Digital Humanities, Close to Humanity?
Hey! My name is Shawna, and I’m excited to walk you through the journey I’ve had in Digital Humanities English 480 with Dr. Daniel Anderson. As a second-semester senior, I had already finished all my credit hours for both my English and Political Science major. I took this class with a genuine curiosity for what Digital Humanities was and how I can participate in it. We’ve had a challenging semester where our in class communication and work-shopping became Zoom University and independent studies. Despite the bump in our semester, this class had equipped us to handle projects in different creative programs, such as Adobe Rush and Audacity. As I talk about the projects we’ve done, I will break down my learning through two lenses: what I’ve learned about digital humanities and what I’ve learned personally as a student. In this portfolio, you will see my struggles in translating a Word report to a video report, compiling and creating a podcast, and scraping data to investigate gender and age in Pinterest.
Adaptability and risk-taking have been the most important values that I’ve had to embrace in this course this semester. As a student who lacks the self-confidence in navigating new technology programs, I’ve had to try new things to make programs work. Once we moved to Zoom, I was nervous to finish out my podcast and Pinterest project without the direct support of my classmates. To adapt, I had to use Adobe and YouTube tutorials instead of just asking a friend in class. I also adapted from working in class where I had the easiest access to Professor Anderson for questions to resorting to email for questions as I found myself working on projects late at night on my quarantine schedule. Through trial-and-error and a lot of successes (and many more failures), these projects have required me to think critically about how I present material - focusing on visual and sonic media. The experimentation, such as using Animaker in my Pinterest video, changing how I recorded narration (with voice-over in Adobe Rush to using Voice Memos on my phone), and importing various music clips to find the best fit for my podcast required a lot of risk-taking.
In learning how to navigate Adobe Rush and Audacity, I’ve learned how fun it can be to create my own projects. I found myself caring about the work I did in this class way more than my other classes because I have had so much fun creating my report videos and podcasts. None of the projects were easy to make, but I was able to embrace my creativity and utilize critical thinking to problem solve the roadblocks that appeared.
Portfolio Video
My Process
I used the Portfolio Video to explain my thought process behind two projects and reflect on what I’ve learned about Data and Privacy in this class. I chose to discuss the podcast and Pinterest project in this recap video. I began by creating a rough script and then a storyboard, which has been the most useful step for every single video I’ve made this semester. In the storyboard I wrote out a script and included images or videos I wanted to screen capture as a rough plan for how the video composing would go. I used both Snag It and Adobe Rush to compose the video.
When discussing the podcast, I reflected on the process of getting the raw material recorded and my editing process within Audacity. I spoke of how I cut down the material from 27 minutes to 16 minutes and how I edited the quality of the sound. Similarly, when I spoke of the Pinterest video, I discussed my process of gathering the data through a scraping tool and my process of using the data gathered to compile it into a video. (To see more details about both the podcast and Pinterest video process see below).
In the Portfolio Video, I wanted to discuss data and privacy because it has been a recurrent theme throughout the semester. The common thread in both these projects is the focus on how we interact with data and what it is used for. Thus, the video centers on my analysis of data collection and what I’ve learned from the creation process in both of these projects.
Digital Humanities Implication
The Portfolio Video was a great exercise in combining multiple mediums into one project. I combined the vertical Pinterest video footage to screen capturing the sound editing in the Audacity program. It was interesting to gather material for this project because I wasn’t sure how to translate the podcast in a visual way, without just screen capturing the sonic waves, which is what I ended up mostly doing. (The animations I created became too fuzzy to be used in the final video). I experimented more in the animation program to talk about the data and privacy learning implications as well as when discussing the podcast. Inherently, this combination of different mediums emphasized how Digital Humanities is interdisciplinary at its core. I also reflected on the major themes of social exchange that occurs within the digital humanities, as well as implicit ratings.
Personal Reflection
The process of creating a portfolio video is a very reflective process. Not only am I able to critically think about my previous work that I have submitted, but I also found myself wanting to correct more mistakes I found in the work I’ve submitted. This was also a useful tool to condense very wordy explanations to create reflections in an incredibly shorter video. Thus, this semester ending project emphasized both information processing, motivation, and adaptability. It is a very useful exercise to speak about two other projects in a reflective manner as it reiterates the information that was taught and learned throughout the semester. Furthermore, this reflective process increased my motivation to keep learning how to use video composing programs as I find it fun (but yet I have a lot of improvement to make!). I lastly had to be adaptable in creating this video because I had to combine both a vertical format video into a horizontal format that I wanted to make the portfolio video in. This took patience and a lot of reworking to make the video flow well. Lastly, I had to use Snag It in exporting my final portfolio video because of exporting issues with my Adobe account. Although this was a creative workaround to not lose any project material, the final video appears more fuzzy than I would have liked in my final video.
Digital Humanities Story Report
Link to the Digital Humanities Story Report
My Process
We were tasked to find a Digital Humanities project to compose a print-based report on. I had recently discovered e-poetry, so I wanted to create a project that centered around this concept. I found Jason Nelson’s Dispersed Digital Poetry Project. To accomplish this task, I had to conduct research to gather background research on what e-poetry was in the context of modern times and how Jason Nelson was positioned in this recent phenomenon. In my research I made an DH Sprint plan with my group, notes for the DH Sprint, other notes, an outline, and source document before I wrote the report.
After my initial research, I dove deep into Jason Nelson’s digital poetry and tried to piece together why e-poetry mattered. I concluded that e-poetry can build bridges between people on a level that other literary or artistic mediums cannot. This medium allows more accessibility, freedom, and creativity to users and producers alike.
The challenge to this task was to take this digital humanities project and do a dramatic rendering or report. Nelson had many interesting interviews or self-reports published on his project. I decided after watching many of his YouTube videos the best way to give insight to his project is to compose a fictional Q&A interview, based on true statements, that would create a story arc. My report was divided into six sections. The first three focused on what e-poetry was and what the significance of the genre was. The next two sections are focused on Nelson. The first explains who he is, and the second is the dialogue Q&A creation I made. The last section of my report are screen captures of a few of Nelson’s games with a short description of how the game is functioning. I tried to put as many images and hyperlinks in my print-based report as I could so when I made the video in the next assignment I would have some material to work with.
Digital Humanities Implication
This print-based report allowed me to focus on the issue of accessibility that permeates the digital humanities. Accessibility can encompass many things, such as just the ability to access - I am using it as the ability for a person to physically, mentally, or intellectually engage a particular digital resource using technology. E-poetry, as a humanities based field, can open the door for people who would generally shy away from literature to experience profound art and words in a creative capacity. Therefore, e-poetry is a fascinating resource that allows people to access and compose meaningful creations without having to be an expert computer programmer. It moves written words and texts to a new medium and platform, so there is an element of interdisciplinarity as well.
Personal Reflection
I was overwhelmed to start with because there are many digital humanities projects out there so I had a hard time choosing. Even when I did narrow it down to Nelson’s project, there is so much material I could work with I had to figure out a way to narrow my project down even more. In this process, before I wrote a single thing, I engaged in a lot of reflection and problem solving to craft together a narrative. I felt like I needed to ground my readers in what is e-poetry before talking about Nelson’s project, so I needed to be creative in what the physical report would look like as well. The six section set-up was my creative effort to make the report flow well while I still covered a lot of information. I learned that I can’t focus on too many things at once when writing a narrative report. Instead, I had to choose only the most interesting aspects to focus on.
Digital Humanities Story Report Video
My Process
For this project, the challenge was to translate the print-based report in the previous assignment into a video format. This involved both conceptual and technical planning. To compose the video, I started off by creating a storyboard to conceptualize the video itself. This step was the most crucial step in translating to a video because it forced me to think of how my text would appear with images, screen text, narration, and sound.
I started off with a rough script of narration. This text was important to make sure I was translating over the most essential information I wanted to keep. I had to tweak the text to make it sound more conversational and informative, instead of sounding like academic writing. After getting a rough script written, I began to envision what images would look good on screen to accompany the script. On my storyboard, I typed the images that would be associated with the script and I approximated the time that each image or scene would be shown on the screen.
In this process I had to learn how to use the program Snag It to gather material for my video and the program Adobe Rush to compose the video. I spent time reviewing Jason Nelson’s material, used Snag It to screen capture his e-poetry video games as I played, and analyzed the games. I used many of these screen captures to fill in many gaps of narration or transitions with a game playing in the background.
When recording the narration of the video, I used the recorder that is embedded in Adobe Rush. I found this recording process extremely frustrating because I would constantly accidentally delete my recordings and have to start from scratch because none of the recordings would be saved on the computer. I also found that these recordings weren’t as clear as I would like them to be. I found screen capturing the material for the video the easiest because the material would be saved on my computer and I could adjust, readjust, and manipulate that material to fit where I needed it.
The final video ended up being 6:26 minutes. I used a Word Doc to screen text the transitions that brought up questions that were asked in my print-based report. Questions I asked include: What is e-poetry? Why does e-poetry matter? Can games really be poetry? What role does a reader have in these games? Is this the future of poetry? This helped the video flow with some purpose.
Digital Humanities Implication
Translating a print-based report into a video engages with various media aspects and emphasizes interdisciplinarity. Unlike other digital humanities projects (such as the William Blake or Brontë family archives), the e-poetry project is not translating pre-existing written poetry or letters into an online database. Instead, e-poetry is dynamic and uses technology as the basis of creation, replication, and adaptation. Therefore, Nelson’s e-poetry project from creation engages with multiple variations of sounds and visuals to impact the reader or gamer. E-poetry is interdisciplinary as it is experimental in nature. Since e-poetry (and e-literature) is an upcoming field, it’s based on interactive cinema, film schools, digital and visual arts programs, and design programs (and probably many more!).
Personal Reflection
After my frustrating experience with recording the narration on the computer instead of another recorder like the voice memo app on my phone, I really had to adapt and stay persistent as I learned how to use the Rush program. I also really needed to work on exposing the narration more and tuning down the game sounds because I found it distracting in retrospect. Other than having to problem solve and adapt when creating the actual video, I learned a lot about the creativity that existed in the digital humanities world. I was so interested in e-poetry because I had never heard of it before, and the consumer basis of e-poetry is huge. E-poetry also emphasizes a very collaborative effort to make these interactive games or “creatures” as Nelson says. I also enjoyed this assignment because I learned cool information about video creation in Rush and how much it took to compose a report video.
Podcast
My Process
Once my group (David, Allison, Marianne, Phoebe, and myself) were assigned the topic of Data and Privacy we met as a group to brainstorm the best approach to research the topic. We can up with a podcast sprint, or plan of action. From our initial meeting, we walked away with 6-8 topics that might have fallen under the umbrella of Data and Privacy. Over the weekend we individually looked at resources and stories that would be interesting to include into our podcast recordings. This is what I brainstormed and researched over the weekend.
We did both a “trial” podcast run and then hosted a discussion in front of the class. In our first meeting we had a great and natural conversation. We recorded the conversation, in case there was any material within that conversation we wanted to use in composing the final podcast. We included a lot of outside sources and clips from our research that generated more ideas that we wanted to look into more. From this “trial” run, we uncovered that we were interested in mostly 3-4 topics (smart devices, streaming services, crime implications, and celebrity implications).
From the “trial” run to the performative discussion held in front of the class we decided to do some more individual research to bring to the table. We wanted our discussion to sound as natural as possible so the only “script” that we made was having David introduce the podcast, but we didn’t have an outline of what we wanted to talk about in a particular order.
After the class recording, I sat and listened to both raw tapes and began to take notes about what the podcast I wanted to create would sound like. I decided to frame the class discussion and edit the material within that second recording. Using the program Audacity, I cut down the raw material pieced together conversations to make ideas flow more logically. The biggest challenge with this editing was to reduce the background noise, where we had a loud leaf-blower interrupting the recording the majority of our discussion in class. I also tried to go through and delete a lot of “ums” and “uhs” or awkward pauses to condense the podcast even more. From the raw material of 27:36 minutes I reduced the podcast to 16 minutes with an added introduction and conclusion.
Digital Humanities Implication
The two big digital humanities values that were touched on in this assignment were collaboration and data privacy. Obviously, our topic was data privacy, so the research was fundamentally saturated in looking at digital humanities arguments for where the line exists between companies or organizations using our data and where we should be privileged with privacy. The podcast itself was a huge collaboration effort between myself and my classmates (David, Allison, Marianne, and Phoebe). We all brought a different angle to the discussion of data and privacy, whether that was talking about smart devices, streaming services, crime, or pop culture implications. Having a diverse group gave our conversation a dynamic flow that was engaging to participate in.
Personal Reflection
This assignment made me the most nervous at the beginning of the semester but it turned out to be my favorite one! I was nervous because I didn’t want to have to hear myself talk, nor did I think I would have anything interesting to say. (I was wrong, I loved the topic Data Privacy that our group got!). I loved the collaboration involved with my classmates to get the raw material for the podcast. I also really enjoyed the research involved in our topic. I learned a lot about data in general, such as many companies like Netflix or Amazon using our implicit ratings and cues as data to improve their products. Not only did I learn information about the topic but I was exposed and learned a lot about sonic editing with the program Audacity. When editing the sound, I wanted to replace the Netflix excerpt to have it slowed down, however, the original clip came from one of my team members and he was unable to find the original to send me.
I had fun messing with the sonic waves, albeit it was frustrating at first trying to learn the tools to do so. Overall, the process showed me that creating a podcast involves a lot of risk-taking. I deleted a lot of sections I enjoyed decreasing the time of the podcast and to make it flow more logically. I did enjoy the creative process of building a frame (introduction and conclusion) to the podcast.
Pinterest Video
My Process
To start this data scraping project, I had to make Pinterest accounts. I made three profiles to explore the issues of gender and age in Pinterest. My first Pinterest account, I made a generic 22-year-old profile that had minimal interests. My second Pinterest account was a 22-year-old profile that I modeled after my own interests. I created six boards of things I enjoy (Mountains, Beach, Dream Homes, Life Hacks, Memes, and Cute Animals). My third Pinterest account I made to be a 65-year-old gender neutral profile. In each profile I went through the process of data scraping. I used a data scraping website that was cultivated by a UNC Digital Humanities group under the direction of Professor Anderson. The data scraping tool looked like:
I conducted five searches for each of the three profiles with this tool. I searched the terms “red” “New Zealand” “homeschool" “family vacation” and “sweater.” With each of these searches images would appear on the tool as it would if I was using the Pinterest app. I would download the images to the server, go to the analysis page, and analyze the results. Word clouds of terms, descriptions, and promoters that were used would appear. I took the visual results and the data that appeared on the word clouds to make basic assumptions of how Pinterest was using my different profiles to generate results.
When searching the color “red” as a blank 22-year-old profile, most of my results were of hair products and color, focused on fashion aesthetics, or shoes. Marketing places included etsy, fineartamerica, redbubble, my candypros and myshopify. The main promoting company that came from my data search was only dillards. When I updated this profile to fit my actual interests the main results were focused just on products and there were many different shades of red that appeared like I was looking at a painting sample. When I finally looked at the 65-year-old contrived profile, I was surprised to see very similar things to my first 22-year-old profile. Red lipstick and hair products. I felt the term “red” gave back very feminine results, regardless of my attempt at creating a gender neutral profile. If Pinterest is a way to engage in escapism like Tekkobe mentioned and build fantasy worlds, I could see why a 65-year-old profile would receive similar results as a 22-year-old would.
When searching for “sweater” in all three profiles, I got very similar image results. The data, however, shows that the key terms to flag the sweaters were changed. In the 22-year-old blank profile, the main descriptors were products, outfit and style. While my customized 22-year-old profile focused on outfit, casual, and knit. The 65-year-old profile focused on winter, fashion, and style. The marketing companies were all similar, lulus, madwell, etsy. But again, the promoting companies gave more options in my customized 22-year-old profile (suggesting shein, wayfair, petsmartcorp, etc) while the blank profile only had apricateapparel as a promoter. Again, I believe the term sweater is feminized in itself. I didn’t receive any male sweaters in my 65-year-old profile. I did find that the focus on winter sweaters in the older cohort to be more interesting, it suggests that older people need a thicker sweater in general, while the sweaters on the 22-year-old profile were mostly light and fashionable sweaters.
When looking at “family vacation” the blank profile showed many travel books to various places from Greece to Ireland or Hawaii Or it was showing life hack articles to travel easier. Using my cultivated 22-year-old profile, it was similar to travel guides, but they were now focused on mountainous or hiking areas such as Colorado or Canada and Yellowstone or beachy areas. Remember I made two boards one as tropical and the other name mountainous. When searching as a 65-year-old, the data showed all-inclusive resorts that were family friendly. Disney actually became one of the top results. This shows maybe Pinterest is targeting the age cohorts when generic terms like this are used. For my 65-year-old profile, it seemed like a grandparent-like situation, where they promote easy vacations that can include kids and grand-kids, while the 22-year-old profiles generated “cheap ways to travel” and fun things to do while there.
When I searched New Zealand, all three profiles came up with very similar results. Pinterest showed pretty scenery and “discovered” New Zealand articles. When looking at the data, it also shows many similarities between the profiles. Using terms such as travel, South Island, itinerary, Australia, and places. I wasn’t surprised that my results didn’t distinguish between genders or age cohorts because using the term New Zealand is very specific and would garner small results.
Finally, when I searched for home-school with the blank profile and personalized 22-year-old profile, it came up with many home-school schedules and routines to follow as well as how to teach home-school links. When looking at the 65-year-old profile, I solely got how to teach home-school links and fun activities to do as a teacher. When looking at the data, it shows that very similar terms were used in all three profiles, such as kids, activities, school, resource — but because of the age, I believe Pinterest categorized what pins appeared to be the most appropriate. This search term turned out to be very gender neutral as well.
After doing my analysis based on the word clouds and data, I drafted a storyboard to create the video. I used Snag It consistently throughout the data collection process, so I used the material from what I've already done as my visuals. I also experimented in Animaker to create my opening and closing visuals. After generating the visual material, I used Adobe Rush to combine the material into a video.
Digital Humanities Implication
This project emphasized the use of data and what the implications were for gender identity, as well as brought to light the network and social exchange that occurs on Pinterest’s platform. I found that the implicit ratings that Pinterest used, such as what a person pins or what boards they create, impact the material they do see, but that is not always the case. For instance, the phrase “family vacation” shows cheap ways to travel to places all around the world for my blank 22-year-old profile, while the same phrase brought links to inclusive resorts for the 65-year-old profile. Although family vacation didn’t bring gendered results, other terms did. For instance, “red” seemed to hold a feminine connotation to begin with. So even when using the gender neutral 65-year-old profile, I received very similar results to “red” in the 22-year-old profiles. The Pinterest project gave insight to this social network in gendered terms. I learned in Cindy Tekkobe’s article “A Site for Fresh Eyes,” that Pinterest is often referred to as being feminine that cultivates a place for women to daydream and passively engage in technology. At the same time, I learned that Pinterest can be viewed as a place where girls and women can cultivate their current or future identity in “Collecting Girlhood” by Jen Almjeld.
Personal Reflection
I found this project fascinating because I never thought of Pinterest or any social media platform in gendered terms. I learned a lot about how data functions within a social media platform and what elements do affect the material you see. I tried to focus on gender by creating a young female profile that was blank and comparing it to a gender neutral profile of a 65-year-old. My results mostly returned with differences that I accounted for the age difference instead of the gender neutrality. This project took a lot of adaptation, as I compiled the video in a vertical format it cut out a lot of the material I screen recorded in a horizontal format. So, I had to redo a lot of my screen recordings to fit the vertical format. I also tried to be creative and play around with an animation tool maker, something I’ve never done before. This involved a lot of risks and trial-and-error because I spent a lot of time making the animations for it to freeze on me and appear fuzzy when I translated it into Adobe Rush. I also didn’t realize I didn’t have my Adobe account attached to the UNC Adobe, so I reached my limit of exports. For the final video I had to screen capture the video while in the program which presented challenges and needed flexibility in itself.
Pinterest Video Revision
My Process
I wanted to revise the Pinterest Video because I wanted to play around with the vertical format more. The biggest thing I wanted to fix was to make the video shorter and my dialogue more direct in what I wanted to say. To shorten the video, I decided to redo the introduction so that I get right into my project instead of doing the background work. I did this background work because I was replicating my process I did for the DH Video Project but I didn’t find it as effective in hindsight.
I went through and edited my script, fixing my narration and cutting down on details that took away from my main point: that Pinterest paid more attention to the age of the profile more than the gender. Here is the revised storyboard and script. I also fixed the sonic elements. I wanted more music throughout the piece to make it more engaging. In my revision I found that I was talking way too fast, and I wasn’t letting the viewer look at what was on screen. So when I added an acoustic guitar soundtrack to the piece, I also slowed down the narration a bit to not rush through my analysis. I also slowed down the scrolling, so it would linger on a few images. However, when I recorded the screen capture this scrolling was really fast so the very slowed down version lingers more but still moves more quickly than I'd like.
Digital Humanities Implication
I think a huge part of digital humanities is having the flexibility to go back and edit and reanalyze previous assertions. For instance, I played with adding ambient music quietly throughout and breaking up the animation, which forced me to learn how to alter videos / sounds from an existing video. For the content, I initially wanted to talk mostly about the gender dynamics, but really what I found interesting was the age dynamic. So embracing the change, I dramatically revised my video to focus more on that and less about gender as a whole. If I had more time in the semester, I would love to look into the gender dynamic more by building more sturdy profiles to compare data too. I also alluded to the fact that this data being generated fit the age content more than the gender, but I didn't speculate where that distinction came from. I would like to further investigate the data that came from companies, such as Dillards, to track the influence of "outside" Pinterest Data.
Personal Reflection
This was a fun project to compile, but more challenging than the DH Story Report Video. I think because I had to make most of my assertions based on what I saw, instead of having background research that guided me in making an informative video. Thus, this project really emphasized critical thinking and problem solving overall. For instance, I concluded that the age was a more prominent factor because I saw things targeted to a younger audience versus an older one (such as cheap vacations vs. all-inclusive resorts, respectively).
Comments
- Throughout the semester, I responded to readings and gave feedback to peers on their work through group style meetings. A compilation of those posts from the semester can be found below:
- Responses to Readings
- Peer Review Comments
- Other in class projects / assignments
- I also took reading notes for throughout the semester to guide my responses and comments.
Final thoughts
This class has challenged me to push myself to learn new programs and information. I have found this class to be my most interesting of the semester. I’ve enjoyed pushing my ideas and creative ability while developing my skills along the way. There were a lot of challenges during this semester-long journey, but I appreciated the freedom to be creative in my problem solving. I submitted projects that took me many more hours than I would like to admit, and I would say I’m very proud of my submissions (even though they are nowhere near professional creations). If you asked me a year ago to make a video on the fly, it would look no where near the videos I’ve made this semester. That is because I’ve learned awesome tools and techniques throughout the semester that has helped me further my digital skills. Overall, I learned the most about data that exists and what data can be used for in this digital humanities class. Through the interactive projects I’ve engaged in I’ve learned how to translate print-based information into an engaging and informative video or podcast. Through the persistence, risk-taking, and tons of adaptation exhibited throughout the semester, I tried my best to engage in digital humanities the best I could.