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Summary
The growing availability of historical media-related data and sources in digital form, and the development of tools for searching, analyzing, and visualizing them, provide promising new avenues for media studies research. But the uptake of these data and tools in mainstream media studies is still rather modest. The author argues that exploiting the advantages of computational research is necessary because scholars are already using digital data and tools, and because they will be disadvantaged if they do not critically engage with them. Computational media research requires increased methodological awareness and an improved transparency and responsiveness of data and tools.

Abstract
Cinema Context is an online database for researching the history of cinema exhibition and distribution in the Netherlands. It contains structured information on venues, persons and companies involved in the dissemination of film from the late nineteenth century until the present day, with an emphasis on the first half of the twentieth century. Aim of this paper is to document and critically reflect on the creation of the database and account for and motivate the choices made in constructing the data model and collecting the data.

Abstract
This introduction to the special issue of performing arts data papers starts off by dwelling on the purpose of the (re-)use of structured data for performing arts history, and on the benefits of publishing data papers about these data sets. The authors present several observations on the general characteristics of data models in this scholarly domain and conclude by discussing each of the contributions to this special issue of the Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences.