Journalism History and Digital Archives

This book showcases various ways in which digital archives allow for new approaches to journalism history. The chapters in this book were selected based on three overall objectives: 1) research that highlights specific concerns within journalism history through digital archives; 2) discussions of digital methodologies, as well as specific applications, that are accessible for journalism scholars with no prior experiences with such approaches; and 3) that journalism history and digital archives are connected in other ways than through specific methods, i.e., that the connection raises larger questions of historiography and power.

The contributions address cases and developments in Asia, South and North America and Europe; and range from long-range, big-data, machine-leaning and topic modelling studies of journalistic characteristics and meta-journalistic discourses to critiques of archival practices and access in relation to gender, social movements and poverty.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

Introduction: Journalism history and digital archives

Henrik Bødker

1. A Century of Journalism History as Challenge — Digital archives, sources, and methods

Thomas Birkner, Erik Koenen & Christian Schwarzenegger

2. Excavating Concepts of Broadcasting — Developing a method of cultural research using digitized historical periodicals

James F. Hamilton

3. Exploring Machine Learning to Study the Long-Term Transformation of News - Digital newspaper archives, journalism history, and algorithmic transparency

Marcel Broersma & Frank Harbers

4. In Search of America — Topic modelling nineteenth-century newspaper archives

Quintus Van Galen & Bob Nicholson

5. Journalism History, Web Archives, and New Methods for Understanding the Evolution of Digital Journalism

Matthew S. Weber & Philip M. Napoli

6. Saving Data Journalism — New strategies for archiving interactive, born-digital news

Meredith Broussard & Katherine Boss

7. The Politics of Women’s Digital Archives and Its Significance for the History of Journalism

Pernilla Severson

8. Digital Archiving as Social Protest — Dalit Camera and the mobilization of India’s "Untouchables"

Subin Paul & David O. Dowling

9. Digital Archives as Subaltern Counter-Histories — Situating "Favela Tem Memoria" in the Rio de Janeiro media and political landscape

Stuart Davis

10. @franklinfordbot — Remediating Franklin Ford

Juliette De Maeyer & Dominique Trudel

Henrik Bødker, Ph.D, is Associate Professor at the Media and Journalism Studies Department at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has published on various intersections between popular culture and media, e.g. music and magazines. In addition to questions related to digital archives, he is currently working with how digital technologies and practices relate to changed patterns of circulation and new temporalities of journalism.