The role of the Dundee press and public propaganda in shaping public opinion and home front support for the war effort in Scotland, 1914–1918

This chapter examines the impact and influence of mass circulation and the broad Scottish-wide appeal of a multifaceted Dundee-based provincial press during the First World War. Dundee daily newspaper (including evening titles) and weekly newspaper titles (published on Saturdays and Sundays) boasted high circulation figures and legitimately claimed to have broad national appeal and a strong regional and local identity. According to Catriona Macdonald Scottish newspapers exerted a phenomenal influence ‘over the framing and interpretation of war news’ and – with circulation growing significantly over the course of the war – it was the weekly titles ‘rather than the more famous dailies’ that better reflected and informed public opinion over these years. These claims can be tested through a brief examination of the Dundee press and a more focused exploration of the popular weekly the Dundee People’s Journal. It will assess the influence and impact of readers’ letters, local poetry, cartoons and caricatures, anti-alien and anti-German sentiment, alongside advertisement and editorial campaigns exploiting popular iconic imagery and the use of local dialect, to generate and maintain support for the war and patriotic home front activity before the formal introduction of military conscription in March 1916.