Analysis on the Evolution of the Theme in Dianshizhai Pictorial postprint

Abstract: ［Purpose/significance］As one of the earliest news pictorial in China, Dianshizhai Pictorial has important historical value. Based on social network theory and methods, this article uncovers the correlation between word items in Dianshizhai Pictorial to reveal what the news pictorials were concerned about in Late Qing Dynasty. ［Method/process］ Firstly, the corpus was constructed by using General Review of Dianshizhai Pictorial as the corpus source. Secondly, the co-word network was established with Dianshizhai Pictorial inscriptions and postscripts as semantic units. Then, the keyword themes were established through community segmentation. Finally, the temporal egocentric network was constructed with the core keywords in the themes to examine the semantic coevolution of the keywords. ［Result/conclusion］ According to the research results, Dianshizhai Pictorial presents seven core discourse themes: “overseas news” “Shanghai” “strange and bizarre stories” “Chinese women” “Chinese celebrities” “Suzhou” and “illness and disability”.Taking the term “Chinese women” as an example, the chronological egocentric network shows that judicial terms such as “crime”, “murder case” appear more frequently and are evenly distributed, while “marriage” and “concubinage”, as indicators of old and new concepts, show the contrast in strength, which reflects the coexistence and transformation of old and new concepts in the hedge of Chinese and Western cultures. The results also show that social network method can effectively make up for some shortcomings of traditional research methods.