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Probabilistic topic decomposition of an eighteenth‐century American newspaper

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  • David J. Newman
  • Sharon Block

Abstract

We use a probabilistic mixture decomposition method to determine topics in the Pennsylvania Gazette, a major colonial U.S. newspaper from 1728–1800. We assess the value of several topic decomposition techniques for historical research and compare the accuracy and efficacy of various methods. After determining the topics covered by the 80,000 articles and advertisements in the entire 18th century run of the Gazette, we calculate how the prevalence of those topics changed over time, and give historically relevant examples of our findings. This approach reveals important information about the content of this colonial newspaper, and suggests the value of such approaches to a more complete understanding of early American print culture and society.

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  • David J. Newman & Sharon Block, 2006. "Probabilistic topic decomposition of an eighteenth‐century American newspaper," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(6), pages 753-767, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:57:y:2006:i:6:p:753-767
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.20342
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    Cited by:

    1. María Pinto & Rosaura Fernández-Pascual & David Caballero-Mariscal & Dora Sales, 2020. "Information literacy trends in higher education (2006–2019): visualizing the emerging field of mobile information literacy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1479-1510, August.
    2. Arturas Kaklauskas & Natalija Lepkova & Saulius Raslanas & Ingrida Vetloviene & Virgis Milevicius & Jevgenij Sepliakov, 2021. "COVID-19 and Green Housing: A Review of Relevant Literature," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-38, April.
    3. Hung, Shih-Chang & Chang, Shu-Chen, 2023. "Framing the virus: The political, economic, biomedical and social understandings of the COVID-19 in Taiwan," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    4. Peter Grajzl & Peter Murrell, 2021. "Characterizing a legal–intellectual culture: Bacon, Coke, and seventeenth-century England," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 15(1), pages 43-88, January.
    5. Lino Wehrheim, 2017. "Economic History Goes Digital: Topic Modeling the Journal of Economic History," Working Papers 177, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    6. Lino Wehrheim, 2019. "Economic history goes digital: topic modeling the Journal of Economic History," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 13(1), pages 83-125, January.
    7. Yawen Zou & Manfred D Laubichler, 2018. "From systems to biology: A computational analysis of the research articles on systems biology from 1992 to 2013," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-16, July.
    8. Xiaoyao Han, 2020. "Evolution of research topics in LIS between 1996 and 2019: an analysis based on latent Dirichlet allocation topic model," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2561-2595, December.

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