Uncovering Reprinting Networks in Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers

FAIN: HD-51728-13

Northeastern University (Boston, MA 02115-5005)
Ryan Cordell (Project Director: October 2012 to April 2015)

The development of models, using tools from computational linguistics, to help track the spread of prints and reprints of poetry and short stories throughout 19th-centry newspapers, using the sources found in the Chronicling America database of digitized newspapers.

Uncovering Reprinting Networks in Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers seeks to develop theoretical models that will help scholars better understand what qualities--both textual and thematic--helped particular news stories, short fiction, and poetry "go viral" in nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. Prior to copyright legislation and enforcement, literary texts as well as other non-fiction prose texts circulated promiscuously among newspapers as editors freely reprinted materials borrowed from other venues. What texts were reprinted and why? How did ideas--literary, political, scientific, economic, religious--circulate in the public sphere and achieve critical force among audiences? By employing and developing computational linguistics tools to analyze the large textual databases of nineteenth-century newspapers newly available to scholars, this project will generate new knowledge of the nineteenth-century print public sphere.

Media Coverage

The appeal of facts that blow your mind, from the 19th century to Buzzfeed (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Alexis C. Madrigal
Publication: Fusion
Date: 1/13/2015
URL: http://fusion.net/story/38218/the-appeal-of-facts-that-blow-your-mind-from-the-19th-century-to-buzzfeed/

Going Viral in the Nineteenth Century (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Rebecca Onion
Publication: Lapham's Quarterly Roundtable
Date: 3/5/2014
URL: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/going-viral-nineteenth-century

Viral sensations of the 19th century (Media Coverage)
Author(s):
Publication: Future Tense
Date: 2/25/2014
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/viral-sensations-of-the-19th-century/5280340

Life Advice for Young Men That Went Viral in the 1850s (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Rebecca Onion
Publication: Slate Vault
Date: 12/4/2013
URL: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/12/04/advice_for_men_list_of_maxims_that_went_viral_in_the_nineteenth_century.html

How Stories Went Viral in Antebellum America (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Ben Richmond
Publication: Motherboard
Date: 11/25/2013
URL: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-stories-went-viral-in-antebellum-america

http://www.internetactu.net/2013/11/07/les-medias-viraux-un-phenomene-ancien/ (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Rémi Sussan
Publication: InternetACTU
Date: 11/7/2013
URL: http://www.internetactu.net/2013/11/07/les-medias-viraux-un-phenomene-ancien/

Here’s How Memes Went Viral — In the 1800s (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Greg Miller
Publication: Wired MapLab
Date: 11/4/2013
URL: http://www.wired.com/2013/11/data-mining-viral-texts-1800s/

Going Viral In The 19th Century (Media Coverage)
Author(s):
Publication: The Dish
Date: 11/4/2013
URL: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/11/04/19th-century-virality/

Top 10 Viral Hits of the Pre-Civil War Years (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Arika Okrent
Publication: mental_floss
Date: 9/24/2013
URL: http://mentalfloss.com/article/52867/top-10-viral-hits-pre-civil-war-years

Associated Products

“Detecting and Modeling Local Text Reuse” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Detecting and Modeling Local Text Reuse”
Author: David A. Smith
Author: Ryan Cordell
Author: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
Author: Nick Stramp
Author: John Wilkerson
Abstract: Texts propagate through many social networks and provide evidence for their structure. We describe and evaluate ef- ficient algorithms for detecting clusters of reused passages embedded within longer documents in large collections. We apply these techniques to two case studies: analyzing the culture of free reprinting in the nineteenth-century United States and the development of bills into legislation in the U.S. Congress. Using these divergent case studies, we eval- uate both the efficiency of the approximate local text reuse detection methods and the accuracy of the results. These techniques allow us to explore how ideas spread, which ideas spread, and which subgroups shared ideas.
Date: 09/08/2014
Primary URL: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dasmith/infect-dl-2014.pdf
Primary URL Description: Institutional repository
Conference Name: IEEE/ACM Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

Viral Texts Reprints Database (beta) (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Viral Texts Reprints Database (beta)
Author: Ryan Cordell
Author: David A. Smith
Author: Abby Mullen
Author: Kevin Smith
Abstract: The Viral Texts beta database presents our data from the nineteenth-century holdings of Chronicling America for other scholars to browse and search.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://viraltexts.northeastern.edu
Access Model: Open Access

Viral Textuality in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Newspaper Exchanges (Book Section)
Title: Viral Textuality in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Newspaper Exchanges
Author: Ryan Cordell
Editor: Veronica Alfano and Andrew Stauffer
Abstract: This chapter will draw on the results of a large-scale text analysis project using computational tools to automatically identify reprinted texts in the millions of pre-1861 pages in the Library of Congress' Chronicling America newspaper collection. Thus far the study has uncovered nearly 50,000 "viral texts": news stories, short fiction pieces, poems, and prose vignettes that circulated among readers and editors in the decades before the civil war. I use the phrase "viral texts" deliberately, as our findings point to a range of textual sharing practices beyond simple reprinting, including reprinting, reauthorship, and remixing. Analyzed at scale, viral texts can be read as powerful indicators of influence, pointing to those publications who printed texts most often appropriated by others. To that end, this chapter will employ network analysis techniques with our project's data to model the system of antebellum newspapers, analyzing whose texts were most likely to be reprinted elsewhere, and thus helped shape antebellum taste and opinion.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/virtual-victorians-veronica-alfano/?K=9781137398208
Primary URL Description: Palgrave MacMillan product page
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Book Title: Virtual Victorians: Networks, Connections, Technologies
ISBN: 9781137398208

Computational Methods for Uncovering Reprinted Texts in Antebellum Newspapers” (Article)
Title: Computational Methods for Uncovering Reprinted Texts in Antebellum Newspapers”
Author: Ryan Cordell
Author: David A. Smith
Author: Abby Mullen
Abstract: This paper describes the computational methods developed for the Viral Texts project, and serves as a companion piece to Cordell's article published in the print issue of the journal.
Year: 2015
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Literary History
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Reprinting, Circulation, and the Network Author in Antebellum Newspapers (Article)
Title: Reprinting, Circulation, and the Network Author in Antebellum Newspapers
Author: Ryan Cordell
Abstract: Over the past decades, literary scholars have increasingly attended to “ephemeral” media such as antebellum newspapers and magazines, and in particular to the systems of reprinting and remediation through which texts circulated prior to the development of modern intellectual property law. However, such studies are stymied by physical and digital archives that hide more than they reveal. Bibliographies, indexes, and keyword searches alike limit our inquiries predominantly to what we already know, while the larger culture of reprinting remains buried amidst millions of pages and billions of pixels. This article argues computational tools can identify patterns of reprinting within digitized periodicals corpora that are more meaningful signals of the “culture of reprinting” than can be ascertained by reading or searching. The texts uncovered through these methods complicate our current understandings of genre, authorship, and influence during the period, pointing to the prominence of understudied genres such as the vignette in everyday reading and the amorphousness of authorship in a print culture founded on sharing, exchange, and remediation. When modeled at scale, this uncovered corpus suggest a diffuse, decentered, and truly national print culture that challenges studies focused on known print centers such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
Year: 2015
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Literary History
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Detecting and Evaluating Local Text Reuse in Social Networks (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Detecting and Evaluating Local Text Reuse in Social Networks
Author: Shaobin Xu
Author: David A. Smith
Author: Ryan Cordell
Author: Abby Mullen
Abstract: Texts propagate among participants in many social networks and provide evi- dence for network structure. We describe intrinsic and extrinsic evaluations for algo- rithms that detect clusters of reused pas- sages embedded within longer documents in large collections. We explore applica- tions of these approaches to two case stud- ies: the culture of free reprinting in the nineteenth-century United States and the use of similar language in the public state- ments of U.S. members of Congress.
Date: 06/27/2015
Primary URL: http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W14/W14-2707.pdf
Primary URL Description: Publication in conference proceedings
Conference Name: Joint Workshop on Social Dynamics and Personal Attributes in Social Media

Infectious Texts: Modeling Text Reuse in Nineteenth-Century Newspapers (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Infectious Texts: Modeling Text Reuse in Nineteenth-Century Newspapers
Author: David A. Smith
Author: Ryan Cordell
Author: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
Abstract: Texts propagate through many social networks and provide evidence for their structure. We present effi- cient algorithms for detecting clusters of reused pas- sages embedded within longer documents in large collections. We apply these techniques to analyzing the culture of reprinting in the United States before the Civil War. Without substantial copyright enforcement, stories, poems, news, and anecdotes circulated freely among newspapers, magazines, and books. From a collection of OCR’d newspapers, we extract a new cor- pus of reprinted texts, explore the geographic spread and network connections of different publications, and analyze the time dynamics of different genres.
Date: 10/09/2013
Primary URL: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dasmith/infect-bighum-2013.pdf
Primary URL Description: Publication in Conference Proceedings
Conference Name: Workshop on Big Humanities

Going viral- the 19th century way (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Going viral- the 19th century way
Abstract: The idea of photos, messages and text going viral is a very modern one indeed. Or is it? NorthEastern University’s Ryan Cordell has been digging around in old American newspapers and he reckons the 1800s were alive with viral media. He talks about his research effort, called the Infectious Texts Project, how you track viral media from the past, and what it all means for the future of communication.
Date: 02/16/2014
Primary URL: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/going-viral--the-19th-century-way/5251686
Primary URL Description: Interview for Australian Broadcasting Company's "Future Tense" show.
Format: Radio

GOING VIRAL, ANTEBELLUM STYLE (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: GOING VIRAL, ANTEBELLUM STYLE
Abstract: The Infectious Texts project at Northeastern University is making thousands of pre-Civil War newspapers searchable. Bob talks with Ryan Cordell, a leader on the project, about the mechanism behind text virality in the 1800’s and some of what’s been discovered so far. GUESTS: Ryan Cordell HOSTED BY: Bob Garfield TAGS: information technology viral
Date: 11/22/2013
Primary URL: http://www.onthemedia.org/story/going-viral-antebellum-style/
Primary URL Description: Interview with On the Media
Format: Radio

‘Many Facts in Small Compass’: Information Literature in C19 Newspapers (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: ‘Many Facts in Small Compass’: Information Literature in C19 Newspapers
Author: Ryan Cordell
Abstract: Conference presentation on the genres uncovered in the Viral Texts project which might be categorized as “information literature”: lists, tables, recipes, scientific reports, trivia columns, and so forth.
Date: 01/09/2015
Primary URL: http://ryancordell.org/mla/many-facts-in-small-compass-information-literature-in-c19-newspapers-mla15-talk/
Primary URL Description: Posted on Cordell's research blog
Conference Name: Modern Language Association Convention

---