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Archiving the Visual

That technologies often govern the realm of possible research is a reality of the historian's enterprise. Although much attention has been paid to considering both the promises and pitfalls of newspaper digitization—specifically the increased speed with which searches can be conducted and archives culled for information alongside the drawbacks of proprietary databases and software—these are not the only transformations to the research-scape. Using her research examining news coverage of the controversial 1985 bombing of the MOVE1 house in Philadelphia, PA as a case study, the author explores the challenges of using digital newspaper archives that configure articles as plain text rather than as image files. The author considers how the absence of visuals, specifically photographs, from such databases complicates the work of media historians. Such databases, the author argues, stifle the otherwise productive communicative tension between ‘seeing and saying.’