NOTE: The typographic pear image is from Robert Justin Goldstein's book, Censorship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-Century France, 1989. The inkwell portraying Louis-Philippe belongs to me.
Increasingly, activists and dissidents are turning to the new media (blogs, FaceBook, Twitter) to lead grass-roots protest movements often because the mainstream media are government controlled. The “net” is accessible to a diverse crowd, and information delivery takes place in real time. What a change from those earlier days. It took the content of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses (1517) approximately a month to travel Europe and 17th-century subscription-based newspapers approximately one week to arrive at their destination. How did earlier citizens question official policies in a period of censorship and the Inquisition?
Since the advent of movable type (in the 1450s), journalists and scientists have used the press to criticize. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, officials of the church and state responded by implementing increasingly stringent laws to suppress divergent views in religion, medicine, and astronomy to name a few. There were enough examples of burnings at the stake (Giordano Bruno who wrote a heliocentric and infinite world) and imprisonment or censorship (Galileo who claimed he had proof of the heliocentric world) to make writers cautious. In sixteenth-century France, newspaper copy was submitted to officials prior to publication. In the 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu penned some of the news stories carried by journalist Théophraste Renaudot to ensure the favorable portrayal of French policies. To evade pre-pre-publication screening, some writers used rhetorical strategies such as a retraction (e.g., I am outlining this pernicious theory to make you aware of its dangers). Some writers (including Galileo, the priest Marin Mersenne, and journalist Renaudot in his published conferences proceedings) presented information in the form of a dialogue between three individuals, representing divergent positions characterized by rational, neutral, or specious reasoning. Often these evasive writings seemed reminiscent of a verbal sparring match, pitting the wit of the writer against the intellect of the official. Others used convoluted reasoning, or they relied on a long-winded, verbose style to overwhelm censors and make the author’s position unclear. Still others attributed new points of view or radical theories to the Ancients. Sometimes two different versions of a text appeared—one targeting the censors and the other, a public of savvy readers.
Source: http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2009/02/charles_philipons_la_caricatur.html
One of the more creative ways of communicating antigovernment critiques took place in 19th-century France. By this time, the press had been given varying degrees of constitutional protection in the late 18th century. But freedom of the press vacillated with politics and often failed to protect caricature because officials contended these images could create derision and scorn in the public eye. And French kings, who created regimes of abuse and displayed gout-ridden or jowled physiques, became popular targets. In a series of caricatures, Louis Philipon, editor of Le Charivari, represented King Louis-Philippe as a pear in the 1830s. When Philipon faced imprisonment and fines, he protested by using the shape of a pear to print the text of the censorship decree issued by the king.
These earlier activists, limited to the print medium, used creative approaches, approximating verbal or visual repartees to spar with officials. Just think of what they would have done if they had access to blogs or FaceBook. They could post satirical messages on a Louis-Philippe FaceBook fan club. . . . They could use blogs to counter any “whitewashing” that originated with royalist supporters. While pre-internet officials had hard copy with which to contend, with numerous outlets and the potential for real-time communication, perhaps today’s “censors” face a more difficult task.
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