RELI/ENGL 39, Fall 2015, University of the Pacific

Author: Amaris

Visualization

Telcons ‘Textplot’ Memcons – Stacked Bar Graph

This week’s readings were fairly difficult, but as with all the other readings, they expanded our knowledge about Digital Humanities.

In “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display,” Johanna Drucker compares “data” with “capta,” as touched on by several other blog posts. She says that data can be seen as a “given” while capta is “taken and constructed.” It seems that capta is used to create the visuals, though you first need data.

Kaufman’s piece was actually my favorite. On the “Quantifying Kissinger” page, she describes the proejct in which the researchers analyze historical records of the Kissinger collection in the Digital National Security Archive (DNSA). I loved the visualizations page, which pieced together “1300 most frequent words in each corpus.” Their work reminded me of what we did in class with Voyant, where we also found words that appeared often and used a visual to further understand them.

Digital Humanities is still a confusing concept but I felt like the readings this week explained more about its potential and what you can do with it.

Goodbye, Privacy…I think.

When Twitter announced that you could now display your birthday on your profile page, people were excited about the balloons that would go across your page. However, it’s just marketing, really. Twitter uses it to provide relevant advertisements for you…and also know you more about your identity.

The two articles introduced the idea of “metadata” (data about data) and noted that privacy is pretty much impossible to achieve. As Gilliland’s article mentioned, your purchases and Facebook likes can all be tracked. Some might find this horrifying, and I admit that it can be a bit unsettling how much can be tracked. But the thing is, things like Facebook likes don’t have to happen. If you’re that concerned about privacy, you don’t have to post that much about yourself on social media. You can just share the bare minimum…but of course, hardly anyone does that.

We briefly mentioned reposting in class last week, and some people said that anything posted on social media is bound to be stolen. I agree, although I’m not too happy about that. It can be an invasion of privacy when you repost (in my definition, posting someone’s work with a source and/or permission) something. One of my followers on a social media site told me that an online store called Syndrome was using one of my personal photos in the shop banner. I messaged the store about it and eventually the owner took the photo down, but I definitely felt an invasion of privacy. They hadn’t asked me for permission, after all. Although I don’t think it was right for them to use the photo, I know that there will always be reposters out there and that’a an unfortunate aspect of social media that we have to deal with.

You could say that I don’t have to post up any photos as well, and I agree. I don’t have to share anything at all. But social media can help people get their name out; for example, I want to be a a part-time travel blogger and sharing my photos – despite the risk of reposting – can lead to that. I know the risk, but I guess I’ll partake in it anyway and share the information that I’m willing to share.

But hey, maybe I just want balloons to float across my Twitter when the time comes, too.

A Decent Relationship with Benefits

I don’t have the greatest relationship with technology, but I definitely try to use it to my advantage. Although I’m often on social media and use sites such as Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and more, I never really understood what technology could do for me until recently. And even with that, I will never truly grasp the potential it has.

With Tumblr, I was able to be sponsored by some small Internet stores; in exchange for an item or two, I would write a review and take photos. I took it for granted in the past, but looking back on it, technology really helped me with everything. Without it, I wouldn’t have the connections that I did with the stores. In addition, I am currently trying to promote my travel/photography blog on the platform Blogger (also known as Blogspot) so I can do something with photography in the future, and I needed a way to get more views. When I made a post about it on Twitter, I suddenly found multiple people reaching my blog through Twitter (people I didn’t know) and I realized how far technology can help me reach. A Google search on my name can bring individuals to that page as well, and it really surprised me how I could use technology to my advantage just by using something as simple as key words. Earlier in the day I tried an experiment on Twitter. I gave a link to my Blogspot again, but this time I made sure to use the words “travel,” “France,” “photography,” etc. in the post. Sure enough, it brought more viewers. This sounds so simple, but it’s really just a small example of what technology can do and how you can use it to your own benefit.

Of course, I am no expert. I have Photoshop but I can’t do much on it. I’m on the computer and my phone quite often, but I only know a little bit about coding.

And now to the articles. The issues in Williams’ piece are definitely major. People with disabilities can’t access certain aspects of technology. Although technology has been created to help people with disabilities, we need to see more. Henn’s article/podcast centered around women’s involvement with technology and how it decreased over time. The market targeted men and boys more (ex: personal computers) even though women were widely involved before. I think that’s changing more now, but some women are looked down upon in the work field.

Perhaps that can change…and maybe digital humanities can help with that.

The Digital Humanities

I remember Googling “Digital Humanities” before I took this course, hoping to find a good definition to help me understand the class more. Even after the Google search, reading various articles, and being in class for two weeks, I still don’t have the full understanding of it. But maybe that’s all right. I feel like Digital Humanities is open to interpretation by everyone. In all the articles we’ve read, we haven’t had a complete agreement on what Digital Humanities actually is. However, we can all agree that it’s an exciting concept and provides a new way to look at the world around us.

 

In “The Digital Humanities is not about building, it’s about sharing,” Mark Sample states that Digital Humanities involves “reproduction of knowledge.” We can see an example of this with Voyant, which we used in class to further our analysis of various works and open our eyes to things we had not seen before. In addition, “‘This Is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities” by Lisa Spiro details the author’s thoughts on Digital Humanities. She mentions that the Digital Humanities “seeks to push the humanities into new territory by promoting collaboration, openness, and experimentation.” This refers not only to her wanting the community to collaborate and connect, but also to showcase her own answer of what Digital Humanities is and why we need it. Whenever we discuss the articles in class, I am always pleased to hear everyone interpret the articles in a different way but still collaborate with each other and agree on certain things. When we do so, everyone learns new things and sees things from a different perspective.

 

We all have our interpretations of the Digital Humanities, but one thing is certain: It makes us look at the world in a new way.

Voyant ft. Test-Corpus-2

test-corpus-2

 

 

Voyant was not easy to use at first, but it soon made perfect sense. I thought it was immensely interesting to see how it could break down the texts and not only extract individual words, but also showcase detailed graphs and more.

Although some people think Voyant is unnecessary, I think it’s a pretty cool program to have. I believe it actually can help us understand a text more. For instance, seeing which words appear the most can help us understand the author’s thought process and emphasis on certain ideas. In addition, it can display certain words (ex. life and death) to demonstrate contrasting elements in the story. Even if people do not use it for these purposes or deem the program useless, the aesthetics of Voyant stand out regardless of its contribution to our understanding of various works.