THE GLOBAL MEDIA AND THE EMPIRE OF LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM,CIRCA 1910–301

This article briefly sketches the rise of the global media system after the mid-1860s before turning to the transformation of that system during the First World War and until the end of the 1920s. In particular, we look at how technological changes, especially the development of wireless and, by late 1926, short-wave radio, were dealt with by the companies that ran the world's vast network of undersea cables, news organizations and governments. We show that responses to new technologies varied greatly, with some trying to blunt their impact while others embraced them. Mergers and acquisitions were a key response to the new technologies and to the worldwide economic boom of the 1920s. However, by the end of the decade, the economic logic behind these changes was eclipsed by a discourse of technological determinism, nationalistic corporate patriotism and imperial security. These ideological discourses underpinned a series of mergers throughout Europe and Britain, most notably the formation of Cable and Wireless in 1929. Similar pressures were at play in the USA, notably in RCA and the International Telephone and Telegraph Company's own bid to create a global multimedia conglomerate, although restrictions on cross-media ownership in the Radio Act (1927) and Congressional concern about the formation of a military–communications–media complex stymied the attempt. Altogether, however, the reorganization of the global media business at the end of the 1920s reflected and reinforced the collapse of this early era of globalization – the empire of liberal internationalism – and the rise of a new geopolitical–economic regime based on the struggle for the control of global communication, virulent nationalism and relative autarchy, not to be reversed until the revival of globalization in our own times.     

RESEARCHING THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION FOR WOMEN IN BRITAIN, 1947–1989

This report details the aims, methodology and selected findings of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project ‘A History of Television for Women in Britain, 1947–1989’, running between 2010 and 2013 at the University of Warwick and De Montfort University. Here, we consider the difficulties of conducting historical television research and the ways in which we have tried to use a method which is attentive to production research, textual analysis and audience work in a dialogic relationship. We discuss the work of Doreen Stephens, the BBC's first Editor, Women's Programmes, the ‘discovery’ of the daytime women's arts programme Wednesday Magazine and the ways in which the women who have participated in our study have described the significance of television for women in their lives. Finally, we discuss the ways in which the project has attempted to engage with constituencies outside the academy.     

UNIVERSITIES,PUBLIC SERVICE RADIO AND THE ‘AMERICAN SYSTEM’ OF COMMERCIAL BROADCASTING, 1921–40

In the second half of the nineteenth century, several Hebrew journals were established, creating a new cross-communal printed public sphere. At the time, Hebrew was merely a language embedded within the two languages of daily communication – spoken Jewish vernacular (Yiddish in Eastern European communities) and the state vernacular. It lacked an active basic vocabulary for many spheres of modern life and was no longer used in everyday or political discussion. In this paper, I investigate the linguistic choice of Hebrew by comparing three of the main nineteenth-century journals – HaMaggid, HaMelitz and HaTzfira. The reasons for using Hebrew were distinct and individual for each journal. Yet, I argue that choosing Hebrew had more indirect, national repercussions: even when it was not the primary rationale for its use, journalistic Hebrew acted as a catalyst for the rise of modern Jewish nationalism.