+
Hunt or Gather, Share or Steal:Scottish News Networks, 1790-1840
M. H. BealsSheffield Hallam University
@mhbeals
View These Slides
About MeColonial News Database
View This Presentation
After 16 Sept 2014
+Overview
Scottish Scissors-and-Paste Journalism
Identifying Reprints
Understanding Dissemination Pathways
Manual Construction of Social Networks
Digitally Constructed Dissemination Pathways
+Journalism in Georgian Scotland
Proliferation of Colonial and Provincial PressesSpread of Journeyman Printers
Reduction of Stamp Duty
New Profit ModelsEntertaining and Literary Content
Adverts to Attract Readers to Sell to Advertisers
Ports and Post-RoadsSignificant amount of Material Copied from London
Growth of Domestic News-SharingEventual Establishment of Direct Overseas Connections
Manual Dissemination of NewsLimited Number of “Specials”
Postal Exchange, Subscriptions, CorrespondenceNo Telegraph until 1840s and Not Used for Miscellany
+Scissors-and-Paste Journalism
A contemporary term, often used pejoratively, for the wide-spread practice of excerpting from or recycling of articles from other publications, this term actually covered a number of different editorial strategies, ranging from agreed syndication to unacknowledged piracy […] The practice was not limited to news and, encouraged by confused and ambiguous copyright law, many cheap literary miscellanies were founded on the premise of extracting 'useful knowledge' from prohibitively expensive books, monthlies and quarterlies to make it more accessible to the lower classes.
Catherine Feely, Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism
+
Promise Large-Scale Digitisation EffortsKeyword SearchingnGram Matching (WCopyFind)Edition Tracking (Juxta)
Viral Texts Project (Cordell, Dillon, and Smith) Large-Scale Corpus of Nineteenth Century Newspapers
Extensive, Automatic Repair of OCR ErrorsIdentification of Highly Reprinted Materials (Memes)
Discussion and Exploration of Meme Traits and and Patterns
PerilsDiscrete Digital Corpera (Paywalls)
Offline Penumbra (Curation)Lost Nodes (Incomplete Data)
OCR Variability (50-80%)
Computer-Aided Identification of Reprints
+ Computer-Aided Identification of Reprints
# concordanceset.pyimport redef replace_words(text, word_dic): rc = re.compile('|'.join(map(re.escape, word_dic))) def translate(match): return word_dic[match.group(0)] return rc.sub(translate, text)
def getNGrams(wordlist, n): return [wordlist[i:i+n] for i in range(len(wordlist)-(n-1))]
basenumber = raw_input('What is the first id number? ’)number = str(basenumber)numberint = int(basenumber)basenumberend = raw_input('What is the last id number? ’)endnumber = int(basenumberend)
ngram = raw_input('How many words should be in a phrase? ’)ngrams = int(ngram)combifile = 'combine.txt’listopen = open(combifile, "r”)wordlist = listopen.read()splitlist = wordlist.split()listopen.close()ngramslist = getNGrams(splitlist, ngrams)
if ngramslist: ngramslist.sort() last = ngramslist[-1] for i in range(len(ngramslist)-2, -1, -1): if last == ngramslist[i]: del ngramslist[i] else: last = ngramslist[i]
tidystring = '’
for item in ngramslist: number = str(basenumber) numberint = int(basenumber) lineitem = " ".join(item) print lineitem tidystring += str('\n' + lineitem + ',')
while (numberint<=endnumber): file = str(number + ".txt”) fin = open(file, 'r’) text = fin.read() fin.close() if lineitem in text: tidystring += str(number + ',’) numberint = int(number) numberint += 1 number = str(numberint)
# create an excelfile for this exampleexcel_file = "ngramcompiled.csv”fout = open(excel_file, "w”)fout.write(tidystring)fout.close()
+ Computer-Aided Identification of Reprints
+ Understanding Reprint Networks
Meme Identification
Courtesy of Viral Texts Project, http://www.viraltexts.org/
+ Understanding Reprint Spread
Chronological Spread
Courtesy of Viral Texts Project, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwDlyt7jhMs
+Understanding Dissemination
Pathways
Genealogical Model
+
Datelines
Sections
Attributions
In-Text References
Maintained Errors
House Style
Inconsistencies
A Faithful Reprint
+
Original, Sydney Gazette, 8 November 1815
Reprint, London Courier, 2 January 1817
A Faithful Reprint
+
Reprint, London Courier, 2 January 1817
Reprint, Caledonian Mercury, 6 January 1817
A Faithful Reprint
+
Reprint, Caledonian Mercury, 6 January 1817
Reprint, Aberdeen Journal, 8 January 1817
A Faithful Reprint
+A Faithful Reprint
+ Manual Construction of Social Networks
The Glasgow Advertiser, 7 October 1793, p. 5
Knoxville, May 11.IT is shocking to describe the bloody scenes thathave lately taken place in this district. TheIndians have killed and scalped a great number ofpersons, among whom is Colonel Isaac Bledose,who was massacred within 150 yards of his ownhouse.
On the 27th instant a body of Indians attackedGreenfield station: they killed John Jervis, anda negro fellow, belonging to Mrs. Tarker. Bythe bravery of three young men, viz. William Nee-ly, William Wilson, and William Hall, the stationwas preserved; they killed two Indians, woundedseveral others, and put them to flight. It is to beremembered, that Neely and Hall had each lost afather and two brothers, and Wilson a brother, bythe savages. Men are now in pursuit of the Indi-ans.
Full Discussion of Dissemination Pathway Available at: http://prezi.com/in4_bqvgmanr/
+Manual Construction of Social
Networks
Derived from Google News Archive, British Library 19th Century Newspapers,
NewspaperArchive.com, Readex Early American Newspapers, Newspapers.com, and the University of Kentucky
+Binary Computer Model
Arbitrary Tolerance Levels
Reference to Additional Tables
Bypassing Missing Nodes
Flexibility
Difficult to Recreate Human Instinct…
…But is That a Bad Thing?
+Phylogenic Model
Phylogenetic Model
Image Courtesy of Fred Hsu (Wikipedia:User:Fredhsu on en.wikipedia) CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
+ Can Computers Replace Historians?
Computer ProgramOCR Clean-up ProcessesDivision into Likely Meme GroupingsVariety of Relatedness Scores
Textual IntegrityPrefixes and SuffixesChronological SeparationChronological-Geographical FeasibilityWell-Worn Path ModifierModeling of Relatedness Factors
Directional Social Network DatabaseRaw Data to Inform Additional Research
Manual CorrectionsDirect Attributions
Parsing Compilations
Initial Discovery of Well-Worn Paths
Inclusion of Offline Materials
(www.mhbeals.com/cnd)
+
Hunt or Gather, Share or Steal:Scottish News Networks, 1790-1840
M. H. BealsSheffield Hallam University
@mhbeals
View These Slides
About MeColonial News Database
View This Presentation
After 16 Sept 2014
