Finished! Looks like this project is out of data at the moment!
CONTENT WARNING
This project contains terms which are now considered discriminatory, harmful or offensive. The content also contains graphic descriptions of how enslaved people were mistreated. You may therefore find some of the material upsetting.
Also, please note - we've completed the classification stage for this project. To browse other active projects that still need your classifications, check out zooniverse.org/projects.
Results
Update on progress
Here are the complete stats for the amount of adverts identified in the first task:
Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette newspaper
For sale = 9,697 [transcription in progress]
Wanted = 1,532 [transcribed]
Fugitive = 4,722
Captured = 1,328
Total = 17,277
Barbadian newspaper
For sale = 6,643 [transcription in progress]
Wanted = 549 [transcribed]
Fugitive = 787
Captured = 429
Total = 8,408
Across the two newspapers, that means we identified more than 25,000 adverts in total. Thank you to everyone who took part.
We are now in the midst of the task of transcribing key information from these adverts so that we can populate a database and start to analyse the data. With your help, we have already transcribed all of the Wanted to purchase/hire adverts. I have just launched the transcription task for the for sale adverts (and I am currently designing the workflow for the fugitive and captured adverts).
Objectives
Datasets
The tasks that Zooniverse contributors perform will help create several datasets. All datasets created via this project will be published on the British Library's Research Repository where they will be freely available for all to access and reuse with a CC BY-NC licence. This means that these datasets will be freely available for anyone to consult and analyse.
Datasets will include collections of:
- Adverts advertising humans for sale
- Adverts posted by enslavers that want to purchase enslaved people
- Adverts by enslavers seeking to recapture enslaved people who have escaped.
- Articles categorised as either pro- or anti-slavery.
Database of enslaved people
This project also seeks to create a database of enslaved people identified within these newspapers. This database will try to map family and other connections between enslaved people identified. This resource will also be made freely available for anyone to access. It will be a particularly important resource for genealogists. But it will also be an important resource for academic and general interest research.
Research article
These datasets will be essential for an article that will address the main research question: To what extent did colonial newspapers facilitate and challenge the practise of slavery? These datasets will enable me to analyse trends. For example, did a particular type of advertisement become more or less prevalent before or after a significant event such as a major revolt or legislative change? And can we identify patterns of resistance by analysing these adverts at scale?
Potential machine learning outcome
While not an immediate aim of this project, it is hoped that some of the datasets created by this project could be used to help train a machine learning model to identify similar articles in other digitised newspaper collections.
Beyond this project
The potential machine learning outcome is just one of many broader research projects that this initial project could act as a seed for. If appropriate funding can be secured, there is scope to expand this project to explore other newspapers. There is also scope to expand this project in other ways, beyond newspapers.