On 29 May 1919, one of the most famous total solar eclipses in history provided a crucial test for Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. During approximately five minutes of totality, British astronomers photographed the star field behind the eclipsed Sun to try to detect the predicted bending of light. Their successful confirmation transformed Einstein into an international icon, and newspapers worldwide reported the results. This article examines how news of the eclipse and the scientific expeditions spread through the global press. Rather than focussing on the later impact of Einstein's relativity, it examines coverage of the expeditions themselves. Digital newspaper archives from Portugal, Brazil, Great Britain, Germany and the United States of America were surveyed for all eclipse-related news published between 1 January 1919 and 31 December 1920. This analysis provides the first systematic overview of how information about the eclipse and the expeditions circulated internationally, reflecting its transmission across different audiences in Europe and the Americas.
In Georgia, as well as in Transcaucasia in general, from the first appearance of print media until the beginning of the twentieth century, only the interests of Tsarism were pursued in the press. The Tsarist and Communist press used similar propaganda styles while advancing different political interests. The shifting political climate of the transition period fostered media content distinct from Tsarist influence and shaped by relative freedom. Propaganda texts were, of course, still to be found in the pre-Soviet Caucasian press, but pluralism, the striving for independence of the countries conquered by the Russian Empire, and chaos created a different situation. This paper discusses the peculiarities of the propaganda activities of the pre-Soviet Caucasian press of the beginning of the twentieth century using the Georgian newspapers published in 1919: the social-democratic, Ertoba (Unity) and the national-democratic, Sakartvelo (Georgia).
Studies of the media during the First World War have highlighted its weaknesses and deficiencies, yet the question of how citizens actually engaged with the press and made sense of the war remains elusive. Based on extensive analysis of Australian civilians' correspondence, this article argues that citizens were capable of engaged and effective reading of the forms of information available in the press, including reportage, casualty lists and extracts from soldiers' letters. That sensitive reading of the press, made in conjunction with their own contacts with soldiers on and returned from the front, allowed civilians to achieve a genuine, if necessarily imperfect, understanding of the nature, course and shocking costs of the war. Far from being entirely deceived, Australians' determination to continue the struggle suggests they fought with their eyes open, even as they longed for the conflict to end.
This essay examines the dynamics that facilitated the circulation of periodical publications (impresos) produced in Spain across the Spanish Atlantic during the second half of the eighteenth century. The category of impresos includes three periodicals published in Madrid: theGaceta de Madrid (Madrid Gazette), the Mercurio Hist & oacute;rico Pol & iacute;tico (Historical-Political Mercury), and the Gu & iacute;a de Forasteros (Foreigners' Guide). These impresos spread news and reflections about Europe, Africa, and Asia. It is argued that the postal administrations created by the Spanish Empire after 1764 were fundamental to the circulation of printed news to Spanish America. The urban post offices established by the Bourbon government not only facilitated distribution but also served as centers for sales. Similarly, price reductions, tax exemptions, and frequent distribution encouraged the purchase of these materials. This study contributes to an understanding of how inhabitants of Spanish American territories accessed news from other parts of the world and the mechanisms that made this possible.
This article examines Spanish representations in printed news pamphlets of the Peace of M & uuml;nster, a treaty that recognised the independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands from Spain and concluded the Eighty Years' War. Often considered part of the broader Peace of Westphalia, the agreement was made possible after years of diplomatic negotiations in M & uuml;nster. This study analyses two news pamphlets printed in Spain reporting on the agreement signed on 8 January 1647 and the treaty's ratification on 15 May 1648. It explores news genres, communication networks, discourse and representations, offering insights into the early modern communicative landscape and how power can be exercised through texts.
Researching the film and media histories of migrant and diasporic communities presents significant archival challenges due to both the complex nature of audiovisual media and the historical neglect by memory institutions. While critical archival scholarship has emphasized proactive acquisition and appraisal to counter archival absences, this article argues that equal attention must be paid to the role of metadata practices. Building the concept of "archival marginalia," the article proposes a framework for understanding archival metadata as a site of epistemic redress, drawing from decolonial and reparative archival theories. It highlights the under-explored realm of reparative description in audiovisual archives and presents a case study from the DE-BIAS project at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, focusing on the postcolonial Surinamese community in the Netherlands. The article advocates community-led, social-justice-oriented reparative work that reclaims marginalized perspectives and transforms archival knowledge production.
With the incapacity of King George III in 1788 and early 1789, a political crisis developed as the opposition Whigs looked to force a regency for the Prince of Wales, which would potentially see the fall of the Pittite government. The political machinations of this unsuccessful parliamentary campaign are well established; however, the political battle was not only fought in parliament but at length through the press. This article examines the press war that was fought between the opposition and the government. It shows that the developments in opposition party political management in the 1780s meant that the press war during the Regency Crisis represented a further development in the organisation of adversarial party politics. This was established by parliamentary and press arguments which were intrinsically intertwined for both opposition and government across newspapers, pamphlets and graphic satire as well as in Westminster.
This article explores the colonial foundations of aerial media-those that operate in and as the atmosphere, from drones and satellites to data signals. Rather than simply transmitting through air, these media territorialise it, transforming the sky into a site of surveillance, control, and communicative violence. While some media scholarship has treated air as an elemental medium for sensory connection, its colonial-military histories remain largely overlooked. Drawing on archival research and engaging the anticolonial turn in media studies, this article examines how air was organised as a vertical medium of domination in 1920s Iraq under British mandate rule. Through wireless telegraphy, aerial photography, and bombardment, empire restructured the atmosphere into a communicative field of power. This study reframes air not as a neutral conduit of meaning, but as a historically saturated medium through which empire sees, knows, and breathes force-remaking how life is sensed, valued, governed and amputated from above.
The advertising revenue model for supporting journalism has long been an article of faith for scholars and policymakers alike. This paper challenges that assumption by examining advertising revenue as a share of the newspaper industry's total revenue from 1880 to the present as part of a larger political economic analysis. By historicizing the complicated relationship between journalism and advertising and arraying its critical historiography, we arrive at implications vital to the industry's foundations and future.
This article examines the role of the popular press, particularly the Daily Mail, in shaping public opinion to facilitate the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902. It focuses on the role and writing of Herbert Wrigley Wilson, long-time contributor and assistant editor of the Mail. It is argued that, especially through Wilson's writings, the Daily Mail sought to recast Japan's image in British public opinion from negative to positive, and to create an atmosphere more conducive to alliance. The 'selective racism' of the Mail is shown-defending Japan in racial terms while publishing intensely racist statements regarding South African Boers and Eastern European Jewish immigrants. This was not driven by racial hierarchy but by support for the realist imperatives of the British Empire-subordinating racial prejudice to strategic needs. This study presents a significant correction to scholarship on the alliance focused solely upon elite diplomacy and discourse.
This article focuses on the aftermath of a skirmish between British forces and the Irish Republican Army [IRA] in November 1920 in a remote village near the town of Tralee in the south-west of Ireland. It examines newspaper reports of the incident and an accompanying photograph that purported to show three dead ambushers. The photograph was, in fact, staged after the event in a different location to provide some positive news during a difficult period for the British administration in Ireland. The discovery of the fraud undermined British efforts to cultivate positive relations with the national and international media. The fraudulent nature of the photograph has long been known to Irish historians, but this article examines its appearance in the context of the broader reporting of the crisis by English daily national and provincial newspapers. Finally, this piece also uses the skirmish to examine the creation of stock film footage of the Irish conflict by Path & eacute; News that could be re-produced as news reporting in different contexts.
This article presents the first history of Fireweed, 'a magazine of working-class and socialist arts' and in so doing reveals a forgotten contribution to British literary and artistic culture. This article argues that Fireweed-overlooked by existing research-is worthy of rediscovery owing to its improbable Arts Council funding and its unique blend of elements: it was multi-disciplinary, mixed-media and featured the work of amateur and professional contributors. Fireweed is remarkable because of its emergence from a Lancashire writers' group, its avowed socialist leaning and its endorsement by the British state; its pages offer a vivid insight into the cultural and political life of the 1970s.
Drama 'based on real events,' or docudrama, is a media format that emerged in film and radio in the 1930s and remains a popular mode of storytelling across broadcasting, cable, and streaming media. A study of the radio roots of docudrama reveals how these programs engaged audiences with a unique combination of fact and emotion. By comparing a commercially-sponsored series, Cavalcade of America (1935-1953), with a government-sponsored series, Americans All, Immigrants All (1938-1939), this study explores how early radio docudramas addressed audiences as members of a national community. An analysis of program form and content, together with an assessment of contemporary audience research, shows how docudramas positioned listeners not just as audiences, but as actors in the unfolding drama. This study offers a new perspective on the pre-war era of broadcast docudrama and the format's unique strategy of audience engagement.
This article studies the diplomatic and propaganda strategy of the Portuguese government related to the policy of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War and its reflection in the Portuguese press. By means of a qualitative methodology that uses original documentary sources, the objective of this work is to identify, describe and analyse the messages disseminated by the Estado Novo [New State] about its participation in the London Committee, where it had a diplomatic confrontation with the USSR, France and England. As shown in the study, the decisions taken by Salazar in relation to the London Committee and their media projection were aimed at favouring the interests of General Franco's government. In addition, the diplomatic campaign served the Portuguese dictatorship to exacerbate nationalism and anticommunism, fostering a climate of agitation and mobilisation that consolidated the repressive structures of the regime and raised Salazar's prestige.
This article considers the evolution and role of Advisory Committees at the Australian Broadcasting Commission from its inception in 1932 until the formation of a Corporation in 1983. Although the number of 'local' Advisory Committees (for states and regions), and specialist Committees focused on programming areas, peaked at some 57 in the early 1960s, they have been almost entirely overlooked by media and other historians. The article is based on newly opened meeting papers and correspondence files of some of these Committees, part of a broader project to make the ABC's document archives more discoverable by researchers in the lead-up to the broadcaster's centenary in 2032. It considers why Advisory Committees were established and maintained, and the challenges of managing them, as well as tensions around whether they should be expert or demographically representative, and whether they should provide retrospective commentary or generate new programming ideas.
This article challenges the dominant narrative in the history of cartographic journalism that portrays German persuasive maps of the interwar period as propaganda tools or as bearing ideological links to German National Socialism. It investigates the use of these maps in Pewarta Deli, an indigenous newspaper in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), between 1935 and 1940. The newspaper used suggestive maps inspired by the German school of Geopolitik for their technical-reproductive aspects rather than their ideological affinities to the Nazis. In this context, suggestive maps became counter-colonial maps that gave indigenous readers alternative readings to the dominant imperial map discourse in the Dutch East Indies. This research suggests revisiting the discourse of suggestive maps in the media of colonized countries in the interwar period. It also reaffirms the importance of paying attention to maps and their discourses in the fields of media history and communication history studies.
This article aims to re-evaluate the importance of the gramophone as a mass medium for dispersing state-controlled political and moral views in the 1920s. It takes the Japanese 'Gramophone Record Recommendation and Authorization Project' by the Social Education Department of the Japanese Ministry of Education as a case study. Between 1923 and 1940, this project aimed at guiding children and adolescents towards forms of sound that were deemed morally and socially acceptable through the recommendation of carefully selected records. Bureaucrats cooperated with non-state actors such as academics and record companies to achieve this goal. Amid competing visions about morally 'correct' sound and the spread of 'degenerate' popular music, the encroaching Western corporate influence in Japan's recording industry added another complexity. Taking this hitherto overlooked facet into account, this case study adds a novel perspective to gramophone records' political and ideological sonic functions in the 1920s.
This article re-examines the emergence of virulent anti-Chinese political cartooning in nineteenth-century Australia by analysing the collaboration between cartoonist Phil May and The Bulletin. Focusing on the 1886 publication of 'The Mongolian Octopus' and 'The Chow and His Charmers', it argues that these works were not merely personal expressions of racial hostility, but the product of a coordinated editorial campaign. The Bulletin's decision to place anti-Chinese cartoons on its front cover illustrates its strategic use of illustration as propaganda. By comparing May's Bulletin-era cartoons with his later, more subdued Chinese-themed work in London, the article shows that the intensity of his earlier output was enabled by the magazine's editorial direction and ideological climate. This study reframes anti-Chinese cartooning as institutionally driven. It highlights the editorial-cartoonist relationship as central to constructing racial ideologies in colonial media, challenging individualist models of cartoon authorship.
In 1936, six years after joining the BBC as a Talks Assistant, Margery Wace was moved to a new department, Empire Talks, with the job of expanding and professionalising the output. As 'Empire Talks Organiser', she quickly impressed with her understanding of the role, her bold scheduling and her ability to get the best out of speakers. The outbreak of the Second World War saw Empire Talks gain heightened significance and Wace was at the forefront of managing an ever-expanding schedule and an ever-growing staff, overseeing hundreds of hours of broadcasting each week. Not one to push herself forward, she worked herself to exhaustion and it was only when, in early 1941, she almost died that BBC executives realised her full-worth, creating her Empire Talks Director. Wace's death in January 1944, shortly after the birth of her second child, may have contributed to her almost total absence from histories of the Empire Service.
