The dissertation project investigates the ways in which the post-emancipation Guyana periodical press inclusive of the planter and state press, and the ethnic press comprising Black and Portuguese (Madeiran) newspapers, expressed diverse ethnic and class interests through the formation of reading publics, their use of language, and their claims about citizenship and identity within the colony of British Guiana. In many cases these challenges and struggle for recognition closely followed or led to more explicit struggles for social and economic emancipation in the colony. Each segment of the professional and social classes represented specific social aspirations and orientations in the transformative period after emancipation.

While the overall trajectory of my project is an analysis of all major newspapers in the period identified, the thesis interrogates, through a content analysis, the origin, context and the conduct of key newspapers representing the non-state or non-planter press. This section of the periodical press, including Black and Portuguese newspapers, generally termed the 'ethnic' press, articulated diverse race and class interests through the formation of reading publics, the use of language and their claims on citizenship and identity within the British colony.

The first chapter, a historical overview, provides an overall sense of where the newspaper press stood in technological and social terms in Guyana at the eve of 'emancipation'. The second chapter examines the role and activity of newspapers that constituted the official "press" in the post-emancipation period. Chapter three demonstrates, via several key nineteenth century riots and the reaction of the press, the background social tensions in which racial stereotypes were formed and framed. The fourth chapter investigates the rise and impact of the ethnic press during the post 1838-emancipation period in Guyana, especially with respect to the racialization of labor within the colony. The final and concluding chapter is theoretical in theme and content and examines the press from the perspective of critical and relevant paradigms.