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Week 12: The Future of Digital Humanities; Research Methods Workshop

Quinn WarnickApril 9, 2015Weekly Updates

Our conversations in class this week were excellent — thank you to Andrew and Kevin for their discussion prompts, and to all of you for engaging with the chapters we’ve read. Next week, we’ll conclude our discussion about “future trajectories” in the digital humanities, and we’ll spend a day experimenting with different tools for analyzing research data. Here’s a quick overview of our plans:

On Tuesday, we’ll review pp. 255–306 in Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities, and (if time allows) I’ll share a conference presentation I gave last year that deals with digital methods.
On Thursday, we’ll dedicate the entire class session to an “early findings workshop” for your Research Projects. Please come to class ready to explore whatever data you’ve collected thus far. (Translation: bring your laptop and make sure you have some artifacts, interviews, field notes, etc., to work with.)

By the end of Week 13 (April 24), you should be completely done collecting data for your research project; please plan accordingly. If you’re worried that this won’t be possible, come see me during office hours (T 2–5, W 9–12) or email me to arrange for another meeting time.

Rhetoric as Digital Pedagogy / Digital Pedagogy as Rhetoric
Doug Eyman's entry on "rhetoric" in the new MLA collection, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities.
How Facebook’s Algorithm Suppresses Content Diversity (Modestly) & How the Newsfeed Rules the Clicks
Zeynep Tufekci explains what Facebook's recent Science article really means: "[T]his study confirms that for this slice of politically-engaged sub-population, Facebook’s algorithm is a modest suppressor of diversity of content people see on Facebook, and that newsfeed placement is a profoundly powerful gatekeeper for click-through rates. This, not all the roundabout conversation about people’s choices, is the news."
I Read All the W3C Specs
Sanders Kleinfeld's great analysis of some incredibly dense, technical documents.
Digital Activism: Relationships and Stories
Jeff Swift: "Digital media allow activist communities to spread their stories farther and faster than they could otherwise, but studies of digital activism repeatedly suggest that this capability doesn’t necessarily create an entirely new kind of activism."
Pipeline Information Network
Created by a class of Virginia Tech students. Great case study in online advocacy.
Carly Fiorina failed to register this domain.
Digital rhetoric in action: "Carly Fiorina failed to register this domain. So I'm using it to tell you how many people she laid off at Hewlett-Packard."
The Bot Bubble: Click Farms Have Inflated Social Media Currency
Doug Bock Clark, in the New Republic: "Click farms jeopardize the existential foundation of social media: the idea that the interactions on it are between real people. Just as importantly, they undermine the assumption that advertisers can use the medium to efficiently reach real people who will shell out real money. More than $16 billion was spent worldwide on social media advertising in 2014; this money is the primary revenue for social media companies. If social media is no longer made up of people, what is it?"
Slack Off
Amanda Hess covers the hot new office communication tool, Slack, in Slate: "Given Slack’s knack for producing procrastination—Slack, it turns out, is not just a clever name—it’s not immediately clear why companies would be eager to get their workers on board. But Slack’s gamification of the workplace functions like a clever trap: Work is so fun, you never want to leave."
Watch Me Write This Article
Chadwick Matlin reports on James Somers's new app, Draftback: "It’s a fascinating experiment that treats writing like data. After years of trying to build a program, Somers realized that Google Docs was already saving every keystroke we enter. So he hacked Google Docs to play documents back to their authors, materializing on the screen with every stutter-step inherent to the writing process."
Taking Steps
Eric A. Meyer gets "Step Nined" on Facebook: "The things we build are almost always meant to make things faster, more efficient, easier. Perhaps, sometimes, they should be harder."
It’s Kind of Cheesy Being Green
Paul Ford, on the consequences of Apple's subtle (and petty?) choices: "Apple uses a soothing, on-brand blue for messages in its own texting platform, and a green akin to that of the Android robot logo for people texting from outside its ecosystem.... There are all sorts of reasons for them to use different colors.... However, one result of that decision is that a goofy class war is playing out over digital bubble colors. Their decision has observable social consequences."
I Turned Caps Lock on for a Week and Everyone Hated It
Kashmir Hill reports on an interesting experiment: "Typing in all caps is perceived as an accident, an affront or a call for help. Typing in ALL CAPS arouses strong emotions in people. I know. I USED ALL CAPS FOR A WEEK AND PEOPLE HATED IT."
The Danger of Reading the Comments
Betsy Woodruff reports on new research about online health discussions: "So what’s a public service announcer to do when competing with cyberspace’s hordes? For starters, said Berger, don’t ban comments. People are going to find ways to opine, and trying to keep them from doing so is a Sisyphean task. Plus, announcers who ban comments are missing an opportunity, as good comments can boost a PSA’s impact. So instead of preventing responses, groups like the CDC should look for ways to encourage their supporters to post positive responses"
Twitter Jokes and the Philosophical Origins of Humor
Gene Buonaccorsi, in the Atlantic: "As people continue to develop a sort of collective literacy of the tweet as a narrative form, Twitter’s uses and styles are evolving into an entirely new dialect. Except maybe it’s not entirely new. While the platform has created new subtextual categories for communicating, Twitter often showcases classic philosophical theories of humor in action. In other words, the platform is new but the narrative structure is ancient."
They Feel "Blessed"
Jessica Bennett on the #blessed trend: "There’s nothing quite like invoking holiness as a way to brag about your life. But calling something “blessed” has become the go-to term for those who want to boast about an accomplishment while pretending to be humble, fish for a compliment, acknowledge a success (without sounding too conceited), or purposely elicit envy."