For years, online media have crept into our everyday lives. At Oren Dunn City Museum, we rely on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get our messages out daily. Many people obsessively post or tweet their every moves on some kind of social platform.
Indeed, this 21st century method of communicating remains a higher technological version of newspapers in Mississippi, especially since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All this came to mind as we watched Public Radio’s broadcast of the whistleblower Frances Haugen, former data scientist at Facebook, testify before Congress. As NPR put it, Haugen said Facebook, “harms children, sows division and undermines democracy in pursuit of breakneck growth and astronomical profiles.”
Consider that Facebook rewards engagement to posts. The more comments and likes, the more the algorithm in use spreads a particular post and ensures the post’s more visible position in one’s timeline, instead of just a chronological appearance.
Here in Tupelo and Lee County, as well as other places over the globe, people express their views freely on social media, especially Facebook. The comments concern various topics, including local news items and local, state and national politics and policies, to name a few. Sometimes the comments become harsh and unkind. People argue with one another.
The same phenomenon occurred during and after Reconstruction in the South, especially as Bourbon Democrats in Mississippi attempted to regain control of the state from Republicans. The highest technology of the time rested in the printing press. Private ownership of newspapers and the competitive nature of newsgathering stood as the rule from the late 1860s through the years of the Great Depression.
State and local officeholders rewarded the newspapers who supported them with printing contracts. Sometimes, editors and publishers received patronage jobs for their support.
In addition, politicians created newspapers. For example, two years before John Rankin launched a successful campaign for Congress, he published a newspaper, the New Era, in which he took his views — and campaign — directly to the people. After his election to Congress in 1920, Rankin let the newspaper die. The organ had accomplished the new congressman’s mission.
In Jackson, James K. Vardaman supported Rankin in “Vardaman’s Weekly.” Rankin acknowledged Vardaman as one of his mentors early in the career of the District 1 congressman.
Even before Rankin’s birth, political parties supported by Democrats, Republicans or some third party — such as the Greenbackers or Populists — had their own newspapers. Those who supported certain politics or policies could find their so-called comments on the front page of most. Many of those newspapers published weekly.
For instance, the Tupelo Journal of 1895 considered itself a Democratic newspaper, thus following the policies of the party as it sought single-party status over Republicans and other minor third parties in local and state government. F.L. Kincannon published the paper, which ran from 1895-1924.
Democratic Party-based newspapers and their opposition slung vitriol at one another in their columns, calling the opposition “sorehead” and “know-nothings.” At one point in the state’s history, before Blacks were disfranchised by the 1890 Constitution, Democratic Party newspapers called opposition parties that encourage Black candidates and voters “half-breeds” and “mongrel.” Sometimes those stories or columns or letters would elicit canings and duels when disagreeing parties met face-to-face.
Obviously, today’s social media has not ventured far from its lower technological predecessor, except we have yet to experience a duel or caning as a result of Facebook retorts.
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October 15, 2021 at 04:44PM
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Partisan vitriol on social media little different than the earliest printed media - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
"Media" - Google News
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