510: Digital Humanities

     Chapter 8 of the book discussed mapping tools which are an integral part of political and social work with statistical information. Addresses demographics, research management, infrastructure development, and security concerns. Mapping platforms are complex, but they are all made up of data points, base maps, and labels. In humanities is used to show something on a map, analyze any aspect of spatial experiences, narrate an event using a map or maps to present the argument, interpret a map's historical and critical form, create a map from place-based references, and employ coordinate data or use a map as a picture. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems which is designed to integrate maps with data for analysis and presentations. Shape files and pixel images are just two ways to store information visually for mapping. An example of a pixel image is a jigsaw piece since it can only be moved, copied, and pasted, not manipulated by shape. While shape files are vec...

     Chapter 8, "Maps & Virtual Spaces", touches upon the ideas of maps and how they can be useful when they have proper research connected to them. It also touches upon the tools behind creating useful maps and different data types surrounding them. In this chapter the idea of GIS or Geographic Information Systems is also touched upon. According to Chapter 8, Geographic Information Systems are used to match maps up with different kinds of data for its overall analysis. In this chapter "Critical issues in spatial humanities" (Drucker, 141) is also touched upon. This issue relates to maps and how there can be a lot of assumptions put in maps without knowing it. In this chapter it is stated that, "Asking even the simplest question about space raises cultural issues and ethical ones immediately" (Drucker, 141). This statement above gives you more clues on the ethical issues surrounding many parts of digital humanities. Chapter 9, "Three-Dimensional a...

Blog post 6: Maps & virtual spaces Coming into this chapter of reading, I was not sure what exactly I was going to learn from it. However, after reading it I was able to get some of my questions about mapping answered. To effectively display information on a map, it's crucial to consider both the content and the type of map that best suits your needs. While Google Maps is highly accessible and user-friendly, even the simplest mapping projects require careful thought. Questions about distances between places, travel times, and the natural and social features that define a region all relate to our spatial experience. These inquiries intersect with issues like accessibility, transportation, isolation, communication, and development patterns, as well as the significance of land and location concerning status, class, and symbolic factors such as myth and ritual. It’s important to distinguish between aspects of research that are fundamentally spatial and those that are only tangent...

Chapter 8 of the reading highlights the variety of ways a map can be used within a DH project and how important this consideration is to the use of one’s map. Maps can be used to interpret, narrate, analyze, or just illustrate something. One important feature of digital maps is the spatial data which relies on GIS (geographic Information Systems). This type of system is good at putting data into a map for analysis and presentation purposes. Dealing with different coordinate systems and ways to provide accurate information, this allows the map to be easy to use and understand. Sometimes maps need to be told in a storytelling way rather than spatially when what happens at the place is more important. Chapter 9 detailed a lot about virtual modeling and the art of 3-D representation. There are many considerations when creating this type of DH project like sustainability and accuracy due to what it takes to make them. These are used for a variety of reasons like providing context to what so...

 Chapter seven introduces the idea and significance of quantifying literature through data mining. through quantifying ad data mining we can observe different patterns and analyze data within different texts, articles, books, etc. Different literary resources like Voyant, developed by Geoffrey Rockwell and Stefan Sinclair- which we used in class, allows users to easily distinguish different patterns like different words and how many times throughout the text they were used- along with where in the text you can find said words, recurring phrases, and different themes found in the text. As Quantifying Literature stated, "sometimes the data exposes trends or repetitions that are invisible to a casual reader." With that, identifying and analyzing different patterns and themes allows the reader a fresh, different understanding of literature.  Data mining is the process of analyzing text, video, pictures, and audios and is very important in terms of analyzing different texts. Throu...

  Chapter 7, Data Mining and quantifying literature, explains how analyzing data from texts, images, and auditory files can help point us in a direction of beginning research. Data analysis allows us to pull out patterns of a piece of work that can be recognized as part of the works overall theme, topic, and mood. Text analysis in particular is a “subset of data mining that focuses on the analysis of language” (Underwood 2017). Patterns of terminology, vocabulary, and nomenclature contribute to the textual analysis of language. Furthermore, one can analyze a specific work of text and then compare it to a larger corpus in order to pull out larger themes. Generalizability and reliability “determine the extent to which the results of an analysis can be applied outside the single sample”. Before textual analysis can take place, distant reading but first be put into practice. Distant reading was first introduced in 2000 by Franco Moretti. Distant reading is “the idea of processing conte...

Alex Forbes ENGL 510 Malinda White September 29th      Drucker emphasizes the importance of quantifying literature, and how it can help readers to better understand what they are reading, "the act of quantifying literature, while it may seem reductive, opens up new avenues for understanding texts" (112). Digital tools like Voyant help to reveal patterns and connections that you may not be able to interpret through traditional reading methods. Obtaining quantitative data from literature can be both enlightening as well as controversial. For instance, while tools like Voyant offer a way to visualize and analyze vast amounts of text, allowing us to identify trends and themes that might not be immediately apparent, Voyant also gives us a narrow view of the text, failing to provide context that may be essential to understanding the quantitative data. For instance, through text mining, you can discern the frequency of specific words or phrases thus offering insights into repeat...