Newspapers as material artifact of Indian society (pre-partition era): An Analysis of The Tribune (16 December 1922)

Abstract

Newspapers as material artefacts have been a much-debated arena over its trustworthiness as a source, yet much research has expounded on utilizing media as a source of providing insights into the working of society and culture at large. The present paper takes a holistic approach for studying The Tribune newspaper dated 16 December 1922 as a historical artefact to take into account its topographical aspects as well as content and linguistic variations in the choices of lexemes to depict a pre-partition society. The analysis unravels that on topographical aspects local and foreign news sections remain perplexed, on contextual level, the newspapers is more concerned about the economic and health issues of the society and there is muting of coverage of communal riots. On the linguistic level, the results are enthralling as certain lexemes used in this artefact are archaic, whereas multi-lingual choices at many places can be observed.

Keywords: newspapers, artifacts, partition