Aaron Ackerley - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Aaron Ackerley

New England Journal of Medicine, 1956

Twentieth Century British History, Jun 30, 2014

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Aug 1, 2020

<p>This chapter surveys changing notions of professional identity in the twentieth-century ... more <p>This chapter surveys changing notions of professional identity in the twentieth-century British press. The term 'journalist' is highly contested, covering a wide range of figures with different forms of experience and training as well as a wide range of roles within and beyond news organisations. Journalism has also lacked the clearly defined rules of practice and established pathways into the occupation evident in other careers that are classed as professions, such as medicine and law. By exploring key topics such as continuities from the nineteenth-century press, the rise of professionalism and journalists' associations and unions, the myth of the 'Fourth Estate' and struggles over press regulation, and the impact of digitisation, this chapter explains how notions of professional identity within journalism have changed in response to wider social and cultural changes and changes within the newspaper industry itself. These topics are also explored in short case study, focused on the <italic>Guardian</italic>.</p>

Media History, Mar 17, 2019

Historical Research, Feb 7, 2022

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>A major issue for campaigners for rad... more <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>A major issue for campaigners for radical political programmes is the question of publicity. A vibrant literature has emerged examining the ways in which the Labour party developed a media strategy and cultivated their own newspapers and links with established media organizations in mid twentieth-century Britain. However, the role of the quality press in helping make the radical respectable in the interwar and Second World War period merits more attention. This article provides a detailed analysis of internal developments at The Times and the Manchester Guardian to explain how both papers came to promote radical policies.</jats:p>

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Nov 19, 2020

This thesis is an exploration of economic ideas in the British interwar daily press, focusing on ... more This thesis is an exploration of economic ideas in the British interwar daily press, focusing on four titles: The Times, the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. The contention that knowledge is power is examined by analysing the specific ways in which ideas were created, reformulated, and transmitted. The interwar period was a time of economic turmoil and political dislocation, with a large variety of economic understandings and policies vying for attention. New ideas and those that had emerged from the pre-war reconfiguration of British politics challenged orthodox thinking. The press was the dominant mode of communication at this important juncture. An innovative approach is undertaken, with the newspapers being foregrounded as the central site of research. The surviving internal archives of the newspapers and a wide range of primary source material such as private papers, memoirs, biographies and official newspaper histories are used to reconstruct the day-to-day working practices of the newsrooms, helping provide important context for an analysis of the economic ideas that they published, accessed through digitised collections of the newspapers. This allows the actual functioning of editorial control to be assessed and reveals the importance of recognising the division of responsibilities within newspapers. The different types of content featured in the newspapers which contained economic ideas are surveyed, while the salience of their forms and conventions is explained. The specific journalists and departments responsible for creating the content are identified, and the personal, professional and political relationships which structured and informed their work are delineated. These considerations are then used to investigate two case studies: Free Trade versus Protectionism and The Gold Standard and ‘Sound Money’. Newspapers emerge as highly complex sites, with multiple lines of authority and with unique internal dynamics

Reviews in History, 2019

Jim Tomlinson's latest book distils ideas evident in his work for over three decades to present a... more Jim Tomlinson's latest book distils ideas evident in his work for over three decades to present an account of how 'in seeking to manage the economy' British governments have 'sought simultaneously to manage popular understanding of economic issues' (p. 1). Tomlinson tracks the narratives British governments have attempted to craft to explain the state of the economy and the policies required to improve it from the postwar period up until the present day. Receiving special attention are efforts aimed at altering the behaviour of the public-either as a whole, or certain sections such as the working class-that were held to be necessary to allow the government's proposed economic policies to function successfully. The book opens with the important insight that the term 'the economy' is a contested one, contrary to the arguments of some political scientists that there is a 'real' economy that electors may 'misunderstand'; rather than being a natural object, 'the economy' is socially constructed. It is also acknowledged that attempts to educate the population about economic ideas are 'never innocent of ideological and political purposes, implicit or overt' (pp. 2-3), a concern the book does a good job of showcasing, though, there are occasions where 'ideological goals' are mentioned without the form they took being explained (p. 121). Tomlinson displays a critical and discerning mindset throughout, both in relation to the theoretical terms that are used and the limitations of the sources that are surveyed. For example, the problematic nature of the concept of 'productivity' is cogently explained (pp. 185-86). Likewise, a nuanced view of popular economic knowledge is presented. Public 'ignorance' of economic phenomena has often been charted by detailing how popular economic understandings diverge from 'expert' views, which usually just produces the unsurprising insight that only a small percentage of the population understands economic terms in the same manner as economists. Indeed, the work of some of the historical actors Tomlinson surveys is critiqued in this regard, such as Hilde Behrend's studies on popular understandings of 'prices' and 'inflation' (p. 196). Tomlinson instead looks to approaches utilised in the field of the public understanding of science, viewing popular understandings on their own terms and recognising how they can influence behaviour. Importantly, the role of emotion in dictating popular acceptance of economic ideas is foregrounded, with Barbara Wootton's comment that the public is more drawn to ethics, which are "warm and real", than economics, which are "cold and abstract", given due prominence (p. 194).

In recent years, cultural institutions and commercial providers have created extensive digitised ... more In recent years, cultural institutions and commercial providers have created extensive digitised newspaper collections. This book asks the timely question: what can the large-scale digitisation of newspapers tell us about the wider cultural phenomenon of mass digitisation? The unique form and materiality of newspapers, and their grounding in a particular time and place, provide challenges for researchers and digital resource creators alike. At the same time, the wider context in which digitisation of cultural heritage occurs shapes the impact of digital resources in ways which fall short of the grand ambitions of the wider theoretical discourse. Drawing on case studies from leading digitised newspaper collections, the book aims to provide a bridge between the theory and practice of how these digitised collections are being used. Beginning with an exploration of the hyperbolic nature of technological discourses, the author explores how web interfaces, funding models and the realities of contemporary user behaviour, contrast with the hyperbolic discourse surrounding mass digitisation. This book will be of particular interest to those who want to investigate how user studies can inform our understanding of technological phenomena, including digital resource creators, information professionals, students and researchers in universities, libraries, museums and archives.

Unemployment and the State in the Depression makes an important and original contribution to our ... more Unemployment and the State in the Depression makes an important and original contribution to our understanding of the 1930s in Britain, a period that continues to intrigue historians and capture the public imagination. The book focuses upon the impact of the coalition National Government’s unemployment policy, and on the use of a highly controversial household means test for the long-term unemployed in particular. If the depression of the 1930s cast its shadow over the history of interwar Britain, then it was the use of the means test that dominated public and private debates about it. It was the most debated piece of domestic legislation and opposition to the measure came from across the political spectrum; it led to a scale of opposition in the streets that some argued had not been seen since the days of Chartism. Such was its legacy, the alleged worst effects of the means test even influenced post-Second World War politics. Whilst no serious study of the depression would fail to mention the significance of the measure, to date, there is no single detailed study of the administration, effects and response to the means test. The purpose of this book is to redress this balance and further understandings of a measure which was central to the social and political history of Britain in this era. The book examines the construction of the image of the means test and its effects, including claims of suicide, furthering understanding of relationships within the family, the masculinity of the unemployed and how the out of work were perceived by the press and government. It focuses in particular upon protest movements, furthering understandings of the importance of place and political culture through a comparative case study of south Wales and the north-east of England.

The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, Volume 3, 2020

This chapter surveys changing notions of professional identity in the twentieth-century British p... more This chapter surveys changing notions of professional identity in the twentieth-century British press. The term ‘journalist’ is highly contested, covering a wide range of figures with different forms of experience and training as well as a wide range of roles within and beyond news organisations. Journalism has also lacked the clearly defined rules of practice and established pathways into the occupation evident in other careers that are classed as professions, such as medicine and law. By exploring key topics such as continuities from the nineteenth-century press, the rise of professionalism and journalists’ associations and unions, the myth of the ‘Fourth Estate’ and struggles over press regulation, and the impact of digitisation, this chapter explains how notions of professional identity within journalism have changed in response to wider social and cultural changes and changes within the newspaper industry itself. These topics are also explored in short case study, focused on th...