My research question for this assignment is based on the history of American-centered newspapers that began circulated in Hawaii as settlers became more populous on the island. I wanted to find out how some of the first newspapers of a press company represented Hawaii and its politics, perhaps compared to how Indigenous Hawaiians or more recent news outlets would. A web resource like Voyage seemed to be a good fit for a research question like this because I thought it would be interesting to see how the use of certain words and terminologies would be used more or less over time. I would also need to consider the greater historical context around when the articles we’re written in case that interferes with any words or terminologies that could overshadow others. I decided just to focus on one old newspaper article for time purposes but I ended up with some interesting data, some surprising, and some not.
The words “united” and “states” were the two most used words in the entire article with “war” and “american” both tied for second place. This article written mostly for settlers on land that is increasingly being colonized is really pushing the narrative of assimilation and also perhaps conflict that knowingly or unknowingly came with it. Voyage had a pretty big learning curve for me personally, not just with figuring out the different visualizations, but also deciding which ones would best represent my data. It got to a point where I decided to just leave it at the default setting because I felt that it best represented my data without over-complicating things for myself. The newspaper I chose was the front page article of Austin’s Hawaiian Weekly dated June 17, 1899. It appears to be their first article and was based in Honolulu. Its founder, Franklin H. Austin, went on to manage multiple American-based Hawaiian newspapers with little success. Ultimately, this specific newspaper did not last beyond 1900. This specific article looks at the conflict between the United States and the Philippines and their efforts to expand their territories on Hawaiian land. “War” is also prevalent within the article because ii mentions the Philipines’ war with Spain. I would definitely benefit from using more articles from this newspaper to get a better idea of mostly used words but I hypothesize that words like “United States” and “America” would still be very prevalent.
Lua– There is some great information here about Hawaii’s newspapers and how they convey the significance of territorial expansion to U.S. empire building in the late nineteenth century. I am also drawn to this particular newspaper being published in 1899 and how that “moment” is situated within U.S. history, Native history, and the history of U.S. colonialism and imperialism. This was also just shortly after the U.S. annexed Hawaii to become U.S. territory, and yet much of the paper discusses the Philippines and other pending sites U.S. imperialism. With that framing in mind, there is so much to analyze in terms of political sentiment, Indigenous resistance, and more generally the lives of both Native Hawaiians and settlers on the islands.
Voyant is a solid introductory tool that provides immediate visualizations for your work; but it does take time to learn all of the different options (and how to even use them). Even with the initial visualizations on the dashboard, there is still plenty of information to comprehend and interpret! I’m glad you had the chance to explore the history of the newspaper itself; information like who owned the paper, who were the editors, and the paper’s political affiliation can tell us a lot about how and what newspapers reported. Since this particular paper ceased after 1900, I’d be interested in how other newspapers (especially Native Hawaiian newspapers) approach these same topics.