Yesterday’s papers and today’s technology : digital newspaper archives and ‘push button’ content analysis

This article considers the methodological implications of using digital newspaper archives for media analysis. The discussion identifies a range of validity and reliability concerns about this increasingly prevalent mode of analysis, which have been under-appreciated to date. Although these questions do not deny any role for the use of proxy data in media analysis, they do highlight the need for caution when researchers rely on text-based, digitalized archives.