The Scottishness Of The Scottish Press: 1918–39  

Oleh:

Connell, Liam

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Media, Culture & Society vol. 25 no. 2 (Mar. 2003), page 187-207.
Fulltext: 187MCS252.pdf (115.32KB)

Isi artikel

This neglect of historical analysis is surprising given the frequency with which historical claims are made for an autonomous Scottish media. Numerous accounts of Scottish society have asserted that Scotland’s distinctive media patterns form an important constituent of Scottish institutional autonomy that has helped to preserve Scottish difference within Unionist structures of government since 1707 (Brown et al., 1996: 3, 1999: 4, 76; Kellas, 1984: 7–9). According to this interpretation, the preference for locally produced newspapers in Scotland is indicative of Scottish sociological distinctiveness, because Scottish newspaper-readers consume alternative titles they receive a distinctively Scottish perspective on events (Hutchison, 1983, 1987; Meech and Kilborn, 1992; Tunstall, 1983: 226). Such claims sit uneasily with the assertion that Scottish papers are predominantly local journals which preponderantly cover regional events, and the apparent contradiction more forcefully raises the question of how long Luckhurst’s description of Scottish newspaper titles has accurately characterized the Scottish press. No answer to this question is easily found in the critical work on the Scottish press which, as well as avoiding historical comparisons, rarely offers any analysis of the content of these supposedly autonomous Scottish newspapers: a notable exception being Law (2001). While consistent with those theories of nationalism that interpret the nation as a communicative community, and which appear to emphasize the structural fact of a national media in respect of the national community over the content of such media (Anderson, 1991; Gellner, 1983: 127; Schlesinger, 1991: 161–2), this approach neglects the manner in which the press is capable of generating a feeling of collective belonging through the style of its address (Dahlgren, 1992: 17; Fowler, 1991: 46–65). The extent to which Scottish newspapers are capable of engendering a sense of Scottishness due to a tendency to address their readership as Scottish has never been thoroughly examined.

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