“THE AFFAIRS IN ITALY CONTINUE TO WEAR A CLOUDY ASPECT”: REPORTS ON THE FIRST ITALIAN CAMPAIGN (1796-1797) IN THE GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES

Using two online repositories of historic American periodicals, Chronicling America and Newspapers.com™, this chapter investigates the reporting of the conflict between France and Austria (and its allies) in northern Italy in 1796-1797. In particular, the analysis focuses on news reports involving the town of Brescia in the Philadelphia-based Gazette of the United States. Combining linguistic analysis of temporal and spatial references, a study of the routes of transmission, and content analysis of the reports, the investigation shows that the format of the narrative presentation varied in the individual news items, as did the news origins of the reports from Europe, while the temporal and spatial referencing, which were in part designed to create credibility, could sometimes lead to obfuscation.