Palestine in the US Press 1918: a computerized analysis of historical texts

Buranok Sergei Olegovich ORCID: 0000-0001-8307-9428 Doctor of History Professor; Department of Universal History, Law and Teaching Methods; Samara State Socio-Pedagogical University 443099, Russia, Samara region, Samara, Maxim Gorky str., 6567, office 308 s.buranok@pgsga.ru

The research was carried out at the expense of the grant of the Russian Science Foundation No. 24-28-00071, https://rscf.ru/project/24-28-00071/

Relevance and objectives of the study

1918 was an important milestone in shaping the image of Palestine in the United States, as well as a number of related images: the British Empire, the Arabs, and the Jews. At the end of the First World War and immediately after its conclusion, American journalists built a discussion around such categories as imperialism, self-determination, revolution, colonialism, Zionism, i.e. the traditional conceptual framework for discussing the Middle East crisis. During this period, Palestine became a significant part of the US foreign policy discourse, in which the "old colonial empires" (Great Britain and France) quickly transformed from allies into competitors, especially in the context of the new redistribution of colonies and dependent territories discussed in the American information space ^[1].

Studying the statistical indicators of the US periodical press regarding the image of Palestine will help identify several problematic points: firstly, counting the number of mentions of Palestine in newspapers in different states will show both geographical features of fluctuations in interest in the Middle East and differences in approaches to Palestine among republican and democratic periodicals; secondly, comparing statistics from 1918 With the previous and subsequent historical period, it is possible to trace the evolution of the press's position on Palestine; thirdly, it seems advisable to make a selection of the 10 most relevant articles on Palestine for 1918 and conduct a statistical analysis of their texts using the Leximancer program. This software was created in 2009 by Andrew Smith (University of Queensland) for primary text analysis and visual display of extracted information in the form of a conceptual map that provides an overview of the material, presenting the main concepts contained in the text and how they are related. The advantage of the "Leximancer" program is the possibility of statistical analysis of significant volumes of different texts. So, in 2017, K. Dunmob, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, studied social media posts about international relations and diplomacy with the help of this program ^[2]. In 2018, researchers Mercy Ette and Sarah Joe analyzed the media and social networks of Nigeria ^[3]. And in 2020, a study of the activities of trade unions in Australia in the period 2007-2020 was published, where the initial processing of documents was carried out by the Leximancer program ^[4]. Consequently, there is experience in using the "Leximancer" program for sociological and political science research, especially where the basic sources are the media. Applications of this program are also possible for analyzing large arrays of periodicals.

Palestine in US newspaper publications: a geographical factor

The first task (counting the number of mentions of Palestine in newspapers in various states) can be carried out using the Chronicling America portal created by the Library of Congress. By 2024, the total number of newspaper pages presented on the portal has exceeded 16 million. The online newspaper repositories of each state and individual newspapers were used to verify the information received. As a result of the calculations, the following statistical information was obtained on the number of mentions of Palestine in the newspapers of each American state in 1918 (Fig. 1).

1. Mentions of the word "Palestine" in the newspapers of the United States in 1918.

It can be seen that two states stand out in quantitative terms (California, New York) and 5 more states (North Dakota, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois and the District of Columbia) showed a result of more than 500 mentions. Geographically, these states belong to a wide variety of territories: the West and East Coasts, the Midwest and the Northwest. The increased interest in Palestine can be explained by several reasons.

Firstly, all of these states (with the exception of Illinois) are characterized by a strong democratic orientation, and at the end of the First World War, their periodicals actively discussed the internationalist ideas of President Woodrow Wilson. Illinois and one of the state's most important newspapers, the Chicago Tribune, supported the isolationists.

Secondly, as of 1918, large Jewish newspapers existed in some of the designated states. In New York: "The Jewish daily news", "The Forward", "Hamodia" in Minnesota: "The American Jewish world", in California: "The Jewish News of Northern California". These publications were much more likely than others to write about Middle Eastern issues, the need to recognize the principles of the Balfour Declaration in the United States, and the work of New York Rabbi Stephen Wise ^[5].

Thirdly, California and New York had very strong traditions of international journalism and periodical press coverage of issues of the post-war world order, relations with colonies and empires, and self-determination for small nations. In this context, Palestine was extremely interesting for American foreign policy observers ^[6].

It is advisable to solve the second problem (comparing the statistical indicators of 1918 with the previous and subsequent historical period) using the example of the states with the highest citation rates, but with different political orientations (both Republican and Democratic). For this analysis, articles on Palestine from four states (California, New York, Vermont, and Illinois) were selected for the period from 1916 to 1922. The first two states at that time represented a more democratic view of international relations, while Vermont and Illinois represented a Republican isolationist view. Our graph of mentions of Palestine in newspapers in these states immediately confirmed this: their total number in Republican states is more than twice as low (for example, 7,107 in New York compared with 3,326 in Illinois for the entire period). Isolationist newspapers in 1916-1922 showed significantly less interest in the situation in the Middle East than internationalist ones. (Fig. 2).

2. The number of mentions of the word "Palestine" in the states of New York, Illinois, California, and Vermont in 1916-1922.

The chart clearly shows the fluctuation of interest in the Palestinian issue in the US periodical press. The lack of this interest in 1916 was followed by a sharp rise in 1917-1919. This is explained not only by the increased discussion in American newspapers of British military successes in the Middle East, but also by the end of the First World War, when a large-scale discussion about the new world order, the League of Nations, the mandate system and colonialism unfolded between isolationists and internationalists in the United States ^[7]. However, within this extremely important time period, Republican and Democratic newspapers behaved differently: in California, a sharp drop in interest in Palestine occurred in 1919 (from 3054 mentions to 1383); in New York, a serious drop also occurred in 1919 (from 1890 citations to 1304). The general trend in the democratic press is a decrease in the attention of journalists and editors of periodicals to the situation in Palestine by 1919 by 45.28 – 45.1% compared with 1918.

Republican newspapers in Vermont and Illinois, on the contrary, showed an increase in mentions of Palestine from 1918 to 1919: from 301 to 532 (Vermont) and from 711 to 863 (Illinois). The increase in the number of mentions was 76.74% and 31.28%, respectively. Such changes are directly related to both the positions of the editorial offices of the newspaper in these states and the content of the Palestinian discussion. From the very beginning of the Paris Peace Conference, the problem of self-determination for peoples, the mandate system and the League of Nations have become the most controversial topics in the US periodical press. The ideas of President W. Wilson adjusted the position of the Democrats on Palestine: only the League of Nations and the mandate system are able to resolve the Middle East issue ^[8]. Democratic publications pointed out that it was Britain that should take the Holy Land under its care and prepare for independence. Republican newspapers have sharply criticized the possible participation of the United States in the League of Nations. Influential Republican senators, led by Henry Lodge, actualized the Palestinian issue as an example against American involvement in eliminating the consequences of British colonialism ^[9]. The isolationist position had a more extensive media coverage in newspapers, which is why we can see on the graph an increase in the number of mentions of "Palestine" in the publications of the states of Illinois and Vermont in 1919.

Analysis of the content of publications about Palestine

The last of the tasks set in the study is a statistical analysis of the contents of the 10 most relevant articles about Palestine from newspapers in 1918. Quantitative analysis of texts using the "Leximancer" program was applied to provide a meaningful description of the US information discourse on Palestine. The data obtained during such a statistical analysis can be presented in the form of the following table and compared with the graph of changes in US public opinion interest in Palestine (Table 1).

Table 1. Information about the main terms in 1918 publications.

The analysis was based on the periodicals of the state of New York for 1918. For the specified year, Palestine was mentioned 1,898 times in New York newspapers, which is one of the record figures for the United States. Moreover, this number will be exceeded only in 1947 (2,153 mentions) and in 1948 (3,048). Therefore, 1918 can be described as the year of the highest interest of New York journalists and editors in the problem of Palestine in the first third of the twentieth century. Out of the entire mass of articles, 10 were selected, where the Middle East was the focus of the authors' attention.

An initial analysis of the texts of these articles showed that the coverage of the Palestinian issue was constructed by journalists using the following key concepts: "Palestine", "Jews", "colony", "Turkey", "Arabs", "East", "Zionism", "nationalism", "Britain", "government", "state". However, the quantitative content of these keywords in the studied texts in different periods of 1918 was extremely variable. The common feature of all the publications was the presence of "Palestine" and "Britain" in each of them (the word "Jews" was absent in only two of the articles studied). From this, it can be concluded that throughout 1918, Palestine, like the Middle East in general, was perceived in the information discourse of the United States, primarily as a British territory.

The data obtained is confirmed by the content of American newspaper publications in 1918, which, with references to history, proved the right of the British Empire to Jerusalem (New York Times. 1917. December 11. P. 1; Perrysburg journal. 1918. November 14. P. 4; The news scimitar. 1918. November 18. p. 1). It is important to note that all London's actions in the Middle East were evaluated in the American periodical press of 1917-1918 as positive. And the British and Turks stood out in a pair of "their own", in relation to Palestine: Palestine was perceived in the United States as a legitimate part of the British Empire ^[10].

The quantitative distribution of mentions of "Britain" at the beginning and at the end of 1918 is also interesting: there are an average of 7-10 mentions in January-February publications, while 3-4 in November-December. This is explained both by military events in the Middle East (at the beginning of 1918 there were active hostilities near Jericho) and by political ones, when at the final stage of the First World War, possible options for the future world order were discussed in US newspapers and the expansion of the British colonial empire at the expense of Palestine was criticized by American journalists ^[11].

Consequently, it can be concluded that the permanent presence of the term "Britain" in 1918 publications on Palestine accurately characterizes the information situation in the US periodical press regarding the evolution of understanding of events in the Middle East.

The next pair of related terms describing the Palestinian issue in American newspapers are "Jews" and "Arabs." The total number of mentions of "Jews" in New York State newspapers in 1918 was 3364 times, and "Arabs" - 608 times (more than 5.5 times less). For the New York Times, this disparity was even more pronounced: "Jews" - 314 times for the whole year, "Arabs– - 19 times (16.5 times less). At the same time, the word "Jews" is distributed approximately equally in the analyzed publications, whereas "Arabs" are found only in the January issues of The Republican-Journal, The Watertown Daily Times and in the November issue of The Advertiser-Journal (The Republican-Journal.1918. January 26. P. 1; Watertown Daily Times. 1918. January 17. p. 2; The Advertiser-Journal. 1918. November 5. P. 4). It can be concluded that it was "Jews" that was the most important word to describe the national aspect of the Middle East problem. Both Republican and Democratic newspapers in New York State shaped the image of Palestine in 1918, primarily through the relationship between "Britain" and "Jews."

This situation is explained not only by the discussion of the Balfour Declaration in the US periodical press, but also by the fact that in the period 1917-1918, US Jewish public organizations, community leaders and active lobbyists, as well as newspapers controlled by them, adjusted the US information discourse: from the idea of supporting the transfer of Palestine to the British Empire to the thesis of the need to create an independent European state in the Middle East ^[12].

However, government terms were not so common in newspapers in 1918: "Government" (in relation to Palestine) was mentioned only twice in the November issue of The Advertiser-Journal, and "state" 7 times in one of the last December issues of The Argus and once in May in the newspaperThe Newark Courier" (The Argus. 1918. December 29. P 24; The Newark Courier. 1918. May 23. P. 7.). It is clearly seen that a certain intensification of the mention of "power" terms occurred immediately after the First World War, when the question of the future of Palestine became part of the colonial discussion in the United States and the idea of the complete transfer of this territory to the British Empire did not meet with such unanimity as in 1917 ^{[13; 14]}.

Conclusion

The following conclusions can be formulated:

First, the Middle East information discourse of the United States was formed in 1918 around the concepts of "Palestine", "Britain", and "Jews", which indicates the significant influence of the ideas of the Balfour Declaration on both republican and democratic publications in the United States.

Secondly, 1918 was a record year for the mention of "Palestine" in the periodical press, especially in democratic newspapers. Consequently, the topic, which is relatively new to American information discourse, quickly became a leader and was actively used by isolationists and internationalists in the United States to substantiate their own concepts of the post-war world order.

Thirdly, based on the specifics of the distribution of keywords, it can be concluded that the Middle East conflict of 1918 was not yet considered in America as a conflict between Arabs and Jews, but it was no longer considered as a confrontation between two empires: the British and the Ottoman.

Fourth, the quantitative indicators characterizing the position of the American periodical press regarding Palestine show that 1918 should be divided into three stages. The first stage: January – February. The second stage: June – August. The third is November – December. At each of these stages, there is an increase in the number of mentions of "Palestine" and other keywords in American newspaper publications.