Democracy and Uncertainty. Approaching a Heuristic Framework for Studying Political Discourse in the Weimar Republic

Ein Beitrag zur Digital History 2023: Digitale Methoden in der geschichtswissenschaftlichen Praxis: Fachliche Transformationen und ihre epistemologischen Konsequenzen, Berlin, 23.-26.5.2023.

Abstract: In this paper, I will discuss methodological challenges and considerations in the early stages of a research project on political discourse in the Weimar Republic. The project focuses on heterogeneous perceptions and definitions of democracy as visible in Weimar's newspapers. I will problematize that text mining might seem particularly helpful for coping with the textual masses of this serial primary source. However, primarily quantitative approaches tend to neglect essential political and social contexts, thus omitting what stands behind the concrete formulations on the text surface. On the other hand, purely qualitative examination tends to be too selective to scrutinize discourse at scale. Therefore, I will outline a framework of scalable reading: The alternating movement of zooming into the close reading perspective and zooming out to the large-scale level. My strategy is, at its core, qualitative, but it introduces quantitative explorations in an overall framework of methodological triangulation. This is inspired by other studies of scalable reading in contemporary history, whose approaches must be adapted to do justice to the specific conditions of Weimar’s complex political culture. I will outline my considerations and a proposal for scalable reading, which enters largely uncharted terrain in historical research on Germany’s first democracy.

While this paper focuses on methodological considerations during the project's onset, I have reported on the project more extensively and with special regard to pro-democratic discourse here: Christian Wachter [in press], Capturing Discourse through the Digital Lens: Towards a Framework for the Analysis of Pro-Democratic Discourse in the Weimar Republic, in: Florentina Armaselu/Andreas Fickers (eds.), Zoomland: Exploring Scale in Digital History and Humanities, Berlin 2023 (Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics, 7).