News Making, Contested Publics and Stories of Belonging in the Dutch Caribbean (Slavery and Emancipation)

News Making examines how people in Curaçao and Sint Maarten turn events into stories that shape public life.Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2019, the book develops an analytical distinction between ‘news’ as an everyday social practice and ‘the news’ as institutional media.Moving from the late nineteenth century to the present, it traces how colonial governance, missionary activity, oil industrialization, and constitutional reform (10/10/10) have structured emerging publics in the Dutch Caribbean. Theoretically, the book reworks debates on the public sphere, creolization, and popular culture within a relational understanding of empire, bringing social and media theory into conversation with Caribbean intellectual traditions.Methodologically, it combines archival research with interviews, newsroom ethnography, and attention to rumor, gossip, and oral storytelling as forms of popular news making.Case studies include the rise of Papiamentu-language n