The readings this week highlighted a principle which had been dancing the edges of my periphery concerning digital history. That in order to incorporate a new method or technique into ones method of doing history there necessitates a shift from attention elsewhere. This shift of attention can be something groundbreaking like the ability to crunch large amounts of data in relatively short amounts of time to produce historical change over time at a scale never before dreamed of. Or something less revolutionary (but still important) like the ability to house historical citations in software like Zotero. Regardless of the degree of radical-ness the incorporation of digitization and use of large amounts of data with the help of computers has meaningfully changed how historians approach their work.
Laura Putnam’s article in The American Historical Review entitled “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast” draws on both the causes for excitement and potential pitfalls of this shift. Her linkage of historians turn to digital sources highlights the explosion of transnational research now available at the fingertips of scholars. Digitization has created the ability for what she describes “side-glancing and borderless term-searching,” which are essentially ways that historians can both interact and connect with sources in ways that allow scholars to ask new questions (Putnam, 380). Beyond the quickness of retrieving this information and the international outlook she also emphasizes the boon to searching, being able to trace individuals or microhistories and effectively. Yet this sort of searching has the potential to be a double sword. Putnam mentions several pitfalls to be wary of from problematic methodology (cherry picking, not citing data sources) to what is lost when the historian does not physically go to the archives (archivist knowledge, in country experiences), to the implications of power (what gets digitized and why), decontextualization, and more. Putnam’s article, I think successfully weighs importance of the benefits and traps of digitization, it gave me a lot to think about (and the title of this blog post.)
Meanwhile, Johnathan Blaney’s article “A Culture of Non-Citation” felt almost like a zooming in of what Putnam could have easily listed as one of the hazards of increased digitalization. It goes to the failure to have a full discussion on methods of digitization, standardize citation, and teaching of how to use digital sources appropriately. Before I moved on to the final two articles, I admit dear reader, I decided to skip ahead and explore the two databases linked in Module 2.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database created a real wow moment for me in terms of understanding some of the power that digitization has on visualization. The time-lapse visual over the course of just a few minutes created an incredibly memorable and effective way to see data. It was clean, direct, and purposeful and quite frankly one of the best (and smoothest) displays of digital history I have ever seen. To be fair, that list is quite small, but still it gave me an understanding of the power of using data and digitization in this field. It was like an alchemical transmutation of data into visualization and as such fascinating. The last two articles were useful in comprehending the size of data and the distinction of “smart” data and “big” data, but I felt the in-class exercised showed me just how tedious working with data could be.
The technical activity we did in class was to fiddle with the application OpenRefine. Having loaded a data set we fumbled around with faucets and filters until Kenzie helped walk our group through the finer points of how to extract what we wanted to know. One big lesson I’ll walk away with is how easy it was to dismiss or forget the fact that we were looking records of those who had died. I found myself joking about the spelling of the word “consumpcon” for consumption without really feeling the weight of the meaning as cause of death. It didn’t weigh on me until later how morbid that was that I forgot the little flattened piece of information mitigated through my screen and an application was describer for a human being who had perished. That thin piece of shame I felt for failing to have compassion reminded me of S. L. Ziegler’s piece about being good data brokers. Ziegler’s suggestion is that empathy is a powerful and necessary tool against the de-personalization of digitization and I am going to try to be alert to that in the future.
6 replies on “Distant Reading Vs Deep Maps”
Hi Jess,
I know we’ve talked about this recently, but I really did love your finishing paragraph when talking about the insensitive approach we’ve taken towards those lost to consumption in our activity. It’s so very interesting to recognize this because as historians, we’ve been trained to emplore empathy and compassion whenever possible. Just today I was messaging you about a newspaper article from the 1940’s that really made me think, but now I can’t help, but wonder what the psychology is behind looking at a newspaper with this sense of compassion over these data sets. Maybe it’s because the data sets themselves have lost their “touch” of human nature as they appear to just be numbers on a screen, or maybe there’s a deeper meaning behind how we interact with each other online somewhere in the mix.
This is just a long-winded way of saying thank you for pointing that out. It really puts this type of digital history and digitization in a different perspective for me.
Hi Jess,
Your blog is thought-provoking, highlighting areas of concern with the down-fall methods historians may use with digital data. One area of concern is within African American history. Historians who cherry-pick information and fail to use appropriate citations can dilute the importance of historical events. As we all are aware, Black history has often been limited, or erased. However, a greater awareness with historical documents, such as the Registered Free Negro Papers has opened an area previously unknown. It is also true that African American and Native history is examined more in-depth than others. Mainly, because the narrative has been written by the victor. But with Black/Native past events, oral or spiritual/cultural practices are ignored. However using a side-glance in historical research provides a deeper understand of these cultures. Sadly, some historians may not want to take the time to search for primary or secondary source data to include oral histories.
Hi Jess. You bring up some good points about the readings and lecture that I hadn’t thought about. I think you’re right in that we need to really think about the data we are working with and the people it represents. This means having a deeper degree of empathy for the people whose oftentimes morbid or horrific experiences make up that data. While digital databases like SlaveVoyages are powerful tools that make sense of a global phenomenon, they do not replace the brutal experiences of the people the data represents. As Putnam points out, there is something lost by simply looking at digitized resources without physically being in a space. When it comes to creating datasets like SlaveVoyages, I think it is the duty of the historian to establish real connections with the communities the data set represents, for it is only then that we can disconnect the numbers from real experience.
I think your discussion in your last paragraph respresent my own issues with analyzing data in the way we do. It depersonalizes it and removes the context. I know not all data does that but I think this is where we need to be creative about how we present the data. One of the most powerful digital presentations I’ve seen is called the Fallen of World War II. It presents the deaths in a very data driven fashion but as he speaks and his visuals change it gives the numbers a pretty large emotional punch. What I hope we all learn from this course is how to take the raw emotionless data and turn it into projects that bring back the humanity to data analysis.
Hi Jess!
I gotta agree with Kenzie about your final paragraph. I sadly didn’t even think about that fact that these individuals in the database had died of consumption. And as Kenzie said, as historians we are trained to emphasize with our research and them data we are looking at because 9/10 it is about real people who experienced something tragic, such as the pain of dying from consumption. Thank you for bringing up that point because it has now reminded me to not just view the data as numbers and names, but as real people who existed.
Hi Jess,
Your post is thought-provoking, highlighting areas of concern with the down-fall methods historians may use with digital data. One area of concern is within African American history. Historians who cherry-pick information and fail to use appropriate citations can dilute the importance of historical events. As we all are aware, Black history has often been limited, or erased. However, a greater awareness of historical documents, such as the Registered Free Negro Papers has opened an area previously unknown. It is also true that African American and Native history is examined more in-depth than other histories. Mainly, because the narrative has been written by the victor, and in most cases, oral or spiritual/cultural practices are the side-glance of history. Some historians may not want to take the time to search for primary or secondary source data.