A “careful study” on public opinion. An exemplary investigation of media monitoring through press clippings collections in the League of Nations’ Information and Mandates Sections

Abstract

This article seeks to shed some light on institutional monitoring practices employed by the League of Nations during the 1930s. It explores internal reception of external communication on the organisation and its work and asks (and partially answers) what processes and practices were established by the organisation concerning media monitoring and which views and interpretations these practices (re-)produced. For that purpose, it discusses findings from four exemplary hermeneutic case studies conducted on collections of a total of 701 press clippings collected and curated by League organs. To provide a topical focus (and, simultaneously, increase the transdisciplinary value of the presented research) all four collections concern the League of Nations’ project of international control over colonial policy and are accordingly sourced from the archival section files of the organisation’s Mandates Section. The article contextualises the findings concerning the clippings with information derived from the minutes and reports of the League’s experts’ commission on Mandates, the Permanent Mandates Commission.