Week 2
Examining Multimodal Research and Communication: A Creative Introduction
New Media and DH
As we saw last week, there are many different ways to define the digital humanities. One aspect of this debate concerns the relationship between the traditional and digital humanities. Whereas some scholars see a divide, others see the relationship between the two as a "spectrum," arguing that "all humanities scholars use digital practices and concepts to one degree or another" (Lincoln Mullen, 2010). On one end of this spectrum are scholars who use basic digital tools and resources, such as word processing programs and Google. On the other end are those who use computational methods in their research and/or produce scholarship that is "interactive," "hypertextual," "virtual," "networked" and/or "simulated." For an introductory discussion of these terms, read and collaboratively annotate Martin Lister et al., "New Media and New Technologies" in New Media: A Critical Introduction, Second (London: Routledge, 2009), 9-44. Hypothes.is link.Evaluating DH Projects
The project, as Anne Burdick et al. explain in the embedded excerpt, is the "basic unit" of DH scholarship. Because DH projects are both "continuous" and "discontinuous" with traditional forms of humanities scholarship, they need to be evaluated based on their humanistic merits (i.e. use of evidence, argumentation, etc. ) and digital merits. Some questions to consider when evaluating the digital merits of a project include:- How is the project set up?
- Who runs it, and who are its stakeholders?
- What are its assets, structure, services and displays (technical definitions of these terms can be found here)? What values seem to be encoded in these elements?
- Who is the audience for this project? Does the audience already exist or does the project create a new community?
