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Historical Newspaper Data: A Researcher’s Guide and Toolkit

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  • Brian Beach
  • W. Walker Hanlon

Abstract

Digitized historical newspaper databases offer a valuable research tool. A rapidly expanding set of studies use these databases to address a wide range of topics. We review this literature and provide a toolkit for researchers interested in working with historical newspaper data. We provide a brief description of the evolution of historical newspapers, focusing on aspects that are likely to have implications for the design of empirical studies. We then review the main databases in use. We also discuss some key challenges in using these data, most importantly the fact that even the most extensive datasets contain only a selected sample of the universe of historical newspaper articles. We offer tools for evaluating the comprehensiveness of available newspaper datasets, show how to assess potential identification concerns, and suggest some solutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian Beach & W. Walker Hanlon, 2022. "Historical Newspaper Data: A Researcher’s Guide and Toolkit," NBER Working Papers 30135, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30135
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    Cited by:

    1. Melissa Dell & Jacob Carlson & Tom Bryan & Emily Silcock & Abhishek Arora & Zejiang Shen & Luca D'Amico-Wong & Quan Le & Pablo Querubin & Leander Heldring, 2023. "American Stories: A Large-Scale Structured Text Dataset of Historical U.S. Newspapers," Papers 2308.12477, arXiv.org.
    2. Alex Armand & Paul Atwell & Joseph F. Gomes & Yannik Schenk, 2023. "It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s Superman! Using Mass Media to fight Intolerance," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2023012, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    3. Jacob Carlson & Tom Bryan & Melissa Dell, 2023. "Efficient OCR for Building a Diverse Digital History," Papers 2304.02737, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    4. Melissa Dell, 2024. "Deep Learning for Economists," Papers 2407.15339, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2024.
    5. Quentin Lippmann & Khushboo Surana, 2022. "The Hierarchy of Partner Preferences," Discussion Papers 22/08, Department of Economics, University of York.
    6. Daniel J. Smith & Macy Scheck, 2023. "Examining the public interest rationale for regulating whiskey with the pure food and drugs act," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 196(1), pages 85-122, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General

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