Flying the frontier: a case study comparison of newspaper coverage of early northern plane crashes

• Main Author: Williams, Leanna Prax
• Other Authors: Ehrlander, Mary F., Cole, Terrence, Tordoff, Dirk
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Aeronautics; Aeronautics in journalism; Aircraft accidents; Frontier and pioneer life; Frontier thesis; Pioneers; Master of Arts in Arctic and Northern Studies; Arctic; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/15083

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019 From the early days of Alaskan aviation beginning in 1923, stories about Alaskan bush pilots leapt from newspaper pages, captivating readers and selling papers. These newspaper stories, along with magazine articles and other popular culture media accounts, portrayed pilots as pioneers, cowboys and brave adventurers, and referred to Alaska in terms heavily laden with American frontier imagery, a trend that persisted in Alaska but faded elsewhere. What did newspaper reports convey about the lives and deaths of these aviators and their relationships to Alaska and the frontier? How has the portrayal of these early Alaskan pilots in ways that perpetuated frontier mythology affected attitudes toward Alaska's aviation industry? This research employs case study comparisons to approach these questions, evaluating tone and language of early news coverage about Alaska aviation from its advent in 1923 until early 1948 and exploring the origins of the modern American media's portrayal of the Alaska aviation industry. I argue that these early bush pilots captivated the American public because they lived and worked at the intersection of two frontiers: Alaska as The Last Frontier, and at the dawn of the air-age, the sky as a new frontier. 1. Introduction -- 1.1. Approach -- 1.2. Significance and stakes -- 1.3. Historical context -- 1.3.1. Development of American mass media -- 1.4. Conclusion -- 2. Literature review and methodology -- 2.1. Literature review -- 2.1.1. Turner's frontier -- 2.1.2. Alaska aviation and frontier symbolism -- 2.1.3. Sky as frontier -- 2.1.4. Religious symbolism -- 2.1.5. Literature review synthesis & conclusions -- 2.2. Methodology -- 2.2.1. Historiography -- 2.2.2. Content analysis of newspaper articles -- 2.2.3. Data organization -- 3. The 1920s: The roots of the frontier flyer -- 3.1. Introduction and historical context -- 3.2. Merrill case study -- 1929 -- 3.3. Eielson case study -- 1929-1930 -- 3.4. 1920s synthesis and conclusions -- 4. ...