# Abolitionist Networks: Modeling Language Change in Nineteenth-Century Activist Newspapers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.07538 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07538/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 106 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Distributed Representations of Words and Phrases and their Compositionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1310.4546/) (2013)
- [Word Embeddings Quantify 100 Years of Gender and Ethnic Stereotypes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08412/) (2017)
- [Diachronic Word Embeddings Reveal Statistical Laws of Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.09096/) (2016)
- [Diachronic word embeddings and semantic shifts: a survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03537/) (2018)
- [The Geometry of Culture: Analyzing Meaning through Word Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09288/) (2018)
- [Statistically Significant Detection of Linguistic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.3315/) (2014)
- [Cultural Shift or Linguistic Drift? Comparing Two Computational Measures of Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.02821/) (2016)
- [Temporal Analysis of Language through Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.3515/) (2014)
- [Dynamic Word Embeddings for Evolving Semantic Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.00607/) (2017)
- [Time-Out: Temporal Referencing for Robust Modeling of Lexical Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01688/) (2019)
- [A State-of-the-Art of Semantic Change Computation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09872/) (2018)
- [Individuals, Institutions, and Innovation in the Debates of the French Revolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06867/) (2017)
- [The Social Dynamics of Language Change in Online Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02075/) (2016)
- [OCR Error Correction Using Character Correction and Feature-Based Word Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.06225/) (2016)
- [Simple dynamic word embeddings for mapping perceptions in the public sphere](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03352/) (2019)
- [Follow the Leader: Documents on the Leading Edge of Semantic Change Get More Citations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04189/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Embedding-based Detection of Lexical Semantic Changes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07979/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Time Waits for No One! Analysis and Challenges of Temporal Misalignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.07408/) (2021)
- [Predicting Long-Term Citations from Short-Term Linguistic Influence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13628/) (2022)
- [A Quantitative Discourse Analysis of Asian Workers in the US Historical Newspapers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02572/) (2024)
- [Tracing the Genealogies of Ideas with Large Language Model Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01661/) (2024)
- [Words and Action: Modeling Linguistic Leadership in #BlackLivesMatter Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02637/) (2024)
- [A Data-driven Investigation of Euphemistic Language: Comparing the usage of "slave" and "servant" in 19th century US newspapers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15057/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The abolitionist movement of the nineteenth-century United States remains among the most significant social and political movements in US history. Abolitionist newspapers played a crucial role in spreading information and shaping public opinion around a range of issues relating to the abolition of slavery. These newspapers also serve as a primary source of information about the movement for scholars today, resulting in powerful new accounts of the movement and its leaders. This paper supplements recent qualitative work on the role of women in abolition's vanguard, as well as the role of the Black press, with a quantitative text modeling approach. Using diachronic word embeddings, we identify which newspapers tended to lead lexical semantic innovations -- the introduction of new usages of specific words -- and which newspapers tended to follow. We then aggregate the evidence across hundreds of changes into a weighted network with the newspapers as nodes; directed edge weights represent the frequency with which each newspaper led the other in the adoption of a lexical semantic change. Analysis of this network reveals pathways of lexical semantic influence, distinguishing leaders from followers, as well as others who stood apart from the semantic changes that swept through this period. More specifically, we find that two newspapers edited by women -- THE PROVINCIAL FREEMAN and THE LILY -- led a large number of semantic changes in our corpus, lending additional credence to the argument that a multiracial coalition of women led the abolitionist movement in terms of both thought and action. It also contributes additional complexity to the scholarship that has sought to tease apart the relation of the abolitionist movement to the women's suffrage movement, and the vexed racial politics that characterized their relation.