational television networks, there are some open channels and other non‐commercial alterna­ tives (Amezaga and Arana 2012; Camauër 2005). The question is whether migrants would benefit from the same type of protective measures as do national minorities and whether new migrants will participate in other transnational communicative spaces and not depend on minority media, but also will not find voice in the national mediascapes. The shifting forms and functions of minority media in European communication history and the interrelations of these platforms with mainstream media or media from abroad make visible how minority people negotiate belonging, identity, and loyalties. As Thomas Tufte (2001) puts it – they reveal how minority people “navigate between different cul­ tural universes” in their communities, neighborhoods, nations and beyond (p. 47).

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Imagined New Spaces of Political Solidarity in the 1880s–1920s Beyond the National? Paschal Preston

­Introduction This chapter explores modern ideas, imaginaries, and theorizations of how the major polito‐economic, technological, and social innovations unfolding during the 1880–1920 period enabled or prompted more expansive forms of political solidarity and organization. It examines how the “new combinations” of political, economic, and social innovations of that period, including new communication technologies, may have afforded novel imaginaries of the expanded spatial scale of effective political mobilization, organization, or intervention. The theme of this chapter, like all efforts at historical narrative, has a certain space and time of origin and so its design and authorship bears the stamp of its context. The chapter pays particular attention to the supra‐national dimension. It explores whether and how then “new media,” in combination with other major innovations, were viewed with respect to their potential to expand beyond the local and national toward more international or European‐level conceptualizations or imaginaries of civic solidarity and political practice. This European spatial frame is also connected to the much‐mentioned experience (and academic theme) of an ever‐deepening “globalization” in recent decades. Building on the “common market” project dating back to the 1950s, more recent decades have witnessed the majority of European states engaging in successive efforts to create not merely a single market but an increasingly‐unified economic, policy, and regulatory space affecting many sectors of society. Indeed, the media and communication service sector has featured prominently in the wider project of ever‐deepening economic and political unification across the European Union (EU) area (now comprising 27 member states). By the early twenty‐first century, the EU area may be defined as the leading exemplar of intensified globalization at a world‐region level. Of course, the ever‐deepening practices of “globalization” processes over recent decades have also had direct implications for the education sector, not least the academic

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field concerned with media and communication studies. The creation of an organization like the European Communication Research Association (ECREA) may well be seen as an expression of top‐down forms of internationalization and Europeanization favored by political and economic elites. Nevertheless, it affords new opportunities for regular contact and exchange of ideas in ways that were unavailable to the most eminent scholars working in this field – even as recently as the 1960s and 1970s (Mattelart 2007). It can also be seen as a belated expression of those novel international and European‐level forms of modern association and exchange that were imagined by important social and political theorists in the 1880–1920 period. Over the past five years, as this Handbook project proceeded from its original state as  a mere idea toward the authoring, editing, and publication stages, the seemingly ever‐onward march of deepening internationalization (and its regional expression “Europeanization”) have all run into very stormy waters. The financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent regimes of “austerity” and economic exclusion have been accompanied by unprecedented questioning, criticisms, and challenges to deeper political and economic integration. There has been a new wave of populist or extreme nationalism and xenophobia seemingly opposed to European and global‐level policy and to related flows of trade, capital investment, and people. These threaten to reverse many of the internationalization trends, developments, and trajectories that had been presumed as typically modern and “normal” dating back to the nineteenth century at least. Indeed, the EU project, as an actually‐existing form of supra‐national political ­governance (covering most but not all of the world region that is Europe) has come close to crash or total collapse on several occasions since this Handbook project was first devised. As we write, the EU is being threatened by new forms of extreme or fundamentalist nationalism and xenophobia, an appalling prospect for anyone who is vaguely familiar with the history of Europe since the early modern period. But the vista of a fatal crisis of the whole EU unification project now emerges as the United Kingdom (UK), the country that has given us the first stage of modern globalization has decided to pull out of the EU. This threat is amplified as that UK decision has given confidence to extreme right‐wing or xenophobic forces in other countries, such as Italy, Hungary, France, Poland, all with unknown consequences for future of EU – as well as for the kinds of international scholarly collaboration manifest in the ECREA. The threats of the break‐up of the limited supra‐national forms of political integration achieved by the EU and the return of radical forms of nationalism are hardly welcome developments in light of European history, even if they serve to underline the relevance of the specific theme of the current chapter.

Approach and Outline This chapter examines ideas, imaginaries, or conceptualizations of the optimal spatial levels of modern political and economic interdependencies, solidarities, and action during the 1880–1920 period in Europe. This period witnessed the advent of “mass media” in many European countries in combination with multiple major political, economic, institutional and social innovations giving rise to many characterizations, ranging from that of the “Belle Époque,” a Second Industrial Revolution to that of high modernity (Preston 2009). Thus, this chapter examines how the combination of communication and other major innovations served to prompt distinct ideas and imaginaries concerning the optimal



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spatial and geographical forms of interdependency, political organization, and solidarity in modern society. It explores ideas and practices originating in academic and other intellectual circles, and briefly considers some related new political movements and practices. It draws on cases or empirical materials situated in different European political and socio‐economic or cultural settings, in particular Great Britain, Germany, and France. Part one provides a brief sketch of the dominant political and economic models prevailing both before and during the 1880–1920s period in Europe. These serve to situate and ground the new communication, socio‐technical, institutional, and political innovations of this time. Part two examines how influential political and intellectual circles viewed the optimal spatial scale and forms of political organization and action in this period. It explores the ideas of key theorists and writers situated in Great Britain, Germany, and France concerning the optimal spatial scale of political organization and mobilization linked to the new “combinations” of socio‐technical innovations and political‐economic forces. This part commences by briefly interrogating the notion of a Second Industrial Revolution and its ramifications for understandings of technology from this time. Part three briefly considers the new social movements related to “internationalism” in the period, whilst part four addresses the sharp and dramatic shift from the Belle Époque to the outbreak of World War I or the Great War. Part five considers certain implications of the war and the reconstruction of nation‐states’ roles and the nation‐centered frames subsequent to the Great War, whilst the final section presents some conclusions and implications.

­Classic Liberalism with Limited Democracy: A Dominant Model Under Pressure Who invented liberalism? … Nobody ever claimed to be the first liberal … there was no Marx of liberalism. Liberalism was the common response by a segment of European culture to the French Revolution. … Oddly enough, for a tradition derived largely from the Enlightenment, if ever there was an ‘organic’ European political language, liberalism was it (Kahan 2003, p. 7).

For most of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, France, Germany and much of northern Europe had shared a dominant political credo or ideology of classic liberalism marked by a language of “capacity” justifying limited notions of democratic participation (Kahan 2003, p. 190) alongside a robust defense (if not celebration) of economic inequalities. But by the 1880s, it was becoming clear that this version of liberalism was unable to maintain its position astride a Tocquevillian fence with “one foot stepping into democracy, one leg still caught up in aristocracy” (Kahan 2003). A key feature of the widespread role and influence of liberalism in Europe since the nineteenth century comprises the significant diversity in its practical expressions and institutional forms. The practical implementation and realization of liberalism as a highly influential model of politics and political economy has been “dependent on … a variety of conditions” (Jahn 2013, p. 176). Thus, there have been significant variations in liberal thought and practice in different times and places; indeed, major variations not only arose between different states but also within states over time. Toward the 1880s, a combination of social, cultural, and political‐economic changes achieved “the disappearance of that middle ground between aristocracy and democracy”

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upon which European liberalism had stood for many decades (Kahan 2003, p. 190). In effect, liberalism was abandoned for more one‐sided commitments, and by the closing decades of the nineteenth century, liberals were being “compelled to go over to their enemies on one front or another,” to become either democrats or conservatives, “or even to move on to Socialist political groupings” (Kahan 2003). Parties that retained the “Liberal” name gave it new meanings, “economic, nationalist, or civil‐ rights oriented, depending on circumstance” (Kahan 2003). However, they were no longer liberal parties “as the mid‐nineteenth century had understood ‘liberal’ to mean” (Kahan 2003, p. 190). Some liberals at least were able to recognize and investigate the intimate relationship between “liberal order” and “imperial ambition” (Jahn 2013, p. 179) which became such a feature of all the capitalist powers during the 1880–1914 period. Thus, viewed with regard to the role of classic (modern) liberalism in Europe, the 1880s appeared as a veritable “watershed of European history in an amazing number of respects” (Kahan 2003, p. 179) even if the changes could not always be accurately described as “new liberalism” (Kahan 2003, p. 190). These years witnessed not only several moves in response to the suffrage debates, but they also brought major transformations in many aspects of liberal culture. It was precisely in the 1880–1910 period that a “mass press” became a regular and widely diffused feature of daily life in many European countries, usually in the form of cheap newspapers “appealing to a literate but uneducated audience” (Kahan 2003, p. 180). Some of these driving factors and forces for change had been developing and operating before the 1880s. But they began to “accelerate both quantitatively and qualitatively” from the 1880s on, and this “growing cascade of cultural changes” accompanied the decline of classic liberalism (Kahan 2003, p. 181). From the early nineteenth century, however, we also observe how a distinct strand of classic modern liberalism, marked by a strong internationalist orientation, took hold in Europe. It tended to view and understand itself as carrying on the principles of the late Enlightenment, especially those that had inspired the French Revolution. At that time, according to Hobson (2005 [1902]), “every wise man in Europe  –  Lessing, Kant, Goethe, Rousseau, Lavater, Condorcet, Priestley, Gibbon, Franklin – tended to consider himself more of a citizen of the world than of any particular country” (p. 9). Hobson’s account may overstate the case, but it gives a flavor of a certain (radical) liberal self‐ image or self‐understanding in that period. For example, “Goethe confessed that he did not know what patriotism was, and was glad to be without it,” and Kant indicated that he was much more interested in the events of Paris than in the life of Prussia whilst the cultured groups of all countries “were at home in polite society everywhere” (Hobson (2005 [1902])). In contrast to this, Kahan’s (2003) detailed survey of liberalism in Europe argues that nationalism was an inseparable bedfellow of liberalism in the early nineteenth century but that it contributed to the decline of liberalism toward the late 1800s. We must note, again briefly, that important schools of past and present‐day liberals tend to argue (alongside most conservatives, and nationalists) that only a shared nationality can provide the relevant political and cultural common denominators to support a viable liberal democratic citizenship. Yet, we find other accounts insisting that classic (early nineteenth‐ century) liberalism tended to regard and treat nationalism as a “highway to internationalism” (Hobson 2005 [1902], p. 11). In sum, certain strands of liberalism, dating back to the mid‐nineteenth century, have accommodated a strong internationalist outlook even if these usually tended to be less radical than the new social movements of labor and socialism in the 1880–1914 period.



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­Images and Imaginings of New Political, Economic, and Social “Spaces” After our brief sketch of the dominant political and political‐economy models before and during the 1880–1920 period, this part explores the ideas of key thinkers concerning the spatial implications of the new “combinations” of communication, other socio‐technical innovations, and political‐economic forces unfolding at this time. But first, we critically interrogate the notion of a “Second Industrial Revolution” and its ramifications for understanding technology at this time and thinking about its socio‐spatial implications. It is never easy to view or define the dominant combinations of technological and socio‐economic changes of any period “close‐up” as it were. Whilst the 1880–1920 period has often been characterized by certain subsequent historians as that of a Second Industrial Revolution, others have suggested that the very notion of an “Industrial Revolution” was itself far from familiar before 1880, since the first use of the term “is usually attributed to Toynbee in 1882” (MacLeod 2007, p. 144). Nevertheless, the notion of a Second Industrial Revolution has often been invoked to characterize the range and implications of several major new technology systems and innovations, which made their appearance in and around the 1880s–1920s period. The most significant, in terms of overall economic and social implications, included the introduction of heavy‐current electrical systems, alongside technical innovations in the field of chemicals and new materials, new modes of motorized transport, and the like (Preston 2001, 2009). It is likewise important to note that the 1880–1920s period was also marked by significant shifts in the awareness, ideas, images, and conceptualizations of something called “technology.” In many respects, technology was now accorded a novel and distinct status and role in the language, thinking and practices of major economic, political and legal actors in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe and beyond. It was precisely in 1880–1920s period that research and development (R&D) laboratories were introduced, specialized units devoted to the production of “new technology” products and processes within industrial corporations, starting with the chemicals and electrical sectors. It was also in this period that political leaders began to regularly invoke technology as a key factor in industrial and economic development projects as well as in the inter‐ imperial contests for military power (Kern 2003). In the social sciences, writers began to pay new and significantly more specific attention to technology matters, as witnessed in the papers presented by Max Weber, Werner Sombart, Ferdinand Tönnies and others at the inaugural conference of the German sociological society in 1910 (Kemple 2005). The field of economic analysis, which apart from the Marx’s exceptional work had largely ignored the technology factor before the 1880s (Schumpeter 2006 [1954]) gave growing attention to economic aspects of technology. This was most evident in the pioneering work of Joseph Schumpeter who was not only very familiar with German sociologists of the time but who also, in his historical approach, theorized the significance and periodization of major new technology systems and their relation to new ensembles or “combinations” of matching or paired socio‐­ economic and political innovations (Preston 2001, 2009).

British Thinkers: Cobden, Spencer, May, Dicey, and Hobson For most of the nineteenth century, Great Britain was not merely the “workshop of the world” and the global hegemon, but its dominant international economic, military, political and imperial power also enhanced the profile and widespread influence of the

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works and ideas of British writers (Kon 1989 [1979]). This setting also influenced the strongly imperialist tone that marked the types of internationalism evident in many (but not all) British writers at this time. Richard Cobden (1804–1865) was probably the most prominent British advocate of modern liberal internationalism in the mid‐nineteenth century (e.g. Cobden (1903 [1867]). His pioneering role as political activist and advocate of free‐trade liberalism was intricately linked to his experiences as a manufacturer. As an ardent critic of state intervention of all sorts, he criticized the “balance of power” idea associated with the Concert of Europe regime of that time (even if latter was often framed and greeted as an early example of modern international policy coordination on the part of the major state powers). Cobden’s work may be taken as a leading exemplar of an idealized version of classic modern liberalism in Great Britain and Europe during the mid‐nineteenth century. His writings and campaigning highlighted what he viewed as the superior benefits of international trade, capital movements, and regulation by the market, claiming that these served to relegate protectionism, military violence, wars, and political rivalries to the sidelines. For Cobden and fellow free‐trade liberals, the passions long associated with national flags, armies, and patriotism can and should be replaced by a conception of modern nationalism viewed as a mere starting point or “a plain highway to internationalism” (Hobson 2005 [1902], p. 11). Another influential strand of British writing at this time was the historical school and political current known as the Whigs who tended to explain their country’s “commercial superiority” and manufacturing competitiveness in the mid‐nineteenth century in terms of two factors: one pointed to constitutional factors, especially the comparative freedom of Britain’s constitution with its “perfect security of property” (Macleod 2007, p. 136). The second set of explanations was more varied, ranging from geographic factors such as Britain’s insular location, superior machinery, abundant resources (of capital, credit, or coal supplies), as well as the extraordinary genius and talent of key individuals. These latter factors were frequently viewed as prompted and nurtured by a certain “confidence and energy” stimulated by the political guarantees of property protection and free enterprise (Macleod 2007, pp. 136–139). Macaulay’s History of England (1848–1855) comprised an influential exemplar of Whig history as it integrated the analysis of the Industrial Revolution “into the grand narrative of constitutional progress and English liberty” (Macleod 2007, p. 138). Many British liberal commentators tended to emphasize that general prosperity and peaceful social change would be direct outcomes of steam power and other technological symbols of the unfolding techno‐economic landscape of capitalist industrialization in the nineteenth century. Influential strands of liberal thought at this time cast British and global history “into a technologically determined form” whereby “human agency yielded to the agency of steam power” (Macleod 2007, p. 134). The steam engine (or sometimes the disembodied “mind” of Watt) was presented as the significant historical agent, independently capable of transforming the world. Indeed, the steam engine was taken to offer contemporaries “a tangible, technological explanation for the rapid, otherwise often bewildering, changes that were affecting their lives so profoundly” (Macleod 2007, pp. 134–135). For example, in his 1878 book Democracy in Europe – A History, Sir Thomas Erskine May celebrated the scientific discoveries and technological innovations and inventions of Great Britain and late nineteenth‐century Europe. May confidently declared that no previous period of European history could be compared to that time for its “scientific



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discoveries and inventions, for bold speculations in philosophy, for historical research, and original thought” (p. liv). May (1878) also noted and emphasized how the virtues of classic liberalism extended “the free intercourse of nations” and greatly nurtured a free press whilst also deepening international exchanges, not least on the European level: The free intercourse of nations, in the present age, facilitates of travel and postal communication, the publicity of state affairs, and the universal expansion of the press, have brought the different states into so close a contact, that the common sympathies and interests of mankind pulsate through the whole of European society. (p. xlix)

The work of Herbert Spencer, intricately bound up with the birth of sociology in Great Britain (Kon 1989 [1979]), was strongly influenced by British utilitarianism and liberalism, as he was a robust critic of state intervention and most prevailing proposals for social reform. Spencer contributed several original concepts to sociological analysis (e.g. systems), pioneered the analysis of social evolution and proved an important reference point for subsequent European sociological theorists such as Émile Durkheim (see below). Spencer’s sociological works were influential in Great Britain, the United States of America (USA), as well as some European countries in the period up to the Great War, but his profile in the field declined dramatically during the interwar era. Spencer is remembered for his early role and association with the contentious approach known as “Social Darwinisn,” a term applied to diverse ways of thinking and theories that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, all of which tried to apply the evolutionary concept of natural selection to human society. Inevitably perhaps, interpretations of Spencer’s work on social evolution, and its appropriations by others, were strongly influenced by the prevailing climate of European imperialism during the late nineteenth century. At that time, imperialism was frequently justified by the influential presumptions of “the white‐man’s burden” and the “civilizing mission” of the European powers. In essence, most elites in the European imperial powers viewed themselves as having “a duty” to bring what they presumed to be the moral and material benefits of Western civilization to “backward” cultures. In this discursive and cultural climate, and whatever the intent of the particular authors, theories of social evolution were ripe for appropriation by imperialistic projects and tendencies (Adas 1990; Hobson 2005 [1902]). This created a specific perspective on socio‐spatial aspects of major technological innovations including new communication systems: while a certain form of internationalism was being advocated, it was laced with the kind of imperialist and racist assumptions that were prevalent in establishment circles (including journalistic discourse) during the 1880–1914 period in Great Britain (as in other imperial powers). Mainstream (establishment) discourses tended to explain colonialism and imperialist domination across the globe by referring to superior scientific and technological performance as well as military and organizational superiority. These influential and popular notions of technological superiority were often combined with racist assumptions to justify European domination of the rest of the world. After Europeans had begun to build faster ships, bigger guns, and more complex machines, these new technological developments were taken as empirical or material evidence for the imperialists’ claims to moral superiority. The lack of technological or scientific development in the colonies was equated with technical and intellectual inadequacy, if not moral degeneracy (Adas 1990). At the time, various notions of societal evolution, including Social Darwinism, were mobilized to support such “imperialist internationalism,” not least the notion that the British and other European races or “cultures” were somehow uniquely superior. These

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began to crumble, however, from the turn to the twentieth century. Indeed, shortly after the turn to the new century (1900), Japan, supposedly one of the inferior races, gave a severe blow to such racial assumptions by competing economically with European nations and by defeating one of them in war. But the coming industrial‐scale violence and destruction of World War I served to severely question claims as to the superior moral authority of European science and technology, and it undermined the validity of claims as to the civilizing mission of European imperialism. If the more progressive strands of classic liberalism in the nineteenth century represented an “early flower of humane cosmopolitanism,” then one of its later enthusiasts, John Hobson (2005 [1902]), provided the first and most compelling account of how such new growth was “destined to wither before the powerful revival of nationalism,” which lay at the heart of great‐power rivalry and imperialism that emerged around the start of the twentieth century (p. 10). If classic liberals regarded nationalism as a means rather than an end, “a plain highway to internationalism,” then its later perversion in the form of imperialism involved a highly distorted form (Hobson 2005 [1902], p. 11). The new imperialism meant highly‐charged forms of nationalism and nationalist rivalry, where “nations trespass beyond the limits of facile assimilation” in ways that served to “transform the wholesome stimulative rivalry of varied national types into the cutthroat struggle of competing empires” as the Great War approached (Hobson 2005 [1902]).

German Theorists: Van Thünen, Marx, Knies, Bücher, Tönnies, and Weber From the early 1800s, German scholars such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Heinrich von Thünen, provided novel analyses of the expanding spatial scale of capitalist production, trade, and investment, proposing new concepts for understanding the growing scope of socio‐economic relations, including distinct explanations of the sources of “capitalist imperialism” (Harvey 2001, p. 285). Despite their differences, both Hegel and Von Thünen rejected the assumption that the hidden hand of the market can harness universal egoism to the benefit of all; a beloved idea of most English liberal political economists of that time and ever since. Von Thünen’s analysis, on the other hand, pointed to an inevitable deterioration in the condition of civil society in the absence of remedial measures to counter market forces (Harvey 2001, p. 289). The young Von Thünen, after arriving at conclusions that challenged the established views (those of the owning classes), observed that he dared not publish his novel and radical views for fear of being branded “a fanatic or even a revolutionary” at the time (cited in Harvey 2001, p. 289). Instead, he proceeded to concentrate his attention upon other topics (Harvey 2001). Thus, the young Von Thünen had to bite his tongue in expressing his radical views –much like the young Tönnies several decades later, or indeed, a long succession of subsequent scholars. The story of pioneering modern German scholarship on matters of technology and communication in the nineteenth century took a new turn with the work of Karl Marx, according to the accounts of subsequent specialist scholars, many of whom were careful to emphasize their critical distance from the political values and ideals espoused by Marx (e.g. Schumpeter 1939, 2006 [1954]). Indeed, in his comprehensive work on The History of Economic Analysis, Joseph Schumpeter (2006 [1954]), identified Marx as the first theorist in Western political economy to identify the role, forms, and implications of technology factors with the attention they deserved in the modern capitalist



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economy. Schumpeter himself proved to be the pre‐eminent economic theorist engaging with the role, forms, and implications of technology, innovation and their relation to business cycles, industrial growth, and developments during the first half of the twentieth century (within both the German language and Anglophone economics literature) (Preston 2001). Marx was a one‐time newspaper editor who was twice sacked and had first‐hand experience of state repression. Yet he is frequently remembered for his pithy phrases, such as “the first business of a newspaper is not to be a business,” which emphasize the particular forms of bias, censorship, or ideological assumptions which characterize the commercial mass media (Marx and Engels 1998 [1848], 1973–1993). Marx was also highly attentive to the role of mass media as a specific domain of public communication and technology – even more than Schumpeter, although the latter lived and worked in an era of truly “mass” media. With other pithy phrases such as “the annihilation of space by time,” Marx sought to describe how the inherently ceaseless change and expansive thrust of the capitalist mode of production served to both prompt and harness distinctly new capabilities (such as the electric telegraph, railways and the application of steam power to shipping). But Marx also emphasized how capitalism expanded the scale and intensities of international exchanges and interdependencies. In sum, whilst not opposed to certain progressive forms of nationalism (Benner 2018 [1996]), Marx also proved to be an ardent internationalist and socialist whose ideas greatly influenced the strong internationalist orientations of the new social movement linked to working class mobilizations in the 1880–1914 period. By the late nineteenth century, German universities were widely regarded as the most advanced and sophisticated in the world as regards academic standards, research methods, as well as teaching and learning practices. Indeed, they attracted students and researchers from many countries, including Japan and the USA, two countries which were then rapidly progressing on their own paths toward capitalist industrialism. The story of pioneering and important German scholarship on matters of technology and communication continued through the closing decades of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Much of it was influenced by the German Historical School’s distinctive approach to political‐economy analyses rather than the more radical work of Marx (Hardt 1988). Some of the most significant German contributions to the study of modern media and communication came from the pens (and typewriters) of Karl Knies (1821–1898), Albert Schäffle (1831–1903), and Karl Bücher (1847–1930) (Hardt 1988). One of several notable features of this work included attempts to examine the development of communication networks, infrastructures, and organized news systems in relation to the history of trade as well as shifts in the general production, distribution, and exchange of goods and commodities (Preston 2009). Unfortunately, largely due to geo‐political factors shaping the academic realm, most of their work has been ignored or severely neglected in later textbooks covering the field of communication and media studies. That gap in the scholarly record has some parallels with the treatment of the better‐known (but mis‐represented or mis‐remembered) work of Tönnies (1855–1936) as we will indicate below. The question of “What is Capitalism?” and its many related topics received a striking, if not unique, “level of intellectual attention and illumination” in Germany during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II (Muller 2002, p. 229). Unfolding during the decades leading up to the Great War, much of this German debate on the rapidly unfolding changes focused around the theme of “which human type is promoted by modern capitalism” (Muller 2002). At the center of those debates stood four particularly important

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a­ cademics: Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936), Max Weber (1864–1920), Georg Simmel (1858–1918), and Werner Sombart (1863–1941). These writers had come of age in the decades after Germany had been unified in 1871, an “era when German universities, research institutions, and museums … were widely regarded as the best in the world, and when the prestige of professors within Germany was at its peak” (Muller 2002). Ferdinand Tönnies proved to be not only the oldest of this group, but he may also be distinguished as the author of “the book that set the terms for much of the debate” in Germany during the decades up to World War I and directly informed certain important strands of communication and media studies as it emerged as a discrete disciplinary field in the latter half of the twentieth century (Muller 2002, p. 229). Tönnies’s (2001 [1887]) Community and Civil Society is frequently hailed as a seminal text on modernity – but it is a key work that is much more frequently invoked than read. On close inspection, the book readily reveals itself as a work that challenges and subverts the frequent identification of Tönnies as a key influence in treating the national as the default spatial frame for the analysis of modern society, including its mediated communication aspects (e.g. Beck 2000). In fact, Tönnies’s Community and Civil Society presents some interesting, indeed surprisingly relevant, observations on the spatial dimensions of the capitalist forms of Gesellschaft, which he observed unfolding in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Tönnies (2001 [1887]) argued that there were two fundamental forms of social life: He identified two successive and “contrasting epochs in the grand overall development of civilisation,” an epoch of “close‐knit Community” (Gemeinschaft), which was succeeded by an epoch of “market‐based civil Society” (Gesellschaft). For Tönnies “Community is signified through its social will as concord, custom and religion” whilst “Society is signified through its social will as convention, policy and public opinion” (p. 257). In historically‐grounded terms, Tönnies’s much‐cited distinction refers to certain historical shifts unfolding in Europe in line with the transition from feudalism to “modernity” in northern Europe (starting from the sixteenth century). Less frequently, it is also sometimes taken to refer to the transition from early Roman history to the period of the Roman Empire (Inglis 2009, p. 817). Tönnies was also highly attentive to the significant cleavages between the power and economic and other privileges of the minority of property owners relative to the great mass of the population (or the laboring classes) in the modern Gesellschaft (even though Tönnies’s engagement with such class cleavages has rarely featured in most later treatments of his work). Furthermore, Tönnies (2001 [1887]) argued that his two core concepts (Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft) “correspond to certain types of external social arrangements”. He stated that his concept of Wesenwille (natural will) is characterized by strong affectivity and group‐oriented feelings and is taken to describe the typical psychological and social‐ relational dispositions that constitute a Gemeinschaft social order. On the other hand, his notion of Kürwille (rational will), serves to describe “the equivalent dispositions – involving high levels of individualistic calculation – that constitute the social order of Gesellschaft” (Inglis 2009, p. 818). Tönnies’s book (2001 [1887]) identified some 10 major features of modern society (Gesellschaft). Most of these key aspects do not feature in many prior summary accounts of Tönnies’s work in relevant text books targeted at the sociology and communication studies fields. Five of these major thematic features directly referred to geographical and spatial dimensions of modern society. Tönnies’s account underlined both the centrality and ever‐widening scope and scale of markets, trade and capitalist production in modern societies as well as the ever‐growing dominance of the urban over rural life. Indeed,



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Tönnies directly emphasized the increasingly international scale and scope of markets, trade linkages, productive activities, and related interactions. His book also underlined the highly international status, differential mobility and the class‐specific dispositions, civic value orientations of the merchants, traders, financiers, and other property‐owning classes compared to those of the laboring classes. Similarly, Tönnies addressed the growing role and status of increasingly large urban areas and how they tend to “rule over” the rest of society (2001 [1887], p. 36). He viewed the modern metropolis or international city as a place where “money and capital are unlimited and all‐powerful” and which “represents world markets and world trade” (Tönnies 2001 [1887], p. 253). Indeed, he suggested that the metropolis possesses the capacity or potential to “produce goods and scientific knowledge for the entire globe, and to make valid laws and form public opinion for all nations” (Tönnies 2001 [1887], p. 253). In essence, the core geographical aspect of Gesellschaft presented an early image and vivid portrayal of the Global Village idea (some eight decades before McLuhan’s version) or what more recent theorists refer to as “globalization.” Tönnies’s account highlighted how nation‐states give way to a truly “international market society without national boundaries” as the commerce and business class “turn outwards” and “burst” existing spatial boundaries (Tönnies 2001 [1887], p. 243). In a remarkable passage of summarizing and forecasting toward the end of the book, Tönnies (2001 [1887]) predicted that the “whole movement” of Gesellschaft “can be understood as a transition from original, simple, family‐based communism through to an absolutely detached cosmopolitan and universalist individualism” toward a form of “state‐based and international socialism” (p. 260). Tönnies’s work had direct links to (and more to say about) highly topical, contemporary issues, such as the connections between economic forms of “globalization” and matters of civic values, citizenship, community identities or solidarities and the extent to which these may be class specific. He suggested that the more extensive the trade area (or the greater the degree of “globalization,” to use a more recent term), the more likely it was that the pure laws of exchange trade prevail and that those other “non‐commercial qualities which relate men and things” tend to be neglected, if not ignored (Inglis 2009, p. 823). Tönnies (2001 [1887]) argued that the key tendency of modern trade is “to concentrate on one main market, the world market, upon which all other markets become dependent,” (p. 79) whilst the core process is tending toward “a planet‐spanning set of attitudes based upon calculating self‐interest” (p. 169). In Tönnies’s (2001 [1887]) account of the modern society, “the entire culture” tends to be overturned “by a civilisation dominated by market and civil Society” and this transformation may mean that “civilisation itself” is coming to an end, unless “some of its scattered seeds remain alive,” so that “a new civilisation can develop secretly within the one that is dying” (Tönnies 2001 [1887], pp. 256–257). The combined effects of “the big city” and Gesellschaft conditions in general may well yield “the ruin and death of the people” (Tönnies 2001 [1887], p. 257). At the same time, Tönnies took a positive view of the potential for social learning, suggesting that in time, “the masses come to self‐consciousness with the help of education offered in schools and newspapers” (Tönnies 2001 [1887]). He further suggested that the masses will progress from class consciousness to the class struggle, even if eventually “this class struggle may destroy the Society and the state which it wants to reform” (Tönnies 2001 [1887], pp. 256–257). Tönnies suggested that the “common people” are, thus, transformed into the “proletariat,” whilst much against the will of the privileged groups, “the proletariat is encouraged by education” to think and acquire “self‐consciousness” about “the conditions

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which chain them to the labour market” (Tönnies 2001[1887], p. 174). Furthermore, he suggested that these new forms of awareness, knowledge, and “self‐consciousness” in modern society will give rise to new social movements, resolutions, and efforts on the part of the working classes, which aim “to break their chains” and are internationalist in scope: They unite for co‐operative and political action in parties and trades unions. These unions are first found in the great cities, then become national, and finally international in scope and character, just like the associations of educated people and capitalists of the real Gesellschaft which preceded them and provided them with models.” (Tönnies 2001 [1887], p. 174)

This close but selective reading of Tönnies’s seminal work, first published in 1887, reveals its account of capitalist industrial society to be much more than a mere dichotomized set of presumed “modern” and “traditional” values, dispositions, or forms of social will – a characterization so familiar from so many sociological, communication or development studies textbooks. It also reveals that Tönnies conceived of the modern as highly international in scope and that his analysis clearly did not default to the national spatial frame. Tönnies’s classic work comprised a highly dialectical account of the positive and negative features of modernity and the potential for significant reform or transformation in line with the interests of the popular classes. It proposed a deep and radical “participatory” model toward more progressive forms of social organization, transformation and reform; furthermore, it emphasized a potentially positive role for education, social learning, and even media of public communication alongside new social movements and mobilizations in constructing and advancing new forms of awareness, knowledge, and “self‐consciousness” among the masses in a modern society setting (e.g. Tönnies 2001 [1887], p. 174). Second, and most importantly, Tönnies’s book (2001 [1887]) was highly attuned to the significant and ever‐growing international scale at which the crucial social, economic, and political relations of modern society operate. This reading of Tönnies’s seminal work (2001 [1887]) reveals an author with a much more comprehensive vision and radical edge than that presented in many conventional textbook accounts. Tönnies was more overtly a political radical in his younger days, when his expression of radical views seemed to have hindered his university career. But by 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, he was a full professor and a respected member of the establishment in Germany, and he had well‐distanced himself from any hint of radical socialist anti‐war positions. So much so that he was sufficiently trusted by the establishment to be invited to author a dramatically different kind of book – this time a typical, “official” wartime propaganda work, one targeting the apparent evils of “Warlike Britain” (Tönnies 1915). Like many liberal and social‐democratic intellectuals at that time, also Tönnies proved to be willing or compelled to take sides in the novel propaganda wars, which aimed to justify the mass slaughter and industrial‐scale destruction that characterized the most violent war in human history to date, the Great War of 1914–1918.

­Émile Durkheim on Divisions of Labor – Social and Spatial Émile Durkheim was one of the key founding figures of the classical sociological canon. Though he too has been criticized by Beck (2000) and others for being excessively wedded to national frames and nation‐state‐centered ways of thinking, Durkheim’s work was highly attentive to deepening internationalization of social relations. As Inglis (2009)



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noted, Durkheim was “far from being conceptually trapped within the confines of national borders” (p. 814). Durkheim sketched out the lineaments of an incipient world‐ level “moral culture” as he actually proposed “an account of the nature of what today would be called cultural globalization” (Inglis 2009). One of Durkheim’s best‐known and most influential contributions to the study of modernity (and to modern sociological thought) comprised his analyses of the division of labor and especially his distinction between “organic” and “mechanical” forms of social “solidarity” (Durkheim 2013 [1893]). In certain respects, the latter distinction by Durkheim had many overlaps, if not parallels, with the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft distinction proposed earlier by Tönnies. Still, when Durkheim reviewed Tönnies’s book in 1889, he made clear that he was highly critical and dissatisfied with many aspects of the analysis. Durkheim also critically engaged with Spencer’s work. Durkheim (2013 [1893]) emphasized that “[m]oral and social life is derived from a dual source, the similarity of individual consciousness and the social division of labour,” whilst also noting that “their relationship is one of inverse variation” (p. 325). Durkheim’s (2013 [1893]) The Division of Labour also advanced some striking suggestions of a prospective supra‐national future, which were further developed in other later writings. Here, Durkheim clearly observed and pointed toward internationalization trends evident at the world‐region level of Europe: We have seen already that there is tending to form, above European peoples, in a spontaneous fashion, a European society that has even now some feeling of its own identity and the beginnings of an organization … the formation of larger societies will draw us continually closer (p. 315).

In later work, co‐authored in 1913 with his nephew Marcel Mauss, Durkheim discussed aspects of the “supra‐national life” of societies, indicating how the evidence from ethnography and prehistory speaks to us that there are “social phenomena extending beyond the territory of any single nation” (cited in Lukes 2013 [1893], p. xl). These supra‐national social phenomena form “complex and integrated systems,” which may not be limited to a determined political organism, but they can “nevertheless be situated in time and space” (cited in Lukes 2013 [1893], p. xl). For the study of such phenomena, Durkheim and Mauss invoked the concept of “civilization,” which they defined as “a moral milieu within which are immersed a certain number of nations, and of which each national culture is but a particular form” (cited in Lukes 2013 [1893]). In sum, Durkheim was highly attuned to the deeper trends toward internationalization as a key characteristic of modern society. He was also far from being a bounded nationalist with regard to methodology for the analysis of crucial social trends or his beloved “facts.” In fact, Durkheim was one of the important thinkers on modernity to expressly identify and reflect on “the idea of a European society as an emergent reality” (Delanty 2013, p. 185). He also advanced the “first explicitly sociological discussion of cosmopolitanism” and, even if this remained a minor theme in his work overall, he was also “concerned with global issues to an extent that has often not been appreciated” (Delanty 2009, p. 61). Durkheim believed in the possibility that humanity might be organized as a single society at some point in the future and that the organic solidarity that was which was so characteristic of modernity could also develop between societies, making possible a world patriotism (Delanty 2009). Many subsequent readings of Durkheim’s work, have indeed been nation‐centered, and so tend to ignore or underplay the extent to which his work on the division of labor

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has a strong focus on the changing spatial dimensions and their wider implications, and that he himself viewed these as comprising core emergent social facts of the modern era. Indeed, the ultimate thrust of Durkheim’s work can and should be read as highlighting (rather than neglecting) the increasingly world‐spanning nature of the division of labor and the new forms of solidarity and cultural forms that corresponded to it, phenomena, which he saw as the central emergent social facts of his age.

­New Social Movements – Reimagining the Space of Political Organization Not too long after the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, another author, Jeremy Bentham, proceeded to invent the term “international” (Mazower 2013, p. 19). From the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, entirely new kinds of internationalist ideas and imaginaries could be traced not only in the writings of intellectuals and thinkers but also in the ideas and practices of radically new types of political actors and social movements (Kern 2003; Musto 2014). From the 1820s, we observe significant new ideas and movements centered around “popular pacifism.” Unfolding in circles far removed from the elite domains of law‐making and diplomacy, the advent of large‐scale peace movements expressed an important dimension of a growing, if largely neglected, internationalism at this time. The novel and large‐scale peace movements, which emerged shortly after the defeat of Napoleon and flourished until the late 1840s, represented a significant development, not least given the centrality of war in the prior history of Europe and beyond. They comprised a new kind of social movement – one that expressed a growing international consciousness and signaled clear advances from the limits of prior discourses, not least those centered around “just” or “unjust” wars. Some of these new movements were centered around dogmatic beliefs in the boundless benefits of free‐trade and market‐based competition (Cobden was a prominent prime exponent of the classic liberal model of belief system). But some other strands of this movement displayed a strong religious‐flavor (including evangelical Christians). According to Mazower (2013), “there were no more ardent internationalists to be found anywhere than among evangelical Christians” during the first half of the nineteenth century (p. 31). For example, one of the leaders of a significant trans‐Atlantic peace movement was Elihu Burritt, a self‐taught Massachusetts journalist, also known as the “learned blacksmith.” He advocated what he called “people‐diplomacy” in contradistinction to the aristocratic elitism favored by the diplomats during the first half of the nineteenth century. Burritt publicized the idea of popular pacifism and the building of a League of Universal Brotherhood at various conferences in the USA and Europe, as well as through his newspaper, the Christian Citizen. Burritt emphasized that workingmen should band together and refuse to fight one another in wars, so that the classes with interests in war‐ making would be hindered, an idea that Marx endorsed in later works (Mazower 2013, pp. 33–34). Indeed, this anti‐war position seemed to overlap with some of the ideas expressed in the newer labor and socialist movements that began to emerge in most European countries during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The idea that workers in all the major countries in Europe had “nothing to lose but their chains” (to cite a popular slogan among labor leaders of the time) by uniting together to fight for workers’ rights and to oppose war helped inspire the First International Association of Workmen. The organization was established in 1864, essentially for the mutual defense against the employers of labor, in all countries. But its formation caused



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much alarm to conservative‐leaning liberals such as May (1878) who worried that “socialism and communism were uppermost in the councils” of the First International (pp. lxx–lxxi). The new labor and socialist movements at this time placed much emphasis on “the emancipation of labour, in all countries” as a prime goal, even as they opposed wars where workers were mobilized to fight other groups of workers from another country. For the aristocratic, Sir Thomas Erskine May, however, it seemed as if “war was thus declared against capital” in all parts of Europe by the “mischievous” new labor and socialist movements (May 1878, pp. lxxi). Indeed, despite much empirical evidence to the contrary, May claimed and advanced the view that the then widely diffusing print media were avid supporters of the new labor and socialist movements, for example by declaring that “newspapers supported the movement, and proclaimed its objects, with even less reserve than its leaders” (May 1878). By the closing decades of the 1800s, the two arms of the Labour Movement (economic and political) in the industrialized regions of Europe were mobilizing and asserting their organized presence, especially during the 1880s and 1890s. By the turn of the twentieth century, Germany had the largest Social Democratic party in Europe. In July 1889, the Second International was inaugurated at a congress attended by some 391 delegates from 20 countries (Eley 2002, p. 86). The organization expressed the strong internationalist orientations and imaginaries of the new labor and socialist movements and their relatively radical democratic, egalitarian political values. Its agenda and concluding resolution centered around four areas: first, the eight‐hour day and working conditions; second, the issues of peace, war, and the respective merits of national militias as opposed to standing armies; third, universal suffrage; and fourth, the adoption of May Day as an occasion of international working‐class solidarity (Eley 2002). Thereafter, the Second International operated as a forum for regular annual meetings to exchange ideas, experiences and interests of labor and socialist organizations based in the major industrial countries, and for discussing policies to oppose the drums and rumbles of an impending inter‐imperialist war (Hobson 2005 [1902]). In the case of Great Britain, for example, the first explicitly socialist political groups and parties began to emerge around this time. The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established in June 1881. One sign of the changing times and forms of consciousness was that some of the early members of the SDF had previously been active in the Manhood Suffrage League (Joll 1975; Hobsbawm 1989; Day and Gaido 2012). By 1900, there were many examples of this radically new consciousness, novel political thinking and political‐economic ideas and practices among working‐class organizers and leaders within new socialist movements. The opening address at the 1900 conference of the SDF can serve as an example: The address was given by Will Thorne, whose mother had been forced take him out of school and send him out to work when only eight‐years‐ old due to poverty. By 1900, Thorne was described as deputy mayor of West Ham (a district council in London), and also as a Socialist and trade unionist candidate. There were a number of striking features in Thorne’s opening address but the primary one comprised a strong commitment to internationalism alongside a sophisticated critique of imperialism from the point of view of specific working‐class interests. Thorne stated: It is very satisfactory to note that the feeling of international brotherhood between the workers of different countries is growing stronger and stronger. A few years ago the rank and file of the working classes regarded any workman of another nation as a foreigner … Now the workers are beginning to understand that the foreign workers and themselves are one and the same (Will Thorne, cited in the Report of the Social Democratic Federation Conference 1900, pp. 4–5).

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­Social Democrats Get to Parliament: Moderated or Silenced Internationalism? The clear, robust and enthusiastic spirit of internationalism evident in the earlier stages of the labor and socialist movements, and also manifest in the proceedings of the Second International, soon came under increasing pressure. As the Socialist and Social Democratic politicians entered parliament and the drumbeats of an impending major war in Europe approached, the internationalist, anti‐war spirit of the workers’ movement and socialist organizations in all countries (shared by certain strands of the feminist and peace movements) came under severe pressure from the established political and ideological institutions, including the rapidly-expanding commercial media. This emergent new form of working‐class internationalism, so vividly expressed by Will Thorne in 1900, were put under severe tests and multiple pressures to retreat (or vows of silence) in face of the rising tide of imperialist‐nationalism that surged through the mainstream institutions of politics and of public communication in the years immediately leading up to and during World War I. Most sections of the still‐growing labor movement proved unwilling or unable to challenge the latest wave of imperialist‐ nationalism propagated by the hegemonic (conservative and liberal) elites in the political domain and by the majority of the commercial mass media of the time. Instead, many of the labor movement leaders were tempted by the lure of enhanced personal status or other fruits of integration into the national political system and its prevailing institutions of decision‐making and power‐broking in return for adopting the imperialist‐ national path favored by the established order. By then, too, the means of mediated communication had become mass media in scale and reach in Great Britain and in all the (then) advanced capitalist economies. Indeed, the news media were not only thoroughly “bourgeois” in terms of their modes of ownership, control, and the strategic managerial direction of news agendas and of journalistic expression (Preston 2001, 2009). They were also laced with the new imperialist‐ nationalism prevailing within the so‐called great powers. When it came to foreign policy and international affairs, especially the crucial issues of peace and war, the elite owners and controllers of the mass media usually raked up the profits and bonuses whilst avidly supporting robustly militaristic and war‐mongering policies. The commercial mass media generally accepted or supported novel state‐led propaganda efforts and undermined the defined role or declared responsibilities of mediated public communication with regard to informing citizens of a modern liberal democratic society (Musto 2014). For example, as World War I neared and finally commenced, most Labour Party politicians in Great Britain, as elsewhere, fell in behind the flag of imperialist‐nationalism and supported the war as did all but a handful of liberal politicians. An exception was Ramsay MacDonald who resigned as chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in August 1914 over his party’s decision to support British participation in the war. In the subsequent decades of the twentieth century, even when the validity of the British Empire was put seriously in question by the rising anti‐colonial movements across the globe, the Labour Party in Britain was rarely able to articulate a distinctive policy position even with regard to this basic (democratic) aspect of internationalism. When in possession of ministerial power, it was difficult to identify a distinctive or consistent British Labour party foreign‐policy strategy constructed around relevant key principles, such as internationalism, international working‐class solidarity, anti‐capitalism, and antimilitarism.



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­The Fall: From “Belle Époque” to World War I The final two decades of the nineteenth century and the first dozen or so years of the twentieth century have also been characterized as the “Belle Époque.” This characterization tends to evoke “a period of enormous, exhilarating, disturbing change,” which, in turn, was often seen as a response in part to the emergence of new communications technologies and information infrastructures as well as enabling “the relatively easy international movement of people, goods, influence and ideas” (Rayward 2014, p. 13). Indeed, this period generated many compelling accounts of the onward march of ­globalization as a core feature of modern capitalist industrialism and its deepening divisions of labor, including those of Tönnies (2001 [1887]), Hobson (2005 [1902]), Kern (2003), and Nikolai Bukharin (1915). The period witnessed a series of imitative initiatives and structures on the part of establishment organizations, all seemingly targeted at the international‐level political and governance efforts. These included annual large‐scale Universal Peace Congresses in the different cities of Europe, the formation of an Inter‐Parliamentary Union in 1889 as well as the formation of an International Peace Bureau. Next to an expanding corpus of international law and financial institutions, the period also saw growing mainstream interest in international arbitration as the basis for settling disputes between nations, all aiming to “ensure the maintenance of peace” (Rayward 2014, p. 3). The Belle Époque also comprised a remarkable period of efflorescence in the arts and sciences, one which yielded an amazing array of exciting, eventful, and lasting cultural, scientific and intellectual achievements, many marked by a strong international orientation. This was the period of “Rutherford, Bohr, Einstein, Mme Curie, the Solvay Conferences on Physics, Freud, Proust, Gertrude Stein and her circle, of Oscar Wilde, of James Joyce, of … [many] great bibliographic enterprises, of the Carte du Ciel, of Stravinsky and the Diaghilev ballets, … of the creation of the Nobel Prizes, the spread of the influence of the Art and Crafts Movement and of Art Nouveau” (Rayward 2014, p. 13). Indeed, the Belle Époque period has been characterized by: Progress, industrial and scientific development, global trade, social amelioration, hard won political liberalism, a flowering in the fine and liberal arts, dynamic peace movements and above all, internationalism in all of its ramifications seemed to typify the age. (Rayward 2014, pp. 3–4)

However, the prevailing sense of confidence, rich achievement, and material progress and security among the influential elites, as well as the creative and zestful cultural air and structures, including a relatively long period free of major wars in Europe was not to last. Despite growing tensions from the early 1910s, this all came crashing down relatively suddenly with the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

­World War I and the Reconstruction (and Embedding) of Modern Nationalism The war in Europe between 1914 and 1918 might well be characterized as the First Total War or the First War of Industrial Systems, if not the first war of industrial‐scale death and destruction. The war instituted state‐directed planning and a command economy in the

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combatant countries to ensure that all major industrial sectors and plants mobilized their resources and output to enable and sustain the violence that passed as military goals. That mode of operation extended to the media and communication sectors, including the intensified developments of relevant technical components and the controlled harnessing of mass and commercial media for radically new forms of propaganda techniques (see Chapter 5). A distinct amplification of nationalist thinking, discourse, and practice was central to the much‐enhanced overall role of the nation‐state in political, economic, and military affairs as well as its novel modes of control over the radically new forms of propaganda and discursive techniques. The nation‐state and national interests were asserted as the priority, unquestioned and pervasive default frame for political discourse and many other domains of knowledge and cultural production, especially in the mass and commercial media sectors. Like many of the new communication devices, techniques, and routines first pioneered in the context of World War I as a veritable “hot‐house of innovation,” many aspects of the wartime propaganda and discursive techniques simply continued to be practiced after the violence and war ended. This applied especially to the continued use, routinization, and embedding of the “national” as the default frame for political communication and for journalistic and news‐making practices in the commercial media sector after the war had ended. The expanded functions, scale, and capacities of the state in the years after World War I, often associated with new liberalism, served to further underline the resort to the national as the default frame for political and journalistic discourse. There were little sustained efforts to explore and expand upon the more positive ­features of the internationalist and peace‐oriented movements that had emerged and grown in the decades before World War I. Likewise, there was little or no explicit inquiry as to how they might provide rich and potentially positive resources to avoid any repetition of such destructive wars. Instead, the approach in commercial media and elsewhere was one of “business as usual,” and there was no serious challenge of the pervasive grip of the nationalist imaginary or the national as default frame in political and journalistic discourse in the years following World War I. It would be an understatement to say that this was a wasted opportunity for some “social learning.” For just over two decades later, Europe became the leading site of yet another “world war” of mass death and destruction.

­Conclusions and Implications This chapter has examined some important ideas and conceptualizations of changes in the spatial and geographical base for political organization and solidarity in modern society marked by multiple new “combinations” of technological and socio‐economic innovations during the 1880s–1920s period. It has selectively treated ideas and related practices in academic or intellectual circles and briefly considered relevant political practices and movements. The chapter has highlighted certain neglected accounts of internationalization at that time and their implications, not least those produced by Ferdinand Tönnies (2001 [1887]). This review of Tönnies’s work seriously questions the adequacy and accuracy of its treatment in many subsequent academic textbooks. Indeed, it would appear that methodological and political nationalism, as the default frame and analytical mindset, may be more common among authors of academic textbooks published in subsequent decades than it was for Tönnies and some other theorists of modernity a century ago.



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One key implication of this chapter is that it would be highly productive for academic authors to make greater efforts to observe and compare the specific forms and conceptualizations of globalization (economic, political, ecological, cultural etc.) at the turn of the twentieth century with those that prevail today. The same also applies to journalists and other media professionals as well as to political actors. A second key implication of this chapter is that there are now some urgent and pressing reasons to abandon the narrow, nationalist paradigm that continues to inform the modern journalistic, news media and political communication discourses that developed in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. This old paradigm with its prevailing tendency to default to national or sub‐national levels of political organization, mobilization, or identification requires an urgent and drastic transformation toward new kinds of imaginaries. The requisite new paradigm must accord top‐level attention to the ever‐deepening international dimensions of the common and interwoven ecological threats, economic inequalities, and other material insecurities now facing citizens, not only across Europe, but in all corners of the globe. There are four main reasons for this conclusion. First, we clearly need to recognize and apply the kind of concepts and measures of change in the spatial scales of political and  economic interdependencies and interrelations (as well as the social divisions of labor) adopted more than a century ago by Tönnies (2001 [1887]) and Hobson (2005 [1902]), That done, it soon becomes very clear that such trends have been much amplified in the subsequent period and so international interdependencies have become much deeper and more complex in the contemporary era. Second, one of the most significant political challenges facing citizens today is the growth of economic inequalities and insecurities, alongside new forms of financial oppression, in all advanced electoral democracies over the past three decades or more. This trend, however, can only begin to be addressed by political mobilization on the European and international levels according to one prominent contemporary researcher on the matter of economic inequality (Piketty 2014). Third, the unfolding and looming ecological crisis is inherently global in its scope and ramifications. The narrow nationalism, commercial messaging, and economic blindspots that operate as the default frames for prevailing journalistic, news media, and political communication discourses are inhibiting rather than informing the requisite responses. In sum, they are unable to fully recognize, let alone address, the urgency and depth of the looming crisis – any more than they did with respect to the decades‐long trends of growing economic inequalities and insecurities. Fourth, the prevailing paradigm informing current journalistic, news media, and political communication discourses frequently serves to undermine, rather than support, the rather minimalist levels of actually‐existing supra‐national (world‐region) levels of political organization and co‐ordinations manifest in the EU project. Indeed, some major news organizations actively support those forces promoting a return to narrow, disabling or reactionary forms of nationalism. Bearing in mind the history of two massively destructive wars over the past century, as well as the tendencies of reactionary nationalisms to dynamically escalate (epidemic‐like), it is difficult to exaggerate the stakes involved in any eventual break‐up of the EU project in face of rising right‐wing populism and xenophobia in recent years. In sum, the conclusion of this chapter is that we urgently need to move beyond the blindspots and limits of the prevailing journalistic, news media, and political communication discourses. Both media researchers and practitioners must turn toward a new paradigm that embraces old and newer kinds of imaginaries which accord much greater attention and emphasis to the international and global dimensions of the interwoven

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material existence and deep interdependencies prevailing between the working people and citizens throughout the world. Finally, we must also highlight that despite much attention to “globalization” in recent decades, academic work is still not immune to the blindspots and limits of methodological and political nationalism. Hopefully, this present volume may make a small contribution toward the pressing need to move beyond such tendencies.

­References Adas, M. (1990). Machines as the Measure of Men, Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Beck, U. (2000). What Is Globalization? Cambridge: Polity. Benner, E. (2018 [1996]). Really Existing Nationalisms. A Post‐Communist View from Marx and Engels, New Edition. London: VERSO Books. Bukharin, N. (1915). Imperialism and World Economy. London: Martin Lawrence. Cobden, R. (1903 [1867]). The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, vol. 1. London: William Ridgeway. Day, R.B. and Gaido, D.F. (2012). Discovering Imperialism. Social Democracy to World War 1. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Delanty, G. (2009). The Cosmopolitan Imagination. The Renewal of Critical Social Theory. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Delanty, G. (2013). Formations of European Modernity: A Historical and Political Sociology of Europe. Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Durkheim, É. (2013 [1893]). The Division of Labour in Society, 2e. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Eley, G. (2002). Forging Democracy: the History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. New York: Oxford University Press. Hardt, H. (1988). Communication and economic thought: cultural imagination in German and American scholarship. Communication 10 (2): 141–163. Harvey, D. (2001). Spaces of Capital. Towards a Critical Geography. New York: Routledge. Hobsbawm, E.J. (1989). Age of Empire: 1875–1914. New York: First Vintage Books Edition. Hobson, J.A. (2005 [1902]). Imperialism: A Study, 2e. New York: Cosimo Inc. Inglis, D. (2009). Cosmopolitan sociology and the classical canon. Ferdinand Tönnies and the emergence of global Gesellschaft. The British Journal of Sociology 60 (4): 813–832. Jahn, B. (2013). Liberal Internationalism –Theory, History, Practice. Palgrave Macmillan. Joll, J. (1975). The Second International, 1889–1914, Rev. Edition. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Kahan, A. (2003). Liberalism in Nineteenth‐Century Europe. The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kemple, T. (2005). Instrumentum Vocale. A note on Max Weber’s value‐free polemics and sociological aesthetics. Theory, Culture & Society 22 (4): 1–22. Kern, S. (2003). The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ Press. Kon, I.S. (ed.) (1989 [1979]). A History of Classical Sociology. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Lukes, S. (2013 [1893]). Introduction to this edition. In: The Division of Labour in Society, 2e (ed. E. Durkheim and S. Lukes), xxv–xlvi. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Macleod, C. (2007). Heroes of Invention: Technology, Liberalism and British Identity, 1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1973–1993). Karl Marx and Frederick Engels – Collected Works. [Volumes 1 through 46]. New York: International Publishers. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1998 [1848]). The Communist Manifesto (ed. E. Hobsbawm). London: Verso. Mattelart, A. (2007). Keynote address. Presented at IAMCR 50th Anniversary Conference, UNESCO headquarters, Paris, France (23–25 July 2007).



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May, S.T.E. (1878). Democracy in Europe – a History, 2 Volumes. New York: W. J. Widdleton. Mazower, M. (2013). Governing the World. The History of an Idea. Penguin. Muller, J.Z. (2002). The Mind and the Market. Capitalism in Modern European Thought. New York: Anchor Books. Musto, M. (2014). Workers Unite: The International 150 Years Later. London: Bloomsbury. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty‐First Century. (trans. Arthur Goldhammer). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Preston, P. (2001). Reshaping Communication: Technology, Information and Social Change. London, UK: SAGE Publications. Preston, P. (2009). Making the News. London, UK: Routledge. Rayward, W.B. (2014). Information beyond Borders. International Cultural and Intellectual Exchange in the Belle Époque. New Edition. London and New York: Routledge. Schumpeter, J. (1939). Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, Vols. I and II. New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Co., Inc. Schumpeter, J. (2006 [1954]). History of Economic Analysis. London, UK: Taylor & Francis. Social Democratic Federation (1900). Report of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) conference. [Present author presumes that this report [on conference which took place on 5–6 August 1900 at Stratford Town Hall, east London] was published in London by the Social Democratic Federation (SDF)]. Tönnies, F. (1915). Warlike England as Seen by Herself. New York: G. W. Dillingham Company. Tönnies, F. (2001 [1887]). Community and Civil Society, (ed. Jose Harris, and trans. Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis). Cambridge University Press.

Author Index

Abazov, R., 388 Abbate, J., 334–335 Abbott, A., 354 Abel, R., 62 Abellán, M. L., 146 Adas, M., 459 Adinolfi, G., 222 Agirreazkuenaga, I., 445 Akhmadulin, E., 154–155 Aksoy, A., 446 Ala‐Fossi, M., 91 Albert, Pierre, 414, 416 Albert I of Belgium, 108 Albes, J., 99 Aldrich, R. J., 206 Alexander II of Russia, 423 Alexander III of Russia, 52 Alfandari, E, 281 Allor, M., 385 Alpatov, V., 443 Altenloh, E., 388 Álvarez, J. T., 34 Alves, F., 50 Alwood, E., 206 Amann, Max, 141 Amaya Quer, A., 223 Anakina, M., 310 Anastasiades, G., 229

Anderson, Benedict, 247, 334, 386, 439 Anderson, J. Q., 334 Angell, Norman, 117 Apezarena, J., 342 Arnheim, R., 121 Arnheim, Rudolf, 121 Arnold, Matthew, 10, 405, 418, 439 Arrese, A., 337, 342, 344 Arrighi, Giovanni, 357, 361, 364 Artero, Juan P., 300, 302, 304, 306, 307–308, 310, 312, 337 Astashov, A., 107 Atai, G., 394 Atton, C., 8 Attwood, L., 428 Avery, T., 243 Aytaç, I. A., 387 Azevedo, C.D., 225 Badenoch, Alexander, 198–199, 202, 206, 249–250 Badillo, P.‐Y., 305 Badouard, R., 334 Badsey, S., 102, 104 Bairnsfather, Bruce, 103 Bajomi‐Lázár, P., 283, 285, 376 Bakker, G., 63–64, 65 Ba k̨ owski, P., 280

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

476 Balbi, G., 129, 138, 264, 269 Balčytienė, A., 277, 286–287, 288–289 Baldelli, P., 259 Balogh, E. S., 143 Balsebre, 146 Baltar, 49 Banks, M. A., 334 Barbier, F., 277 Bardoel, J., 8, 325 Baris, R., 393 Barlow, R. R., 371 Barnhurst, K. G., 11, 362 Barrera, Carlos, 147–148, 224, 367–368, 370, 371, 374, 376, 379–380 Bastiansen, Henrik G., 205–206 Bastos, h., 338, 341, 344 Batory, A., 222 Baudelaire, Charles, 358, 405 Baya, A., 309 Beck, U., 6, 462, 464 Becker, J., 304, 310 Bednařík, P., 195 Beers, 117 Laura, 117 Belmonte, K. A., 206 Benjamin, Walter, 3 Bentham, Jeremy, 26, 466 Bergmeier, H. J. P., 175 Berners‐Lee, Tim, 334–335 Bernhard, N. E., 206 Bertrand, F., 108 Bessa, Alberto, 50–51, 308 Bessler, H., 85 Bigelow, Kathryn, 433 Bignell, J., 10, 249 Bingham, Adrian, 28, 116–117, 118, 421–422, 424, 426, 432, 433 Birkner, Thomas, 43, 54–55 Bishton, D., 341 Bjork, U. J., 54, 409–410, 411 Björkin, M., 126 Björnberg, A., 127 Blanchard, M., 373 Blaum, V., 375 Bleyer, Willard, 369 Bljum, A., 27, 30 Blum, R., 79 Boczkowski, P. J., 340, 353 Boelcke, W. A., 174 Bondebjerg, I. B., 243, 404, 415 Bonet, M., 92 Borejsza, J. W., 221 Borscheid, P., 241

Author Index Bösch, F., 9–10, 147 Bosch, J., 303 Bourdon, George, 369 Bourdon, Jerome, 244, 247–248, 251, 385, 415 Bourne, F. H., 408 Bourquin, J., 373 Bouygues, Francis, 273, 308 Boycott, Rosie, 433 Boyd‐Barrett, O., 45 Bradbury, J., 316 Brandes, H., 423 Brantner, C., 437, 439, 447, 448 Bravo, Arco, 344 Brecht, Berthold, 79, 93 Bredow, H., 84, 174 Bremm, K.‐J, 99 Brenner, C., 195, 200 Briggs, A., 9, 32, 80–82, 83, 118–119, 176–177, 178, 185–186 Brikše, I., 92 Broersma, Marcel, 403–404, 405–406, 407–409, 410–411, 412–413, 414, 416, 418–419 Bromley, M., 46–47, 379 Brooks, Ernest, 103 Brooks, T., 176–177, 423, 425 Bruch, R. v., 370–371 Brückmann, A., 55 Brüggemann, M., 318–319, 321 Brügger, 334–335 Brunetta, G. P., 130, 139 Brunmeier, V., 394 Brunsdon, C., 271 Buchan, John, 103 Bücher, Karl, 2, 370, 460–461 Buchsbaum, J., 76 Buitenhuis, P., 102 Bukharin, Nikolai, 166, 469 Burckhardt, Jacob, 405 Burda, A., 88, 303 Burke, Peter, 9, 44, 55, 277, 352–353, 387 Burke‐Kennedy, E., 341 Burns, Russell, 242, 252, 319 Burns, Tom, 266, 319 Bustamante, E., 181, 257, 261, 263–264, 267, 272 Butterwegge, C., 447 Č ábelová, L., 87, 88 Cabrera, A., 226–227 Caetano, Marcelo, 225–226, 227 Cailliau, R., 334



Author Index

Camauër, L., 449 Candeias, A., 45, 49, 51 Caprotti, F., 70 Carabias, Josefina, 429 Carey, James, 351, 404 Carmichael, J., 103 Carné, Marcel, 66 Carrillo, M., 225 Casey, R. D., 372 Castells, M., 76, 300 Castronovo, V., 128, 137, 358 Cawley, Anthony, 43–44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56 Cebe, Jan, 79 Cervera, J., 214 Cesareo, G., 259 Chadwick, A., 8, 177 Chalaby, J., 9–10, 11, 44, 56, 355, 408, 409, 412–413 Chamberlain, Neville, 176 Chambers, D., 198 Chapman, Jane, 9, 46, 135, 425 Charon, J. ‐M., 369, 373 Charpentier, A., 110 Chatterjee, C., 446 Chilcote, R. H., 222 Chuliá, E., 146 Chun, W., 4 Clark, B., 176, 186, 358 Cobden, Richard, 457–458, 466 Coelho, Eduardo, 50 Cole, R., 175 Collins, R. F., 411, 433 Conboy, M., 25, 27–28, 46–47, 117 Cormack, M., 444, 445 Costigliola, F., 405 Cottle, Simon, 439 Couldry, N., 448 Creuzberger, S., 200 Crisell, A., 81–82, 83 Cristo, D., 226 Cronqvist, Marie, 189, 201 Crouch, C., 6 Crowdy, T., 178 Cull, N. J., 206, 222 Cummings, R. H., 206 Cunha, A., 49–50 Cunliffe, John W., 370 Č uřík, A., 338 Curran, James, 4, 44–45, 46–47, 191, 196, 262, 271, 284 Curtice, J., 336 Czepek, A., 303

477

Dahl, H. F., 9, 177 Dale, M., 75 De Bens, E., 108 de Beus, J., 316, 318 De Schaepdrijver, S, 108 de Vreese, C. H., 318, 325 Debruyne, E., 108 Deffner, A. M., 323 Deist, W., 98 Delanty, G., 465 Delgado, L., 213 Derrida, Jacques, 444 Desai, J., 388 Desmet, P., 325 Desmond, R. W., 369–370, 372 Deuze, M., 363, 437–438 d’Haenens, L., 8, 325 Díaz Nosty, B., 344 Dibbets, K., 124 Dickinson, B., 371 Diller, A., 85, 174 Dinershtein, E., 52–53 Dipper, C., 97 Dittmar, C., 207, 210 Djerf‐Pierre, M., 126–127, 194, 448 Dobreva, Alina, 277, 280–281 Dodge, J., 376 Doğançay‐Aktuna, S., 387 Doherty, M. A., 175 Dolç, M., 259 Donders, K., 260, 325 Donsbach, W., 416 Dorril, S., 206 Douglas, S. J., 80–81 Dovifat, Emil, 54, 371 Doyle, G., 76, 301 Dubrovin, Alexander, 155 Duiz, R., 269 Durkheim, Emile, 5, 354, 465 Dussel, K., 84–85, 115, 120–121 Eckert, G., 173 Edison, Thomas, 61, 63 Edwards, J. C., 175 Eichner, Susanne, 385–386, 388, 390–391, 392, 394, 396, 398 Eisenhardt, U., 24 Ekström, M., 194 Elgar, Edward, 102 Elgemyr, G., 126 Ellefson, M., 9, 441 Ellis, John, 246–247, 248–249 Emery, W. B., 92

478

Author Index

Engblom, L.‐A., 192, 197, 201 Engel, M., 28, 44–45, 46–47, 48, 395–396, 461 Engelsing, R., 45 Ergert, V., 91 Eriksen, E. O., 318, 326 Esch, Ernst, 371 Esin, B., 51 Esser, F., 222, 362, 378–379, 415 Facebook, 340, 345, 393 Faenza, R., 259, 268 Falböck, G., 443 Falk, B. J., 235 Farrar, M. J., 103 Fattorello, Francesco, 374 Faus Belau, A., 147 Ferenc‐Piotrowska, M., 180 Ferenczi, T, 409 Ferrández Ferrer, A., 440, 447–448 Ferreira, Rafael, 49 Fet, Afanasyi, 53 Feyel, G., 26–27, 28, 29 Fickers, Andreas, 9–10, 11, 239–240, 244, 245–246, 248–249, 250–251, 252 Fiedler, Anke, 205, 207, 221–222, 224, 226, 228, 230, 231–232 Filas, R., 309 Flynn, Roderick, 61–62, 64, 66, 68, 74, 75–76, 302, 303–304 Folch‐Serra, M., 222 Foley, M., 337 Folkerts, J., 368 Follesdal, A., 319 Fontán, Antonio, 374 Forgacs, D., 127 Forno, M., 138 Foucault, Michel, 250 Francis, M., 201 Franco, 36, 181, 443 Francisco, 35–36, 136, 145–146, 181–182, 183, 213, 215, 222–223 Graça, 35, 44 Franquet, 257, 267 Rosa, 257–258, 260, 262, 264, 266, 268, 270, 272 Fraser, N., 317–318 Frei, N., 141 Frevert, U., 429 Friedan, Betty, 431 Friedmann, Werner, 373 Friedrich, C. J., 222 Friese‐Green, William, 61

Fröhlich, R., 371, 373, 376–377, 378–379 Fuentes, J. F., 33 Führer, K. C., 84–85, 119–120, 121 Fukuyama, Francis, 5, 7 Fulda, B., 115, 119–120 Fuller, J. G., 102 Gaido, D. F., 467 Galili, D., 241 Galsworthy, John, 102 Garbo, Greta, 429 García Galindo, J.A., 223, 224 García González, G., 182–183 Garliński, J., 180 Gaumont, Leon, 62 Geiger, R. ‐E., 431 Georgiou, M., 437–438, 446 Gerhards, J., 318, 426 Giddens, Anthony, 5–6 Gil de Zúñiga, H., 326 Gillies, J., 334 Ginsburg, T., 221 Glaser, K., 441, 444 Glinskij, B., 53 Goban‐Klas, T., 212, 291 Goebbels, Joseph, 85, 137, 140, 142, 174–175, 178 Goebel, G., 242 González, Felipe, 215 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 232, 282 Gorky, Maxim, 157 Görtemaker, M., 200 Graf, Heike, 437, 448 Graña, Manuel, 370 Grande, E., 6 Grandi, R., 267, 268–269 Grant, Harold, 103 Grasso, A., 264 Gray, M., 335 Gregor, Neil, 136 Gregory, A., 104 Grimm, D., 318 Gripsrud, J., 10 Griset, P., 334 Guback, T., 71–72 Gubern, R., 146 Guchkov, Alexander, 154, 157 Guillamet, J., 33, 36 Guinard, P. J., 33 Gulyás, A., 284, 300 Gustafsson, K. E., 409, 441 Gutenberg, Johannes, 24, 54 Guy, Alice, 62



Author Index

Guzek, 310 Damian, 299 Habermas, Jurgen, 3, 6, 317–318, 326 Hadenius, S., 126–127 Hagerty, B., 47–48 Hájek, R., 339 Hale, 54, 141 Halefeldt, H. O., 84, 86 Hall, 284, 359 Peter, 61 Hallin, D. C., 257, 333, 335, 357, 362, 406, 407–408, 410 Hamilton, J. F., 8 Hampton, M, 116, 118, 355–356, 408–409 Hanitzsch, T., 222, 356 Hann, E., 235 Hanson, E. C., 205 Harbers, F., 405, 413–414, 416, 418 Harbor, Pearl, 184 Hardt, H., 2, 442, 461 Hardy, J., 301 Hargitai, H., 92 Harlow, Jean, 429 Harmsworth, 425 Alfred, 47, 117 Harnischmacher, Michael, 367–368, 369–370, 372, 374, 376, 377–378, 380, 382 Hartley, J., 413, 418 Hayward, S., 62, 65 Heil, A. L., 185, 206 Hellwig, M., 303 Hemels, J., 122 Henrich‐Franke, C., 197, 249–250 Henry, Wendy, 433 Hensle, M., 178 Hepworth, Cecil, 63 Herbert, U., 190, 252 Heretakis, Emmanuel, 221, 228–229, 230, 264 Hesse, K. R., 209 Hibberd, Matthew, 257, 261 Hickethier, K., 80, 245 Hiley, N., 104, 105 Hitler, Adolf, 69, 136, 140, 142, 174, 183 Hixson, W. L., 206 Hobsbawm, Eric, 357, 364, 467 Hobson, John, 5, 456–457, 458, 459–460, 467, 469, 471 Holmberg, C‐G., 115, 125 Holtz‐Bacha, C., 301, 371, 373, 376–377, 378–379

479

Honecker, Erich, 232 Hood, Stuart, 262 Hopkin, D., 30, 105 Horgan, John, 302, 304 Howarth, Mary, 47, 425 Høyer, S., 9–10, 407–408, 410, 418 Hugenberg, Alfred, 121–122 Hughes, G. M., 444 Hume, David, 1–2 Humphreys, P. J., 10, 261–262, 263, 266, 269, 301, 333 Hung, Jochen, 115–116, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130 Hynes, S., 104 Ibárruri, Dolores, 214 Ibsen, Henrik, 212 Ijäs, A. J., 442 Immler, N. L., 322–323 Instagram, 393 Iordanova, D., 74 Iskhakov, R., 443–444 Isnenghi, M., 110 Isola, G., 128 Jachimowski, M., 310 Jackel, A., 73–74 Jakubowicz, K., 277–278, 291–292, 308–309, 380 Jarlbrink, J., 410–411, 418 Jasiewicz, K., 181 Jeanneney, J.‐N., 51 Jeanval, H., 63 Jensen, K. B., 9, 387–388 Johnson, A.R., 11, 206, 235, 249, 437 Jones, E. H. G., 444 Jowett, G. S., 233 Joyce, James, 469 Joyce, William (”Lord Haw‐Haw”), 175 Kaase, M., 301 Kaelble, H., 11, 30, 189, 319 Kaes, A., 120–121 Kaitatzi‐Whitlock, S., 299, 319, 321 Kalinin, Mikhail, 167 Kaltenbach, 175 Kaszuba, E., 92 Katsoudas, D., 92 Keenan, T., 4 Kekkonen, U., 216 Kerensky, Alexander, 158 Khvostunova, O., 309 Kind‐Kovács, F., 206

480

Author Index

Kinnebrock, Susanne, 1, 10, 23, 421, 424, 426, 428, 437 Kiselev, A., 44 Kiss, J., 341, 343 Kleinsteuber, H. J., 303 Klimkiewicz, B., 291–292, 293, 309 Knies, Karl, 460–461 Kocabaşoğlu, U., 387, 389 Koch, Adolf, 370 Kohli, M., 323 Kohnen, R., 25–26 Kokula, I., 429 Kolb, E., 120 Kolokytha, Olga, 315, 316, 318, 320, 322, 324, 326 Koopmans, R., 318, 325 Köpplová, Barbara, 79, 375 Körösényi, A., 283–284 Koszyk, K., 29, 98, 196, 425 Kött, M., 413, 418 Kracauer, S., 121 Kramp, L., 333 Kretzschmar, S., 449 Kronvall, K., 125 Krotz, F., 263, 266 Kruglikova, Olga, 153–154, 156, 158, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168 Krupp, M., 390, 391, 395 Kuhn, T., 326 Kunczik, M., 284 Kupferschmitt, T., 396 Kuznetsov, V., 158–159, 161–162, 163–164, 165, 167–168, 169 Kwiatkowski, M. J>, 179 Lánczi, A., 282, 284 Lange, B., 31 Langenbucher, W. R., 442 Langewiesche, D., 26 Largardère, Arnaud, 307 Larsson, L., 192, 354 Lasswell, Harold, 3, 97–98, 222 Latzer, M., 10 Lauder, Harry, 102, 105 Lauk, E., 92, 287–288, 376, 380, 440, 443, 446 Laurie, C. D., 175 Lazarsfeld, Paul, 3 Leab, D., 206 Léauté, Jacques, 377 Leete, Alfred, 104 Leffler, Melvyn P., 205–206 Lehnert, D., 25

Lenk, C., 121 Leonhard, J., 26 Lerg, W. B., 80–81, 83, 84–85 Leroy, M., 108 Lewis, P. H., 222, 363 Liedtke, R., 191 Lievrouw, L., 385 Lijphart, A., 123 Lima, Helena, 43, 48–50, 51, 221, 226–227, 418 Linz, J. J., 221 Lipp, A., 110 Lister, M., 4 Lloyd, Marie, 102 Löblich, M., 3 Lommers, S., 11, 197 Longhi, R. R., 342 Lovelace, C., 30, 102–103 Lovell, S., 91, 184 Lozano, 251 Lozanov, G., 279 Ludendorff, Erich, 100 Lumière, Louis, 61–62 Lundgren, L., 247, 249–250 Lyman, R., 339 Maarek, P., 304–305, 306, 308 MacCrae, John, 103 MacDonald, Ramsay, 468 Machill, M., 261 Maia, M., 90 Majchrzak, G., 212 Makhonina, S., 155 Mann, Michael, 361 Manovich, L., 4 Mansell, G., 179, 180 Mansfeldova, Z., 278, 282 Marinescu, V., 309 Marlin, R., 97 Marquis, A. G., 102 Maršík, J., 86–87 Martín Rojo, L., 326 Martínez, Rafael, 183 Marx, Adolph, 53 Marx, Karl, 460–461, 466 Marzano, A., 128 Massart, J., 108 Matheson, D., 341, 412, 418 Mattelart, A., 97, 454 Mäusli, T., 245 Maxwell, Robert, 261, 273 Mazur, L., 45, 180 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 358



Author Index

McCallum, Claire, 421 McCrystal, C., 198 McEwan, J. M., 103 McLaughlin, L., 317 McLellan, David, 103 McLuhan, M., 8, 386, 463 McNair, B., 45, 47 McReynolds, L., 423 Melischek, G., 25 Mendelssohn, P.d., 55 Mertelsmann, O., 200 Merziger, Patrick, 135–136, 138, 140, 142, 144, 146, 148, 150 Metyková, 338–339 Meyen, Michael, 205–206, 207–208, 210, 212, 214, 216, 218, 232 Meyer, J.‐H., 11, 411, 418 Michelsen, Morten, 202 Mickiewicz, E., 278–279, 280–281 Mihaylova, K., 281 Mihelj, S., 249, 251, 277, 385 Mikkonen, S., 218 Milev, R., 279 Miller, A., 103 Miller, J., 388 Miller, T., 76 Milton, John, 26 Miquel, P., 277 Mlitz, A., 8 Mondadori, Arnoldo, 138, 308 Monteleone, F., 128–129, 138, 266 Moore, M., 196 Morley, D., 247, 271, 446 Morriss, A., 179–180 Mosse, Rudolf, 28, 119, 121 Mottram, R., 65 Müller, J. E., 240 Muller, J. Z., 461–462 Murdoch, Rupert, 261, 273, 302, 336–337 Murialdi, P., 33, 115, 264, 362 Musso, P., 244 Mussolini, Benito, 34–35, 70, 127–128, 129–130, 136–137, 138 Mustata, 249 Navickas, A., 287 Negroponte, N., 7 Nerone, J., 11, 45–46, 48, 56, 353, 355– 356, 357 Neverla, I., 391 Newcourt‐Nowodworski, S., 181 Nicholas, S., 118, 176–177, 193, 201 Nieminen, H., 288

481

Nikolchev, I., 278–280, 311 Nikolov, B., 279 Nixon, Raymond, 372–373 Noam, E., 92, 312 Nordberg, K., 127 Nordenstreng, K., 207, 216 Nordmark, D., 127 Norkus, Z., 289 Northcliffe, Alfred, 47–48, 102, 116–117, 409, 426 Novagrockienė, J., 287 Nowak, E., 303 Nowak‐Jeziorański, J., 179 Núñez Díaz‐Balart, M., 35 O’Brien, Denis, 304 Ociepka, B., 291 O’Connell, J. M., 399 O’Connor, W. F., 46, 174–175 Oggolder, C., 341, 345 Oldcastle, John, 406 Olechowski, T., 25–26, 27, 30, 31 Oliveira Marques, R., 345 Olsen, Ole, 65 O’Neill, B., 91 Ortoleva, P., 128–129, 139 O’Toole, F., 337 Ovsepian, R., 162, 165–166, 168–169 Owen, Wilfred, 104 Øy, Nils E., 23, 37 Pajala, M., 247, 250 Palace, Winter, 158 Palacio, M., 146, 271 Palmer, M. B., 28, 408, 414, 418 Papa, A., 139 Papandreou, George, 227 Park, Robert, 3 Parry, Hubert, 102 Parry‐Giles, 206 Parta, E.R., 11, 206, 235 Pathé, Charles, 62 Paulu, B., 387, 389, 391 Pauwels, C., 267, 323, 325 Pavlik, P., 338 Pearson, Arthur, 28, 47, 299, 438 Pegg, M., 81, 83 Pells, R., 409, 418 Pennell, C., 104 Perincioli, Christina, 432 Pessa, Fernando, 183 Peters, B, 333, 413, 418 Petev, T., 278–279, 280

482

Author Index

Picard, R. G., 325 Pinto, A. C., 136, 374 Pisarek, W., 213, 375 Pištora, L., 87 Piulats, C. M., 445 Pizarroso Quintero, A., 33, 182–183, 184 Pohle, H., 85 Pohlit, S., 389 Polanco, Jesus de, 308 Polanyi, Karl, 354, 356 Ponsford, D., 336 Poole, H. W., 334–335, 340 Pope, Jessie, 103 Pöttker, H., 9–10, 355, 407–408, 410, 418, 448 Potúček, J., 87–88 Powell, Charles, 215 Powell, Michael, 66 Preoteasa, M., 309 Preston, Paschal, 3, 5, 7–8, 10, 319, 321, 457, 461 Prommer, Elizabeth, 385, 388, 390, 391 Psychogiopoulou, E., 322 Pugh, M., 430 Pulitzer, Joseph, 369 Quarterman, J. S., 334 Quintero, P. A., 50 Quittner, J., 7 Radnóti, Z., 234 Raeymaeckers, K., 108 Ragone, G., 138 Ramos, R., 45, 49, 51 Rank, Arthur, 67 Rashin, A., 45 Raskin, Adolf, 174 Raunio, T., 319 Rawnsley, G. D., 206 Raycheva, L., 278–279, 280 Rayward, W.B., 469 Reed, Carol, 66 Reeves, N., 104 Reichardt, S., 137 Reith, John, 81–82, 118, 243 Renger, R., 54 Renoir, Jean, 66 Requate, J., 10–11, 405, 412, 418 Reumann, K., 54, 56 Rian, Ø., 36 Ribeiro, Nelson, 88–89, 90, 97–98, 173–174, 176, 180, 181–183, 184 Richards, H., 117, 119

Richeri, Giuseppe, 257–258, 264, 267, 268–269, 305, 308 Riemer, N., 326 Riepl, W., 8 Risse, T., 318, 325 Risso, L., 205, 217 Rizzoli, Angelo, 138, 308 Robb, 102, 104 Robertson, J. C., 32 Robey, George, 102 Rojas, F., 147 Rollenberg, P., 311 Rolo, C. J., 178 Romsics, I., 282 Rosen, J., 385 Roslyng‐Jensen, P., 206 Ross, C., 141 Rössler, P., 428 Roth, P., 91 Ruellan, D., 414, 418 Russell, Audrey, 198 Rydén, P., 115, 125, 409 Saiz, M. D., 35 Salaverría, R., 335, 338, 341, 345, 379 Salminen, E., 216 Salokangas, R., 359, 374–375, 442 Salt, John, 177 Sanford, G., 212 Sangiovanni, A., 139 Sannino, P., 443 Santamaría, E., 447 Santos, R., 88 Sarikakis, Katharine, 315–316, 317–318, 319–320, 321–322, 324–326 Sassatelli, M., 321–322 Sauvage, M., 245 Scannell, P., 9, 247 Schade, E., 91–92 Schafer, V., 334 Schäffle, Albert, 461 Schildt, Axel, 130, 190 Schliep, K., 309 Schmidt, Anne, 97, 98–99, 100–101, 320, 396 Schofield, N., 222 Schudson, Michael, 355–356, 362, 368, 406, 413–414, 418 Schuhmann, S., 423 Schulz‐Vorberg, H., 319 Schumacher, R., 85–86 Schuman, R., 316 Schumpeter, Joseph, 457, 460–461



Author Index

Schwalbe, C. B., 206 Schwarz, Vanessa, 425 Scott, J. W., 305, 306, 421 Seal, G., 388 Seceleanu, A., 309 Sedgewick, J., 66 Sefertzis, G., 229 Seoane, M. ‐C, 35, 215 Sewell, P. W., 241 Shandley, R. R., 194 Shedden, D., 341 Sherel, A., 163, 168 Shirokogorov, S., 438 Shneer, D., 442 Siapera, 5, 8, 343 Siebert, S., 24, 205, 282, 357 Silberman, M., 221 Silberstein‐Loeb, J., 44–45, 117 Simi, B., 92 Simonson, P., 10 Siomos, T., 374 Šipoš, B, 143–144, 145, 234–235, 338 Skoog, 198, 200 Slater, D., 340 Smil, V., 241 Smith, Adam, 466 Smith, Anthony, 245, 271, 323, 432 Snowden, Edward, 341 Sombart, Werner, 457, 462 Søndergaard, H., 389 Sonina, E., 52 Sösemann, B., 141 Souhami, D., 103 Sousa, J. P., 48–49, 50, 406, 409, 418 Spehr, P., 61 Spencer, Herbert, 457, 459 Stacey, J., 194 Stalin, Joseph, 69, 165–166, 168, 181, 215, 233 Stanage, T., 45 Stead, W. T., 46–47, 404, 406, 418 Stein, Gertrude, 442–443, 469 Steinmaurer, T., 260, 267 Steinmetz, R., 210 Stephenson, H., 369–370, 372, 377–378 Stewart, G. H., 378 Stites, R., 427 Stöber, R., 54, 119, 142, 386, 388, 423 Stoeckel, F., 326 Stolypin, Peter, 155 Stone, D., 189 Strömbäck, J., 362 Sturken, M., 240

Sükösd, M., 233–234, 277–278, 283 Sutcliffe, A., 189 Sutton, A. A., 369 Suvorin, Alexei, 52–53 Sythin, Ivan, 107 Syvertsen, T., 91 Szabó, I., 282 Szot, L., 376 Taylor, H., 336 Taylor, M., 110 Taylor, P. M., 30, 102, 176, 177, 178 Temple, M., 48 Tengarrinha, J., 34, 45, 48–49 Terrón Montero, J., 223 Terrou, F., 372 Thacker, T., 102, 104 Thatcher, Margaret, 262 Ther, V., 98, 100, 101 Thomas, 10, 108, 207, 240, 303, 346 Thompson, J. B., 353 Thompson, K., 63, 66, 68 Tidy, R., 175 Tobia, Simona, 205–206 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 405 Toffler, A., 7, 385 Tommila, P., 442 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 5, 354, 457, 460, 461–463, 464–465, 469, 470–471 Tonscheidt, S., 430 Toscan, Daniel, 76 Tranche, R. R., 214 Tranfaglia, N., 128, 137 Trappel, J., 288, 346 Trautmann, L., 390 Triandafyllidou, A., 11 Tucher, A., 355 Tuchman, G., 353 Tufte, Thomas, 449 Tulloch, J., 378–379 Tunstall, J., 404, 418 Turf, Paris, 306 Tusan, M., 426 Tusan, Michelle, 426 Twain, Mark, 403, 419 Twitter, 345, 393 Ulbricht, Walter, 231 Uricchio, W., 240, 243 Usher, N., 353 Vajda, E., 285 Van Eeno, R., 108

483

484

Author Index

van Elteren, M., 404–405, 406 Van Jacob, S., 445 Van Vree, F., 124 Vartanova, E., 278, 309 Vassilev, R., 280 Veidlinger, J., 442 Verhey, J., 99 Verschik, A., 443 Voronova, S., 280 Wagner, Hans‐Ulrich, 173, 189–190, 192, 194, 196–197, 198, 200, 202 Ward, S., 48 Wartanova, E., 391, 394–395 Wasburn, P. C., 176, 184 Weale, A., 175 Webb, Alban, 177, 206, 209, 233, 235 Weber, Max, 3, 140, 241, 354, 387, 457, 460, 462 Weber‐Menges, S., 438, 446 Weckel, U., 194, 423 Wehler, H.‐U, 45 Weibull, Lennart, 10, 115, 125–126, 127 Welch, D., 98, 100 Werth, N., 164 West, Mae, 429 Weymouth, A., 10 WhatsApp, 393 Wheeler, M., 299, 311 Whites, C. L., 159–161, 190 Wiener, J. H., 29, 408, 410–411, 412, 419 Wijfjes, H., 122–123, 124

Wilde, Oscar, 469 Wilhelms, K., 428 Wilke, J., 28–29, 31, 54–55, 378, 387, 389, 415, 419 Wilkinson, G., 105 Willett, R., 405–406, 419 Williams, Raymond, 8–9, 10, 246, 248–249, 369–370, 410, 414, 419 Williams, Walter, 369 Wilson, C. C., 448 Winch, Michael, 186 Winek, M. D., 184 Winston, B., 9, 80 Wittenbrink, T., 84 Wolfe, T. S., 440, 443 Wolinsky, A., 334 Wolter, H.‐W., 54–55 Wright, D. G., 102 Wyka, A. W., 300 Yanglyaeva, Marina, 437 Zakharov, S., 438 Zelizer, B., 48, 351 Zeller, R., 11 Zemskov, V., 167 Zhilyakova, N., 155 Zhirkov, G., 106, 156–157, 158–159, 160–162 Zimmermann, C., 10, 92, 136 Zukor, Adolph, 64

Subject Index

ABC (newspaper), 215, 307, 337 absolutism, 25, 32, 39 access to information, 37–38, 182–183, 335–336, 392–393, 394–395, 396–397, 398–399, 440 ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), 340 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 334 advertising, 28, 47, 53–54, 261–262, 264–265, 343–344, 423–424, 429–430 advertising markets, 288, 302, 338 Africa, 89, 176, 205, 231, 446 AGCOM (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni), 305 Agência de Notícias de Informaçō es (ANI), 226 Albania, 214 ALO (Association pour la Liberation des Ondes), 259 alternative media, 343, 345, 422, 431, 447 Americanization, 16, 29, 119, 121, 243, 403–404, 405–406, 407–409, 411, 413, 415–416, 418–419 anti‐capitalist movements, 7, 468 Armenia, 392 audience ratings, 182, 274

audience research, 83, 85, 90, 142, 207 audiences, 385–386, 388–389, 390, 398, 409, 425, 439–440, 446 demands, 301 demographics magazines, 123 social class, 44, 104, 128, 153, 157, 174, 195, 387 feedback, 7, 142 film, 121, 388, 398 Germany, 67 Italy, 139 focus on, 209 fragmentation, 271–272, 385 journalism, 338 literacy, 34, 45, 51, 162, 288, 386–387, 397, 422–423 newspapers, 346, 406, 408 preferences, 141–142, 398 radio, 79 Britain, 85, 193 Italy, 306 preferences, 88 Sweden, 127 size, 346 television, 242, 265 television, 228, 247, 272 women, 47, 49, 85, 87, 116, 138, 190, 194

The Handbook of European Communication History, First Edition. Edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

486

Subject Index

Austria, 31, 354, 412, 437 exile publications, 443 Habsburg Empire, 23–24, 25–26, 28, 30–31, 34, 65, 143, 180 migration to, 446 press freedom, 25, 27, 30–31, 91 press regulation, 447 radio, 91, 193, 263, 267 regional broadcasting, 267 Austro American Tribune, 443 authoritarian regimes, 135–136, 137, 139, 143–144, 145, 221–222, 441–442, 443 BAI (Broadcasting Authority of Ireland), 303 Basque language and culture, 443, 445 Bauer Group, 302, 311 Bayard Group, 306 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), 32, 80, 83, 176–177, 178–179, 180, 182–183, 193 commercial broadcasters and, 271 female correspondents, 198 female staff, 198 formation, 81–82 funding and license fee, 196, 262 as model for other broadcasters, 185, 193, 197, 262, 266, 284 non‐English services, 176, 180–181, 212, 388 overseas listenership, 235, 279 propaganda broadcasts, 176–179, 185 public service remit, 243, 336 radio, 83, 118, 193, 302 local and regional, 262–263, 445 programme content, 200–201 television, 242, 262 tone and content, 119 London‐centrism, 119 BBC as model for other broadcasters, 91 World Service, 206 BBFC (British Board of Film Censors), 32 BBS (Bulletin Board System), 341 Belarus, 392 Belgium propaganda, World War I, 107–108 radio, 92 regional broadcasting, 267 Belle Époque period, 454–455, 469 Berlin Wall, 209, 230–231, 368 Berliner Morgenpost, 119 Bertelsmann Music Group, 261, 284, 299, 303

BIM (Bureau d’Information Militaire), 29 BIP (Bureau of Information and Propaganda), 180 Black Hundreds, 154–155, 160 Blitz, 341 Bohemia, 49, 86 books, 129, 141, 144, 212, 228, 230, 411, 418 Boulevardzeitung, 120 Brighton School, 63 British Board of Film Censors (BBFC), 32 British Movietone News, 194 Bulgaria, 92, 195, 277–279, 280–281, 282, 375, 380 newspapers, 281 Bulletin Board System (BBS), 341 Bulletin des Armées de la République, 110 Cable News Network (CNN), 248 cable television, 260–262, 269–270, 271 Canal Plus, 75, 263, 265, 305–306, 307–308, 312, 337 Catalonia, 34, 36, 267, 305, 341, 445 Catholic Church, 27, 32, 36, 130, 149, 224, 305, 307 CCIR (Consultative Committee on International Radio), 245 censorship, 24–25, 31–33, 143–144, 146, 181, 225–226, 228, 286–287 Germany, Nazi regime, 140–141 Poland, 212 Portugal, 225–226 Russia, 30, 154 Scandinavia, 36–37 Spain, 35–36 World War I, 34–35 See also press freedom CERN, 335 Channel 4 (UK), 302, 337 cinema. See film citizenship, 288, 318, 326, 361, 364, 438–439, 463 civil rights, 136, 143, 422, 426, 429, 437 clandestine station, 174–175 class (social), 121, 124–125, 128, 153–154, 157–158, 358–359, 462–463, 467–468 middle class audiences, 38, 44, 87, 119, 121, 123–124, 125, 423 working class audiences, 33 classical music, 83, 85–86, 89, 93, 123, 127 CLR (Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Radiodiffusion), 91, 261, 284



Subject Index

CNMC (Commission for Markets and Competition), 305 CNN (Cable News Network), 248 Cold War, 15–16, 190, 201–202, 205–207, 213, 215–216, 217–218, 249–250 Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC), 305 Committee to Protect Journalists, 339 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 339 communication studies (as field), 3, 16, 205, 369, 454 communism, 161, 213–214, 215, 217, 278, 280, 282, 291 Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Radiodiffusion (CLR), 91 consumerism, 54, 149, 227, 293–294, 361, 423–424, 430, 447 copyright, 53, 288 corporatism, 125, 221, 225, 359–360 Corriere della Sera, 34, 138, 308, 358, 424 Cosmopolitan, 432 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, 277 CSCE conference, 216 Czech Republic, 285, 333, 336, 338–339, 342–343, 345–346 Czechoslovakia, 80, 86, 88, 91, 192, 195, 372, 375 radio, 86–88 See also Czech Republic; Slovakia Daily Express, 28, 47, 117, 191 Daily Herald, 117 Daily Mail, 47–48, 116–117, 119, 303, 312, 336, 341, 344 Daily Mirror, 28, 47–48, 103, 116–117, 191, 425 Daily Telegraph, 28, 117, 336, 341 DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite), 262 Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), 102, 105 democratic deficit, 5, 315, 317, 318–319, 320–321, 323, 325, 327 Denmark, 36–37, 39, 63, 386–387, 389, 390–392, 396–397, 398–399 audiences, 396–397 film, 63, 65, 71, 73 press freedom, 36 deregulation, 260–261, 262–263, 264–265, 270, 272–273, 294, 300–301, 302 Deutsche Film‐Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA), 74, 194 Deutsche Stunde, 84 Deutscher Kurzwellensender, 175 Diário de Notícias, 34, 49–50, 337, 341

487

Dick Barton – Special Agent, 200 dictatorships. See authoritarian regimes digital media, 3–4, 7–8, 10, 267, 333, 335, 337, 344–346. See also internet diversity, 260, 299–300, 321–322, 323, 352, 438–439, 441–442, 447–448 Dutch East India Company, 353 ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research), 1, 17, 454 ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community), 316 EEC (European Economic Community), 75, 260 England. See United Kingdom Enlightenment period, 3–4, 455–456 EPS (European public sphere), 7, 11, 315, 317–318, 319, 320–321, 323, 325 Escual Herrico, 443 establishment, 232 Estonia, 31, 160, 285–286, 376, 380, 437–438, 442–443 ethnic minorities, 11, 437, 439–440, 441, 443, 445, 447, 449 ethnicity, 179, 438, 448 Europe financial crisis (2008) and, 325–326 identity of, 201–202 Europe in crisis, 326 European Broadcasting Union (EBU), 11 European Parliament (EP), 316, 319, 324, 326 European Union (EU), 16–17, 75–76, 299–300, 315–316, 317–318, 319–321, 324–325, 326–327 Eurovision Song Contest, 247, 250 exile publications, 442–443 Falange Española, 145, 429 fascism, 35–36, 128–129, 135–136, 137– 138, 139, 148–150, 427, 429–430. See also authoritarianiam Federal Republic of Germany. See Germany Federazione di Radio Emitenti Democratiche (FRED), 259 feminism, 431, 432–433 film, 61–63, 66–67, 68–69, 70–72, 73–74, 75–76, 120–121, 387–388 audiences, 121, 388, 398 authoritarian control, 35 censorship, 32 cultural eurosphering, 323–325 Denmark, 63, 65, 71, 73

488

Subject Index

film (cont’d) European, co‐productions, 73–75 feature‐length, 64 feminist, 432 France, 61–62, 63, 66, 74, 263 Germany, 67, 69, 120 1920s, 121–122 Nazi regime, 142 Hungary, 145 Italy, 71, 128, 432 Netherlands, 124, 194 newsreels, 64, 70, 104, 106, 111, 194, 388, 391 propaganda, 35, 142 romance, 421, 429 Scandinavia, 39 Spain, 72, 272 Sweden, 125–126 United Kingdom, 63, 67, 72, 118–119 Financial Times, 117, 341 Finland, 36–38, 206–207, 215–216, 354–355, 359–360, 362, 373–374, 443–444 Cold War, 215–217 forms, narrative, 249 Fox, 198, 304, 337 France censorship, 32 film, 61–62, 63, 66, 74, 263 newspapers, 28 press freedom, 25, 29 propaganda, World War I, 110 radio, 92 television, 305, 306, 360 See also French Revolution Frankfurt School, 247 Frankfurter Zeitung, 119, 212 Freedom House, 285 freedom of speech, 27, 37, 105, 195, 225, 279, 300, 338 freedom of the press. See press freedom French Revolution, 2, 4, 26, 33, 54, 97, 304, 455–456 Fugger‐newsletters, 353 Gastarbeiter program (Germany), 446 Gay Times, 432 Gazzetta del Popolo, 34 Geheimsender, 174 gender, 15–16, 421–423, 425, 427–428, 429, 430–431, 433, 438 General‐Anzeiger newspapers, 28–29, 54–55, 119, 425

Germany, 28–29, 43–44, 69–70, 84–85, 119–120, 377–378, 386–387, 397–398 audiences, 395–396 Federal Republic (West Germany), 71, 72–73, 207–208, 209–210, 212, 231–232, 244, 432 female journalists, 198 film, 67, 69, 120 post‐WWII, 194 German Democratic Republic (East Germany), 207–209, 221, 230–231, 232, 235–236, 266, 375–376, 430 German Empire, 25–26, 27, 29, 54, 98, 100, 426 immigration, 446 journalism, 54–55, 122, 371, 415, 419 legislation, 196 media legislation and policy censorship, 32 East Germany, 230–232 post WWII, 196–197 media narratives, post WWII, 199–200 Nazi regime, 140–142, 144, 174–176, 177, 213, 215, 229, 230 newspapers, 54–55 circulation, 115 post‐WWII, 191–192 press freedom, 31 propaganda Cold War, 207–210 Nazi regime, 140–142, 173–175 World War I, 98–101 radio, 84–86, 119–120 Cold War, 207–208 Nazi regime, 173–175 television, 194, 242 commercial, 244–245 Weimar republic, 120 Germany Calling, 175 Glavlit, 30, 164 globalization, 5–6, 7, 16–17, 453–454, 463, 465, 469, 471–472 Golos Moskvi, 154 Gosizdat, 159 Great Britain. See United Kingdom Greece, 221, 227–228, 229, 235–236, 258–259, 260–261, 406, 408 media policy and control, 227–230 newspapers, 228 television, 229–230 Grüne Post, 120 Guardian, 100, 341, 343–344, 346



Subject Index

Hamburger Zeitung, 191 Home Service (BBC), 193 Hungary, 136, 143–145, 149–150, 221–222, 232–233, 282, 284–285, 375–376 journalistic practices, 284–285 media control and policy, 143, 232–235, 284–285 IAMCR (International Association for Mass Communication Research), 1, 214, 372, 374–375 ICA (International Communication Association), 1, 4, 10 Iceland, 37, 75, 250 illiteracy, 45, 49, 106, 127, 138, 162, 170, 358 Independent News and Media (INM), 303–304 Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC), 301 Independent Television Authority (ITA), 266, 301 International Communication Association (ICA), 1, 4, 10 International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), 355 International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 197, 399 internet, 7–8, 333–334, 339–341, 345–346, 391–392, 393, 395–396, 398 audiences, 391–394 development, 334–335 newspaper circulation and, 336–337 Ireland, 75–76, 300–302, 303–304, 333, 335–336, 337, 340–341, 343–344 Irish Times, 341, 344 ITA (Independent Television Authority), 266, 301 Italy, 32–33, 34–35, 63–64, 129–130, 136–137, 148–150, 260–261, 304–305 Fascist media, 137–140 film, neorealism, 194 press freedom, 32 propaganda, World War I, 110 radio, 35, 182 television, 258, 264 commercial, 266 ITU (International Telecommunication Union), 197, 399 ITV (UK broadcaster), 257, 262, 265–266, 271, 301–302

489

jazz music, 87, 123, 139, 145, 175, 178, 233–234 Jews, 442 journalism, 355–356, 358–360, 361–362, 367–368, 369–370, 372–374, 375–376, 377–379 access to profession, 139, 341, 354 online newspapers and diversity, 341 women and, 198 campaigning, 46 commercial pressures and, 38, 46 online payment models, 341, 344, 346 core skills, 352 Czecheslovakia, 338–340, 346 educational programs, 147, 164 internet, 7, 333 internet and, 333 Lithuania, 287 online, 344 political stances, 354 Cold War, 216, 217, 259 Russia, 155, 156, 160, 170 Soviet Union, 161 White movement, 160 Southern Europe, 36 standards and ethics, 353–355 history of practice, 352–353 objectivity regime, 413–415 professionalism, 351 tabloid, 28, 46 United Kingdom, 191 values and ethical standards, Europe, 356–357 values and practices, 7, 195, 280, 333 Anglo‐American ‘factual’ model, 56, 346, 355 as literary form, 48, 56 working conditions, 49, 118, 354 as non‐commercial activity, 153 journalism education, 379 journalistic standards, Lithuania, 287 Kultura, 212 La Presse, 28 labor movement, 7, 468 Labour Party (UK), 200 Latvia, 31, 286 League of Nations, 31 legislation, 35, 44, 48, 261–262, 263, 270, 280, 282 Ley de Prensa, 223–224 LGBT media, 422, 432

490

Subject Index

liberalism, 26, 39, 356, 359, 455–456, 458–459, 460, 470 classical, 455–456, 458–459, 460 Lidové noviny, 338, 342 Light Programme (BBC), 193, 200 Lisbon Treaty, 316, 322 literacy, 34, 45, 51, 162, 288, 386–387, 397, 422–423 Italy, 127 Lithuania, 31, 277, 286–287, 288–289, 290 LNK (Laisvas nepriklausomas kanalas), 288 lottizzazione, 244 LRT (Lithuanian Radio and Television), 289 Luxembourg, 75, 91, 193, 257–258, 260, 267, 302 LWT (London Weekend Television), 262 Maastricht Treaty, 11, 75, 316, 321–322 magazines, 122–123, 147–148, 190, 212, 423–425, 428–429, 430–431, 432–433 illustrated, 51 Italy, 128 underground, 8 mainstream media, 234, 289, 325–326, 431, 433, 441, 447–448, 449 Marieberg Media, 288 mass press, 3, 10, 118–119, 358, 404, 406, 408–409, 415. See also tabloid newspapers media concentration, 299, 300–301, 302–303, 305–306, 307, 309–310, 311–312, 313 Mediaset, 264, 305, 308, 337, 362 Metro‐Goldwyn‐Mayer, 66 middle class, 38, 44, 87, 119, 121, 123–124, 125, 423 migrants, 320, 438, 440, 445–447, 449 Milan, 129, 306, 358, 374 Military Chronicle (Russia), 106 mimetic transplantation, 278, 284, 294 Mladý sve ̌t, 342 Moving Picture News, 63 Mrs Dale’s Diary, 200 MTV (Music Television), 248 Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 55 Napoleonic Wars, 33, 36, 54 national identity, 201 nationalism, 5–6, 16–17, 143, 454, 456, 460–461, 469–471, 472 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 205, 215, 217, 236, 278, 279

Nazi party, 136 NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists), 373, 376, 378–379 Néa Politeía, 229 Nederlandse Christelijke Radio Vereniging, 124, 193 NEP (New Economic Policy), 68–69, 161–162, 164, 166, 167 Netherlands, 24–25, 71, 73, 116, 130, 269–270, 354, 408–409 EC referendum, 316 film, 124, 194 magazines, 122 newspapers, 122–123 radio, 92, 123–124 television, 247 Neues Wiener Journal, 28 New British Broadcasting Station (NBBS), 174–175 newpapers, tabloid, Germany, 120 News Corporation, 300, 302–304, 307, 312, 341, 343 News UK, 301–302, 303 newspapers, 168, 190 audiences, 386–387 Bulgaria, 279 circulation levels, 50, 119–120, 156–157, 158–159, 162, 335, 337, 424–425, 426 France, 28 Germany, 1920s, 119–120 Greece, 229 Italy, 35 online, 340 Poland, Cold War, 212 rotary presses, 44 Spain, 32, 35, 335, 341 Sweden, 124–125 United Kingdom, 46–48 NGOs (non‐governmental organizations), 326, 345, 448 Nordisk, 65 Norway, radio, 91 Nova Television, 279, 281 Novoye Vremya, 52 Objedinionny, 261 Octobrists, 154, 157 Odnoklassniki, 394 OIR(T) (Organization Internationale de Radiodiffusion (et de Télévision)), 197, 250, 252 OKTO TV, 447



Subject Index

ownership, 289, 291, 293, 299, 300–302, 303–304, 310–311, 321 Pathé, 62, 64–65, 68, 194 PBS (public broadcasting service), 243, 301, 303, 310, 312, 447 periodicals, 51–52, 144–145, 154, 158–159, 423–424, 426, 441–442, 443–444 Petit Journal, Le, 28, 50, 357, 425 Petit Parisien, 119 picturephone, 241 pirate radio, 258, 447 Poland, 290–294 Cold War, 210–213 customs service, 212 newspapers, Cold War, 212 underground periodicals, 212 World War II, 178–181 Polskie Radio, 178–179 Portugal, 34 Portugal, 43–44, 48–49, 182–183, 235–236, 335–336, 337–338, 341–342, 344–345 Portugal authoritarian media control, 225–227 newspapers, 34, 48–51 radio, 88–90 radio, 181–183 Post Office (Germany), 84 Post Office (UK), 81–82 Pravda, 155–156, 157–158, 159, 162, 165–166, 167–168, 169, 216 press barons, 46, 102, 117–118, 408 Germany, 119 press freedom, 23–24, 25–27, 29–31, 32–33, 35–36, 37, 39, 195–196 19th century, 25–28 authoritarianism and, 29–31 Middle Ages and Rennaissance, 24–25 World War I, 30 See also authoritarianism; censorship privatization, 258, 260, 264, 268, 289, 291, 300, 305 professionalism, 346, 351–352, 353–354, 355–356, 357, 359–360, 361, 362–364 propaganda, 97–98, 99–101, 102–103, 104–106, 110–111, 139–140, 159–160, 175–176 Germany Nazi regime, 140–142, 173–175 radio, 173–175 Hungary, 143

491

origin of term, 97 United Kingdom, 111 World War II, United Kingdom, 175–178 public service media, 28, 193, 242–243, 244, 284–285, 292–293, 307, 445 public sphere, 3–4, 9, 11, 221–222, 234–236, 317–318, 321–322, 326 Puritan Revolution, 24 radio, 79–80, 90–91, 126–127, 128, 130, 138–139, 163, 192–193, 389–390 audiences, 388–389 Bulgaria, 279 commercial, 259–260 Germany, 119–120 Cold War, 207–208 Nazi regime, 173–175 Hungary, 87 Italy, 35 1920s, 128–129 organizational structures, 193 pirate (unlicensed) stations, 258, 447 pluralistic broadcasting, 92 Poland, 178–181 Portugal, 88–90 program contents, 93 public and private monopolistic broadcasters, 90–92 Spain, regional, 267 state involvement, 91–92, 126 Sweden, 126–127 United Kingdom, 118 World War II, 173 Radio Committee (RMC), 168, 306 Radio Corporation of America (RCA), 81, 243 Radio Dimensione Suono (RDS), 306 Radio España Independiente, 214 Radio Free Europe (RFE), 206–207, 209, 212, 233 Radio Luxembourg, 83, 193 Radio Merkur, 258 Radio Monte Carlo (RMC), 306 Radio Nacional de España (RNE), 36, 146, 214, 223, 305, 307 Radio Orange, 447 Radio Renascença, 90, 181, 342 Radiojournal, 86–87, 88 Radiotjänst, 126–127 RAI (Radio Audizioni Italiane), 140, 244, 258, 264, 266, 271–272, 305, 306 RCA (Radio Corporation of America), 81, 243

492

Subject Index

RCP (Rádio Clube Português), 89–90, 170 RDS (Radio Dimensione Suono), 306 Reichspressegesetz, 26 RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), 207, 209–210 Rizzoli‐Corriere della Sera (RCS), 306, 308, 312 Roma people, 279, 282, 438, 442 Romania, 10, 176, 195, 246, 308–309, 310–311, 375 Rome, 2, 34, 36, 73, 129, 137, 306 RTP (Rádio e Televisão de Portugal), 226 RTVE (Radio Televisión Española), 264, 272 RuNet, 394, 395, 398 russia, 53, 311 Russia 1905 Revolution, 153–156 1917 Revolution, 156–159 gender, 423 internet audiences, 394–395 magazines, 53 media consolidation, 310–311 newspapers, 51–53, 167–168 October Revolution, 30, 159, 387 propaganda, World War I, 105–107, 111 radio, 168 television, 169 Russia See also Soviet Union Russian Revolution, 159 Russian World, 106 Russkoe Znamya, 155 Sami, 442, 444 Scandinavia, 36–38, 193, 194, 217, 260, 408, 411 Schuman Declaration, 316 Serbia, 30, 103, 392 Siècle, Le, 28 Sky, 302, 304, 337 Skype, 393 Slovak media landscapes, 338 Slovakia, 87, 285, 333, 336, 339–340, 342–343, 345–346 Slovenia, 285, 376 Slovo, 342 soap operas, 230, 246, 390, 429 Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión (SER), 36, 146, 147, 337, 342 Solidarity movement (Poland), 212–213 Sony, 268, 299 Soviet Realism, 74 Soviet Union, 69, 179–180, 205–206, 215–216, 250, 375–376, 389–390, 442–443

early period, 161–166 economic collectivization, 166–168 Soviet regime, under Stalin, 166–168 See also Russia Spain, 148–149, 181–182, 213–214, 260–261, 304–305, 307–308, 341–342, 373–374 authoritarianism, 145–148 Civil War, 35, 90, 176, 213, 222, 257, 374 film, 72, 272 media policy, 222–223 Cold War, 213–215 Fraga’s law (1966), 224–225 Ley de Prensa, 223 Suñer’s Law, 223–224 minority groups, 445 newspapers, 32, 34, 341 propaganda, 214 radio, 181–183 anti‐communist propaganda, 214 television, 263 commercial, 264, 271 regional, 267 Spanish Inquisition, 32 Star Wars VIII, 76 Stationers’ Company, 24 Storyful, 341 Stuttgarter Zeitung Group, 303 STV, 445 subsid, 34, 38, 278–279, 302, 304, 306, 342, 346 Süddeutsche Zeitung, 373 Sun, The, 336, 343, 433 Sunday Pictorial, 191 Sweden, 24, 36–37, 39, 75, 124–125, 201, 354–355, 443–444 future visions, 201 media policy, 197 newspapers, 192 press freedom, 36 Switzerland, 24, 25, 65, 91, 194, 244–245, 269, 335 Sykes Committee, 82 TCP/IP protocol, 334 television, 193–194, 239–241, 242–243, 244–246, 248–249, 257–258, 261–263, 389–390, 395–396 audiences, 246–247, 389–391 Bulgaria, 279–280, 281 cable, 260–262, 269–270, 271 Cold War cultures, 249–250 East‐West blocs, 250–251



Subject Index

color standards, 245 commercial, 257–258, 260–268, 269, 271, 301, 430 access pressure, 258–260 decentralization, 265–271 organizational consolidation, 272–273 program content and production, 271–272 France, 245, 305, 306, 360 Germany Cold War, 208–209 East Germany, 266 Greece, 228 Hungary, 283 legislation, deregulation, 260–263 as national medium, 245 program content, 248 narrative forms, 248–249 public broadcasting, 146, 244–245, 257, 279, 281 Russia, 168–169 technology, 258 1920s‐1930s, 241–242 cable, 271 decentralization and, 268 large screen devices, 241 line and color standards, 245 regular broadcast, 242–243 satellite broadcasting, 270 transition to domestic spaces, 245, 245–246, 247 United Kingdom, 242 Yugoslavia, 250–251 television programs, 241–242, 247–248, 249, 271, 272, 395, 444, 446 Television Without Frontiers (TWF), 261 Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT), 126 Time magazine, 190, 212 trench journals, 98, 110 Trümmerfilm, 194 Trümmerliteratur, 199 Turkey, 386–387, 388–389, 390, 392, 393–394, 398–399, 446 TV3, 288, 337 TVE, 271–272, 305 Ukraine, 168, 392 Ullstein company, 28, 119–120 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), 197, 214, 363, 372–373, 375 Union of the Russian People, 155 Unione Radiofonica Italiana (URI), 128, 138

493

United Kingdom, 24–25, 26–28, 63–64, 65–66, 70–71, 190–191, 260–262, 408–409 film, 63, 67, 72, 119 future visions, 200–201 newspapers, 28, 115, 116–118, 191, 373, 377 journalistic standards and style, 118 press freedom, 30, 31, 195–196 propaganda, World War I, 101–105 radio, 81, 83, 193 post WWII, 200 World War II, 175–178 television, 194, 262–265 See also BBC United States, 61–62, 63–64, 70–71, 368–369, 370–371, 405–406, 407–408, 412–413 film, 61, 64–65, 66–67, 68, 70–71, 72–73, 76, 194 journalistic practices, 119, 121, 403–404, 405–406, 407–409, 411, 415–416, 418–419 radio, 80–81 VARA (Vereniging Arbeiders Radio Amateurs), 124, 193 Verlagsgruppe Passau, 342 verzuiling, 92, 123–124 video (cassette and disc media), 247, 268–269 video groups, 268 VKontakte, 394 Vltava‐Labe‐Press, 342 Vodafone, 307 Voice of America (VOA), 184–185, 206, 212, 235, 279 Völkischer Beobachter, 191 Vorwärts, 120 Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep, 124, 193 Warsaw Pact, 205, 277 WAZ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung), 281, 303 Welsh media, 441, 444, 445 Welt, Die, 191, 212 Welt am Abend, 120 West Germany, 71, 72–73, 207–208, 209–210, 212, 231–232, 244, 432 Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), 281, 303 White movement (Russia), 160–161

494

Subject Index

Wiener Modenzeitung, 424 women, 198–199, 393, 421–422, 423–425, 426–428, 429–430, 431–432, 433 enfranchisement, 124 gender roles, 90 in journalism, 198–199 rights movements and feminism, 7, 39, 117 as target audience, 47, 49, 85, 87, 116, 138, 190, 194 war workers, 104–105 working class, 44, 104, 128, 153, 157, 174, 195, 387 World War, 141 World War I, 29–30, 101, 116–117, 118– 119, 135–136, 354, 468–469, 470 censorship, 34–35 European film and, 64–65

press freedom, 30 propaganda Germany, 98–101 United Kingdom, 101–105 World War II (WWII), 145–146, 173–174, 181–182, 190, 230–231, 368–369, 375–376, 388–389 Finland, 215 World War II, propaganda, Germany, 142 World Wide Web, 5, 334–335, 345, 391 Yugoslav Radio Television, 250–251 Yugoslavia, 30–31, 73, 92, 176, 195, 251, 375–376 ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), 303 Zusammenbruchgesellschaft, 199

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