Oceanic Exchanges: Tracing Global Information Networks in Historical Newspaper Repositories, 1840-1914 (OcEx)

Abstract

The dramatic expansion of newspapers over the 19th century created a global culture of abundant, rapidly circulating information. The significance of the newspaper has largely been defined in metropolitan and national terms in scholarship, while digitization by local institutions further situates newspapers in national contexts. “Oceanic Exchanges” brings together leading efforts in computational periodicals research to examine patterns of information flow across national and linguistic boundaries. Through computational analysis, OcEx also crosses the boundaries that separate digitized newspaper corpora to illustrate the global connectedness of 19th century newspapers. OcEx uncovers how the international was refracted through the local as news, advice, vignettes, popular science, poetry, fiction, and more. By linking research across large-scale digital newspaper collections, OcEx offers a model for data custodians that host large-scale humanities data.

Principal Investigators

Ryan Cordell, Northeastern University, United States, IMLS (USD 199,998)
Mark Priewe, Universitaet Stuttgart, Germany, DFG (EUR 453,275)
Isabela Galina Russell, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, CONACYT (MXN 2,730,000)
Hannu Salmi, University of Turku, Finland, AKA (EUR 175,070)
Julianne Nyhan, University College of London, United Kingdom, AHRC/ESRC (GBP 160,000)
Jaap Verheul, University of Utrecht, Netherlands, NWO (EUR 124,792)