Abstract
This article reconsiders ideas of the public sphere in the seventeenth century, by focusing on how public opinion is produced in the movement of information between media and between receivers. It contends that the scholarly preoccupation with a public sphere viewed exclusively in terms of politics obscures the fact that contemporaries did not distinguish between politics and subjects such as crime in their newsgathering. Examining the case study of James Turner, a burglar in the 1660s who became a cause celebre in London and beyond, this article shows how crime news were eagerly exchanged, informing discussions and constructing public opinion.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 549-564 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Cultural and Social History |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Early online date | 18 Sept 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Bibliographical note
I would like to thank Mark Jenner, Helen Smith, Simon Ditchfield, Lucy Sackville, Jim Sharpe, Bill Naphy, and Antonis Liapis for reading versions of this article. I would also like to thank those who listened to versions of this at conferences and provided useful comments; Ioanna Iordanou deserves a special mention here.Keywords
- Public Sphere
- Print Culture
- Public Opinion
- London
- Early Modern
- Crime
- News Culture
Access to Document
- Accepted Manuscript
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Cultural and Social History on 18 Sep 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14780038.2017.1375703