Autocratic Journalism: The Case of the St. Petersburg Telegraph Agency

Slavic Review ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-57
Author(s):  
Louise Mcreynolds
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Support ◽  
National Development ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Government ◽  
Mass Circulation

At the close of the nineteenth century, the tsarist government faced an increasingly restive reading public, well-informed on a variety of issues through the proliferation of mass-circulation newspapers. A punitive censorship served as the basis for the autocracy's policies toward the press, but by 1900 it had long outgrown the requirements for dealing with a society undergoing modernization. As public opinion tacitly began to be recognized as a factor in national development, some officials realized that they must adapt to the changing journalistic demands of Russia's readers. Hoping to gain public support for the government, they knew that the prohibition of certain controversial topics would not generate the backing they sought. Following the example of successful commercial publishers, they argued that the government should take an active lead in supplying news.

Corruption and the Public Service Ethos in Mid-Victorian Administration: The Case of Leonard Horner and the Factory Office*

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (575) ◽  
pp. 860-891
Author(s):  
Ian Cawood
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
The Public ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Government ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Changing Attitudes

Abstract While the problem of political corruption in mid-nineteenth century Britain has been much studied, the experience of corrupt behaviour in public bodies, both new and long established, is comparatively neglected. This article takes the example of one of the first inspectorates set up after the Great Reform Act, the Factory Office, to examine the extent of corrupt practices in the British civic state and the means whereby it was addressed. It examines the changing processes of appointment, discipline and promotion, the issues of remuneration and venality, and the relationships between inspectors, workers, factory owners, the government and the wider civil service, and the press and public opinion. The article argues that the changing attitudes of the inspectors, especially those of Leonard Horner, were indicative of a developing ‘public service ethos’ in both bureaucratic and cultural settings and that the work of such unsung administrators was one of the agencies through which corrupt behaviour in the civic structures of Victorian Britain was, with public support, challenged. The article concludes that the endogenous reform of bureaucratic practice achieved by the factory inspectorate may even be of equal significance as that which resulted from the celebrated Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854.

Decisions for Empire: Revisiting the 1882 Occupation of Egypt*

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (572) ◽  
pp. 94-126
Author(s):  
William Mulligan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
International Support ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Abstract The decision of Gladstone’s government to invade and occupy Egypt in 1882 remains one of the most contentious in late nineteenth-century British political and imperial history. This article examines the decision-making process in June and July 1882, revisiting Robinson and Gallagher’s influential study in the light of more recent historiographical research and previously unused sources. It looks at who made the critical decisions, what their preoccupations were, and how they were able to get Cabinet approval. Hartington and Northbrook were the two key figures, who co-operated to overturn Gladstone’s and Granville’s policy in June 1882. Yet their co-operation was momentary and they found themselves on different sides of the argument over the participation of Indian forces and international support. Although they shared a sense of Egypt’s importance to British imperial security, they each had a distinctive approach, so that the decision to occupy cannot be reduced to a conflict between Whig pragmatists and Radical idealists. The article also shows how the Alexandria riot on 11 June altered the context of decision-making by shifting the mood in the parliamentary Liberal party towards intervention. Parliament, not the press, was the crucial site of ‘public opinion’ in the Egyptian crisis in June and July 1882.

scholarly journals Responsibilization and Sexual Stigma Under Austerity: Surveying Public Support for Government-Funded PrEP in England

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-653
Author(s):  
Timothy Hildebrandt ◽  
Leticia Bode ◽  
Jessica S. C. Ng
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sexual Stigma ◽  
The Government ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Media Narratives

Abstract Introduction Under austerity, governments shift responsibilities for social welfare to individuals. Such responsibilization can be intertwined with pre-existing social stigmas, with sexually stigmatized individuals blamed more for health problems due to “irresponsible” sexual behavior. To understand how sexual stigma affects attitudes on government healthcare expenditures, we examine public support for government-provisioned PrEP in England at a time when media narratives cast the drug as an expensive benefit for a small, irresponsible social group and the National Health Service’s long-term sustainability was in doubt. Methods This paper uses data from an original survey (N = 738) conducted in September 2016, when public opinion should be most sensitive to sexual stigma. A survey experiment tests how the way beneficiaries of PrEP were described affected support for NHS provision of it. Contrary to expectations, we found that support was high (mean = 3.86 on a scale of 1 to 5) irrespective of language used or beneficiary group mentioned. Differences between conditions were negligible. Discussion Sexual stigma does not diminish support for government-funded PrEP, which may be due to reverence for the NHS; resistance to responsibilization generally; or just to HIV, with the public influenced by sympathy and counter-messaging. Social policy implications Having misjudged public attitudes, it may be difficult for the government to continue to justify not funding PrEP; the political rationale for contracting out its provision is unnecessary and flawed. With public opinion resilient to responsibilization narratives and sexual stigma even under austerity, welfare retrenchment may be more difficult than social policymakers presume.

Missionaries of science: provincial lectures in nineteenth-century Ireland

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (135) ◽  
pp. 266-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enda Leaney
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
National Development ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
National Education ◽  
Secular Education ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Differences

For social reformers in nineteenth-century Ireland, science had an important role to play in national development. Non-denominational or secular education was targeted by the government as a possible panacea for the Irish problem, submerging sectarian and political differences. In order to promote this secular ethos, the government established agencies such as the Board of National Education (B.N.E.) in 1831 and the Queen’s Colleges of Belfast, Cork and Galway in 1845. Science seemed to be an area of discourse particularly appropriate to the promotion of economic prosperity and social harmony through the common cause of education. The rhetoric of cultural transcendence was long associated with the advancement of science — from the Royal Society of London (1660) to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1831) — and took root in nineteenth-century Ireland.

Inequality and U.S. Public Opinion on Foreign Aid

World Affairs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 182 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-295
Author(s):  
Hak-Seon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
American Society ◽  
Social Safety Nets

I investigate how the level of inequality affects American public opinion on foreign aid. As the level of inequality increases across the United States, the majority of the public will be more likely to demand the government implement policies that should ameliorate severe inequality in society. Assuming that government resources are limited, a greater level of inequality in American society may weaken public support for foreign aid because the public may prioritize providing social safety nets and welfare programs in domestic milieu over granting foreign aid to developing countries. In addition, as inequality widens, the public may perceive economic globalization as one of the main causes of inequality; thus, their overall support for globalization will decline. As a result, American support for global engagement will be negatively affected, and public support for foreign aid may decrease. An empirical test using public opinion data in 50 U.S. states since the 1980s confirms my theory: widening inequality both across states and within a given state does weaken public support for U.S. foreign aid.

From Data to News: Weather Reporting, Telegraphy and the Press in Colonial Australia

2015 ◽  
Vol 157 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Cryle
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article examines the role of telegraphy and newspapers in the provision of weather news during the late nineteenth century. In order to trace the transformation from data to news, the discussion begins by documenting the formation of both technical and professional meteorological networks, at a time when government observers across the colonies began to compile joint reports for an expanding reading public. In this respect, its focus will be primarily on the use of the inter-colonial telegraph, and upon two influential observers operating in different Australian colonies: Charles Todd in South Australia and Clement Wragge in Queensland. In order to explore the development of colonial weather networks in the age of the telegraph, the article examines the protracted press and professional controversy that arose between these two media personalities, and maps the transformation of weather telegrams into news by late colonial newspapers.

Censorship, Propaganda and Public Opinion: The case of the Katyn Graves, 1943

1989 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 63-83
Author(s):  
P. M. H. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

THE SUBJECT of this paper is not the sombre story of the mass graves at Katyn, filled with the corpses of murdered Polish officers; nor will it deal directly with the question of who killed those officers. I approach these events in the course of research on the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy in Britain during the Second World War, and on the closely related matters of censorship and propaganda as practised by the British government in that period. The diplomatic crisis produced by the affair of the Katyn graves was one in which publicity was freely used as an instrument of policy—indeed sometimes policy and publicity were indistinguishable. Those who controlled British censorship and propaganda, and attempted to guide public opinion, were faced with acute and wideranging problems. It is the object of this paper to analyse those problems, to see how the government tried to cope with them, and to trace the reactions of the press and public opinion, as a case study in the extent and limitations of government influence in such matters.

scholarly journals Not Guilty, but Guilty

2018 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-190
Author(s):  
Rebecca Beausaert
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
White Woman ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Medical Practices ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Local Media ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Town ◽  
African Canadian

In 1882, an accused, elderly African-Canadian woman—a former slave and known midwife, healer, and abortionist in the town of Woodstock, Ontario—was implicated in the death of a younger White woman, allegedly from a botched abortion. The article focuses on the ways the accused was viewed by the local media, specifically references to her race, age, and “suspect” knowledge of medical practices. Tried in a court of law and found not guilty, the press nevertheless declared themselves “morally certain” of her guilt and attempted to sway public opinion in a way that brought race to the forefront. The trial and its aftermath raise a number of important questions regarding socially-constructed configurations of race, gender, justice, rumour, and respectability in a nineteenth-century Ontario town chiefly populated by Anglo-Celtic Protestants.

The Public’s Foreign Aid Priorities: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 635-648
Author(s):  
David Doherty ◽  
Amanda Clare Bryan ◽  
Dina Hanania ◽  
Matthew Pajor
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
Economic Aid ◽  
Conjoint Experiment ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cost

Foreign aid is one of the few areas where Americans say the government should spend less. We leverage a unique conjoint experiment to assess how characteristics of an aid package, as well as characteristics of the targeted country, affect public support. We find that people are far more inclined to support economic aid than military aid and are disinclined to provide aid to undemocratic countries. We also find that people are more averse to providing aid—particularly economic aid—to countries in the “greater Middle East” than those countries’ other characteristics would suggest. These effects are comparable to those associated with substantial increases in the cost of the aid package, suggesting that public wariness of foreign aid is not rooted in a fundamental aversion to spending in this domain. Our findings offer new insights into the contours of public opinion regarding foreign aid.

scholarly journals Party government and policy responsiveness. Evidence from three parliamentary democracies

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimiter Toshkov ◽  
Lars Mäder ◽  
Anne Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk

AbstractDoes party government moderate the responsiveness of public policy to public opinion? Analysing a new dataset, we examine whether the ability of governments to respond to the public on 306 specific policy issues in Denmark, Germany and the UK is affected by the extent of coalition conflict and by the fit of the considered policy changes with the government preferences. We find a systematic but relatively weak positive impact of public support on the likelihood and speed of policy change. Contrary to expectations, a higher number of coalition partners are not associated with fewer policy changes nor with weaker responsiveness to public opinion. We also find no evidence that responsiveness to public opinion is necessarily weaker for policy changes that go against the preferences of the government. Rather, it appears that public and government support for policy change are substitute resources.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document