Singing the News: Ballads as News Media in Europe and Australia, 1550-1920

Histories of the news media industry often focus on prose newsprint, but this project will demonstrate how songs in early modern Europe and later in Australia were widely used for disseminating news to the public. Exploring ballads in five languages across four centuries, it will reveal how news-songs were effective tools not only to inform the public but also to forge national identities by exploiting the emotive and communal nature of singing. Through a digital platform of news songs, a public exhibition of song treasures in Australian collections, a book, and public lectures, the general public will gain critical insights into how the emotional power of songs was used to create narratives of national identity. This will inform current, often highly politicised, debates about who we are as Australians. The digital platform's recordings of 19th- and 20th-century songs will provide Aus