Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Grey Room 93undertaking a new reading of texts by Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx.I begin, however, by putting forward some general points, thereby laying the groundwork for an analysis of different historical instantiations of this intimate link between the spread of unreliable information and newly emerging media. Rumors and Media ChangeMy main argument is simple and can be summarized in two short sentences:1.The emergence of new technologies and of new and accessible media forms increases and accelerates the circulation of rumors and disinformation.2. Circulation and repetition create belief.One historical example for this dynamic, from long before our present moment, is the invention of movable type in early modern Europe, where the medium of print served as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the Gutenberg Bible, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. 3 However, in the same period a surge of pamphlets and broadsides emerged that reported on the births of various monstrous creatures, such as the Monster of Ravenna, the Monk Calf, and the Papal Ass.While they were highly sensational, each of these texts made forceful claims to factuality and veracity.4 The broadsides and pamphlets were often reprinted, circulating widely as a result.5 In their magisterial study Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (1998), Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park therefore describe "this multiplication of monsters" as "spring[ing] at least in part from the new technology of printing, which greatly facilitated the spread of news through pamphlets and broadsides."6 At the same time, it is important to note that the first texts printed by Johannes Gutenberg were the papal indulgence letters that disgusted Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and other Protestant reformers so strongly.7 Anticipating this essay's conclusion, one could therefore say that it was the proliferation of Catholic indulgence letters that was superseded by the circulation of polemical anti-papal pamphlets.These Protestant broadsides and pamphlets, in turn, led to the founding of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith by Pope Gregory XV one hundred years later, thereby giving us the term propaganda through the congregation's Latin name,
Source: Grey Room
DOI: 10.1162/grey_a_00382
Author: Stefan Andriopoulos
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4388723391