The Atlantic has just alerted me that the leaders of Twitter and Facebook should know more about the history of pamphlet publishing in the 1600s:
“The extraordinary ignorance on questions of society and history displayed by the men and women reshaping society and history has been the defining feature of the social-media era. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg has read a great deal about Caesar Augustus, but I wish he’d read about the regulation of the pamphlet press in 17th-century Europe. It might have spared America the annihilation of social trust.”
— Stephan Marche, in The Atlantic
It dawns on me that my own media law and media history classes didn’t spend much time there either. So WWGD? (What would Google do?)
Here are the first few readings a quick search suggested, from a list of 81,200,000 results, with some font-size irregularities from the cut and paste process. I haven’t read them yet… but maybe if we get a big snowstorm or something:
Pamphlets, Commodification, Media Market Regulation, and …
https://quod.lib.umich.edu › mij ›
by P Verhoest · 2016 · Cited by 2 — The regulatory regime of the media, which was at first characterized by repressive censorship, gradually transformed into a market-regulated media regime.
Seventeenth-Century Pamphlets as Constituents of a Public …
https://journals.sagepub.com › doi › full
by P Verhoest · 2019 · Cited by 10 — From the 16th century onwards, the publication of religious pamphlets as a means of religious and political persuasion was illegal and subject to severe …
Print: Media and 17th-Century Society
https://cyberartsweb.org › cpace › infotech › asg
For printed materials , regulations dating from the sixteenth century required an elaborate system of licensing: every prospective publication had to be …
scandalous and seditious pamphlets banned, 1643. – past tense
https://pasttenseblog.wordpress.com › 2018/03/10 › yes…
Mar 10, 2018 — The new act presented the most detailed list of regulations for the press of the entire seventeenth century: all printing was limited to London …
PAMPHLETS AND PAMPHLETEERING IN EARLY MODERN …
https://catdir.loc.gov › catdir › samples › cam033
From the 1580s pamphlets were a regular feature of booksellers’ stalls, and an increasingly important element in the economy of the book trade. Popular forms of …
27 pages
Printing Ordinance of 1643 | The First Amendment Encyclopedia
https://www.mtsu.edu › first-amendment › article › prin…
The Constitution framers were familiar with press licensing controls such as England’s Printing Ordinance of 1643 when they decided to protect press freedom …
Licensing of the Press Act 1662 – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Licensing_of_the_Pres…
The Licensing of the Press Act 1662 was an Act of the Parliament of England (14 Car. II. c. 33) with the long title “An Act for preventing the frequent …
Pamphlet wars – Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Pamphlet_wars
Cheap printing presses, and increased literacy made the late 17th century a key stepping stone for the development of pamphlet wars, a period of prolific …
Pamphlet wars: Roger L’Estrange and printed polemic in …
https://library.chethams.com › blog › pamphlet-wars-ro…
Apr 5, 2019 — Spies were employed to search for seditious activities and older legislation concerning the regulation of the press was reinforced, demanding …
Print and Print Culture | Charles Herle and the First English …
https://edblogs.pugetsound.edu › …
During the 1640’s, control over printed forms of communication began to collapse in London. These printed sources included pamphlets, books, newspapers, and …
I guess that’s enough for a start, but I don’t think I’m going to read any of those articles myself… not even the Wikipedia page for John Milton’s Areopagitica, although a glance at it reminded me of puzzling through his 17th Century prose style in literature classes more than 50 years ago and at least enjoying some of the poetry and spectacle in Paradise Lost. I may even have glanced at that famous essay on freedom of the press again 25 years later in my one overstuffed grad school media law class, but I believe I had the flu that semester and wasn’t at my best… Coincidentally, I have a cold this weekend, my eyes are tired (they will be 75 years old soon) and I should cut down on this A.D.D.-inspired compulsive online reading and writing.
mild-mannered reporter who found computers & the Web in grad school in the 1980s (Wesleyan) and '90s (UNC); taught journalism, media studies, Web production; retired to write, make music, photograph sunsets & walks in the woods.
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