A local newspaper as mediator in transatlantic networks during the late nineteenth century

As mass migration from Sweden to the USA took off in the late 1860s, texts started to flow between Swedish and Swedish-American newspapers. A network of interconnected papers was established, based on cut-and-paste journalism and journalists moving between the countries. By combining digital text mining and network analysis with a biographical approach, this article examines the role of one specific editor and his paper within the transatlantic exchange system. The analysis shows that Isidor Kjellberg (1841–1895) and his newspaper Östgöten acted as a guide, giving advice and updates on American conditions to Swedes who wanted to migrate. Kjellberg also used the Swedish-American press as an ally in his campaigns for political reform, workers’ rights, and equality, but he also incorporated the methods of American new journalism in his own reporting. The result was not American journalism according to the standard news paradigm, but a hybrid serving his own political agenda.