Wartime Propaganda in the Gazette van Detroit (1914-1918)

The Gazette van Detroit was one of many immigrant newspapers started up in the United States shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. During the war, it kept the Belgian community of Detroit, wider Michigan and Southwestern Ontario (Canada) abreast of the developments in their former homeland, while also reporting on the hostilities elsewhere in Europe from a typically Belgian, and particularly Flemish perspective. It published to that end a variety of pieces under the scrutiny of the Belgian and later also the American government: (1) pieces submitted byregular contributors; (2) letters of Belgian soldiers; (3) articles gleaned from other news sources; and (4) pieces reproducing official information provided by the exiled Belgian government in Le Havre (France). Caught like most other media outlets in a powerful tide of national solidarity, much of this wartime reporting can be considered as propaganda, since it aimed to standardize public opinion by mobilizing the animosity of an entire community against a thoroughly evil enemy engaged in the victimization of an intrinsically good, heroic and unflinching opponent: the Belgian civilian population and army. To achieve this effect, the Gazette employed rhetorical strategies, such as over-lexicalisation, stereotyping and the kinship metaphor.