In search of elites in the early Shenbao

On 15 December 2022, the RTIM research group at Inalco organized a special session of their seminar with Pierre Magistry as host and Christian Henriot as guest speaker.

In this presentation on “In search of elites in the early Shenbao (1872-1892), Henrot proposed to explore the famous daily newspaper of Shanghai, the Shenbao, by the use of different digital methodologies of research, extraction and analysis of historical information. The main hypothesize is that the newspaper evokes in its articles different categories of individuals that belonged to political, economic or social elite groups, but also common people from very diverse backgrounds.

The research hypothesis is to ask how the Shenbao constructed its information at a time when the profession of journalist was non-existent, what were its sources of information, what types of actors, both individuals and organizations, populated the pages of the newspaper, what social landscape is perceptible in the pages of the newspaper?