Thread by @ad_astra_1

In the seventeenth century, Hamburg's printer and newsdealer Georg Greflinger published an influential newspaper: the "Nordischer Mercurius".

Yet, only a few copies are digitized:
brema.suub.uni-bremen.de/zeitungen17/pe…

A short thread about #earlymodernnews for #newshistory and #bookhistory

In August 1674, Greflinger commented (once more) on the uncertainty of news flows present in Europe, and the levels of #fakenews and #falsenews being copied and spread in the European media systems. By the way, this was the normal case for all newspapers at the time.

Greflinger used this phrase in 1674 to commend on the common practices of the news business:

Everyone says their best / even though you have nothing certain (in German: "Ein Jeder sagt sein Bästes / Und hat man noch nichts festes")

What did Greflinger mean by this? The #earlymodern news business depended on handwritten news (letters) being sold to newsdealers etc., who compiled the many voices into new news packages, which eventually were sold to printers like Greflinger.

#earlymodernnews #newshistory

What they, the news printers and publishers of the epoch, bought was collected and compiled "news" from all over Europe (and often beyond). Not all was reliable infomation, but the newspapers corrected themselves fast, and presented the news as possibly correct. #newshistory

On the other end of this transmission, the news readers knew what they were dealing with: #earlymodern readers (and listeners) of news media were trained in being sceptic. They demanded more news to be certain, they tried to read more sources, they wanted to validate messages.

In this sense, #earlymodern news media had often a very sensible readership and listening public. When it came to critically evaluate the offered content of published news, the typical epoch's consumer had a high level of #medialiteracy.

#communicationhistory #mediahistory