‘Pražský Ilustrovaný Kurýr’ (Prague Illustrated Courier)

The Prague penny-press as a window into the world of fin-de- siècle common

man.

A theoretical and methodical approach.

Penny press (from 1830s):

- low price

- high circulation

- readability

- sensationalism

Yellow press (from 1890s)

- bigger sensationalism

- large-scale pictures

- lurid headlines

Popular culture and popular press

• the broadest and the most favourite symbolic culture of modern era

• broadcasted by mass media

• industrialization and urbanization • cheap and fast print• new readers

Petr Burke. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe.

• elements of previous folk culture• elements of high culture• commercially altered for a wider readership

(Matthew Schneirov. The Dream of a New Social Order. Popular Magazines in America. )

"Since the world seemed to be speaking directly to the reader, no special skill, knowledge or sensitivity seemed to be needed to understand and react to a photograph or news story."

Reading theory Producers encode into the text their dominant or

preferred meanings, which "both have the institutional/political/ideological order imprinted in them and have themselves become institutionalised.

(Stuart Hall. Encoding/Decoding.)

Stuart Hall. Encoding/Decoding.

• The dominant readings – readers in agreement with dominant ideology

• The oppositional readings – readers in opposition to dominant ideology

• The negotiated readings - a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements

Readers accept the dominant ideology in general, but modify it to meet the needs of their specific situation.

But while text allows a variety of negotiated or oppositional meanings, its structure always prefers a meaning that generally promotes the preferred ideology. This complexity and subtlety of meanings encoded in text has a powerful effect upon readers, this wide variety of codes coheres to present a unified set of meanings that work to maintain, legitimate, and naturalize the encoded ideology.

(John Fiske. Television Culture.)

"The domains of 'preferred meanings' have the whole social order embedded in them as a set of meanings, practices and beliefs: the everyday knowledge of social structures, 'how things work for all practical purposes in this culture', the rank order of power and interest and the structure of legitimations, limits and sanctions."

(Stuart Hall. Encoding/Decoding.)

The world of the Czech common people

A leadership role through a symbolic capital

Methods

Methods

• Comparison

Methods

• Comparison• Quantitative content analysis - what is attractive and

important to readers

Methods

• Comparison• Quantitative content analysis - what is attractive and

important to readers• Semantic analysis - disguised meanings and

stereotypes

Methods

• Comparison• Quantitative content analysis - what is attractive and

important to readers• Semantic analysis - disguised meanings and

stereotypes • Language analysis - writing techniques and

manipulation

Methods

• Comparison• Quantitative content analysis - what is attractive and

important to readers• Semantic analysis - disguised meanings and

stereotypes • Language analysis - writing techniques and

manipulation• Research of advertisement - target group of readers

Methods

• Comparison• Quantitative content analysis - what is attractive and

important to readers• Semantic analysis - disguised meanings and

stereotypes • Language analysis - writing techniques and

manipulation• Research of advertisement - target group of readers • Picture analysis

Title page pictures in 1898

[%]

homicides, forcible crimes 28

matters of interest, curiosities 23

political issues 14

accidents, fires 12

riots, military conflicts 5

personal issues 4

disasters 3

other events 12

Title page pictures in 1898

Prague 44

Czech Lands 10

Austria 8

The Rest of Europe 24

The Rest of World 14

Regions of Interest :

USA 20 %

Austria 12 %

Germany 12 %

France 12 %

Italy 8 %

Asia 8 %

Hungary 4 %

United Kingdom 4 %

The rest of Europe 12 %

The rest of World 2 %