Publication

Managing the News in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800

This special issue of Media History (22-3/4, 2016), co-edited with Helmer Helmers (University of Amsterdam), develops a new perspective on the early modern communication revolution. It discusses news as a specific kind of information – by its nature continuous, unreliable, and diffuse – which needed to be managed.

Author

Michiel van Groesen

Date

30 September 2016

The news boom of the early modern period challenged European authorities, producers, and readers to devise their own strategies to create cohesion in the fragmented supply of (mis)information. How did authorities respond to the overload and diversity of news? Which intellectual frameworks did readers employ to make sense of the rapid succession of events in distant places? How and why was news collected? And how was news incorporated into history writing and political narratives?

Managing the News in Early Modern Europe contains contributions by Paola Molino, Carmen Espejo, Una McIlvenna, Joop Koopmans, Will Slauter, Stéphane Haffemayer, and Jason Peacey.