A NOTE ON COMPUTER-SEARCHES OF NEWSPAPERS

Online technology now provides the press-focused social science resear cher with an accessible and fast means of selecting newspaper articles for analysis. Taking examples from their experiences of using both ha rd copy newspapers and online output, the authors argue that whilst co mputer searches of newspapers are often appropriate, there are problem s with the current technology. In particular, the relationships betwee n graphics, the spatial location of stories and the accompanying text are not discernible from online output. This is problematic for resear ch using newspapers as a data source where such relationships may be c entral.