Abstract
Even though many historiographical works dealt with the press in the 19th century, we still know very little about media influence on the readers in the age of mass participation. There are many reasons for that, most importantly the questionable legitimacy of assessing the transfer of ideas and notions from pages of the journals to their readers, given by the lack of ego documents. Similarly problematic is applying the modern studies from sociology to a person of the late 19th century, as we cannot claim that the mental processes leading to participation were the same as they are nowadays.
Studying the importance of media for the riots and collective violence of 1897 is equally complicated, as it shares the common problems. Meanwhile, both state administration in 1897 and the press itself consider the influence of media on the formation of street politics obvious.
Yet, those “clear links” fade away in the perspective of the contemporary researcher. Even though there are connections to be seen when studying local press, as – for example – smaller media often published lists of places owned by Czechs/Germans/Jews that were later attacked by the rioters, in many other cases the lines are relatively blurred.
In the first part of my paper, I am going to analyze the influence of the smaller local media on the outbreak of violence in the regional centers. I will demonstrate the influence of media on the journal Nationale Zeitung from Saaz/Žatec and its chief editor Edmund Pummer, to show the importance of local media and their journalist for the riots in 1897. Edmund Pummer was a radical German nationalist, who attacked Czechs on the pages of the newspapers on daily basis. When the anti-Czech riots in Saaz erupted, he was leading the crowds against the Czech objects around the city. Later, he was sentenced to 5 months in prison and later exiled from the monarchy.
In the second part, I am going to present my extensive work with the most-read Czech nationalist press Národní listy. Based on the qualitative analysis of this media, I am going to show the relationship between media and street politics in Bohemia, debating the possibility of assessing the influence of media on the riots of 1897. Simultaneously, I will stress the opposite – effect of the violent riots and demonstrations on media. This way, if there was a possible “circle of violence”, where the media instigated the violence by their reporting, but simultaneously the reporting intensified during the acts of violence.