DIGITAL HUMANITIES PORTFOLIO
ALEX MORTON
Introduction
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Honestly, I wasn't exactly sure what this class was going to entail or even what digital humanities were at the time of registration. Based on the description, it seemed like it would allow me to be more creative than other classes (and as an added benefit it fulfilled a general education requirement). That being said, I was pleasantly challenged. Throughout the course, I researched eerily relevant topics and discussed them in very different modes from what I am used to. These new media aspects allowed me to portray arguments on accessibility and social interactions in non-standard forms. As a pretty heavy STEM person with a love for writing and creating, digital humanities gave me a new look on information and how we can make its portrayal even more efficient. Some key things I'm going to look at as I reflect on my time in ENGL 480 include my struggles with creativity and motivation, as well as my interest in access, media, and social networking.
Digital Humanities Report: Language, Vaccines, and Tweets, Oh My!
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For our first project of the semester, we were tasked with creating a digital humanities report based on some interest we have. This was really our first major hands-on interaction with digital humanities. Throughout the project, we regularly met in small groups to deliberate our reports and solidify the directions we wanted to take. The experience as a whole and what I took away from it were very much dependent on this group work. Being able to collaborate and bounce ideas off one another really strengthened my understanding of digital humanities and how interactive it is.
DH Report Draft
I mentioned motivation as a key component of my semester in the class. I really struggled finding motivation, not just for this class, but for a lot of my classes. This lead to me making late-night attempts at putting together projects. That being said, my perfectionist side generally takes over, and that remains true in this case. As our first DH project, I wanted it to be good. After our group discussions, someone mentioned a prompt they had in a writing class: Taking an essay and reducing versions of it down little by little until you're left with a couple of sentences. I found this very interesting and introduced this same idea into my own report. As for the report itself, I chose to discuss the vaccination debate and analyze how newer forms of media are used in conjunction with it. Coupling the topic with the aforementioned mode of writing presented me with a clear direction for what type of social media I would work with: Twitter. Condensing an academic report down to a few sentences to show how language varies in different circumstances encapsulates part of the reason digital humanities is so relevant. Whereas other disciplines typically diverge into either very uniform or very interpretive styles of creation, digital humanities allow for both. Taking an ordinary creation and transforming it with purpose has become very important. Customers need an efficient product that actually has a use. Digital humanities allows us to do this in a way that keeps consumers of information both engaged and educated.
DH Report Final
Reflecting on this report, a lot of the points of harmful language on platforms like Twitter definitely reigns true. Especially now, with COVID-19 exacerbating the struggles our society has with presenting information and spreading things online. That being said, while receiving feedback and revising my original report, I realized how confusing my use of language still is. One of the cornerstones of digital humanities, in my opinion, is the ability to convey information clearly and with good intent. My original report didn’t go into enough detail on certain things and had a flow that didn’t exactly make my points exceedingly clear. After revision, I feel more confident in the report’s ability to create a story on how Twitter can prolong unnecessary debate, but also increase our ability to connect and receive important information at a moment notice. This choice of topic was absurdly prophetic given the current state of the world and makes an argument for just how relevant a DH-style report can be in explaining, and even mimicking, future events. The narrative of the coronavirus is weird. And social media platforms definitely contribute to that. Language in the news is evaluated under a microscope, making the importance of presenting it properly imperative to enduring this pandemic.
Digital Humanities Video Report
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Our next project was essentially an extension of our original DH report. With the opportunity to transform or first pieces into new creations, digital humanities encourage us to explore multi-modal means of learning. The beauty of this assignment was how insanely varied our videos were going to be in terms of presentation. Figuring out the best way to transfer the contents of the report into a video was the first obstacle. I thought my report would be most persuasive by pulling various news clips and tweets, explaining how they can be misleading, and then introducing what is being done to curb the damage done by the spread misinformation on social media. So, I ran with this idea and ended up being proud of the video I created. It allowed to be more expressive and edit something in a style that I personally like watching.
Video
I ended up pulling clips from a lot of different videos and tying them together in a way that enhanced my discussion of the vaccine debate and created an engaging environment for the user. I had a lot of motivation for the project. I had never really edited a video before, so I went into this thinking it would be a fun experience. I wanted to create a relevant video (which I think I did by accident) that had a nice flow and engaging visuals. The video portion of the project really let my creativity flow, but in a more controlled way. I still needed to be cognizant of how a viewer might interact with and respond to the content. With this in mind, thinking about the digital humanities became a key proponent in creating the video. Pointing out how we can be more aware about our social interactions with new media by introducing new and evolving resources became crucial in my video report. Twitter bots were a central part of my discussion in both the original report and the video, so analyzing how these bots can be good or bad and why we need to be careful with spreading information brought me back to digital humanities. Language and presentation are key to good DH report, and checking our own biases with media needed to be brought up carefully.
Transcript
The transcript allows me to introduce one of the biggest problems I encountered while creating my DH Video; listening to my own voice. I transcribed what I was going to say beforehand to hopefully mitigate how many times I would have to record myself. I’m pretty insecure about my voice, so listening to it repeatedly throughout the course was something I had to deal with. That being said, digital humanities are pretty forgiving with this kind of thing. A large part of DH is taking raw materials and making them into something more effective, possibly in an entirely different form. I think that learning about digital humanities helped me explore all of the resources in my arsenal, even if I wasn't necessarily comfortable with them, because that might truly be the best way to get a desired point across. Also, I realized that I am very fortunate to have access to all these tools, so getting through certain issues should not disengage me from creating the best content that I can.
Storyboard
I mentioned that my motivation for this project was higher than the report. However, when we were tasked with the storyboard, that gave me a moment of pause. This mainly goes back to my anxieties with my voice and the realization that I had to not only speak, but speak in a way that was both calculated and tonally engaging. I am also a very indecisive person in creative spaces, which helps explain why a lot of my plans are short and vague. Part of my process is spur-of-the-moment creation. For certain things, I like to over-plan, but in instances like this I like to leave a lot of my creative choices up to the universe. Digital humanities allows me to do this (to a certain degree). I feel like I can take more artistic liberty, which is definitely a freeing experience given the assignments in my other classes are much more controlled.
Podcast: Accessibility and Digital Divides
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Podcast
Our next project saw us take a much more audio-centric approach to developing a narrative. Our group chose to discuss accessibility and digital divides. I've always had access to whatever I needed for school, but I grew up around a lot of people whose experiences definitely diverged from my own. So, this disparity in access to technology and opportunities within our constantly evolving society was a topic I was very interested in. Again, I encountered the problem of listening to myself speak. I also get in my head way too much when trying to create logical arguments in front of a group. We did a trial run of our podcast, which (thankfully) ended up being much better than the live-studio-audience version of our recording in class. That being said, I think this entire assignment was a growing experience for me. The recording allowed me to actually talk about myself and my experiences, which never happens in the disciplines I study normally. This aspect made me feel more connected to DH in a way. It can begin to feel very personal once you accept that a certain method of creation isn't necessarily normal for you and you embrace it. Just three projects in, the digital humanities have taught me how extensive my creativity can be in a variety of modes that I may never have explored otherwise.
Podcast Revision
I chose to revise my podcast for a couple of reasons. I feel like this is the project that made me fully buy into the digital humanities as its own thing and not just some type of mixture of computer science and english. It also made me feel more connected to the work I was doing in the class. Based on the feedback I received on my original edited podcast, I came back with a couple of revisions. For one, I played with the volume a bit more and tried to even it out since my group spoke at very different volumes. I also tried to fix some of the audio problems that happened sporadically throughout the podcast. Finally, I removed the ice breaker we did at the beginning of the recording session to ensure my podcast was as succinct as it could be. Focus is a big problem of mine. I have trouble narrowing something down because I like to think everything is important in some way. I didn't necessarily change this stance, but this project did help me realize that sometimes you don't need the fluff.
Pinterest Video Report
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Our final project of the semester lead us into the interesting world of Pinterest. Personally, I had only ever used Pinterest to find pictures of dorm rooms and a few other random instances. In other words, I'm very unfamiliar with Pinterest and how it works. The assignment challenged us to analyze how Pinterest presents information based on factors like gender and age. I had always heard about Pinterest as being a female-dominant platform (which was discussed in one of our Pinterest readings), so I took this opportunity to see what might make people think that in addition to make more concrete vision for the project. More specifically, I took my personal Pinterest profile and compared it to a fake 42 year-old woman named Kayla after a series of searches on either account. Something that made this assignment especially difficult was motivation. I've been very unmotivated since the semester was moved online, which has to do with being a lot more socially isolated. As we've seen with my past DH projects, there are many ways to collaborate and be connected. However, in this unprecedented circumstance, there is a lack of true connectedness, which actually brings up interesting points about the realities of social media (which I won't get into here).
Video
This video helps show the differences of the searches on both profiles. I don't know how any other method of presentation would have been as appropriate as a video considering much of the information gathered is visual. An aspect I wanted to include in my own video was self-identification. I wanted the viewer to draw their own conclusions in addition to some of the ones I presented. For this reason, most of the time in the video is spent giving the backstory of the profiles and the pictures recorded from the searches. Something that I have grown to love about the digital humanities is that it takes into account how information is gathered and the implications of any given method. I think this is both thorough and can lead to unforeseen discoveries. Our method of data scraping did not work for Kayla's profile, so there is a chunk of information missing that could potentially impact conclusions. However, I think this benefits the project in a way. With that extra piece of analysis missing, I had to get more creative with how I interpreted the information. I could only really use what I saw in the results. This lead to some, in my opinion, more creative interpretations on my end that I probably wouldn't have even looked for otherwise.
Transcript
Again, the transcript proved to be an absolutely vital part of my video creation. I've definitely learned that some essence of planning is necessary to create a well thought out, well-spoken narrative. I also think that because this project required more analysis than some of the others, it became more important to have those key points picked out already to ensure there was some type of logical flow. I really enjoyed planning out this video because I had a lot of ideas for how the flow could work. I ended up deciding to introduce both the male and female profile at the beginning and go through each search at the same time. I figured this would be the least confusing and most logical way to present the information. I also approached this assignment like a study, which I think made the transcript that much more important.
Portfolio Video
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I wrote a good amount of reflections for my previous projects, but I feel like this video speaks for itself more so than the others. As my final project for this class, I tried to make it as representative of the class as possible. I took a more holistic approach and highlighted some of the things I learned in the class. Enjoy!
Video
Transcript
Storyboard
Final Discussion
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Finishing this class is kind of bittersweet for me. This is likely my last "creative" class I will ever have. I'm sure my computer science classes will force me to come up with some whacky solutions, but not in the same way digital humanities have made me think creatively. As I reflect on my time in the class, I realized I learned a lot more than I would have thought when I singed up for the class. It definitely turned into more than a simple general education filler. The course and content challenged me to step our of my comfort zone on a lot of things and acknowledge a lot of my issues with motivation. I think the incredibly relevant content that I worked with in the class gave me a new appreciation for the accessibility and opportunities I have to work with all of these different modes of creation, truly exemplifying what the digital humanities are about. Through the various projects, my research into social media and our views of connectedness allowed me to see how many small nuances exist in every form of communication we have. Overall, I feel like I successfully learned why the digital humanities are important and relevant, as well as how they impact nearly everything in the new media world.
Comments on Readings
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Feedback
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Extra Videos
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