Audio on Paper: The Merits and Pitfalls of the Dutch Digital Media Archive for Studying Transnational Entanglements during the Second World War

Abstract

This paper traces the transnational entanglements in the Dutch digital media archive, with a focus on the propaganda battle between pro-Nazi and pro-Allied Dutch media during the Second World War. Reflecting on newspaper and radio source materials in the CLARIAH Media Suite, it points out significant differences in the availability of these two source collections. It argues that these imbalances can be explained by the historical context in which these sources were created as well as by archival policies after 1945. The main problem lies in the digitized radio archive which contains only a relatively small amount of audio and leaves out the enormous amount of documents, such as transcripts and monitoring reports. With our article, we ask for more attention for this form of ‘audio on paper’, which has previously been overlooked by scholars and archivists. In the conclusion we argue for the digitization of these source materials and inclusion in the Media Suite as a first step towards redrawing the borders of media archives, enabling a new research agenda aimed at studying transnational entanglements in war time propaganda.

Keywords

• media archives
• propaganda
• transnational history
• digital humanities
• Netherlands
• Second World War