By Cordelia<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

Regarding the opinions of the British and the colonists on their conflict of the late eighteenth century, there exists a general consensus that each side blamed the other. However, this common precept is actually a falsity, at least as according to Troy Bickham in his book, Making Headlines<\/em>, as he wrote about the sheer number of print materials of the time period and how that caused an extreme diversity in shared opinions on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, the scale to which the press and the specific framing of the press truly impacted the events of the American Revolution is unknown, aside from some specific examples. Using Bickman, as well as Philip Davidson’s Propaganda and the American Revolution 1763-1783<\/em>, O.M. Dickerson’s article, \u201cBritish Control of American Newspapers on the Eve of the Revolution,\u201d and Robert M. Entman’s \u201cFraming: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,\u201d one can begin to understand the importance of not just what a person of this pivotal time period said, but how and where he or she said it.<\/p>\n

Philip Davidson defined propaganda as an attempt to control the actions of people indirectly by controlling their attitudes.[1]<\/a> This definition is further divided into subcategories of intentional and unintentional, with intentional propagandists consciously and systematically acting in pursuit of a goal and unintentional propagandists who control attitudes through unintentional suggestion in an effort to maintain a societal status quo.[2]<\/a> In Davidson’s opinion, propaganda, especially in a revolution, is inevitable but the members of the subcategories can vary based on the conflict. In this specific revolution, however, the Anti-British patriots would be considered the intentional propagandists and the British would be considered the unintentional as they were the ones who attempted to preserve a former social system. However, to this argument, Troy Bickman disagreed.<\/p>\n

Bickman argued that the press, with it being the work of bribery, personal connections, and unaffiliated authorship, tended to be an accurate reflection of public opinion but that, in fact, concretely dividing the examples of the press from the period into strict Anti-American and Anti-Ministry categories would be misleading.[3]<\/a> In fact, the openness of the press allowed for a forum through which many opinions could be expressed and mainland Britons, whose friends, family, and business interests all lay in the colonies, were never out of touch with American news, and in fact, experienced most of the conflict through newspapers and pamphlets.[4]<\/a> Bickman’s argument differed from Davidson’s in this regard \u2013 more open categorization \u2013 but also in the way that Davidson relied strictly on propaganda to explain differences between the American and the British presses. Bickman, however, concentrates solely on British reactions to American events and thereby relied on personal reactions found in the press. However, both of these arguments are connected in an unexpected way: framing.<\/p>\n

Robert M. Entman defined framing as selecting some aspects of a reality and communicating them in a text in such a way as to promote a particular interpretation.[5]<\/a> Although the examples he used in his article are those of more modern political debates, his ideas still apply to the revolutionary era. In fact, this concept of skewing information in order to perpetuate an ideology is exactly what Davidson argued both the British and the Colonial Patriots did through the press, whether intentional or not. Entman’s statement that described four locations at which framing takes place (communicator, text, receiver and culture) is also mirrored in Dickerson’s article that stated that the press was, in effect, purposeless without an audience[6]<\/a>[7]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dickerson, in fact, made further connections to the other readings. According to his article, propaganda was much more rampant in British papers than Davidson seemed to imply. In actuality, it was guaranteed that if a province had a royal governor, there was at least one newspaper under his control[8]<\/a>. This seemingly harmless facet of information quickly expands into a broader conspiracy in which the British government paid popular newspaper publisher John Mein to print attacks on the non-importation committee and other patriot acts in and around Boston. Although, in the long run this appeared to have minor effect, it prevented organized colonial non-importation and repeal of the Townshend Acts[9]<\/a>. Although Dickerson did acknowledge that much of his theory couldn’t be proven to be wholly accurate, evidence does exist to recognize that this facet of colonial printing did, indeed, occur.<\/p>\n

If Dickerson’s findings stand, as he asserted they do, his article, in effect, rebuts Davidson’s statements regarding the Brits and the propaganda that he claimed was unintentional. However, the motivation of the \u201csuggestion\u201d is arguably not as important as the scale of the impact of the words, themselves, and therefore Davidson’s argument on the massive impact propaganda has in periods of conflict remain valid. Entman implied the same but on a larger scale than just revolutions: propaganda, biases, and framing impact all press during all time periods. Perhaps most importantly though, in regards to press and propaganda, is the audience’s reaction, as Dickerson implied and which Bickman explored. The British reception to the American Revolution not only sheds light on many aspects of American history, but on British history as well, especially in regards to the history of the press and who or what controls what is printed[10]<\/a>. In this sense, all authors agree upon the idea that the fighting of a revolution is done not just on the battlefield, but on paper. Who has access to the press and the implications of such access is, by and large, one of the most important aspects of the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

<\/a>^{1 <\/sup>Davidson, Philip. Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763-1783<\/em>. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941, xiii.<\/p>\n}

[2]<\/a> Ibid, xiv.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Bickman, Troy O. Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen through the British Press. <\/em>DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009,15.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid, 8.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Entman, Robert M. \u201cFraming: Toward Clarification Of A Fractured Paradigm.\u201d Journal of Communication<\/em> 43, no. 4 (1993): 51-58, 52.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid, 52.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Dickerson, O. M. \u201cBritish Control of American Newspapers on the Eve of the Revolution.\u201d The New England Quarterly <\/em>24, no. 4 (1951): 453-68, 460.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid, 454.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ibid, 462.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Bickman, 7.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/p>\n

Bickham, Troy O. Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen through the British Press<\/em>. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009.<\/p>\n

Davidson, Philip. Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763-1783<\/em>. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941.<\/p>\n

Dickerson, O. M. \u201cBritish Control of American Newspapers on the Eve of the Revolution.\u201d The New England Quarterly<\/em> 24, no. 4 (1951): 453-68.<\/p>\n

Entman, Robert M. \u201cFraming: Toward Clarification Of A Fractured Paradigm.\u201d Journal of Communication<\/em> 43, no. 4 (1993): 51-58.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a>  <\/a>  <\/a>  <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cordelia Regarding the opinions of the British and the colonists on their conflict of the late eighteenth century, there exists a general consensus that each side blamed the other. However, this common precept is actually a falsity, at least as according to Troy Bickham in his book, Making Headlines, as he wrote about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}