Etablierung von Zeitungen als „one-day bestsellers“

Nutzungszahlen und Publikumskonstruktionen auf den Titelseiten deutscher Generalanzeiger (1888–1902)

Abstract

Founded in the 19th century, Generalanzeiger (“general gazettes” or “general advertiser”) are regarded as a milestone of the emerging mass press and can be considered as “one-day bestsellers,” whose users while reading them imagined that thousands of other people were doing the same. Thus far, however, research on media history has neglected that publishers and editorial offices deliberately stimulated such audience imaginations. Based on an analysis of 2,049 front pages from 1888 to 1902, this study shows that the early years of new Generalanzeiger were characterized by an extensive public communication about their audiences. Using various constructions of audiences, newspapers sought to present themselves as popular, established media outlets within an expanding, highly competitive press market. From the beginning, large and steadily growing usage numbers were prominently communicated to (potential) readers and presumably supported the diffusion of emerging newspapers. The historical analysis covers three retro-digitized German Generalanzeiger and is based on deductively and inductively derived constructions of audiences, thereby providing a perspective that can be used to examine and historicize the public communication about media audiences and usage data beyond the Internet and Big Data, and that can be applied to a broad spectrum of media history.