Looking at London for Inspiration

Abstract

This article focuses on a broad process which took place in Europe and the United States starting in the second half of the nineteenth century: namely, the emergence of an incipient mass media culture. Scholars have tended to circumscribe this historical transformation within the contours of the nation state or, at best, to media systems theory. The following pages, in contrast, will show that the transition from the partisan press model towards a commercial and politically independent model involved a hybrid process, powered as much by the circulation of norms and practices across national borders as by local (and sometimes, quite paradoxically) by national mindsets. To reveal this hybrid character, the article adopts an entangled and empirical perspective based on three renowned newspapers from three different countries.