Alternative Press Research Articles

‘Counting fry under a waterfall’: the history, development, and current use of the Small Press Collections at University College London

ABSTRACT University College London Special Collections holds the Small Press Collections consisting of the Little Magazines, Alternative Presses, and Poetry Store of poetry pamphlets, artist’s books, and other text bearing print objects. This essay outlines the history and growth of the collections, founded by Geoffrey Soar in 1964, and starts by exploring the networks essential to the development of a large collection of international, independently published literary and visual art material. I draw on fifteen years’ experience as Collection Manager to examine the challenges of acquiring, cataloguing, and managing non-mainstream, self-published, ephemeral material in an institutional context and facilitating access for researchers. It considers selected comparable collections in the UK and the US and the difficulties in aligning institutional holdings and practices. The notions of materiality and obsolescence in the context of library collections are considered in relation to mimeographed and other format little magazines and small press publications. It concludes with examples of object-based learning scenarios that reactivate the material in a teaching and research context.

Power to the People: Counterculture, Social Movements, and the Alternative Press, Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century

Power to the People: Counterculture, Social Movements, and the Alternative Press, Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century is a Gale database (released in 2023) that documents four distinct primary source collections and three alterative press publications, encompassing ∼600,000 pages of material. It is an aptly named database, covering how counterculture activists/organizations and alternative presses shaped the formation of various social movements in the modern United States and United Kingdom. A broad range of ideas and initiatives can be found within the database, spanning topics such as gender equality, civil rights, antiwar efforts, labor movements, and environmental justice. It is also important to note that the primary source contributors represent diverse voices, from artists to satirists to grassroots organizers. Highlighting those voices may be aligned with broader decolonizing collections efforts underway at some institutions.The four highlighted collections and three alternative press titles include: <list list-type="simple"> <list-item> The Pacific Coast Counterculture Collection (Robert P.J. Cooney, Jr.)</list-item> <list-item> Special Collections on Peace, Politics, and Social Change, Commonweal Library, University of Bradford</list-item> <list-item> Left-wing politics and radical political movement pamphlets, Ron Heisler Collection housed, University of London</list-item> <list-item> The Liberal Students of the 1960s Collection, University of Michigan</list-item> <list-item> Fortean Times (1976‐2020)</list-item> <list-item> Bizarre (1997‐2015)</list-item> <list-item> Viz (1979‐2020)</list-item> </list>The above grants community members, students, and faculty access to primary source materials that are contextually related yet geographically isolated from each other. Given Gale’s relatively large primary source suite of databases, this product complements the overall efforts Gale has made in curating distinct databases that cover relatively focused topics. Being able to cross-search across Gale’s primary source collections through a unified platform adds value to this product, depending on preexisting Gale primary source holdings.

Research on the barriers to accessing sexual healthcare for sexually diverse Muslim men: protocol for a scoping review

IntroductionSexually diverse Muslim men are seen to be at a higher risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections due to their limited access to sexual healthcare services. We outline...

Factors influencing the acceptance of the measures for the containment of Covid-19

Abstract Aim This study examines the impact of individual factors and personal experiences with Covid-19 on how one views the pandemic and the measures against it. Subject and methods For this, a survey was conducted and evaluated using structural equation modeling and multivariate statistics. Results Hereby, a higher approval was found for measures associated with a high contribution to the confinement of the pandemic but with low restrictions on the people at the same time. Furthermore, the results showed that people rating the pandemic as dangerous show a higher agreement with all measures, and likewise, these people decreasingly rate the measures as worse than the pandemic itself. Also, it could be shown that, especially personal experiences like a quarantaine and personal restrictions, increased the opinion that Covid-19 is a dangerous disease. Also, people informing themselves with alternative press rated Covid-19 as less dangerous. In contrast, age and gender had no influence on the view on the pandemic and the measures against it. Conclusion From the results, mainly two conclusions can be drawn: people can disinguish well between the benefits of single measures and personal experiences play an important role in their rating. Thus, when establishing measures in further pandemics, it might be wise to include the public’s opinion in all decisions.

The “Great Awokening”: Racial narratives in reporting on the working class in White leftist and Black newspapers during the 2016 United States presidential election

ABSTRACT Recent events in the United States galvanized by race have purportedly had a significant effect on the wider society’s appreciation of systemic racism, some calling this the “Great Awokening.” Some social commentators assert that it is now the norm for “leftists” to reveal “not a strain of racism,” while others argue that they are now farther left than average Black voters. We critique this assertion of a new metamorphosis among White people by exploring how White leftist print media contrasts with Black newspaper reporting on the shape of working class people during the 2016 United States presidential race. Using textual analysis, we examined articles culled from Ethnic NewsWatch (424 articles) and the Alternative Press Index (303) and found two fundamentally divergent patterns about race’s role. We found that the left-wing White press used a color-blind rhetoric to narrate stories about a racially homogenized working class, a distinctly downtrodden sector of America oppressed by elites. In utilizing a color-blind frame, the reporting failed to confront how systemic racism was a fundamental context to understanding the election. In contrast, Black newspapers described a working class world that was multiracial and actively resistant to structures of oppression.

Violeta Miqueli's Direct Action against State Violence

Violeta Miqueli Mayoz de González (Key West 1891- New Jersey 1972) was an educator and an executive member of ethnic and anarchist groups. She actively participated in their direct action and wrote for their periodicals in Key West, Tampa, New York, Mexico D.F., Buenos Aires, and Barcelona. Miqueli identified the systemic violence that the state exercised against workers like her: difficult access to education and healthcare, prosecution of dissenters, and disadvantaged defense of the poor. Miqueli, like other anarcha-feminists of her time, developed strategies of care and political participation with direct action to protect the people when the state did not. Through the alternative press, Miqueli provided alternative sources of information that denounced the systematic state oppression. Her organization participation provided workers with education and distributed solidarity among state prisoners, while mutual aid dignified their health care. This essay and accompanying digital exhibit explore Miqueli's direct action to show how anarcha-feminists disseminated alternative visions of society while utilizing the freedom of association and the press to organize under the state's structural top-down violence.

Alternative Book Publishing: The Terminology Evolution

The article aims to clarify the content of the concept of “alternative book publishing” taking into account the historical retrospective, as well as to consider the formation of the terminology used in studying the development of this phenomenon in Russia. An analysis of scientific literature shows that the definition of “alternative” began to be used by Russian scientists in relation to printed works and publishing activities in the post-Soviet period against the background of the cardinal socio-political transformations taking place in the country. The term “alternative press” came into scientific usage to define the late 1980s—1990s press that was not controlled by the state, was in opposition and expressed public dissent. The researchers who introduced this term into the scientific community described it as a phenomenon of the transition period. In the first post-Soviet decade, the concept of “alternative book publishing” appeared and became widely used to refer to non-state, independent book publishing of the new stage of Russian history. However, according to the author, this term is also applicable to earlier historical periods, since publishing activities, alternative to the state book publishing, have a deep tradition in Russia. This paper offers an interpretation of the concept of “alternative book publishing” in relation to different stages of national history. The author traces the formation of the terms that characterize this phenomenon and reveals their content in different historical periods.

Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties

Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties

Emotional profiling and cognitive networks unravel how mainstream and alternative press framed AstraZeneca, Pfizer and COVID-19 vaccination campaigns

COVID-19 vaccines have been largely debated by the press. To understand how mainstream and alternative media debated vaccines, we introduce a paradigm reconstructing time-evolving narrative frames via cognitive networks and natural language processing. We study Italian news articles massively re-shared on Facebook/Twitter (up to 5 million times), covering 5745 vaccine-related news from 17 news outlets over 8 months. We find consistently high trust/anticipation and low disgust in the way mainstream sources framed “vaccine/vaccino”. These emotions were crucially missing in alternative outlets. News titles from alternative sources framed “AstraZeneca” with sadness, absent in mainstream titles. Initially, mainstream news linked mostly “Pfizer” with side effects (e.g. “allergy”, “reaction”, “fever”). With the temporary suspension of “AstraZeneca”, negative associations shifted: Mainstream titles prominently linked “AstraZeneca” with side effects, while “Pfizer” underwent a positive valence shift, linked to its higher efficacy. Simultaneously, thrombosis and fearful conceptual associations entered the frame of vaccines, while death changed context, i.e. rather than hopefully preventing deaths, vaccines could be reported as potential causes of death, increasing fear. Our findings expose crucial aspects of the emotional narratives around COVID-19 vaccines adopted by the press, highlighting the need to understand how alternative and mainstream media report vaccination news.

The Cross-Channel Diffusion of the French May

The well-known events of May 1968 in France struck a chord with British radical left activists. This paper examines the impact of the French May on British protest thanks to the analysis of diffusion processes between France and the United Kingdom. Because they perceived similarities between the two contexts, British protesters could identify with their French counterparts, thus providing the necessary condition for diffusion processes to occur. Information was then transferred through the mass media and the alternative press, as well as through personal contacts between both groups. British activists adopted the collective action frames and some of the tactics of the French May. Frustrated by their lack of participation in the running of their universities and workplaces, British students and workers chose to occupy their institutions, to create alternative organisational structures where they would be involved in the decision-making process. Finally, in spite of its particular historical context, Northern Ireland was also influenced by the French May, eclipsing for a brief moment, the local revolutionary Republican tradition.

“Dribbling” the hegemonic media: alternative press in the propagation of women’s soccer

Resumo Este artigo analisa como a mídia alternativa digital propõe novos modos de tratamento da informação para dar visibilidade a temáticas marginalizadas pela imprensa, negociando sentidos com meios hegemônicos e consumidores. A problemática é centrada no futebol de mulheres, assunto que historicamente recebia pouca atenção do jornalismo esportivo tradicional brasileiro, e tem como objeto o Dibradoras, projeto criado em 2015 por um grupo de mulheres com o objetivo de expor as desigualdades de gênero nos esportes. O corpus foi composto por 696 unidades publicadas pelo Dibradoras no Twitter, entre 7 de junho e 7 de julho de 2019, coincidindo com o início e o término da Copa do Mundo da França. Como resultados, é possível sugerir o fortalecimento de um canal de mídia alternativa que amplifica a voz das partícipes do espetáculo futebolístico e fomenta formas contra-hegemônicas de visibilidade para o futebol de mulheres.

Study on mechanical properties of AZ31-Mg alloy and effect of deformation using constrained groove pressing – A review paper

Constrained groove pressing (CGP), an intensive plastic straining process, is designed to fabricate plate-shaped ultra-fined grained metallic materials without modifying their basic dimensions. CGP works on the concept that a material is exposed to recurrent shear deformation under plane strain deformation by using asymmetric alternate pressing. The constrained groove pressing (CGP) method is used on AZ31 Magnesium alloy sheets in this study as a severe plastic deformation (SPD). This approach can be a possibility to increase the mechanical properties of the material for wider scope of applications with improved mechanical properties. CGP is generally carried on at three different elevated temperatures.

Breaking the White Circle: How the Press and Courts Quieted a Chicago Hate Group, 1949–1952

abstract Joseph Beauharnais’s story illustrates the dilemma created in cases of hate speech. The government and courts of Illinois decided that in Beauharnais’s case, it should not be protected. In a legal proceeding that has been cited more than three hundred times, just more than half of the US Supreme Court justices agreed with this verdict. After reviewing the societal and legal environments in which this story occurred, this article examines Beauharnais’s White Circle League literature, the means Chicago’s press and other organizations used to counter it, the legal ramifications of Beauharnais’s rhetoric, and the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling. The authors supplemented resources from a substantial FBI file with additional government documents, newspaper articles, and court cases. This research reveals that many in Illinois—and some Supreme Court justices—considered the racist nature of Beauharnais’s expression intolerable. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the role of Chicago’s alternative press in shutting down the White Circle League.

Counterculture Of 1960-S and «Underground Press» in the Usa

The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a chain of countercultural newspapers and magazines created in the middle of 1966 by publishers of five early underground newspapers «The East Village Other», «The Los Angeles Free Press», «The Berkeley Barb», «The Paper» and «Fifth Estate». By 1974 the majority of underground papers in the USA ceased to exist but they had an impact on journalistic processes during 1970-s that led to the press development in small towns and countryside giving alternative opinion about local news, cultural news, Native Americans’ politics, ecology, youth and anti-military movements. The article considers the history of “underground press” in the USA, its role and importance for Countercultural Revolution of the 1960-s, which was countrywide in the USA and covered all areas of life.

The Counterculture of the 1960s and the Birth of Underground Press in the United States

The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in mid-1966 by the publishers of five early underground newspapers: The East Village Other, The Los Angeles Free Press, The Berkeley Barb, The Paper, and Fifth Estate. The Syndicate was initiated by Allen Cohen, editor of the legendary 1960's edition of the San Francisco Oracle. By 1974, most underground newspapers in the United States had ceased to exist, but their influence was felt throughout the 1970s and the following years, leading to the emergence of small-town and suburban press offering a wide audience alternative views on local news, cultural news, Native American politics, ecology, youth, and anti-war movements.

Jornalismo, consenso e corrupção:

O papel do jornalismo diante da judicialização da política é o tema abordado neste estudo ensaístico de caráter interdisciplinar que procura refletir sobre relações e tensões entre Imprensa e Judiciário na formação de consensos e percepção da política. A partir de indícios das coberturas do caso Lava Jato na imprensa brasileira, mainstream e alternativa, são abordadas questões sobre a retórica do “Quarto Poder” e as fontes de informação na formação da agenda pública. Tais aspectos indicam conflitos velados e desvelados no exercício do jornalismo que, na via da judicialização, reforçam o consenso da corrupção e a deslegitimação da política.

O impacto do “milagre econômico” sobre a classe trabalhadora segundo a imprensa alternativa

Resumo O presente artigo objetiva compreender, por meio da imprensa alternativa, as consequências que as classes trabalhadoras sofreram durante o período do chamado “milagre econômico” (1968-1973), período que buscava principalmente a ascensão das empresas multinacionais e da elite privilegiada do país. Através de uma análise realizada por publicações dos Jornais Politika, Opinião e O Pasquim, referente aos anos de 1971 e 1973, é possível compreender os diferentes tipos de situações econômicas e sociais pelas quais as classes eram submetidas e quais as atitudes que tomavam perante a conjuntura. Além de publicações da imprensa alternativa como fonte primária, realizou-se revisão bibliográfica e análise de dados estatísticos da economia da época. No entanto, é possível perceber que em busca de uma economia em crescimento, a força de trabalho do proletariado era intensivamente explorada por grupos dominantes e pelo Estado, descartando a qualidade de vida e direitos trabalhistas.

Beleza é fundamental sim, mas é essa beleza que queremos?: a aparência feminina nas páginas do jornal feminista Mulherio

O presente trabalho investiga os registros acerca da aparência feminina veiculados na imprensa alternativa da década de 1980. Para esse artigo, escolheu-se o jornal Mulherio, que circulou entre 1981 e 1988 e foi um dos principais veículos feministas do Brasil. As análises apresentadas aqui são referentes às 23 edições que foram lançadas até o ano de 1985, período que encerra a Década da Mulher (1975-1985), fundada pela Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU). Tal momento foi fundamental na promoção de debates sobre a condição da mulher no Brasil e no mundo e pode ser considerado um hiato no qual os holofotes estiveram voltados para as reivindicações femininas

Em movimento: Carpeaux e a última ditadura militar brasileira

Após o golpe civil-militar de 1964, Carpeaux transformou sua coluna de política internacional do Correio da Manhã em uma trincheira de oposição à ditadura. Quando o espaço deixou de existir, Carpeaux partiu para outras frentes de batalha, que incluem cerimônias de formatura, imprensa alternativa e uma película de 16 mm.

La participación de los lectores en la prensa alternativa: Análisis histórico de cuatro revistas catalanas

Active audiences are an increasingly relevant actor in the digital communication ecosystem. However, media participation is not a recent phenomenon, but one that presents a long history. Studying its development is useful to comprehend the current formula of interaction between media and publics and the variety of their approaches. In particular, participation is a key feature of alternative media, which hold horizontal structures and modes of organization that are more open to the engagement of civil society than mainstream media. This paper offers an historical vision of participation in alternative media based on the analysis of four magazines located in Catalonia, a region with a rich alternative press tradition. The opportunities for the readers to publish content, influence the agenda-setting and participating in decision-making are classified and analyzed. As a secondary objective, this paper sketches a chronology for a Catalan alternative communication history.