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XIE, Jia

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Distant Reading Methods for Historical Chinese NewspaperThe Case of Reading Tianyi with Topic ModelingXIE Jia26.01.2023What is Distant ReadingDistant reading is an approach from digital literary studies in which computational methods are applied to often large amounts of text data without reading the texts themselves. The focus here is usually on quantitative analyses, but qualitative metadata can also be compared quantitatively. The term was coined by Franco Moretti (2000) in particular as a counter term to close reading.(translated from fortext.net)Distant Reading is a supplement to the close reading and allows us to interpret our extensive material as comprehensively as possible.(XIE Jia, ongoing dissertation)How to do Distant Readingpreparation: data (full text, word tokenization, user dictionary, …)processing: DH methods (topic modeling, text mining, …)presentation: visual outcomes (graphs), interpretationA case study on Tianyi 天義Tianyi 天義1907 - 1908 Tokyo and Shanghaian anarchist publicationTianyi supported anarchism and political, economic, and racial revolution, calling for women's emancipation and utopian socialism. Tianyi 天義full text data (in notepad)total length: 571,661total characters: 359,350average length of sentence: 5.44(Corpus Grams Tool from DocuSky)Tianyi 天義(Corpus Grams Tool from DocuSky)How to do Distant ReadingTopic Modeling :Put in simpler terms, a topic model is a computer aided program that from a text generates ‘topics’ or ‘themes’: strings of words that are supposed to be indicative of themes addresses within the text. The basic idea is that words that cluster ‘closely’ share a meaningful connection, i.e. a ‘topic’, ‘theme’ or ‘motif’ of a text, which in lay terms could be understood as the ‘important’ or ‘signicant’ key words of sharedtheme.Fridlund, Mats & Brauer, Rene. (2013). ”Historizing topic models: A distant reading of topic modeling texts within historical studies”. Topic Modeling Matt Erlin, ed., Distant Readings. Topologies of German Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century, New York: Camden House, 2014, p.59.Topic Modeling Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) 2003○ a machine learning algorithm that uses the principles of statistics and probability,.○ application: Marketing, Accounting, Management, Multimedia studies,    Cultural analytics, Historical studies, …Blei, David M., Andrew Y. Ng und Michael I. Jordan (2003): „Latent Dirichlet Allocation“. In: Journal of Machine Learning Research. 3, 993–1022.Topic Modeling Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)○ Source: full text of Tianyi○ Topic number = 20○ Word number = 50Blei, David M., Andrew Y. Ng und Michael I. Jordan (2003): „Latent Dirichlet Allocation“. In: Journal of Machine Learning Research. 3, 993–1022.topic1 topic2 topic3 topic4 topic5 topic6 …印度 女子 民族 富民 政府 社會  獨立 男子 特權 貧民 人民 自由  亞洲 男女 革命 田主 社會 吾人  日本 婦人 滿人 貧富 政治 制度  美洲 家庭 異族 富者 中國 人類  白人 中國 中土 農民 自由 組織  奴婢 平等 大同 貧者 世界 私有  波斯 自由 吾人 富人 平民 進化  安南 解放 政府 公司 日本 平等  法人 結婚 中國 制度 階級 生活  世界 父母 受制 佃民 各國 中心  强權 婦女 少數 吳下 革命 財產  排斥 婚姻 種族 疾苦 多數 感情  英人 世界 滿洲 人民 文明 自然  朝鮮 奴隸 梵文 中國 主義者 文明  主人 女界 未有 美國 歐美 苦氏  人民 夫婦 革命者 不均 共和 近世  弱種 之權 自利 慈善 目的 互助  中國 子女 以求 女史 國家 扶助  Colony Gender Nation Economics Government Society …印度 女子 民族 富民 政府 社會  獨立 男子 特權 貧民 人民 自由  亞洲 男女 革命 田主 社會 吾人  日本 婦人 滿人 貧富 政治 制度  美洲 家庭 異族 富者 中國 人類  白人 中國 中土 農民 自由 組織  奴婢 平等 大同 貧者 世界 私有  波斯 自由 吾人 富人 平民 進化  安南 解放 政府 公司 日本 平等  法人 結婚 中國 制度 階級 生活  世界 父母 受制 佃民 各國 中心  强權 婦女 少數 吳下 革命 財產  排斥 婚姻 種族 疾苦 多數 感情  英人 世界 滿洲 人民 文明 自然  朝鮮 奴隸 梵文 中國 主義者 文明  主人 女界 未有 美國 歐美 苦氏  人民 夫婦 革命者 不均 共和 近世  弱種 之權 自利 慈善 目的 互助  中國 子女 以求 女史 國家 扶助  Distant ReadingDistant ReadingDistant ReadingAfter further organizing, we can get● People: Marx, Kōtoku Shūsui (幸徳秋水), Qiu Jin (秋瑾), Kropotkin, Confucius, Ba Jin (巴金), Bakunin, …● Nations: China, Japan, UK, US, France, Germany, Swiss, Russia, Joseon, India, Persia, …● Cities: Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, Paris, Siberia, …● Social identities: servant, prostitute, worker, emperor, merchant, soldier, common, …● Thoughts: Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, Da Tong (大同), Evolution, Mutual Aid, …Distant ReadingDistant ReadingDistant ReadingStatistics imply:Anarchists pay close attention to Asian countries like India, Joseon, Vietnam, Persia, …   and lack of the attention to Africa.Distant Reading & Close Reading波斯、中國、朝鮮之暗殺，亦隱與無政府黨暗符。是則數年之内，社會主義、無政府主義必爲亞洲所通行。此誠亞洲之大幸，而吾輩所可預測者也。波斯雖設議會，然國都騷亂日甚。首相旣遭暗殺，而國王亦以被戕著聞。中國人民，有倡民族主義者，有倡共和主義者，暗殺、暴動之事亦層見叠出。蓋現今亞洲諸弱種，受制强族之下者，旣曰思脫離其覊絆；卽受制君主、官吏之下者，亦思脫離虐政，以伸民氣。此均亞洲諸弱種不甘受壓抑之證也。“Asian Perspective”Li-ching Chou 周麗卿, “The Encounter of Revolutionary Movements and the Asiatic Perspective of Late-Qing China: A Case Study of the ‘Asiatic Humanitarian Brotherhood’” (清末革命運動與亞洲觀的遇合：以「亞洲和親會」為個案的討論), 21 Century 二十一世紀 146 (2014): 17-27ConclusionAdvantages of Topic Modeling:1. fast and efficient2. statistics supporting3. likely to discover hidden clues“Note that the statistical models are meant to help interpret and understand texts; it is still the scholar’s job to do the actual interpreting and understanding.”David M. Blei, "Topic Modeling and Digital Humanities", Journal of Digital Humanities, vol 2, no. 1 (2012)ReflectionRequirements:1. well-produced and well-orginized full-text data2. some linguistics and informatics knowledgeUsability:3. contextless, logocentrist4. textual contentDebateYing Bai, Ruixue Jia, Jiaojiao Yang, Web of Power: How Elite Networks Shaped War and Politics in China, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2022;, qjac041, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjac041Critic (Taisu Zhang): the conclusion of the quantitative method is not different from the consensus of traditional research…Defender (Ruixue Jia): do some issues need to be proven by data when there is a historical narrative? Is data proof more credible than a historical narrative?

Distant Reading Methods for  Historical Chinese Newspaper: The Case of Reading Tianyi Bao with Topic Modeling

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Distant Reading Methods for Historical Chinese Newspaper: The Case of Reading Tianyi Bao with Topic Modeling

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