The Travelling of News in 1848: The February Revolution, European News Flows, and the Finnish Press

Abstract

<p>This article explores media coverage of the European revolutionary turbulence of 1848, particularly the outbreak of the February Revolution in France. By utilizing several European newspaper repositories, the article sheds light on the role of newspapers in the spread of revolutionary news in the European media space across various political borders and language barriers. In our case study, we examine how information on the February Revolution travelled to the Grand Duchy of Finland, an area situated at the crossroads of different communication networks, that was influenced by the reactionary politics of Russia but still culturally connected with Sweden. Benefitting from digitized collections of Finnish, Swedish, Austrian, German, and British newspapers, this article provides a transnational perspective on the mid-nineteenth-century European media landscape. Instead of trying to encompass a comprehensive outlook on news reporting during the European upheaval in 1848, we are focusing on the emergence of early reports of the outbreak of the February Revolution in various countries, and looking at how the circulation of news was extending or going beyond national boundaries, as news about the revolution arrived in Northern Europe and at the borders of the Russian Empire<br></p>