Digital methods for revisiting twentieth-century magazines of ideas and culture

Considering magazines of ideas and culture are fundamental sources for the history of the first half of the twentieth century, we propose a discussion of the use of digital and quantitative methods to broaden knowledge on these historical objects, and bring to light new insights and understanding of the source material, taking into account the aspects that make magazines a particularly complex object of study. After briefly examining the advantages and feasibility of studying magazines using non-traditional historiographical methodologies, we explore how the use of aggregated information can provide visual and comprehensive information not only on the history of specific periodicals but also on their contents. Using various statistical procedures applied to data on the reception of foreign authors and works we try to bring forward aspects of cultural transfer present in these magazines. For this end, we use information gathered by the Semináro Livre de História das Ideias (History of Ideas Free Seminar) research group for the Revistas de Ideias e Cultura (Magazines of Ideas and Culture) project, illustrating our argument with data from A Águia, a republican magazine published in Portugal from 1910 to 1932.