THOMAS SMITS (University of Amsterdam): ‘Machine Learning Meets Victorian Media: Tracking Transnational News Images’.

Periodicals and the Law, Seminar 6: 25 November 2024, 15:00 CET (Chair: Nora Ramtke)

This presentation explores the transnational circulation of images in nineteenth-century periodicals using computational methods. While images were crucial to the period's periodical press, tracing their movement across publications, languages, and national boundaries has long challenged researchers. By applying machine learning techniques to match illustrations between the famous American periodical Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and several major European journals, this research demonstrates new possibilities for analyzing cross-cultural media exchange. It uncovers a complex network of artistic and technological transfer, illuminating the movement of entrepreneurs, illustrators, engravers, and visual content across national borders. This presentation is based on joint work with Paul Fyfe.

Dr. Thomas Smits is assistant professor of digital history and AI at the University of Amsterdam. A historian with an interest in visual culture and computer-assisted methodologies, he is author of The Visual Memory of Protest (AUP, 2023), which he co-edited with Ann Rigney, and the prize-winning The European Illustrated Press and the Emergence of a Transnational Visual Culture of the News, 1842–1870 (Routledge, 2020). Recent work has been published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Visual Studies, New Media & Society, and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. More information: thomassmits.eu.

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