Dutch Newspapers Research Articles

Hands Across Australia’s Land Border

Drawing on Indonesian and Dutch newspapers, this article describes how the Australian people and their political leaders were presented in contradictory ways to readers during the West New Guinea dispute. Particularly from 1949 to 1967, at the height of the dispute between the Netherlands and Indonesia over West New Guinea/Irian Barat, Dutch newspapers focused on the nature of Australian colonialism in an increasingly critical manner. The Indonesian press expected Australia – a supporter of its independence struggle and donor of education aid – to sympathise with its claim to the territory of Irian Barat. Sensitive to any signs that Australia sided with the Dutch or that it feared Indonesian ambitions in the region, the Indonesian press was at first displeased by Australia’s policy of ‘neutrality’ and then satisfied that the Australian government would not interfere.

The 'Discovery' of Gentrification

This paper examines the rise of gentrification in 1970s Amsterdam, based on coverage of the Jordaan neighborhood in Het Parool and a limited number of other Dutch newspapers. Although the term was not yet common at the time, newspaper articles from the 1970s already show a critical attitude toward social change in a working-class neighborhood. Far before policymakers were talking about it, journalists identified the negative effects of gentrification, such as rising rents and a loss of neighborhood identity. The resistance and criticisms of Het Parool and original residents bear striking similarities to contemporary criticisms on gentrification, as visible in the mocking and stereotyping of gentrifiers. Interestingly, developments in American cities were used as a frame of reference for Dutch newspapers in this regard. This exploration of the initial phase of gentrification in Amsterdam shows that both residents and journalists have always viewed the process of gentrification with suspicion.

Exploring the Value of Computational Methods for Metajournalistic Discourse: The Example of COVID-19 Reporting in Dutch Newspapers

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic raised questions about trust in journalism and the quality of news reporting during societal crises. While journalists and media professionals frequently offered critical reflections based on personal experiences and observations, computational methods are not widely used to support these evaluative processes. We aim to extend the conversation on metajournalistic discourse by considering the inclusion of empirical methods for monitoring journalistic practices. By disclosing our findings about Dutch news media’s corona reporting between 2019 and 2022, we demonstrate how computational methods for content analyses of news texts can yield empirically informed insights into different facets of journalistic performance. The corpus includes 106,616 corona-related articles from national and regional newspapers in the Netherlands. We deployed text analytical methods such as topic modelling and named entity recognition to explore Dutch corona reporting in respect to different normative criteria (informing, monitoring, offering platforms for discussion and opinion, interpretation, analysis, and setting public agendas). The study was requested by a large Dutch newspaper to receive a systematic-empirical analysis of journalistic practice for self-evaluation. We argue that computational methods combined with qualitative analyses can stimulate dialogue and critical reflection among news media professionals.

Wanted: marriage partner! Partner preferences in newspaper contact adverts in the Netherlands, 1900-1955

ABSTRACT This study examines romantic and instrumental partner preferences in contact adverts from two Dutch newspapers, the Arnhemsche Courant (N = 283) and the Provinciale Drentsche en Asser Courant (N = 231) between 1900 and 1955. With the spread of the newspaper, contact adverts became a new meeting place. By means of short messages, people could make known that they were looking for a partner to get acquainted or even to marry and describe how their desired person should look like. By analysing how advertisers described themselves and their sought-after partners, insights into the motivations behind partner choice were gained. We identified a number of terms in the ads that could indicate romantic partner preferences, such as age homogamy, openness to regional or social heterogamy, and preferences indicating attraction, personality, and appearance. Similarly, instrumental partner preferences could be gathered from phrases expressing social homogamy (marrying into one’s own social class), parental influences, and the importance of wealth or possessions. The results show that romantic and instrumental considerations in partner preferences co-existed, but that their relative occurrence changed over time. Moreover, differential considerations in partner preference existed according to region, urban or rural residence, social class, religion, and gender. For instance, women’s partner preferences were more instrumental than those of men, while urban women were more likely to place contact adverts than rural women. Widows, widowers, and the divorced more often expressed romantic rather than instrumental partner preferences compared to unmarried men and women.

Everyday memory: a computational analysis of changing relations between past and present in Dutch newspapers in the 20th century

Abstract This article proposes a data-driven approach to memory culture by quantitatively studying the phrase ‘n years ago’ in a set of Dutch newspapers throughout the larger part of the 20th century. In a pipeline consisting of three parts, it looks at (1) the most frequently used time frame (in years and decades) that newspapers use to look back at ‘n years ago’, (2) trends in the use of the most common variants of this phrase through time, and (3) the actual years that are referred to by means of this phrase. By doing so, this article substantiates Aleida Assmann’s claim of an increasing entanglement of past and present after Second World War, while showing that this fundamentally looks like what is here called ‘everyday memory culture’. Rather than the establishment of a canon of landmark years that newspapers increasingly come back to (e.g. 1929, 1940, or 1945), the past that Dutch newspapers invoke on a daily basis is mostly informed by recent and recurrent events in culture, sports, and politics.

To foreignize or to domesticate? How media vary cross-nationally in their degrees of incorporating foreign events

While the domestication literature indicates how national media link foreign events to a country’s domestic affairs, it has thus far only examined modes of domestication - the ways through which these links are created. In this article, we introduce a different dimension of the phenomenon: degrees of domestication. This includes the extents to which a foreign event gets connected with the domestic. By making a topic-modeling analysis of French and Dutch newspaper articles about 9/11, the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, the Arab Spring and Donald Trump’s political rise, we provide an explorative case study of this dimension. We inductively arrive at a scale ranging from no to extreme domestication of the event, classified according to four degrees of domestication: (1) an entirely foreign affair; (2) a foreign political affair involving domestic actors; (3) a domestic political affair; (4) or a personal disruption. French newspapers score higher on the second degree, the Dutch ones on the third and fourth. A deepening of this pattern shows how these differences stem from two distinctive cultural repertoires that journalists and other media participants employ when relating to foreign events: a French one, which sees them as an opportunity to dominate the international political stage, and a Dutch one, which considers them a reason for reflecting on domestic or personal matters. These clear differences indicate the concept’s importance for the literature and for investigating it within other national media contexts.

Dogs in Dutch Media: Exploring Public Opinion As A Step Toward Solving Dog Welfare Problems

Abstract Dogs are considered humans’ best friend, but this relationship is not all puppies and sunshine. Zoonoses, biting incidents, hereditary problems, and other welfare issues can threaten the relationship, especially when humans are not aware of them. Public opinion on dogs in the densely populated Netherlands was therefore examined. Dutch newspapers and Facebook were analyzed with frame analysis. A positive view of dogs seems predominant, followed by one that sees dogs as normal, while problems with dogs are less common. That dogs are considered close to humans is exemplified by the found norms that the needs of dogs must be met, that severe penalties must be applied when humans do not respect the welfare of dogs, and that dog keepers and conditions are responsible for problems with dogs. The image of the dog as ordinary may hinder public awareness, despite the norms that emphasize the importance of dog welfare.

Producing Authenticity, Difference and Extremism

Abstract In this article, we explore the framing of religious converts by Dutch and Flemish newspapers in the period 1991–2017. We focus on the differences and commonalities in ways of talking about religious conversions to Christianity and Islam. Our approach is to probe the ‘figure’ of the convert: How is the religious convert framed and understood? We present a typology of figures of the religious convert emerging from our material, including the ‘authentic seeker’, the ‘exemplary believer’, the ‘cultural other’, the ‘victim’, the ‘opportunist’ and the ‘extremist’. This approach allows us to explore how newspapers promote particular notions of conversion, and to show that the framing of religious converts is mediated by religion, gender, race and citizenship.

European Parliament Elections in the Dutch Press and the Mainstreaming of Euroscepticism: Outsiders Becoming Insiders?

AbstractEuroscepticism has become prominent across the European Union, also in countries that were originally seen as pro‐integrationist such as the Netherlands. Based on a qualitative analysis of claims in three major Dutch newspapers, I examine the mainstreaming of Euroscepticism in the Netherlands in the context of the 2009, 2014 and 2019 European Parliament elections. Mainstreaming refers to a process in which an idea becomes an integral part of debates in the public sphere. I examine the mainstreaming of Euroscepticism through a two‐part analysis that centres around a fourfold typology, which distinguishes between supportive, Euroalternative, soft Eurosceptic and hard Eurosceptic claims. I find that Euroscepticism has indeed become mainstream, in debates revolving around arguments for and against the European Union. Furthermore, Euroscepticism has not just become more prominent but has also moved from an outsider to an insider perspective. Yet, it often remains unclear what Euroscepticism actually entails.

The Kuranty in Context: Dutch Lading Lists and Their Russian Translations. Part 1

There is a great deal of recent scholarship exploring how foreign news reached early modern Russia and what its impact there was. Of particular importance is the study of the kuranty, the translations of Western newspapers and pamphlets. By examining closely what may seem to have been an unusual choice to translate from Dutch newspapers – the cargo lists of Dutch ships from the East Indies – this article suggests how it might be possible to contextualize the news translations more broadly than has been done to date. It is important to examine the significance of the news where it originally appeared, since its significance in the Russian context may be quite different. And it is also important not just to focus on the Russian government’s interest in the political news that informed its foreign policy. Over a period of decades, the importance given certain topics may have changed. The interests of the translators themselves – among them Andrei Vinius – may help to explain why they selected particular items for translation from the substantial quantity of foreign news which began to arrive in Moscow regularly upon the establishment of the foreign postal connection in 1665. The article is published in two parts, the first one here covering the background and the analysis of the evidence up through 1665. The second part, to appear in a subsequent number of the journal, will deal with the lading lists of 1667 and 1671 and the complex analysis of the context within which they may have been of particular interest in Moscow.

Layers of Disability Terminology Experiences of People with Disabilities and their Relatives: An Analysis of Dutch Newspapers between 1950–2020

Layers of Disability Terminology Experiences of People with Disabilities and their Relatives: An Analysis of Dutch Newspapers between 1950–2020

Contested representations: A comparative analysis of palm oil sustainability in Malaysian and Dutch media

The emergence of palm oil as the world's most produced and consumed vegetable oil has prompted various policy initiatives to help govern the industry in a sustainable manner. These initiatives include transnational sustainable certification schemes, such as the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and national level sustainability standards, such as Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil. To date, attempts to find consensus on sustainable policy and processes has been characterised by tension and disagreement. Most notably, stakeholders participating in policy dialogue from producing countries are unsatisfied with the outcomes of transnational palm oil governance. Tension stems from observations that sustainability is understood differently in the palm oil producing countries of the Global South compared with Northern consumption markets. To understand the different framings of palm oil and potential governance solutions, we investigate media coverage of palm oil sustainability in two different countries: the Netherlands – the largest importer of palm oil in Europe – and Malaysia – the second largest exporter of palm oil in the world after Indonesia. From a sample of 397 Malaysian and Dutch newspaper articles between 2000 and 2015, we employ framing analysis to examine the similarities and differences in media representations of palm oil sustainability. Our findings reveal considerable differences in the way palm oil sustainability is framed in the two countries. Malaysian media frame palm oil as a sustainable industry yet underpinned by a distrust towards transnational sustainability governance (e.g. RSPO) and a perception of unfair treatment towards producing countries by the West. Conversely, Dutch media frame the West as proud consumers of palm oil, who are driving up sustainability standards through NGO scrutiny and participation in transnational processes. We argue that a comparative analysis of media frames offers instructive insights for understanding processes of transnational sustainability governance. In particular, we posit that reconciling policy tensions between North and South palm oil stakeholders could be achieved by highlighting the differences in sustainability framings at different points in the value chain to identify contestation and consensus.

Producing ME/CFS in Dutch Newspapers. A Social-Discursive Analysis About Non/credibility

ABSTRACT Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a highly contested illness. This paper analyzes the discursive production of knowledge about, and recognition of ME/CFS. By mobilizing insights from social epistemology and epistemic injustice studies, this paper reveals how actors, through their social-discursive practices, attribute to establishing, sustaining, and disregarding their own and others’ epistemological position. In focusing on the case of the Dutch newspaper reporting about ME/CFS, this paper shows that the debate about this condition predominantly revolves around the ways in which people who make truth claims are represented. In being portrayed as gendered, affectatious, formerly very able, fanatical, or benevolent, people with ME/CFS are constructed as non-/credible. In the debate about what causes ME/CFS, by contrast, the production of non-/credible knowledge focuses more on the content of epistemic positions. Actors in this debate argue that they know the (clear) causes for the illness, something which functions as a discursive strategy to establish and enhance their credibility. This paper contends, however, that since this discursive demarcation of causes is consistently infused with uncertainty – with multi-interpretability, with diffuse explanations, and absence of current knowledge – the credibility of these actors’ epistemic position is undercut rather than established.

Volgordevariatie in groepen met receptief krijgen + voltooid deelwoord in de Nederlands Nederlandse krantentaal1

This article presents the results from a corpus-based investigation of the word order variation observed in verb clusters with ‘receptive’ or ‘semipassive’ krijgen ‘to get’ + a past participle, i.e. between the order in dat hij het boek overhandigd kreeg and the one in dat hij het boek kreeg overhandigd ‘that he was handed (literally: got handed) the book’. In contrast to the same word order variation in clusters with the much more frequent (and much older) auxiliaries hebben ‘to have’, zijn ‘to be’ and worden ‘to be/ become’, which has been the subject of numerous existing studies, including multifactorial corpus-based work by De Sutter (2005, 2007, etc.) and Bloem, Versloot & Weerman (2014, 2017), the variation in krijgen-clusters has never been investigated before, barring a preliminary study by Colleman & Rens (2016). A mixed-effects logistic regression analysis of data culled from a diachronic corpus of Dutch newspaper texts shows (i) that the variation in krijgen-clusters, though it is fairly new, is driven by largely the same language-internal factors as the variation in clusters with hebben etc., and (ii) that, in the course of the 20th century, there has been a significant increase in the relative frequency of the ‘auxiliarised’ krijgen + participle order.

Citra Perempuan Kolonial dalam Kehidupan Beragama di Sumatera Timur, 1870-1942

The opening of tobacco plantations in East Coast Sumatra in 1870 became a major factor in the creation of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity in there. All the Malays there were Muslim, then the Europeans came with their Christianity, which was followed by most of the Batak people, the Indians brought Hinduism and Sikhism, and the Chinese brought Buddhism. East Coast Sumatra is a pluralistic region, but there has never been a conflict between ethnicities or religions. Very interesting. However, the reality of the religious life of the people at that time had never been revealed in detail. Furthermore, during the 1930 census it was recorded that there were 4.293 Europeans in Medan and 2.001 of them were women, but their presence in the religious sphere has not been exposed. Therefore, this study aims to narrate the image of colonial women in religion in East Coast Sumatra. The images of colonial women in this study are all forms of mental, spiritual, and daily behaviour expressed by women in religion, including the outward appearance that appears in women and their religious activities in East Coast Sumatra in the period 1870-1942. This study uses the historical method, and the primary data are the Dutch Colonial Government Report (verslag),Volkstelling 1930, maps, newspapers, bulletins and magazines, photographs depicting the religious life of the people of East Sumatra in the period 1870-1942.

Experts as Game Changers? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Climate Measures in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam

This article analyzes the acceptance of climate policy measures in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam to understand how policy and planning interrelate with private and public interests. While legitimizing climate policy and measures, values can also cause conflict when operationalized locally. By analyzing value conflicts in public discourse, we gain insights into questions of environmental behavior and their influence on the acceptance of climate action. We report on quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis covering 410 articles from Dutch newspapers between 2015 and 2021 in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam related to the energy transition, mobility, and urban greening. Our findings show that public discourse mostly remains abstract and detached from local contexts. As experts and politicians dominate the debate, the discourse mainly addresses science- and policy-related arguments, representing the public interest but reflecting only insufficiently private interests and the local (re-)distribution of benefits and burdens. Therefore, we attribute spontaneous protest to the lack of reference to differentiated values at the local level and find the argument of NIMBYism insufficient to explain residents’ opposition. Instead, our findings point to experts’ and decision-makers’ lack of recognition of the local “idea of place” and a community’s identity as an explanation for the sudden emergence of protests. Here, urban design may bridge the gap between policy and planning by translating technical and economic constraints into place-specific designs.

The importance of cultural tailoring of communicators and media outlets in an influenza vaccination awareness campaign: a digital randomized trial

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of ethnic minorities again. Health inequity within ethnic minorities has been explained by factors such as higher prevalence of underlying disease, restricted access to care, and lower vaccination rates. In this study, we investigated the effect of cultural tailoring of communicators and media outlets, respectively, on vaccine willingness in an influenza vaccination campaign in the Netherlands. A total of 1226 participants were recruited from two culturally non-tailored media outlets (Dutch newspaper and Facebook), and one media outlet tailored to a large community in the Netherlands with Indian ancestry. The participants from all three media outlets were randomly exposed to a vaccination awareness video delivered by a physician with an Indian or Dutch background, followed by an online survey. Cultural tailoring compared to cultural non-tailoring of communicators showed no difference in improvement of vaccine willingness (13.9% vs. 20.7% increment, respectively, p = 0.083). However, the media outlet tailored to the community with Indian ancestry, resulted in a higher improvement of vaccine willingness compared to non-tailored media outlets (46.7% vs. 14.7% increment, respectively, p < 0.001, unadjusted OR = 5.096). These results suggest that cultural tailoring of media outlets may be critical to effectively reach out to ethnic minorities to help optimize vaccination rates and improve general health.

Content analysis of Dutch newspaper coverage of three tobacco control policies, 2017–2019

ObjectivesNews media coverage can influence support for and implementation of tobacco control policies. This research aims to analyse and compare newspaper coverage of newly implemented policies: a substantial tobacco tax...

Shifting terminology and confusing representations

In order to gain a better understanding of the debates surrounding language preferences, the shifts in intellectual disability terminology in Dutch newspapers were analysed. Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, this study examined newspaper articles between 1950 and 2020. The results indicated shifts in intellectual disability terminology in newspapers in the direction of organisations of people with disabilities, scholars’, and the government’s preferred terminology. The use of outmoded terms such as “feebleminded” and “mongol” decreased. However, newspapers continued to use outdated and pejorative terminology and traditional narratives. Intellectual disability terminology, particularly the terms “idiot” and “backward,” is frequently employed in non-disability-related contexts to emphasise negative viewpoints. Consequently, newspaper readers are confronted with a confusing array of terms associated with disparate representations of people with intellectual disabilities, ranging from antiquated and negative to positive and inclusive.

News, Business and Public Information. Advertisements and Announcements in Dutch and Flemish Newspapers, 1620–1675, written by Arthur der Weduwen and Andrew Pettegree

News, Business and Public Information. Advertisements and Announcements in Dutch and Flemish Newspapers, 1620–1675, written by Arthur der Weduwen and Andrew Pettegree