Salon: Automated Historical Text Analysis

In this Salon (14 Feb, 15:00-17:00) we’ll explore the exciting field of Automated Historical Text Analysis, with presentations by:

Dr. Kaspar Beelen (University of Amsterdam) on his paper ‘Women at Westminster since 1945: have they changed the debate?’

To what extent has the increasing presence of women in Parliament made more than a symbolic difference? Have female MPs placed ‘women’s issues’ on the agenda, or added a feminine perspective to existing discussions? In this presentation, we take a fresh look at these questions through text mining. Using digitized and enriched parliamentary debates, we investigate whether the issues and topics discussed at Westminster (the ‘parliamentary agenda’) has altered as the number of women in the House increased.

Kaspar Beelen obtained his Ph.D. in political history at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His research interests include parliamentary culture, political representation, party formation and ideology. Kaspar focuses on quantitative text analysis and its application to the study of historical and political phenomena.

Dr. Frank Harbers (University of Groningen RUG) on his paper ‘Automating genre classification of historical newspaper articles: an approach to studying the development of journalism’s mode of expression.’

This short lecture will address the value and challenges of a genre approach to studying journalism history in the digital ‘age of abundance’. In the lecture Dr. Frank Harbers will critically discuss recently developed approach and tool to automatically classify the genre of historical newspaper articles, which he developed in collaboration with the Dutch National Library as part of his researcher-in-residence fellowship.

Frank Harbers is Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. In addition, he is member of the editorial board of the Dutch Journal of Media History and member of the editorial board of the university pape.