The Handbook of European Communication History

Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, Susanne Kinnebrock

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781119161721, 9781119161622
• eBook ISBN: 9781119161769
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A groundbreaking handbook that takes a cross-national approach to the media history of Europe of the past 100 years

The Handbook of European Communication History is a definitive and authoritative handbook that fills a gap in the literature to provide a coherent and chronological history of mass media, public communication and journalism in Europe from 1900 to the late 20 th century. With contributions from teams of scholars and members of the European Communication Research and Education Association, the Handbook explores media innovations, major changes and developments in the media systems that affected public communication, as well as societies and culture. The contributors also examine the general trends of communication history and review debates related to media development.

To ensure a transnational approach to the topic, the majority of chapters are written not by a single author but by international teams formed around one or more lead authors. The Handbook goes beyond national perspectives and provides a basis for more cross-national treatments of historical developments in the field of mediated communication. Indeed, this important Handbook:

• Offers fresh insights on the development of media alongside key differences between countries, regions, or media systems over the past century
• Takes a fresh, cross-national approach to European media history
• Contains contributions from leading international scholars in this rapidly evolving area of study
• Explores the major innovations, key developments, differing trends, and the important debates concerning the media in the European setting

Written for students and academics of communication and media studies as well as media professionals, The Handbook of European Communication History covers European media from 1900 with the emergence of the popular press to the professionalization of journalists and the first wave of multimedia with the advent of film and radio broadcasting through the rapid growth of the Internet and digital media since the late 20th century.

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 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 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 (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 s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Author Biographies
• Preface
• Introduction: European Communication History: A Challenging if Timely Project
• 1 Struggles over “Press Freedom” and “Public Spheres”: Competing Conceptualizations, Values, Norms
• 2 The “New” Newspapers: The Popular Press in Britain, Portugal, Russia, and Germany, late‐1800s to Early‐1900s
• 3 European Film Since the 1890s: A Media Sector in the Shadow of Hollywood
• 4 Organizing a New Medium: The Emergence of Radio Broadcasting in Europe
• 5 World War I and the Emergence of Modern Propaganda
• 6 Modernization, Democratization and Politicization: Mass Media in 1920s Europe
• 7 Crises, Rise of Fascism and the Establishment of Authoritarian Media Systems
• 8 The Russian Revolution and the Establishment of the Authoritarian Media System
• 9 International Radio Broadcasting During World War II
• 10 Media After 1945: Continuities and New Beginnings
• 11 Media and the Cold War: The East/West Conflict
• 12 Authoritarian Media Control in Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Greece After World War II
• 13 The Rise of Television: Institutionalization and the Forming of National Audiences
• 14 The Introduction of Commercial Broadcasting to Europe
• 15 History of the Media in Central and Eastern Europe
• 16 Media Concentration and the Rise of Multinational Companies
• 17 EU Democratic Deficits: The EU Project and a European Public Sphere
• 18 The Emergence of the Internet and the End of Journalism?
• 19 Professionalisms and Journalism History: Lessons from European Variations
• 20 The Development of Journalism Education in Europe
• 21 New Media and Audience Behavior
• 22 Americanization, or: The Rhetoric of Modernity: How European Journalism Adapted US Norms, Practices and Conventions
• 23 Gender, Media, and Modernity
• 24 Ethnic Minorities and the Media: A Struggle for Voice, Self, and Community?
• 25 Imagined New Spaces of Political Solidarity in the 1880s–1920s: Beyond the National?
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• End User License Agreement