Fuel, Fear, and Fault: Mass Media and Cartel Criticism During the German Coal Crisis of 1900
研究了1900年德国煤炭危机中大众媒体如何推动反卡特尔辩论，通过报纸报道引发公众对燃料短缺的担忧并塑造批评煤炭工业家的叙事，对理解20世纪卡特尔政治史有参考价值。
This article examines the role of the mass media in driving anticartel debates during a coal crisis in Germany in 1900. Threatening the fuel supplies of millions of people, the nationwide energy shortage marked the beginning of the anticartel movement, adding a decisive thrust to antimonopoly sentiment toward the cartelized Ruhr coal industry. While hitherto overlooked, this symbolic chapter of German antimonopoly history was profoundly shaped by daily newspapers, a medium that revolutionized public communication during this period. By cross-referencing newspaper articles with records of the coal industry, this paper investigates how newspapers raised public concern for the fuel shortage and thereby forged narratives blaming the coal industrialists as well as how the coal producers responded to the ever-intensifying public scrutiny. As such, this study would serve to identify the mass media as a key determinant in the broader history of cartels and cartel politics in the twentieth century.