Abstract
This article details how one newspaper The New York Times portrayed Russian Jews between 1851 and 1905 and seeks to answer how and why there were certain periods of time that reporting on Russian Jews peaked in the newspaper. The results demonstrated that during time periods of significant immigration of Russian Jews to the United States, namely 1881-1882, 1890-1893, and 1903-1905, The New York Times reported significantly more about Jewish persecution in Russia.
The results also demonstrate that news stories about Russia may have appealed to American citizens, particularly when the portrayal of Russia was either sensationalized or negative. The methods used were analysis of historical The New York Times newspaper articles as well as quantification of articles used through categorizing by date of publication.
For example, in the 1870s 6 articles related to Russian Jews were published in The New York Times, 80 in the 1880s, 170 in the 1890s, and 407 between 1900 and 1905. The extent of which Americans were interested in Russia is subject for later research by comparison to how other newspapers portrayed Russia during this same immigration period.
This research only focuses on one source as a baseline to discover trends in reporting within an individual source. Keywords in original language (in the languages with nonlatinal writing in latin transcription; use semicolon to separate keywords): Historical Sociology, The New York Times, Russian Empire, United States, Newspaper Media, Russian Jews Title of an article in English: America's Historical Media Fascination with Russia: The New York Times and Russian Jews 1851-1905 Annotation (short abstract) (64 to 2000 characters): This article details how one newspaper The New York Times portrayed Russian Jews between 1851 and 1905 and seeks to answer how and why there were certain periods of time that reporting on Russian Jews peaked in the newspaper.
The results demonstrated that during time periods of significant immigration of Russian Jews to the United States, namely 1881-1882, 1890-1893, and 1903-1905, The New York Times reported significantly more about Jewish persecution in Russia. The results also demonstrate that news stories about Russia may have appealed to American citizens, particularly when the portrayal of Russia was either sensationalized or negative.
The methods used were analysis of historical The New York Times newspaper articles as well as quantification of articles used through categorizing by date of publication. For example, in the 1870s 6 articles related to Russian Jews were published in The New York Times, 80 in the 1880s, 170 in the 1890s, and 407 between 1900 and 1905.
The extent of which Americans were interested in Russia is subject for later research by comparison to how other newspapers portrayed Russia during this same immigration period. This research only focuses on one source as a baseline to discover trends in reporting within an individual source.