ABSTRACT This article uses a combination of discursive and quantitative big data analysis of digitised historical newspapers to present new findings about the representation of foster care in the Australian press from 1865 through 1954. It argues that despite child welfare more broadly rating as a significant social issue in Australian historical newspapers of this period, the topic of foster care itself was much neglected. This is particularly important to understand at a time when historians are being called upon to create histories that respond to the questions and experiences of survivors of out-of-home care, because it helps explain why foster care has been underrepresented in these histories as compared to children’s institutions – that is, the discursive muting of foster care has a long history. The article engages with some of the practical and theoretical challenges of doing digital history, and concludes that for studies which seek to trace the usage and evolution of a concept over time, an approach which combines close and distant reading can produce useful results. In this case, the big data analysis reveals the low profile of foster care in the press, and a closer reading of a sample of these articles demonstrates that the nature of this coverage was largely negative – another important factor in understanding how public perceptions of foster care have been shaped over time.

中文翻译：

---

两次被遗忘：评估澳大利亚历史报纸上寄养服务的规模和性质

摘要本文结合对数字化历史报纸的话语性和定量性大数据分析，提出了关于1865年至1954年澳大利亚报刊中寄养服务代表问题的新发现。它认为，尽管儿童福利得到了更广泛的评价，却被视为一个重要的社会问题。在这段时期的澳大利亚历史报纸中，寄养问题本身被忽略了。在要求历史学家创建能够回答居家护理幸存者的问题和经历的历史时，理解这一点尤其重要，因为它有助于解释为什么相比这些历史，寄养服务的代表性不足对于儿童机构而言，也就是说，对寄养的谨慎性沉默已有很长的历史。本文涉及了进行数字历史的一些实践和理论挑战，并得出结论，对于那些试图追踪某个概念随时间推移的使用和演变的研究，结合近距离和远距离阅读的方法可以产生有用的结果。在这种情况下，大数据分析揭示了媒体对寄养服务的关注度低，而仔细阅读这些文章的样本表明，这种报道的性质在很大程度上是负面的-理解公众如何看待寄养服务的另一个重要因素随着时间的流逝，人们的护理方式已经形成。