Exciting News!: Event, Narration and Impact from Past to Present (Library of the Written Word: the Handpress World, 122)

"International tragedies, national disgraces, and local dangers: reporting can magnify trauma. But how can we gain a deeper analytical understanding of episodes seemingly too immediate for detached observation by our sources or even, perhaps, by ourselves? This volume brings together a broad range of current research in Europe and abroad, regarding an issue of crucial importance for understanding past cultures and our own. Papers discuss the ramifications of media-induced anxiety and anxiety-induced mediality, engaging the humanities, including history, film studies, literature, folklore, creative writing and adjacent fields intersected by sociology, politology, psychology, & anthropology. News media here include all means of mass communication impinging on daily experience, from books to music, from the social web to films, on multiple platforms and in multiple languages across municipal, state, and regional boundaries"-- Provided by publisher Contents 6 Figures and Tables 10 Notes on Contributors 13 Introduction 22 Part 1 Early Modern Origins 32 Section 1 The Force of News 34 Chapter 1 1600: A Year to Remember 36 Chapter 2 Information Shadows Meteorological Disaster and Misinformation across Europe in the Wake of the 1625 Raid on Cadiz 62 Section 2 Natural Disasters 78 Chapter 3 Troubling News Travels Fast The Sannio Earthquake Ripples through the Spanish Monarchy 80 Chapter 4 Narratives and Media Ecology of the “Revolutions” of Naples of 1647–48 96 Chapter 5 St Filippo Neri in the Spanish Press Earthquakes, Veneration and Wondrous Events 121 Chapter 6 ‘Yet Once More I Shake Not Only the Earth’ News of Earthquakes in Early Modern England 141 Section 3 Rebellion and War 162 Chapter 7 Reading the 1641 Irish Rebellion Nehemiah Wallington and the Cultural Construction of Violence 164 Chapter 8 The Power of the Pen Huguenot Gazettes in the Pursuit of Information during the Last Quarter of the Seventeenth Century 183 Part 2 Eighteenth-Century Developments 204 Section 4 Circulation and Reception 206 Chapter 9 Tadhg Ó Neachtain A Case-Study in Gaelic Media Reception in Eighteenth-Century Dublin 208 Chapter 10 MURDER! He Wrote The News as Reported by James Ryan in his Diary (1787–1809) 228 Chapter 11 News about Justice Telling Crime Stories in Eighteenth-Century Europe 245 Chapter 12 The Imperial Crisis in the News, c.1760–1780 News and Newspapers as a Source for Writing Transnational Histories 263 Part 3 The Media and the Masses 278 Section 5 The Politics of News 280 Chapter 13 The Wars at Home Victorian Imperial Sieges and the Conscription of Public Opinion 282 Chapter 14 The Czechoslovak Media Landscape in 1938 A Lack of Media-Induced Anxiety, and the Origins of the ‘Munich Betrayal’ 302 Chapter 15 All Quiet on the Domestic Front? Dealing with Anxiety in Late Socialist Czechoslovak Media 318 Chapter 16 The Media Portrayal of Radical Irish Republicans An Anthropological Perspective 331 Section 6 Trouble in the Headlines 348 Chapter 17 Hyde and the Media—Friend or Foe? 350 Chapter 18 The German Air Campaign against Britain, 1915–18, and British Cartoon Responses 374 Chapter 19 ‘Every Night You Take Up the Paper You Find Someone Has Either Been Killed or Severely Injured’ The Irish Press’s Portrayal of Road Traffic Accidents in the Early Motoring Era 402 Chapter 20 Making a Splash A Brief History of Headlines 417 Part 4 Beyond the News 434 Chapter 21 Challenges beyond the News Events, Neglected Voices and Collective Consciousness 436 Index 450