Tuesday, Feb 18

Submitted by iamdan on Thu, 02/13/2020 - 11:46

Read the items linked below. The first is related to audio modes and not DH concerns and controversy.  After reading the second article, conduct some brief research and identify another piece (blog posting, article, video, etc.) that speaks to a controversy or point of contention associated with digital humanities. Add a comment with a link or reference to the item you have found.

 From Print to Audio

Why Are the Digital Humanities So White? or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation 

Comments

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Submitted by SabrinaZirkle on Thu, 02/13/2020 - 14:25

I really liked how the "Why are the DHs so White? Article reminded the reader that the birth of several major coding languages occurred at the same time as key aspects of the Civil Rights movement and second-wave feminisms. Technology is not created in a vacuum, and our environment and beliefs about the world affect our choices across all areas of our life. I used to think in high school that technology was neutral and simply amplified human nature, but today I do think that technology has an inherent moral impact. If coding frameworks penalize complexity, we must be sure not to sacrifice the complexity and nuances of our discussions about race, gender, and social equality. In more recent years, new tech has also shaped social movements. For example, without social media, the Arab Spring movement of the early 2010s would not have gained as much momentum. The article about "Captivating Algorithms" is an idea that I've thought about out and discussed in my various Advertising and Public Relations classes often. Platforms create special, individual echo chambers for each of us if we aren't careful because we like viewing content that confirms our biases. If number of clicks or time spent per page is the definition for success for our software, we are sacrificing values like truth, open-mindedness, and fairness.

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Submitted by SabrinaZirkle on Thu, 02/13/2020 - 20:07

Hi everyone! I couldn't figure out how to delete my last post, so I'm adding onto it here. 

I am interested in incorporating discussions about the portrayal of chronic pain and invisible illnesses into the podcast project, but I am unsure where to look or how it could align with the project yet. While it overlaps in some ways with discussions about disability and ableism, it it also significantly different in how we think about it in society. (If you haven't guessed by now, I personally experience multiple chronic pain issues, ha ha ha.) Any help is appreciated!!

  1. Do you think I could find a way to incorporate chronic pain/invisible illness into the discussion about digital humanities hot topics?
  2. Do you have any suggested resources or places to start looking? I have seen some content about ablesim and digital humanities, but not about chronic pain/invisible illness. 

 

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Submitted by emmakoslow on Sun, 02/16/2020 - 18:07

The article "Why are the Digital Humanities so White" takes a surprisingly different route in the controversy of Digital Humanities. I never thought that the field could have diversity issues. Since it is a more modern field, I was surprised as Digital Humanities represents the future and yet they are misrepresenting. I like how the argument was told from a timeline like perspective. Instead of just listing the reasons for the argument, the author discusses important technological milestones and how they connected in time with diversity milestones like the Civil Rights Movement. An article I found (https://newrepublic.com/article/117428/limits-digital-humanities-adam-kirsch) on the New Republic shares another point of controversy. It discusses how technology is now taking over English classes as a result. The author believes that Digital Humanities is destroying humanities fields and how the balance between technology and humanities in the field needs to be established and restricted. 

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Submitted by Shawna Sheperd on Sun, 02/16/2020 - 22:57

I found this weekly webcast called Left of Black that is hosted at Duke University. 

https://leftofblack.tumblr.com/ 

The podcasts’ goal is to explore the relationship between Black studies scholars or other scholars that study the experiences of people of color and the digital humanities. This is an interesting source to find since in the article “Why Are the Digital Humanities So White?” strongly claims that there is a threatening disjunction between computation and authentic race representation and understanding. The webcast tries to highlight and promote the contributions of these scholars to the digital humanities field, in order to show that the field is still vibrant and expanding -- with hope to combat the lack of diversity lamented in the article. Some projects that are promoted include: the Black Gotham Archive, Black Girls Code, Diaspora Hypertext, the Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, etc.

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Submitted by natalie.p98 on Mon, 02/17/2020 - 01:12

I found this article by Rochelle Terman titled “Curating or Censoring? The TED Controversy and Digital Humanities,” (https://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/blog/curating-or-censoring-ted-controversy-and-digital-humanities) and it addresses the need to balance the use of quality filters and the preservation of open speech on the web amongst digital humanists. Terman addressed the controversy that occurred when it was decided that Nick Hanauer’s TED talk regarding inequality would not be posted online. Many thought the decision was a form of censorship, while others defended the decision, stating that the decision was made since the content of the talk was mediocre. Terman encourages digital humanists to investigate how curation is utilized when selecting what one would post or not post online, and furthermore, how one can prevent censorship from occurring within this curation. Additionally, she poses the question of who should be the one making these crucial decisions as well.

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Submitted by cschnitz on Mon, 02/17/2020 - 14:46

Over the winter break, I listened to this Invisibilia podcast about a journalist forming a relationship with an AI therapy bot, which brought up a lot of interesting questions about how a sense of ethics are developed through AI language acquisition. I'd like to further explore the implications of AI language acquisition (and often subsequent moral acquisition) for research in the digital humanities—what opportunities and ethical concerns does language-oriented AI introduce for making art and literature? How do we conceptualize ethics and authorship in works produced by AI? This article by James Smithies entitled "Artificial Intelligence, Digital Humanities, and the Automation of Labour" gives a good overview of the next step for AI in DH, along with many common academic and ethical concerns. 

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Submitted by phoebepowers on Mon, 02/17/2020 - 19:56

First article: (I wanted to bullet-point the main takeaways for future reference)

  • give out information at a steady pace that allows listeners time to understand, process
  • find your "radio voice" and make the most of it - write for your voice - speak BEFORE you write it
  • begin with some sort of question that you promise to answer by the end
  • nut graf (who, what, when, where, why) of the story
  • narrow the focus of your story (radio stories require more hand-holding of the audience than print)
  • explain like it's your grandma
  • include QUOTES (aim for 50% recorder/reporter and 50% quotes/other sounds)

Second article: 

The second article was very insightful. I found an article from FreePress speaking on the inherently racial aspect of the digital divide:

https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/insights-opinions/racial-digital-divide-persists

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Submitted by KaylaGibson on Mon, 02/17/2020 - 21:04

The journey from print to radio, while not exactly the same as the one from print to video, is similar. I found it interesting how, in order to find your voice, the author claims that the "first rule of writing for your voice is to speak it before you write it. That’s why you’ll see journalists in public media newsrooms talking to their computer screens." I suppose it makes sense, given how much we've talked about not being able to directly translate from written material to video. That said, I took this approach when working on my draft, and it helped a lot. I didn't exactly talk aloud, but I did talk mentally before I wrote anything, and at particularly rough sections (mostly transitions), I spoke aloud.

My biggest takeaway from the second article was towards the end when McPherson commented that we need to partake in that which makes us nervous. I was struck by this because what's the point of doing something if you know how it's going to turn out? What's life and research if there's no risk involved? Great discoveries aren't made without a trail of mistakes and risks behind them, right? 

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Submitted by Mason Laney on Mon, 02/17/2020 - 22:19

In the spirit of my project report on Wikipedia and how it can be a valuable resource, I decided to look at the Criticism section of the Wikipedia page for Digital Humanities. The page is broken down into different areas of critique: "Negative publicity", "Black box", "Diversity", "Issues of access", "Cultural criticism", "Difficulty of evaluation", and "Lack of focus on pedagogy". Interestingly enough, the page cites the very same "Why Are the Digital Humanities So White?" article that we just read under the "Diversity" section.

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Submitted by natalyv on Tue, 02/18/2020 - 05:09

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/06/article-criticizes-impact-digital-humanities-colleges

The article is analyzing another article about controversy in the digital humanities and its presence in scholarly work in regards to universities and colleges and using the digital humanities to measure success as its tool utilization is enforced and the economics behind digital work is reinforced.

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Submitted by alexmorton on Tue, 02/18/2020 - 08:02

“From print to audio” definitely supplied a lot of valid points for digestible listening. Simple little things like using certain language and speaking things before writing them gives insight into some of the logistics of “good” recording. I thought this was very helpful as we turn towards recording for our projects.

I am not necessarily surprised by “Why Are the Digital Humanities So White?”. Despite it being a relatively modern field, I still wouldn’t expect it to be as inclusive and non-sectionalized as it should be based on the current climate. Men are still payed more. Tech fields are still very male dominated. However, the sequential nature of the piece was an interesting way to portray the information, allowing us to see where DH could go in a way. 

https://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/blog/curating-or-censoring-ted-controversy-and-digital-humanities

This article delves into how certain things need filtration for the user-oriented world of DH while not limiting free speech, using a specific TED talk as an example.

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Submitted by ifsmith on Tue, 02/18/2020 - 13:10

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/2/000217/000217.html

This link leads to the introduction of a special issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly on Feminisms in DH. The introduction narrates some of the central controversies between feminist scholars and DH publications. The author argues that many of the most important DH projects have feminism as their focus in some way, but that there has not been a sustained and thorough analysis of what the relationship between DH and feminism is and should be.  

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Submitted by dannych on Tue, 02/18/2020 - 13:57

The article on NPR podcasting reinforced what I had intrinsically picked up from listening to podcasts - it's all about bait and hook. While in typical print news where you want to get all the information in as quickly as possible, in podcasts the goal is to keep the listener engaged the entire episode. In order to do this task, the reporter must tease the information, pose questions, and not reveal the "punch line" until the very end of the podcast. The other key aspect is audio: talk like a human, not a robot; have background sounds to provide depth; find field audio bits; and, use source audio bits to drive the story and use the reporter to fill in the gaps.

The second article revealed I think something about humanities as a whole as much as it did about digital humanities. I was especially struck by part where the author discussed how humanities departments tended to pigeon hole minority studies into smaller subcategories, as opposed to keeping all the learning and material combined.

I found this chapter that picks up where our article leaves off and demonstrates a more diversified study within digital humanities. Here the author analyzes the comments left on East Asian Double Eyelid surgery videos to study cultural values and cross-national discussions.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=52PkBQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA49&dq=digital+humanities+%2B+lgbt&ots=GxLipXxLQb&sig=c4EIgnymM-FAwlOT_tzz3pUIHng#v=onepage&q=digital%20humanities%20%2B%20lgbt&f=false

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