| dc.description.abstract | Recent (sociological) research has focused on the interplay between societal developments, government reactions, and media attention to social issues such as homelessness. Historical research on early nineteenth-century “vagrancy,” the equivalent of homelessness at that time has explored the first two aspects, but not the role of the media. This thesis fills this gap in the literature by analyzing newspaper articles. Following increasing numbers of vagrants on the streets due to various societal changes, new vagrancy legislation was introduced in France with the Code Pénal (1810) and in England with the Vagrancy Act (1824). My research compares newspaper articles on vagrancy from ten years before and ten years after these laws were introduced to see how the legislation influenced reporting. I examine seven aspects of the articles: quantity, category, length, frequency of the researched words, commonly used words, representation of marginalized groups, and sentiment analysis. To do this, I use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including tools like the TextBlob library in Python. Research on the content of newspaper articles is relatively new in the historical research field. Therefore, this thesis also focuses on which of these seven aspects and which analyses are relevant for historical research on newspaper articles. I conclude that, for all seven aspects there are no significant differences in how the newspapers reported on vagrancy before and after the laws’ introduction. However, more qualitative analyses, like “category” and “commonly used words,” indicate the vagrancy articles reflect the laws’ goals after their introduction. Additionally, I conclude that two aspects, the “frequency of researched words” and the “representation of marginalized groups,” do not significantly contribute to a better understanding of the reporting on vagrancy. A deeper analysis, such as for the sentiment analysis, could help improve and further explain the results. | |
