Contrasting News and Controlling the Narrative: English and French News Reporting in the Wake of the 1696 Conspiracy

In 1696, the discovery of a plot to assassinate William III and of a French invasion aimed at returning James II to the throne kicked news reporting into overdrive. This paper will examine the ways in which news media in England and France intersected, feeding off each other and establishing an intertextual dialogue aimed at scoring points and fixing an unwieldly narrative into set patterns. The paper will analyse the role of news editors in selectively translating and framing news reports coming from abroad with editorial comments in order to shape a story that created shared communities of feeling and rhetorically constructed a sense of ‘the public’.

Lena Liapi is an Assistant Professor in Early Modern European History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her research interests revolve around the history of crime and of cultures of communication.