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Using South Asian Newspapers for Historical Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Edwin Hirschmann
Edwin Hirschmann
Affiliation:
Towson State College
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Extract

The South Asian historian, often unaccustomed to the tools of other disciplines, has largely neglected his most massive primary source—the newspaper. A newspaper file is massive enough to distract researcher and librarian alike, but they should not be distracted. A newspaper by its very nature cannot exist in an ivory tower. Whether subsidized or self-supporting, it is a part of its society. It reflects that society and influences it—sometimes both—in an intellectual ricochet. This article will consider, first, the availability and identification of South Asian newspapers; second, what might be learned from them, and third, how it might be learned.

Type
Research Notes and Abstracts
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , November 1971 , pp. 143 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1971

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References

1 Case, Margaret H., South Asian History, 1750–1950; A Guide to Periodicals, Dissertations, and Newspapers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See for instance his India and the Commonwealth (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1965)Google Scholar.

3 Stempel, Guido H. III, “Sample Size for Classifying Subject Matter in Dailies,” Journalism Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 3 (1952), pp. 333–34Google Scholar.

4 William A. Hachten, “The Changing U. S. Sunday Newspaper,” Ibid., vol. 38, no. 3 (1961), pp. 281–88.

5 An example of such an oversimplification is Ghosh, Sujata, “The Racial Question and Liberal English Opinion as Reflected in the Friend of India from the Mutiny to the Ilbert Bill,” Bengal: Past and Present, vol. XXXI, no. 151 (Jan.–June, 1962), pp. 57–63Google Scholar. The author seems unaware of the changes of ownership and editorship which that weekly underwent during the period of his study, changes which invalidated it as a mouthpiece of liberalism at times. These changes are described in A Brief History of the Statesman (Calcutta: The Statesman, ca. 1947), pp. 6–12Google Scholar.

6 Barns, Margarita, The Indian Press (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1940)Google Scholar.

7 Natarajan, J., History of Indian Journalism, Part II of India, Report of the Press Commission (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1954)Google Scholar.

8 Natarajan, S., A History of the Press in India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1962).Google Scholar

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10 S. Natarajan, p. 233; Moraes, Frank, Jawaharlal Nehru, a Biography (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1959), p. 486Google Scholar.

11 The Hindu, Madras, October 10, 1932, p. 7.

12 Kipling, Rudyard, Something of Myself, For my Friends Known and Unknown (London: Macmillan and Company, 1937), pp. 66–74Google Scholar.

13 “Wayfarer” [Ashu Dey], Life of Shishir Kumar Ghosh (Calcutta: Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1946), pp. 25.ffGoogle Scholar; Dutt, Paramananda, Memoirs of Motilal Chose (Calcutta: Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1935), p. 12Google Scholar.

14 Nehru, Jawaharlal, The Discovery of India (New York: John Day, 1946), p. 293Google Scholar.

15 The specific issues used for this study were Som Prakash, Jan. 4, 11, and 18, 1864, and Oct. 25, Nov. 1 and 8, 1880; Bombay Samachar, Jan. 5, 6, and 7, 1874, and July 12, 13 and 14, 1880; Rast Goftar, Jan. 11, 18, and 25, 1880, and Jan. 6, 13, and 20, 1884; Kesari, April 18 and 25 and May 2, 1882, and March 10, 17 and 24, 1885. The sample is too small to justify any conclusions, and the figures throughout this article are given only to indicate what sort of studies might be made.

16 Deutsch, Karl W.Nationalism and Social Communication, first paperback printing (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1966), pp. 96–101Google Scholar.

17 SirBanerjea, Surendranath, A Nation in the Making (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), pp. 70, 170Google Scholar.

18 Bombay Samachar for the dates cited above, and also Jan. 8, 9, and 10, 1884; Sangbad Prabhakar, May 9, 10, and 11, 1859, and Dec. 17, 18, and 19, 1878.

19 Som Prakash for the dates cited above, and also April 14, 21, and 28, 1862.

20 Rao, K. Rama, The Pen as my Sword (Bombay: 1965), p. 6Google Scholar.

21 Theories and rules of content analysis have been set down in several books. The classic work on the subject is Berelson, Bernard, Content Analysis in Communication Research (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1952)Google Scholar. A more recent work, concise but intelligible to the nonspecialist, is Budd, Richard W., Thorp, Robert K., and Donohew, Lewis, Content Analysis of Communications (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Google Scholar.

22 Bush, Chilton R., “A System of Categories for General News Content,” Journalism Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 2 (1960), pp. 206–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 There has also been an attempt to develop a “basic unit” of measurement, based on a proportion of the printed page. This would avoid problems of varying column width and microfilmed files. See Wayne Danielson and James J. Mullen, “A Basic Space Unit for Newspaper Content Analysis,” Ibid., vol. 41, no. 1 (1965), pp. 105–106.

24 Budd et al., pp. 59–63. Ithiel Pool, considering a proposal for a system of standardized categories of word meanings and intensities, remarked that the “private significance” of the words to the particular person of interest makes more sense. See his Trends in Content Analysis (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1959), pp. 222–23Google Scholar.

25 Subramaniam, V., “Tamil Political Journalism—The Pre-Gandhian Period,” Tamil Culture, vol. X, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec, 1963), pp. 61–66Google Scholar.

26 Merritt, Richard L., Symbols of American Community, 1735–1775 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

27 Merritt himself discussed these two possible objections. Ibid., pp. 199n. and 202n.