Rough draft of history : a century of US social movements in the news

Author / Creator

Amenta, Edwin, 1957- author

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Online

Physical

Summary

"The book offers a new view of U.S. social movement history across the twentieth century by examining how movement organizations were covered in major national newspapers. The book analyzes U.S. so...

"The book offers a new view of U.S. social movement history across the twentieth century by examining how movement organizations were covered in major national newspapers. The book analyzes U.S. social movements--ranging from temperance to women's suffrage to the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street--in a broad comparative fashion. Drawing on the full set of digitized newspapers from the twentieth-century (a task that as little as twenty years ago was considered impossible for researchers), the book offers both an institutional history of news--why the media covered what they covered, and to what effect--and also shows the influence of news coverage on a range of social movements, from the well-known to the obscure. Media coverage is a crucial component of movement visibility; news can draw the general public into battles over new issues but also shapes how movements are perceived. The authors show how a movement's structure--it's organization, as well as the protest and non-protests activities it undertakes--influence its coverage, and consider too how macro political conditions shape movement coverage. They reveal surprising gaps between contemporaneous coverage and current scholarly focus; for instance, the labor movement received the most journalistic attention of any movement of the twentieth century, but it is greatly understudied in comparison to how much it dominated the public sphere. Taking stock of news coverage across a century of movements thus illuminates movements that were influential in public discourse but have been neglected by scholars. The authors end the manuscript by considering how recent developments--the rise of the Internet and social media, the emergence of a powerful right-wing media system, and 24-hour news and the demise of many local newspapers and an overall decline in professional journalism--have aided right-wing movement actors in their bids for attention and for policy change at the expense of those on the left"--

"A comprehensive account of the media's coverage of social movements in the United States. A new view of twentieth-century US social movements, Rough Draft of History examines how national newspapers covered social movements and the organizations driving them. Edwin Amenta and Neal Caren identify hundreds of movement organizations, from the Women's Christian Temperance Union to Occupy Wall Street, and document their treatment in the news. In doing so, Amenta and Caren provide an alternative account of US history from below, as it was refracted through journalistic lenses. Iconic organizations in the women's rights, African American civil rights, and environmental movements gained substantial media attention. But so too did now-forgotten groups, such as the German-American Alliance, Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Peace and Freedom Party. Amenta and Caren show why some organizations made big news while others did not, why some were treated well while others were handled roughly. They recover forgotten stories, including that of the Townsend Plan, a Depression-era organization that helped establish Social Security. They also reveal that the media handled the civil rights movement far more harshly than popular histories recount. And they detail the difficulties movements face in today's brave new media world. Drawing from digitized newspapers across a century and through to the present, Rough Draft of History offers insights for those seeking social and political change and those trying to make sense of it"--

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