Research Methods for the Digital Humanities

////////////////

Edited by

lewis levenberg,

Tai Neilson,

David Rheams

RESEARCH

METHODS

FOR THE

DIGITAL

HUMANITIES

Research Methods for the Digital Humanities

lewis levenberg · Tai Neilson

David Rheams

Editors

Research Methods

for the Digital

Humanities

Editors

lewis levenberg

Levenberg Services, Inc.

Bloomingburg, NY, USA

Tai Neilson

Macquarie University

Sydney, NSW, Australia

David Rheams

The University of Texas at Dallas

Richardson, TX, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-96712-7 ISBN 978-3-319-96713-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96713-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950497

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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v

Contents

1 Introduction: Research Methods for the Digital

Humanities 1

Tai Neilson, lewis levenberg and David Rheams

2 On Interdisciplinary Studies of Physical Information

Infrastructure 15

lewis levenberg

3 Archives for the Dark Web: A Field Guide for Study 31

Robert W. Gehl

4 MusicDetour: Building a Digital Humanities Archive 53

David Arditi

5 Creating an Infuencer-Relationship Model to Locate

Actors in Environmental Communications 63

David Rheams

6 Digital Humanities for History of Philosophy:

A Case Study on Nietzsche 85

Mark Alfano

vi Contents

7 Researching Online Museums: Digital Methods

to Study Virtual Visitors 103

Natalia Grincheva

8 Smart Phones and Photovoice: Exploring Participant

Lives with Photos of the Everyday 129

Erin Brock Carlson and Trinity Overmyer

9 Digital Media, Conventional Methods: Using Video

Interviews to Study the Labor of Digital Journalism 151

Tai Neilson

10 Building Video Game Adaptations of

Dramatic and Literary Texts 173

E. B. Hunter

11 Virtual Bethel: Preservation of Indianapolis’s Oldest

Black Church 195

Zebulun M. Wood, Albert William, Ayoung Yoon and

Andrea Copeland

12 Code/Art Approaches to Data Visualization 211

J. J. Sylvia IV

13 Research Methods in Recording Oral Tradition:

Choosing Between the Evanescence of the Digital

or the Senescence of the Analog 233

Nick Thieberger

14 A Philological Approach to Sound Preservation 243

Federica Bressan

15 User Interfaces for Creating Digital Research 263

Tarrin Wills

Contents   vii

16 Developing Sustainable Open Heritage Datasets 287

Henriette Roued-Cunliffe

17 Telling Untold Stories: Digital Textual

Recovery Methods 309

Roopika Risam

Glossary 319

Index 323

ix

Notes on Contributors

Mark Alfano’s work in moral psychology encompasses subfelds in both

philosophy (ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of

mind) and social science (social psychology, personality psychology). He

is ecumenical about methods, having used modal logic, questionnaires,

tests of implicit cognition, incentivizing techniques borrowed from

behavioral economics, neuroimaging, textual interpretation (especially

of Nietzsche), and Digital Humanities techniques (text-mining, archive

analysis, visualization). He has experience working with R, Tableau, and

Gephi.

David Arditi is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director

of the Center for Theory at the University of Texas at Arlington. His

research addresses the impact of digital technology on society and cul￾ture with a specifc focus on music. Arditi is author of iTake-Over: The

Recording Industry in the Digital Era and his essays have appeared in

Critical Sociology, Popular Music & Society, the Journal of Popular Music

Studies,Civilisations, Media Fields Journal and several edited volumes.

He also serves as Co-Editor of Fast Capitalism.

Federica Bressan (1981) is a post-doctoral researcher at Ghent

University, where she leads a research project on multimedia cul￾tural heritage under the Marie Curie funding programme H2020-

MSCA-IF-2015. She holds an M.D. in Musicology and a Ph.D. in

Computer Science. From 2012 to 2016 she held a post-doctoral research

position at the Department of Information Engineering, University of

x Notes on Contributors

Padova, Italy, where she coordinated the laboratory for sound preserva￾tion and restoration. The vision underlying her research revolves around

technology and culture, creativity and identity. Her main expertise is in

the feld of multimedia preservation, with a special attention for interac￾tive systems.

Erin Brock Carlson is a Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University in

Rhetoric and Composition, where she has taught advanced professional

writing courses and mentored graduate students teaching in the intro￾ductory composition program. Her research interests include public

rhetorics, professional-technical writing, and participatory research meth￾ods. Her work has appeared in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology,

and Pedagogy and Refections: A Journal of Writing, Service-Learning,

and Community Literacy, and is forthcoming in the print version of

Computers and Composition.

Andrea Copeland is the Chair of Library and Information Science

and Associate Professor at Indiana University—Purdue University

Indianapolis. Her research focus is public libraries and their relationship

with communities. She is the co-editor of a recent volume, Participatory

Heritage, which explores the many ways that people participate in cul￾tural heritage activities outside of formal institutions. It also examines the

possibility of making connections to those institutions to increase access

and the chance of preservation for the tangible outputs that result from

those activities.

Robert W. Gehl is an Associate Professor of Communication at the

University of Utah. He is the author of Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy

on Freenet, Tor, and I2p (MIT Press, 2018) and Reverse Engineering

Social Media (Temple University Press, 2014). His research focuses on

alternative social media, software studies, and Internet cultures.

Natalia Grincheva holder of several prestigious academic awards,

including Fulbright (2007–2009), Quebec Fund (2011–2013),

Australian Endeavour (2012–2013) and other fellowships, Dr. Natalia

Grincheva has traveled around the world to conduct research for her

doctoral dissertation on digital diplomacy. Focusing on new “Museology

and Social Media Technologies”, she has successfully implemented a

number of research projects on the “diplomatic” uses of new media by

the largest museums in North America, Europe, and Asia. Combining

digital media studies, international relations and new museology, her

Notes on Contributors   xi

research provides an analysis of non-state forms of contemporary cul￾tural diplomacy, implemented online within a museum context. A

frequent speaker, panel participant or a session chair in various interna￾tional conferences, Natalia is also an author of numerous articles pub￾lished in International Academic Journals, including Global Media and

Communication Journal, Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Critical Cultural

Studies, the International Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society,

and many others.

E. B. Hunter formerly the artistic director of an immersive Shakespeare

project at a restored blast furnace in Birmingham, Alabama, E. B.

Hunter is fnishing her Ph.D. in theatre at Northwestern University.

Hunter researches live cultural contexts—theatre, museums, and theme

parks—to fnd the production choices that create authenticity and mean￾ingful interactivity. To test her fndings in a digital environment, Hunter

launched the startup lab Fabula(b) at Northwestern’s innovation incuba￾tor. She is currently leading the build of Bitter Wind, a HoloLens adap￾tation of Agememnon, which has been featured by Microsoft and SH//

FT Media’s Women in Mixed Reality initiative.

lewis levenberg lives and works in New York State.

Tai Neilson is a lecturer in Media at Macquarie University, Sydney. His

areas of expertise include the “Political Economy of Digital Media and

Critical Cultural Theory”. Dr. Neilson has published work on journal￾ism and digital media in Journalism, Fast Capitalism, and Global Media

Journal. His current research focuses on the reorganization of journal￾ists labour through the use of digital media. Dr. Neilson teaches classes

in news and current affairs, and digital media. He received his Ph.D. in

Cultural Studies from George Mason University in Virginia and his M.A.

in Sociology from the New School for Social Research in New York.

Trinity Overmyer is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and Composition

at Purdue University, where she serves as Assistant Director. In her cur￾rent research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Trinity explores the

knowledge-making practices of data scientists and engages critically with

large-scale data as a medium of inscription and a rhetorical mode of

inquiry. She has worked extensively in “Technical Writing and Design,

Community Engagement, and Qualitative Research Methods”, both

within and outside the university. She teaches multimedia and technical

writing courses in the Professional Writing program at Purdue.

xii Notes on Contributors

David Rheams is a recent Ph.D. graduate from George Mason

University’s Cultural Studies program. His research interests include top￾ics on environmental communications, science and technology studies,

and the Digital Humanities. David has been in the software industry for

over 15 years leading support and product teams.

Roopika Risam is an Assistant Professor of English at Salem State

University. She is the author of New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital

Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Northwestern University

Press, 2018). Her research focuses on Digital Humanities and African

diaspora studies. Risam is director of several projects including The

Harlem Shadows Project, Social Justice and the Digital Humanities,

Digital Salem, and the NEH and IMLS-funded Networking the

Regional Comprehensives.

Henriette Roued-Cunliffe is an Associate Professor in Digital

Humanities at the Department of Information Studies, University of

Copenhagen, Denmark. She has worked extensively within the feld of

archaeological computing with subjects such as open heritage data and

heritage dissemination. As a part of her D.Phil. at the University of

Oxford she specialized in collaborative digitisation and online dissemi￾nation of heritage documents through XML and APIs. Her current

research project has taken a turn towards participatory collaborations

between DIY culture (genealogists, local historians, amateur archaeolo￾gists, etc.) and cultural institutions, particularly on the Internet.

J. J. Sylvia IV is an Assistant Professor in Communications Media at

Fitchburg State University. His research focuses on understanding the

impact of big data, algorithms, and other new media on processes of sub￾jectivation. Using the framework of posthumanism, he explores how the

media we use contribute to our construction as subjects. By developing

a feminist approach to information, he aims to bring an affrmative and

activist approach to contemporary data studies that highlights the poten￾tial for big data to offer new experimental approaches to our own pro￾cesses of subjectivation. He lives in Worcester, M.A. with his wife and

two daughters.

Assoc. Prof. Nick Thieberger is a linguist who has worked with

Australian languages and wrote a grammar of Nafsan from Efate,

Vanuatu. He is developing methods for creation of reusable datasets

from feldwork on previously unrecorded languages. He is the editor

Notes on Contributors   xiii

of the journal Language Documentation & Conservation. He taught in

the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

and is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of

Melbourne, Australia where he is a CI in the ARC Centre of Excellence

for the Dynamics of Language.

Albert William is a Lecturer, Media Arts and Science at Indiana

University—Purdue University Indianapolis. William specializes in

three-dimensional design and animation of scientifc and medical con￾tent. He has been involved in project management and production for

numerous projects with SOIC for organizations. William teaches a range

of 3-D courses at SOIC. He’s received the 2003 Silicon Graphics Inc.

Award for excellence in “Computational Sciences and Visualization” at

Indiana University, and the 2016 award for Excellence in the Scholarship

of Teaching.

Tarrin Wills was Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at the University of

Aberdeen from 2007–2018 and is now Editor at the Dictionary of Old

Norse Prose, University of Copenhagen. He is involved in a number of

DH projects, including the Skaldic Project, Menota and Pre-Christian

Religions of the North, and leads the Lexicon Poeticum project. Tarrin

has worked extensively with XML and database-based DH projects,

including building complex web applications.

Zebulun M. Wood is a Lecturer and Co-Director of Media Arts and

Science undergraduate program. He works in emerging media, focusing

in 3-D design integrated formats. He works with students on projects

that improve lives and disrupt industries, and instructs in all areas of 3-D

production, including augmented and virtual reality.

Ayoung Yoon is an Assistant Professor of Library and Information

Science, and Data Science at Indiana University—Purdue University

Indianapolis. Dr. Yoon’s research focuses on data curation, data sharing

and reuse, and open data. She has worked for multiple cultural insti￾tutions in South Korea and the United States where she established a

background in digital preservation. Dr. Yoon’s work is published in

International Journal of Digital Curation, and Library and Information

Science Research among other journals.

xv

List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Regular expression for consecutive capitalized words 72

Fig. 5.2 MySQL query example 76

Fig. 5.3 Frequency of actors 79

Fig. 5.4 Actor relationship matrix 79

Fig. 5.5 Magnifed view of the actor relationship matrix 80

Fig. 6.1 All concepts timeline 92

Fig. 6.2 All concepts treemap 93

Fig. 6.3 All relevant passages from A 94

Fig. 6.4 Venn diagram of Nietzsche’s use of drive, instinct,

virtue, and chastity. Numbers represent the number

of passages in which a combination of concepts is discussed 95

Fig. 7.1 Facebook insights: Hermitage Museum Foundation UK 111

Fig. 7.2 Van Gogh Museum blog, Facebook and Twitter: domestic

and international audiences 112

Fig. 7.3 Van Gogh Museum blog, Facebook, Twitter: top

countries audiences 112

Fig. 7.4 Levels of online audience engagement 116

Fig. 7.5 World Beach Project map, Victoria & Albert Museum 117

Fig. 7.6 YouTube play platform, Guggenheim Museum 121

Fig. 8.1 Intended outcomes for stakeholders involved

in the photovoice engagement study 134

Fig. 8.2 Colorful mural in downtown area. Pilot study photo,

Michaela Cooper, 2015 136

Fig. 8.3 Students gather around a service dog-in-training.

Pilot study photo, Erin Brock Carlson, 2015 144

Fig. 10.1 15-week timeline 181

xvi List of Figures

Fig. 10.2 Something Wicked’s 2D aesthetic 186

Fig. 11.1 Scan to VR data pipeline 202

Fig. 11.2 A photo of the original church 205

Fig. 11.3 The digital modeling process. a Laser scan model

provided by Online Resources, Inc., b Recreated

3D model of Bethel AMC from 3D laser scan,

and c A fully lit and textured Virtual Bethel shown

in Epic’s Unreal game development engine 206

Fig. 12.1 Example of kinked lines 214

Fig. 12.2 Generative design 215

Fig. 12.3 Aperveillance on display in Hunt Library’s code+art

gallery at North Carolina State University 219

Fig. 12.4 p5.js core fles 220

Fig. 12.5 Example of index.html fle 222

Fig. 12.6 The previous day’s crime incidents—city of Raleigh 223

Fig. 12.7 Aperveillance fnal 225

Fig. 14.1 The scheme summarizes the main steps

of the preservation process for audio documents 246

Fig. 14.2 Manually counting words in a text on a digital device

does not make you a digital philologist 251

Fig. 15.1 Systems of conversion and skills required

for different end-users 267

Fig. 15.2 Dictionary of Old Norse Prose: desktop application

for constructing entries 273

Fig. 15.3 Stages of a web database application and languages used 276

Fig. 15.4 Adaptive web design interface 278

Fig. 15.5 Example of printed version of the Skaldic Project’s editions 279

Fig. 15.6 Form for rearranging text into prose syntax 280

Fig. 15.7 Form for entering kenning analysis 281

Fig. 15.8 Form for entering manuscript variants 282

Fig. 15.9 Form for entering notes to the text 283

Fig. 15.10 Form for linking words to dictionary headwords

(lemmatizing) 284

Fig. 16.1 The dataset in Google maps with locations 299

Fig. 16.2 The dataset in Google sheets 301

Fig. 16.3 The fnal output of the combined datasets 305

Fig. 17.1 TEI header markup of Claude McKay’s “The Tropics

in New York” 312

Fig. 17.2 HTML edition of Claude McKay’s “The Tropics

in New York” with highlighted variants 313

Fig. 17.3 HTML edition of Claude McKay’s “The Tropics

in New York” with editorial notes 313

xvii

List of Tables

Table 5.1 Software 65

Table 5.2 Articles table 71

Table 5.3 Key phrase table structure 73

Table 5.4 Key phrase table structure with codes 75

Table 5.5 Results of the query 76

Table 16.1 API Parameters 296