Introduction : Anglo-American media interactions, 1850-2000

This book presents some of the best new research on Anglo-American media interactions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a topic of strong and increasing concern to both British and American scholars. Yet, given that the countries share a common political and cultural heritage and that, in recent years, “British” media empires such as those of Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black have thrust their way into the United States, it is surprising that the media dimension in transatlantic relations has been insufficiently examined.2 This collection of essays seeks to rectify this gap and, among other things, to raise important questions about the transatlantic media’s role in the construction of national identities and the emergence of global cultures.