Jaedyn - Data & Digitization

 

Chapter two helped me further understand the research and databases which are used or created in digital humanities projects. It also brought to my attention the pros and cons of using preexisting data. I never considered the impacts incomplete data and unethical uses could have on your projects. Especially in today's world. I find things online are much more monitored and protected under specific laws or regulations. Collecting data for a digital humanities project feels quite different from collecting research for a paper. Although some digging into the author, possible bias and overall trustworthiness are necessary for research projects, it seems to be much less expensive than that required of data. As I read through chapter two, I came to the realization that the majority of time put into creating a digital humanities project seems to be used for finding and integrating data. Because of this extensiveness, I appreciated the checklists added throughout the chapter. I made sure to add small sticky notes to those pages for me to come back to while working on my own projects!

Much of chapter three I actually skimmed since I have taken numerous computer programming classes before because of my minor. I assume for this class there will be no extensive coding required but I do think it is important to know and learn the basics behind what you are building, especially since it will be living on the web. Because of this, I geared a lot of my focus towards the Accessibility and Access section of the chapter. I feel that with digital projects, it is easy to look over some of these groups who will be viewing your sight. I think this becomes extra tricky when you incorporate interactive elements which appear to be common in digital humanities projects. I also think it is hard to gauge the accessibility of your site when you are not part of the impaired community. Therefore, I actually think this chapter brought up a great idea of running it through AI to make sure it is fully accessible. 

I chose “On Broadway” for my analysis. Instantly I see many forms of quantitative data in this project. Each segment, or street, displays data on the     number of taxi dropoffs/pickups, Instagram photos per day, median household     income, and more. Alongside this qualitative data are pictures taken on the street as well as common color schemes in these photos. This data is meant to be a snapshot of current life in the city based on human activity rather than your typical data such as square feet, population, and etcetera. In their description of the project, it is clear they did extensive research on using public databases and human created content ethically and legally. The whole point of the project is to interpret how freely accessible data is actually “talking” to us. I find data and digitization easy to spot in this project and am looking forward to analyzing it further!