Leaps and Light Shows: Visual Politics in the Edwardian Mass Press, 1900–10

Abstract

AbstractThis article will explore the ways in which the ‘new dailies’, the Mail, Express and Mirror, used visual content to report on the four general elections that occurred between their emergence during the early 20th century and the outbreak of global war in 1914. Existing scholarship has explored how these founders of the ‘tabloid century’ became prominent components of British culture, but little exists of their pre‐Great War political significance. The article contends that the visual content of these newspapers represented a vibrant and important new form of mass political communication and an important part of the broader mass political culture of the period. Their coverage of election light shows, and cartoon election ‘races’, evoked much of their better‐known ‘human‐interest’ news content which had made them so commercially successful. Drawing on recent work of the popular political culture of the period, the article further contends that these newspapers’ visual political news also contributed to, and drew influence from, the wider mass culture of pre‐Great War Britain in order to articulate political news in ways which were exciting and accessible to their millions of readers. The new dailies therefore helped to democratise political news through entertaining visual connections to British popular culture, which appealed successfully to mass lower‐class readerships historically overlooked by traditional methods of political newspaper reporting and better included them within the vibrant, visual political culture of pre‐war Britain.