European trench newspapers (1914-1918) in relation to the traditional press

Conference organiser: University of AberystwythThis paper aims to outline the characteristics of the so called ‘trench newspapers’ from the First World War and to reconstruct the way they profiled themselves in relation to the traditional press. Trench newspapers were, at some point, published in most belligerent countries, both on the initiative of soldiers, as a means to underscore their specificity as a public and the incommensurability of traditional press discourse with their situation, and, more often, on the initiative of the armies, as a means of propaganda, correcting interpretations and attitudes that were spread, among others by the press. In each case, the trench newspapers profiled themselves as written by soldiers, although they were all more or less scrutinised by the military authorities. In the past, scholarly attention to trench newspapers has been aimed mostly at reconstructing the soldiers’ attitude towards the war. In the view of the abovementioned communicational perspective, the present contribution will study trench newspapers from various European countries as a historical kind of media discourse, by mapping references to the traditional press in their content and by studying the way in which their participative discourse tried to express the identity and fulfil the (often escapist) expectations of the of the soldiers’ communities. Hypotheses will be formulated as to the historical relevance of the trench newspapers in the light of the tendency towards massification, ideologisation and militarisation of culture in various European countries during the interwar period.status: publishe