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How a Newspaper Revolution Sparked Protesters and Influencers, Disinformation and the Civil War

Grinspan, Jon
http://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/10/how-a-newspaper-revolution-sparked-protesters-and-influencers-disinformation-and-the-civil-war/

Publisher:  CounterPunch
Date Written:  10/10/2024
Year Published:  2024  
Resource Type:  Article

In the mid-1800s, a boom in media outlets created a massive political movement — and plenty of disinformation.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

In fact, the most divided period in the history of U.S. democracy – the mid-1800s – coincided with a sudden boom in new communications technologies, confrontational political influencers, widespread disinformation and nasty fights over free speech. This media landscape helped bring the Civil War.

The point is not that 21st century media is like the 19th century’s, but that the past was hardly full of the upstanding, rational, nonpartisan journalists many like to believe it was.

And at this era’s center, in the campaign that actually led to the war, was a huge, strange, forgotten movement – the Wide Awakes – born from this media landscape and fought out in the newspapers, polling places and, ultimately, battlefields of the nation.

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