A cloak of apathy
Political disengagement, popular politics and the Daily Mirror 1940-1945
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12659397 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James Thomas (0000-0003-4805-4190, Cardiff University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 469-482 |
| Publication date | 2004-11-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journalism Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1461-670X • E-ISSN: 1469-9699 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14616700412331296400 |
| OpenAlex | W2162124780 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 5 |
This article re-examines the relationship between the Daily Mirror and popular politics in Britain during the Second World War. It outlines how traditional journalistic and academic analyses have located the period as a high-point of 20th-century radical journalism and political participation in Britain, usually in opposition to a depoliticised and disengaged contemporary news environment. It then re-assesses the Mirror's place in popular culture during this period to suggest an alternative and more complex interpretation of a paper's relationship with popular politics, political disengagement and participation. This differs from both traditional, largely positive accounts of the Mirror's relationship with political engagement and revisionist histories that emphasise its negative relationship with wartime "apathy". It explores firstly the predominantly negative role the paper played in the political mobilisation of a disengaged electorate, both in terms of its continued prioritisation of entertainment over "hard news" and its pioneering of new styles of negative and mediated political coverage. Yet it also examines how the paper's coverage advanced a new, more youth-based, consensual and cross-party alternative for an electorate that was politically disengaged but far from apathetic. This more complex interpretation of the paper's relationship with popular politics and political disengagement parallels current developments and debates around these areas. Keywords: ApathyDisengagementNegative NewsMediated NewsRadical JournalismDepoliticisation
Apathy · Art · Cloak · Disengagement theory · Media studies · Optics · Physics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.18 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2009 - 2012 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |