The Emergence of Terrorism in the Nineteenth Century

Political Assassinations and Public Discourse in Europe and the United States, 1858-1901 Dr. Carola Dietze Carola Dietze's project examines how the development of mass media and the public in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States influenced the birth of the "propaganda of the deed," i.e., terrorism in its modern shape. Moreover, she compares how societies in the nineteenth century dealt with the phenomenon of terrorism and what the political consequences of these different approaches were. Her sample includes the assassination attempt on German Emperor William I in 1878 and the murders of Czar Alexander II, US President James Garfield, French President Sadi Carnot, Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, and US President Arthur McKinley. Terrorist acts would be meaningless if they could not reach a wide audience, above all through the media. So terrorist acts are, by definition, "media events," a term which, in itself, implies a constructivist approach. Although the concrete and immediate outcome of these attacks is well known, Dietze looks more closely at the political struggles surrounding the events that led to these consequences. She also examines the transnational representation of the attacks as well as their international impact. By examining political assassinations and assassination attempts as transnational media events, this project analyzes the symbiotic relationship between terrorism and mass media in the period when it came into being, in the last third of the nineteenth century. Its overarching aim is to help historicize the phenomenon of "terrorism" by confronting the discourse on the recent attacks with the discussions in the nineteenth century.