Text mining newspapers and news content: new trends and research methodologies

Text mining newspapers and news content: new trends and research methodologies

A growing body of research in the humanities and social sciences seeks to “mine” the text of newspapers and news content. The trend crosses historical newspapers and current newspapers. It also seeks to understand how news travels through social media (Facebook, Twitter, news blogs, etc.). The research method does not rely on the original form of the newspaper or news source, but rather on statistical and word patterns present within the mined text; typically these results are also presented visually in a variety of graphs, word maps, etc. that allow users to visual news text in new ways. This exciting and challenging research methodology presents several challenges for libraries seeking to provide access to news content to support this research method, including access and licensing, copyright, technology and software support, storage and access issues, and reference, instruction, and training needs. This paper will present examples of research conducted using text mined from news sources and present an overview of the challenges libraries and archives will face as they seek to support this new research methodology.