A Closer Examination of Paolo Sarpi and the Uses of Information in 17th-Century Venice Paolo Sarpi was an erudite friar who was a driving force in attempts to change government policies regarding the distribution of information and played a significant role in the politics of 17th-century Venice century. Through his political connections and extensive information networks, he has managed to make known his thoughts on how powerful information can be in the right and wrong hands. Looking at Sarpi's academic and political contributions in this period serves to demonstrate that he was a profound and progressive thinker whose ideas about events in Venice and beyond revolved around three main themes of communication studies: that the media allows us to "experiment" distant events as they occur through information networks, that the media, like notices, influence thought, psychological organization and social and institutional organization, and that the media are never neutral as demonstrated by propaganda-laden political writings (Black, Chunn, Edwards and Heyer 2). The reference article, the essay Paolo Sarpi and the uses of information in seventeenth-century Venice by Filippo De Vivo, is structured very similarly to a standard essay as it contains a introduction, a thesis, supporting paragraphs for the points raised by the thesis and conclusion. The title of De Vivo's article is an accurate representation of the topic concerning Paolo Sarpi and the uses of information in Venice in the 17th century. Basic information on Venice and its information network opens the newspaper. It is then established that information that was once available only to the elite classes such as merchants and politicians, was then made available to the masses as a salable commodity in the form of newsletters called alerts (De Vivo 37). His network expanded beyond that available to ordinary people and he had access to information available only to those with political connections like his and, predictably, he made great use of those sources. In addition to having written correspondence with high-ranking officials of other nations, which would have had serious consequences if caught doing so, Sarpi regularly met with domestic and foreign merchants and other travelers to discuss events abroad, which were also frowned upon by the government . The thesis of the article is introduced as an explanation of Sarpi's use of the new means of information (38). To do this,

Topic > A Closer Examination of Paolo Sarpi and the Uses of Information in 17th-Century Venice Paolo Sarpi was an erudite friar who was a driving force in attempts to change government policies regarding the distribution of information and played a significant role in the politics of 17th-century Venice century. Through his political connections and extensive information networks, he has managed to make known his thoughts on how powerful information can be in the right and wrong hands. Looking at Sarpi's academic and political contributions in this period serves to demonstrate that he was a profound and progressive thinker whose ideas about events in Venice and beyond revolved around three main themes of communication studies: that the media allows us to "experiment" distant events as they occur through information networks, that the media, like notices, influence thought, psychological organization and social and institutional organization, and that the media are never neutral as demonstrated by propaganda-laden political writings (Black, Chunn, Edwards and Heyer 2). The reference article, the essay Paolo Sarpi and the uses of information in seventeenth-century Venice by Filippo De Vivo, is structured very similarly to a standard essay as it contains a introduction, a thesis, supporting paragraphs for the points raised by the thesis and conclusion. The title of De Vivo's article is an accurate representation of the topic concerning Paolo Sarpi and the uses of information in Venice in the 17th century. Basic information on Venice and its information network opens the newspaper. It is then established that information that was once available only to the elite classes such as merchants and politicians, was then made available to the masses as a salable commodity in the form of newsletters called alerts (De Vivo 37). His network expanded beyond that available to ordinary people and he had access to information available only to those with political connections like his and, predictably, he made great use of those sources. In addition to having written correspondence with high-ranking officials of other nations, which would have had serious consequences if caught doing so, Sarpi regularly met with domestic and foreign merchants and other travelers to discuss events abroad, which were also frowned upon by the government . The thesis of the article is introduced as an explanation of Sarpi's use of the new means of information (38). To do this,