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- Title
"The Path to Freedom"? Transocean and German Wireless Telegraphy, 1914-1922.
- Authors
Evans, Heidi J. S.
- Abstract
This article examines the early years of Transocean, a news agency owned and run by the German government, and its use of wireless telegraphy from 1914 to 1922. This investigation of the infancy of wireless technology demonstrates that technology plays a constitutive role in defining news. The German government used the new possibilities innate in the medium of wireless to carve out their own sphere of operation in the seas and on continents where German telegraph news had never played a major role, in particular East Asia. Wireless telegraphy enabled the German government to circumvent the British communications blockade in World War I. Afterwards, Transocean's wireless transmissions to East Asia and ships en route caused an uproar in Britain disproportionate to its circulation. It was the Germans' innovative use of wireless telegraphy that other nations, particularly the British, found most disturbing, rather than the content of the reports themselves.
- Subjects
GERMANY; TRANSOCEAN GmbH; HISTORY of telegraphs &; telegraphy; WIRELESS telegraph; HISTORY of telecommunication; WORLD War I; JOURNALISM; NEWS agencies; GOVERNMENT ownership
- Publication
Historical Social Research, 2010, Vol 35, Issue 1, p209
- ISSN
0172-6404
- Publication type
Article