Breaking News

In 2018, writer Kenan Malik wrote in The Guardian that until now, “only governments and powerful figures could manipulate public opinion.” Contributors to this special issue explore this assumption by examining how news broke to the public in the past and how everyday people and subaltern actors, such as Ida B. Wells and Lois Gibbs, broke past elite gatekeepers of public information. The authors also examine the efforts made to break the public’s faith in those who presumed to guard the “public good,” as well as how scholars deconstruct the ways in which we understand the struggles over public discourse. They ask, “How did breaking news stories acquire the kind of widespread traction that changed public discourse?”

Contributors: A. J. Bauer, Jorge E. Cuéllar, Steven Fabian, Maria Ferenc, Kerri K. Greenidge, Rosa Hamilton, Piotr Laskowski, Marissa J. Moorman, Sarah Nelson. Rosemary Pennington, Allison Perlman, Peter C. Pihos, Adam Quinn, Josh Shepperd