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

Abstract

This article explores media coverage of the European revolutionary turbulence of 1848, particularly the outbreak of the February Revolution in France. By analysing several European newspaper depositories, the article sheds light on the role of newspapers in the spread of revolutionary news in European media space across various political borders and language barriers, connecting continental Europe, Great Britain, and Ireland with the Scandinavian frontiers of the Russian Empire. In our empirical 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 Austrian, British, German, Finnish, and Swedish newspapers, this article provides a transnational perspective on the mid-nineteenth-century European media landscape.