The paper famine: Newsprint, development, and the materialities of Third World media in the time of decolonisation

Abstract This article explores the global political economy of paper—particularly newsprint—during the era of decolonisation. It shows how Third World countries, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) understood newsprint as an infrastructural tool for accelerating development. However, a ‘paper famine’ in the mid-1970s exposed the major structural inequalities in the global newsprint trade, catalysing experiments to develop local paper manufacturing capacity in the Third World. The article demonstrates how debates about access to newsprint were tightly bound up with arguments about global information flows and the role of the press in the developing world. In so doing, the article argues that bringing global histories of commodities and communications into conversation enriches our understanding of the media by drawing attention to the material substance by which information circulates.