Blog Post 1: What is DH?

    Digital Humanities (DH) is the process of applying technological methods to the study of humanities and related disciplines. This is done by utilizing a digital medium to make humanities more efficient and accessible for users. DH is used in scholarly applications to share information across wider populations. This gives people a platform to constantly contribute and evolve information on a variety of humanity topics. Ultimately digital humanities allows humans to be an integral part of the world's feedback loop which creates the content we see every day. 

    A quote from the ‘What is Digital Humanities’ website stated that DH takes advantage of the affordances of digital tools and computational methods to teach, research, and produce humanity information. Some define this concept as a state of mind or a new approach. I view this as something that is what you make of it. DH can be multidisciplinary, collaborative, insightful, and transparent, but only if you utilize it in such a way. This application can allow generations to preserve great literary works, collaborate amongst other scholars, and develop new research methods that can be shared easily. 

    I found the reading to be very insightful and a creative way to demonstrate the role/use of digital humanities in these times. The Manifesto 2.0 refers to DH as a network of research, which can further contribute to the constant learning and opportunity to evolve. Open source platforms and software is also discussed in this reading. It is very important to the use of DH because it allows greater accessibility for everyone to contribute to learning. One thing I found interesting about the reading was the desire to be a part of the evolving creation of new digital techniques or methods. 

    The readings have made me consider my previous use of online platforms. This has shown me the power these platforms have and how much knowledge we can share within the forums we use. I definitely have used online platforms in an “autopilot” manner, where I wasn’t really thinking about the role I could have, but these readings have shown how constructive and communicative this resource can really be. I feel like digital humanities has really taken off with the use of social media and people spreading their thoughts on the humanitarian things in society. Many people post about human rights and the role of democracy in our society. More people every day are viewing this content and get to learn from it.

Comments

  1. Dr. MSeptember 2, 2024 at 1:26 PM

    "DH takes advantage of the affordances of digital tools and computational methods to teach, research, and produce humanity information" is a nice overview, you can probably see people stating similar things in different ways, which has a lot to do with diverse backgrounds in DH. And, yes, pen source platforms and software are also vital for accessibility!

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