Digital Humanities Sessions

Please find all Digital Humanities session recordings at:

https://scds.github.io/dh-roundtable/

Title: Navigating the meanders of digital politics in the name of science: the example of online petitions to the UK’s parliament 

Abstract: Over the last decade, e-petition systems have been implemented in a variety of countries by political institutions ranging from the Scottish Parliament to the White House. Whereas the real-life impact of such initiatives has been actively debated among scholars, with some portraying them as a prime example of ‘slacktivism’, such systems are still widely popular with the public. Studying their mechanics thus remains of crucial importance even though their novelty has now waned.   

Between 2011 and 2019, over 110,000 e-petitions were submitted online to the UK’s Parliament which made available under an open license their data and metadata and provided an API for their collection, thus paving the way for prolific scientific use. Yet gathering and making sense of such voluminous, heterogeneous and complex data presents significant technical, methodological and epistemological challenges which this presentation will address so as to initiate a discussion on such issues with colleagues at McMaster in the humanities and social sciences and more broadly, with those involved in multidisciplinary digital projects.  

Bio: Géraldine Castel is an associate professor (maître de conférences) in British studies at UGA. She is co-director of the Politics, Discourse and Innovation team within the Languages and Cultures’ lab at UGA and a UGA referent for digital methods in teaching. Her main research area is British politics, and more particularly the online communication strategies of parties and candidates, as well as tools for online mobilisation. She sits on the committee of Humanistica, the international association of French speaking digital humanities and is particularly interested in data mining and data visualisation. 

Title: GIS Applications in Greek Archaeology: Measuring the Land at Metaponto  

Abstract: The Metaponto Archaeological Project is a research initiative affiliated with McMaster’s Department of Classics that is focused on reconstructing ancient settlement patterns in the territory of the Greek colony of Metaponto, located in Southern Italy. Research includes both archaeological surface survey and excavation in order to trace both the growth of the new foundation and interactions between the Indigenous population and Greek settlers. Research methods employed in the fieldwork include using GIS tools to map sites and surveyed areas, as well as remote sensing to manage excavation data. These digital tools contribute to a diachronic map of settlement patterns and land use that helps to reconstruct the growth and decline of an ancient city.  

Bio: Spencer Pope is an Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at McMaster University and co-director of the Metaponto Archaeological Project. His research is focused on reconstructing dynamics of interactions between Greeks and the Indigenous populations of Italy and Sicily. 

Title: Critical Methodological Approaches for Digital Humanities Scholarship: A Reflection 

Abstract: Working at the nexus of critical communication studies, digital scholarship, and the digital humanities across the various facets of my work, I champion approaches to digital humanities scholarship that are methodologically attuned to material, contextual, and historical specificities of digital cultures writ large. In my presentation, I elaborate and reflect on how these concepts shape my current research agenda at the intersection of critical cybersecurity studies and data justice. My presentation stems from my observations and experiences. However, I endeavour to move beyond the personal and seek opportunities to collectively foster critical methodological approaches that refute normative assumptions about what it means to do digital humanities scholarship and who gets to belong within these spaces.”

Bio: Andrea Zeffiro is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies and academic director for the Lewis & Ruth Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship.  

Title: Detecting, characterising and monitoring the emergence of proto-communities in online news analysis 

Abstract: This presentation deals with online info-communication practices in relation to current events. The growing importance of social media in the public information space has considerably increased the possibilities for opinion manipulation, particularly through a set of broadcasting accounts to which robots or humans are assigned. Often naturalised, these coordinated devices give the appearance of communities and act without the control of platforms and collective regulations. Identifying these devices is an additional reason to study collective dynamics in digital social media and integrate them into the study of info-communication practices.  

Our work consisted of producing a digital toolkit that integrated the functionalities of data collection and supervised enrichment and algorithmic exploitation of these data in order to detect, characterise and follow the emergence of proto-communities. By this we mean candidate collective structures whose specific characterisation suggests that they are actual communities or native communities. Our presentation will be based on a “sustainable development and energy transition” use case for which we are undertaking long-term monitoring work. 

Bio: Jean-Marc Francony is an associate professor (maître de conférences) in information and communication sciences at UGA. He has an Habilitation to direct research (HDR) and is in charge of the Publishing course of UGA’s master in professional studies in publishing. He is particularly interested in Web Data Mining, Social Uses and Practices of the Web and Digital Traceology. He is in charge of the Digital Data Fabrik and involved in research projects such as CLIMAX for the collection of web data, COPERNIC meant to capture, segment and structure massive flows of publications or yet Media Swell, an experimental platform to analyze the practices and social uses of online communication devices. 

Title: “Humanitarian” Communication on social network sites: Construction of a (post) colonial imaginary narrative from a gender perspective.  

Abstract: Twenty photographs taken and put up on the web (MSF net) between 2000-2020 were analysed thanks to the database building capabilities of the Access software. I will show the criteria selected for the constitution of the discriminatory categories among the photographs, then study how international humanitarian aid represents aid-receiver women on social media. The presentation will also analyse how international NGOs use photographs of women receiving humanitarian aid on social media to communicate information about the work they do and provide a digital resource where, based on various quantitative and qualitative categories, theoretical concepts that define the type of representation that NGOs make of women receiving aid can be determined. Twenty more photographs were then added to identify new constructions on different social media websites with an activist scope. These photographs, analyzed from quantitative and qualitative categories, allowed us to analyze an alternative discourse to the hegemony of NGOs. 

Bio:  Cristina Garcia Martinez is a fourth-year PhD student in Hispanic Studies at the Universite Grenoble Alpes (France) and in Gender Studies at the Rovira I Virgili University (Spain). Her thesis title is “Humanitarian aid, gender, and digital communication: women’s image on international NGO. The case of Choco, Colombia (2000-2020).” Her research is focused on gender studies and the colonial matter in humanitarian aid. She has carried out a research sojourn at the Technological University of Choco (Colombia) and has published a good number of scientific papers. She is an assistant professor at the University of Grenoble Alpes in the Foreign Languages Department and Language, Literature, and Foreign and Regional Civilizations Department since 2020.  

Title: Micro-blogging about melanoma on Instagram: info-communicational competences and the professionalised show-casing of cancer.  

Abstract: Stemming from research that focuses on the rise in the public sphere of testimonials by people with ill-health and micro-blogging practices on social media platforms, this presentation will develop an analysis of the accounts of three people with melanoma. Using both a socio and semio-discursive approach, this work will show how some social media users combine a capacity to build a story upon their experience of cancer, to develop a network that takes part in publicizing their story, and they then have it integrated into media underpinned by market logics, thus substantiating the universal dimension of its content. 

Bio: Chloé Salles is an associate professor (maître de conférences) in information and communication sciences at UGA. She is Head of studies at the Grenoble School of Journalism and International scientific cooperation officer for her lab. Her work focuses on professional identity and practices of journalists in the context of online journalism. 

Title: Data management and digital humanities: research and education. The case of Education Technology 

Abstract: On the theme of research data management, the presentation shows the alignment between the objectives of a research project and the pedagogical objectives of a Master’s degree. The Master’s degree at UGA in publishing studies includes a course dealing with issues of information engineering, architecture and mediation. This course trains students to process, enrich and make available data sets. In order to practice on a real case scenario, they participated in a digital humanities’ research project aimed at shedding light on the positioning of Ed Tech (Education technology) players in France in the spring of 2020, i.e the first Covid-19 lockdown period.  

The project’s aims are to contribute to new methodological approaches in information and communication sciences, integrating the collection and automatic processing of data, underline the evolutions visible in school education where new actors offer different pedagogical models, and identify the changes that these data processing techniques generate in the transmission of knowledge in documentation. This project is part of the work carried out by UGA’s Digital Data Fabrik, a team studying the challenges introduced by Big Data in the humanities and social sciences.  

Bio: Aude Inaudi is an associate professor (maître de conférences) in information and communication sciences at UGA. She is in charge of the Documentation course of UGA’s master in Teaching, Training and Education, and of the Documentation and Libraries’ course in UGA’s master in professional studies in publishing. Her work offers a critical approach to the use of digital technology in education, documentation and libraries as well as a focus on communication, organisational and political issues of technical and human mediation. She is PI of the the LivMed project whose goal is to change the role of books from documentary tools to mediation devices. 

Title:  Using Digital Tools to Sharpen Critical Analysis and Communication Skills in the History Classroom 

Abstract: With support from colleagues at the Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship, I have been working with various DH tools (OMEKA, JS Timeline, and Hypothes.is) in my history classes.  In this short presentation, I focus on the “why” of using these tools and lay out the learning objectives I have in mind when I ask students to learn the tech on the way to sharper, more focussed communication that blends the written word with images. I will show examples of student work completed this year in my Contemporary US History (JS Timeline) and Archival Methods (OMEKA) classes. 

Bio: Karen Balcom is an Associate Professor of History and Gender & Social Justice at McMaster University, where she is also the Academic Director (Teaching and Learning) at the Office of Community Engagement.  She is a former Paul MacPherson Teaching Fellow. She does research on the history of transnational adoption and on community-engaged pedagogy, and is always experimenting with Digital Humanities tools in the classroom.   

Title: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: Zooming Pedagogies and Queering Academia 

Abstract: Academia has been moving toward digital landscapes in an attempt to replicate in-person university experiences online. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic has made for swift shifts to the virtual that accelerate expectations that Zoom can sustain transferable academic working and learning conditions, including the performance of academic norms along with an adherence to the methodological and professional rigidity of the university. We, however, consider how Zoom offers affordances to queer academic pedagogies, especially in the digital humanities, through what we call a “networked togetherness.” Drawing on autoethnographic analyses of our use of Zoom in DH context, and particularly the chat function, as a vehicle for networked togetherness, we turn to subcultural humour, memes, emojis, and links as methods to queerly subvert both the expected uses of Zoom for academics and performing academia itself. We put ourselves in conversation with digital platform and networked studies as well as queer theory and the digital humanities, to speak to the possibilities of fostering a collective culture that acknowledges interdependence and precarity in academia through the Zoom screen amid physical and emotional distance. 

Bio: Alexis-Carlota Cochrane is a PhD Student in the Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University. Her research intersects platforms, algorithms, censorship, digital culture and data justice. Follow her Twitter for updates: @Alexis_Carlota.  

Bio: Theresa N. Kenney is a PhD Candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her research explores asexual, aromantic, and platonic relationalities in queer Asian North American cultural production. Her research can be found in Feminist Formations and decomp journal and she is a featured guest expert on asexuality in the documentary series The Big Sex Talk on CBC Gem. You can find her online @ToPoliticise. 

1. Karen Balcom (Associate Professor of History, McMaster University) and Myron Groover (Archives and Rare Books Librarian, McMaster University) on Omeka S  

2. Geraldine Castel (Associate Professor, British Studies, Universite Grenoble Alpes) on Tableau 

3. Devon Mordell (Educational Developer, Paul R. MacPherson Institute, McMaster) on Voyant Tools