War, Media, and the Security of State and Capital

This chapter, by Lee Grieveson, explores the U.S. state’s use of cinema and its regulation of media and communication during World War I and in its immediate aftermath. It examines, in particular, the establishment and functioning of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and state orchestration of new forms of war funding. It explores also the legal regulation of communication and media encoded in the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918, overwhelmingly targeted at socialist and pacifist opposition to the war. The latter parts of the chapter consider the structural influence of this conjuncture on subsequent uses of cinema and media and the regulation of dissidence.

Art history · Capital (architecture) · Espionage · Media studies · Movie theater · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political science · Sedition · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science) · Cinema and Media Studies · European history and politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law