Research Methods for the Digital Humanities

330 Pages·6.385 MB·English

by  lewis levenberg, Tai Neilson, David Rheams

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 David Rheams
Levenberg Services, Inc. The University of Texas at Dallas
Bloomingburg, NY, USA Richardson, TX, USA
Tai Neilson
Macquarie University
Sydney, NSW, Australia
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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C
ontents
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 Influencer-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
v
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
n C
otes on ontributors
Mark Alfano’s work in moral psychology encompasses subfields 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 specific 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
ix
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 field 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 Reflections: 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 finishing her Ph.D. in theatre at Northwestern University.
Hunter researches live cultural contexts—theatre, museums, and theme
parks—to find the production choices that create authenticity and mean-
ingful interactivity. To test her findings 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.