Commercial radio stations RTL and Europe n°1 played an important role during the events of May 1968 in Paris by maintaining the news coverage of the protests, the riots and the strikes. By analyzing the entanglements of the various audiovisual media and surviving audio material,this article defends the idea that a vacuum created by the crisis that affected the French public broadcasting agency is one of the main reasons that brought the commercial radio stations at the centre of the events.

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Press pp. xiii þ 239, $29.95 (paper) Derek W. Vaillant's Across the Waves: How the United States and France shaped the International Age of Radio takes on the task of shedding light on the neglected history of transatlantic radio broadcasting between France and the United States. By doing so, it reflects the transnational turn embraced by many broadcasting historians, and it helps further the understanding of international media history, and of Franco-American relations. This book dwells into the complex U.S.-French radio history, and its multitude of cultural, political and technical entanglements, from the early 1930s to 1974, when France dismantled its state media system; a period referred to by the author as 'the international age of radio'. As the author acknowledges himself, he has tried in this book to go beyond the concepts of 'Americanization' and 'remaining French' that have dominated the perception of Franco-American broadcasting and cultural history. Across the Waves analyses the transatlantic developments of radio broadcasting in order to offer a renewed perspective of this intertwined history. It also attempts to deconstruct these two concepts that are described as appealing, but limited to truly encapsulate the situation, especially as they neglect the influence of French broadcasts, and broadcasters, on the United States. This book is written accordingly to a rather traditional, though justified, chronological approach, in order to reflect the evolutions of Franco-American radio history, with a clear cut following the aftermath of World War II.Throughout the chapters, the author regularly changes his lens of inquiry, by dwelling on various aspects of radio history, as he looks at cultural, technical and political (at national and international levels) aspects of the Franco-American 'international age of radio', during peace as well as war times, with a fascinating chapter on the US broadcasts to France during the second World War. Another chapter, a case-study on the 'first weekly transatlantic women's radio talk show' (p. 101), Bonjour Mesdames (Hello, ladies), highlights these changes of lenses particularly well. Vaillant analyses in it the technical and material aspects of this programme, while revealing its cultural impact, especially on questions of gender norms, and bringing it into a larger scale of analysis, by showing how it can be

This article reflects on the process of building and teaching a course in digital public history for Bachelor students at the University of Luxembourg. The heart of the program was the hands-on, experimental approach. The article describes the organization of the course and presents some of the strategies followed to lead the students through a more holistic and playful approach. The experience shows that the learning by doing motto can be an effective path for teaching public history and especially digital public history, as the digital element opens space for more experimentation.

National broadcasting cultures as dominant points of reference Besides other public intellectuals, no less a person than Bertolt Brecht was very enthusiastic about wireless broadcasting. In his 1932 speech 'Radio as an Apparatus of Communication', he considered the potentials of radio for democracy by discussing how the relatively new medium could overcome social and political boundaries if it establishes formats to communicate with listeners and point out sociopolitical deficits. 1 Among other demands, he calls for a critical public-service medium that controls those in power. Brecht's ideas have been instrumental in democratic societies where radio has become part of the fourth estate alongside print media and, some years later, television. Today, his thoughts are part of public-service agreements, broadcasting acts or editorial policies. Brecht's suggestions even have become a benchmark for the evaluation of national radio cultures: have they developed formats and modes that use the medium's ontological characteristics, has radio become a medium of communication with the population of a specific country or region, has it developed ways to control the national government? As these questions illustrate, the nation state has been the dominant reference point for radio, and with it radio scholarship, too. Radiolike broadcasting in generalhas been quintessentially shaped by specific regions or nation states. Most radio services and channels, in fact, not only explicitly refer to a geolocation through their names, but also their remit and target audience is more often than not linked to a particular country, a region or a city. Moreover, radio programmes and enterprises are subject to control and guidance by the responsible regulatory bodies, interest groups and media laws. It remains to be seen if such rootedness in specific geological or cultural locations will be overcome with new means of broadcast technology that relies on digital formats and the internet. Whereas