2022 Volume 100 Pages 163-180
The newspaper media began to play an important role in France in the mid-19th century as the appearance of popular newspapers expanded the classes of readers and the newspaper market grew significantly. This study examined the characteristics of people engaged in newspaper production in this period, using the Analyse des Correspondances Multiples （ACM）, which draws on the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu. The term “field” in Bourdieu”s theory indicates a social space where specific rules operate, autonomous from other domains. To clarify what kind of homology or differentiation is present in the characteristics of professionals producing newspapers, this study analyzed the qualitative attributes of the professions of “journaliste” and “publiciste” in newspaper production based on data from a biographical dictionary published in the mid-19th century using the ACM method. This study calculated the qualitative variables as “distance” and demonstrated proximity among attributes such as profession or position in the production of newspapers.
The results indicated that the two professions had, to some extent, different capital structures. On the one hand, “publicistes” were active in two media markets and, from the standpoint of the origin of social class and the additional profession, had more pronounced proximity to the political field. On the other hand, although “journalistes” did not have clear proximity to other fields, they occupied a more important position than “publicistes” in the editing and management of newspapers and were located closer to popular newspapers. In conclusion, the journalistic field in the French newspaper market in the mid-19th century was not autonomous, but rather an intersection of the roles and intentions of editors, politicians, and others.
