Cultural heritage as digital noise: nineteenth century newspapers in the digital archive

In this paper we argue that the digitization of historical newspapers is not a neutral process where data are transferred from one medium to another. On the contrary, when newspapers are digitized they are transformed. Like telegraphic signals they usually resemble what was transmitted, but sometimes not. In this paper, we are consequently interested in noisy media, and the ways that digitized nineteenth century Swedish newspapers can today be perceived as a sort of waste(d) heritage.


“Cultural heritage as digital noise: nineteenth century newspapers in the digital archive” (co-written with Johan Jarlbrink), jarlbrink_snickars_2017.