Short presentation
When examining British culture, several characteristics are to be taken into consideration, especially when they involve the multifarious facets of media development and representations and the milestones in the history of great institutions – the BBC’s hundredth anniversary being a current illustration. Broadcasting can be perceived as a barometer of a period, revealing the pulse of a community, a society, a nation. Observing the resonance of issues and events, traditions and habits is central to our apprehension of ingredients that are deeply rooted in culture and identity. In so doing, we listen to Britain, we look at Britain, we seek to grasp British broadcasting’s cultural universals and singularity. All this begs the question of the role of the media in shaping national identity or, in other words, how they constitute cultural ‘landmarks’ that are common to the vast majority of a population at a given time, and how they ‘partly serve as forms of national popular memory’.
Selective bibliography
Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Oxford, OUP, 1995. Vol. 1: The Birth of Broadcasting (1896-1927), 1961; Vol. 2: The Golden Age of Wireless (1927-1939), 1965; Vol. 3: The War of Words (1939-1945), 1970; Vol. 4: Sound and Vision (1945-1955), 1979; Vol. 5: Competition (1955-1974), 1995
Conboy Martin and John Steel (eds.), The Routledge Companion to British Media History, London, Routledge, 2015
Simon Dawes, British Broadcasting and the Public-Private Dichotomy: Neoliberalism, Citizenship and the Public Sphere, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017
Dickason Renée and Georges Fournier, La BBC et le service public audiovisuel, 1922-1995, Informer, Eduquer, Divertir, Paris, Atlande, 2020
Dickason Renée, La société britannique à travers ses fictions télévisuelles : le cas des soap operas et des sitcoms, coll. Sciences humaines & sociales, Paris, Ellipses, 2005
Martin Laurent (ed.), Culture, Médias, Pouvoirs aux Etats-Unis et en Europe occidentale, 1945-1991, Paris, Atlande, 2019
