Computation and the Humanities: Towards an Oral History of Digital Humanities

user interfaces; human computer interaction; computers and societ

Documenting resistance, conflict and violence: a scoping review of the role of participatory digital platforms in the mobilisation of resistance

In recent years, grassroots movements have gained traction and significant numbers globally. Against longer histories of resistance and protest movements’ mobilisation of documentation, mechanisation and digital technologies, this scoping literature review seeks to understand how resistance and social movements have drawn upon the participatory and easily accessible nature of social media and digital platforms to mobilise new generations of activists, create new archives, document activities and abuses, call for accountability and overwrite or challenge the narratives put forward by mainstream media outlets and state archives. We identify relevant projects, explore the activist potential and threats of the combination of digital technologies, social movements, and documentary or archival practice, before concluding by identifying open research questions in relation to digital technologies, social movements and archival practice

Exploring the possibilities of Thomson’s fourth paradigm transformation—The case for a multimodal approach to digital oral history?

This article seeks to reorientate ‘digital oral history’ towards a new research paradigm, Multimodal Digital Oral History (MDOH), and in so doing it seeks to build upon Alistair Thomson’s (Thomson, A., 2007, Four paradigm transformations in oral history. Oral History Review, 34(1): 49–70.) characterization of a ‘dizzying digital revolution’ and paradigmatic transformation in oral history (OH). Calling for a recalibration of the current dominance of the textual transcript, and for active engagement with the oral, aural, and sonic affordances of both retro-digitized and born digital OH (DOH) collections, we call for a re-orientation of the digital from passive to generative and self-reflexive in the human–machine study of spoken word recordings. First, we take stock of the field of DOH as it is currently conceived and the ways in which it has or has not answered calls for a return to the orality of the interview by digital means. Secondly, we address the predominant trend of working with transcriptions in digital analysis of spoken word recordings and the tools being used by oral historians. Thirdly, we ask about the emerging possibilities—tools and experimental methodologies—for sonic analysis of spoken word collections within and beyond OH, looking to intersections with digital humanities, sociolinguistics, and sound studies. Lastly, we consider ethical questions and practicalities concomitant with data-driven methods, analyses and technologies like AI for the study of sonic research artefacts, reflections that dovetail with digital hermeneutics and digital tool criticism and point towards a new MDOH departure, a sub-field that has potential to inform the many fields that seek patterns in audio, audio-visual, and post-textual materials, serially and at scale

The Collection Unit as the Integral Component in Development of a Data Atlas of Complex Cultural Heritage Landscapes

In what form were museum and cultural heritage collections first acquired? How have museum and cultural heritage collections changed over time? And in what way has their cumulative evolution led to their growth over time? These questions sit at the heart of collections history and collections as data research and are likewise core concerns of much social and material culture research. More recently, research is moving beyond the accumulation of collections, seeking a deeper examination of the dynamic movement of objects between individual and institutional agents and actors. This can cast new light on the fluidity of collections, and the intrinsic role that circulation played in their formation and mobilisation (Driver et al., 2021, 3), both in analogue and digital contexts. Researchers attempting to trace the movement of objects and collections between and within cultural heritage institutions are faced with complex data environments. Challenges relate to the intricacies of scope, size, availability, coverage, legacy attributes, and manifestation of collections, that often persist both within and between institutions. Such attributes cannot be adequately addressed by conceptual data models and metadata mappings that merely address a lower level of data interoperability, supporting aggregation and unification objectives (Dragoni et.al 2017). In response, we introduce the “Data Atlas”. This is both a comprehensive metaphor that provides a collective perspective on cultural heritage collections, and an instrument that offers a means to map the intricacies of the complex landscapes of historical resources that have resulted from the long- term curation, circulation, and accumulation of collections dispersed across and within, various institutions and systems of varying accessibility status (Vlachidis et. al forthcoming) . Central to this metaphor is the Collection Unit which originates from the Natural History Museum’s ‘Join the dots’ collections assessment exercise where collections are arranged into discrete units that reflect how curators organise, index and work with their collections (Miller 2020). We define a ‘Collection Unit’ as a physical or digital born entity treated as a coherent item of a curatorial or collection activity which is not abstract but possess attributes unique to its form such as size, physical location, level of digitization, transcription type, availability, and access. Our definition is elastic so as to allow use of the Collection Unit as a building block to create a visual representation of the historical and contemporary collections of the physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). The Sloane collection is now dispersed across different information systems and infrastructures. Assembled from the 1680s onwards, and in part financed by profits from the transatlantic slave trade and enslavement, Sloane’s vast collection of natural history, pharmaceutical specimens, books, manuscripts, prints, drawings, coins, and antiquities from across the world was made as Britain became a global trading and imperial power. Leveraging from a static 2D tabular representation of the Data Atlas we propose the development of an interactive version of the Data Atlas to facilitate a dynamic representation of a dispersed collection, allowing for a comprehensive, interlinked and layered view of Collection Units. The Atlas is part of the UKRI-funded Towards a National Collection Discovery programme, the ‘Sloane Lab: looking back to build future shared collections’ works at the intersection of the history of digital humanities and the history of collections (Nyhan et al. 2023)

Gender influences in Digital Humanities co-authorship networks

PURPOSE: This paper presents a co-authorship study of authors who published in Digital Humanities journals and examines the apparent influence of gender, or more specifically, the quantitatively detectable influence of gender in the networks they form. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: This study applied co-authorship network analysis. Data has been collected from three canonical Digital Humanities journals over 52 years (1966–2017) and analysed. FINDINGS: The results are presented as visualised networks and suggest that female scholars in Digital Humanities play more central roles and act as the main bridges of collaborative networks even though overall female authors are fewer in number than male authors in the network. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This is the first co-authorship network study in Digital Humanities to examine the role that gender appears to play in these co-authorship networks using statistical analysis and visualisation

Exploring international collaboration and language dynamics in Digital Humanities: insights from co-authorship networks in canonical journals

Purpose: This paper presents a follow-on study that quantifies geolingual markers and their apparent connection with authorship collaboration patterns in canonical Digital Humanities (DH) journals. In particular, it seeks to detect patterns in authors' countries of work and languages in co-authorship networks. // Design/methodology/approach: Through an in-depth co-authorship network analysis, this study analysed bibliometric data from three canonical DH journals over a range of 52 years (1966–2017). The results are presented as visualised networks with centrality calculations. // Findings: The results suggest that while DH scholars may not collaborate as frequently as those in other disciplines, when they do so their collaborations tend to be more international than in many Science and Engineering, and Social Sciences disciplines. DH authors in some countries (e.g. Spain, Finland, Australia, Canada, and the UK) have the highest international co-author rates, while others have high national co-author rates but low international rates (e.g. Japan, the USA, and France). // Originality/value: This study is the first DH co-authorship network study that explores the apparent connection between language and collaboration patterns in DH. It contributes to ongoing debates about diversity, representation, and multilingualism in DH and academic publishing more widely

Of global reach yet of situated contexts:An examination of the implicit and explicit selection criteria that shape digital archives of historical newspapers

A large literature addresses the processes, circumstances and motivations that have given rise to archives. These questions are increasingly being asked of digital archives, too. Here, we examine the complex interplay of institutional, intellectual, economic, technical, practical and social factors that have shaped decisions about the inclusion and exclusion of digitised newspapers in and from online archives. We do so by undertaking and analysing a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with public and private providers of major newspaper digitisation programmes. Our findings contribute to emerging understandings of factors that are rarely foregrounded or highlighted yet fundamentally shape the depth and scope of digital cultural heritage archives and thus the questions that can be asked of them, now and in the future. Moreover, we draw attention to providers’ emphasis on meeting the needs of their end-users and how this is shaping the form and function of digital archives. The end user is not often emphasised in the wider literature on archival studies and we thus draw attention to the potential merit of this vector in future studies of digital archives

Documenting resistance, conflict and violence: a scoping review of the role of participatory digital platforms in the mobilisation of resistance

In recent years, grassroots movements have gained traction and significant numbers globally. Against longer histories of resistance and protest movements’ mobilisation of documentation, mechanisation and digital technologies, this scoping literature review seeks to understand how resistance and social movements have drawn upon the participatory and easily accessible nature of social media and digital platforms to mobilise new generations of activists, create new archives, document activities and abuses, call for accountability and overwrite or challenge the narratives put forward by mainstream media outlets and state archives. We identify relevant projects, explore the activist potential and threats of the combination of digital technologies, social movements, and documentary or archival practice, before concluding by identifying open research questions in relation to digital technologies, social movements and archival practice