Anglo-American Quality Press Narratives and Discourses of Sexual Revolution, 1958-1979

My dissertation examines the role of quality newspapers in shaping the debate surrounding the so-called ‘sexual revolution’ in Great Britain and the United States between 1958 and 1979. Four major newspapers, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Times were instrumental in constructing and influencing public discourse on issues ranging from obscenity and pornography to feminism and women’s liberation. I argue that these newspapers and their constituent actors demonstrated and participated in revolution as a political process during this period. By examining these newspapers content through both frame analysis and discourse analysis, I show how they both reacted to and created public discourse surrounding these key issues. These discourses were nuanced and in both areas constituted a revolution in their husbandry of the dialectic of freedom and liberation required.