Abstract
This wide-ranging volume brings together over 20 contributions published by the author between 1983 and 2004 and offers a useful resource for anyone interested in the history of the media in Austria. The contributions are divided into seven thematically organised sections and cover a period stretching from the 18th century to the end of the 20th century. The first section includes two studies of selected episodes of anti-Semitism in the Austrian media in the 19th and 20th centuries and a chapter that discusses the work of Jewish journalists and critics in Austria between 1760 and 1960. The second section brings together a study of the first Czech newspaper published in Vienna in 1761 and a broad examination of the role of the German-language press in south-eastern Europe until the end of World War II, combined with an overview of the foreign-language press published in Vienna. The four contributions in the third section discuss the communications policies and limitations on press freedom in the Metternich era (1815–1848), the work of exiled Austrian journalists in Germany in the same period, the beginnings of the Austrian ‘quality press’ in the early 18th century and the new information channels and flows established in the same century. The fourth section turns to the period of Austrofascism (1934–1938) and comprises contributions examining the impact of the increasingly repressive media policies, their consequences for the non-conformist press and the ways in which the fascist rule affected the nature of theatre criticism. The sixth section comprises thematically varied contributions, ranging from history of caricature to a discussion of oral history projects conducted at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna (Wiener Institut für Publizistik- and Kommunikationswissenschaft). The last two sections include reflective pieces on media history as a field, both with a specific focus on the local development of media research in Austria as well as in more general, theoretical terms.