#dhpraxisdiary Archives

#dhpraxis16 Volunteering as editor for Digital Humanities Now

In September, I attended the PressForward Workshop at CUNY GC, and it helped me a lot during my volunteering week as editor for Digital Humanities Now. The tool is very easy to use, and very powerful to engage with diverse audience. The hard part was to pick the subject: What should I nominate to be published?

Before I start, I read previous editors’ experiences on the blog, and tried to develop my own strategy: First, it should be related to the topics that we have been discussing in our digital humanities class, and second, it should cover current public debates.

Since it was the week after the election week 2016, the role of digital media during the election campaigns was still a hot topic, and on my first day I nominated Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s status update on fake news on Facebook. I personally found this discussion quite important especially in the framework of civil rights. We all know that social media is represented as a platform for freedom of speech. Then we have been witnessing deactivation of activists’ Facebook accounts, and now the claim of blocking the spread of particular views in Facebook newsfeeds. Putting everything on “algorithms” has been always an easy solution, but we should request more precise explanation from Facebook. I found just another text worth to nominate on the same day, and it was focusing on the same topic: Did social media elect Donald Trump?

On my second day, discussions on Facebook and their algorithms were still on the table. But I wanted to turn the wheels more towards digital humanities in academia, and I nominated a project from Norway, the visualization of language and identity. The project seeks answers to the following questions:

How is literature used to address and express issues of language identity in Norway?
How can a digital platform negotiate boundaries and barriers of language use and identity in ways another medium is perhaps limiting?
How can we use a digital map or timeline to show flexibility in language use boundaries in ways that acknowledge the complexities of creating boundaries of language use and identity? How are these complexities challenging assertions of homogeneity?
How can a digital platform be used to acknowledge perspectives and boundaries, such as those in a cultural, political, or colonial context, while still providing an answer to the question of how literature, through time, has contributed to a Norwegian national identity through language?

Then I stumbled upon an entry on Leonard Cohen, wanted to nominate, but when I checked the link, I saw that it was a reminder post of a library about Cohen’s books, cds, dvds, etc. in their collection. There was not any digital content, so I did not nominate. After having checked all new entries in the dashboard, I decided to nominate a content from outside: Getting started with digital security. Nowadays, especially after the election day, we have been talking about the importance of recording human rights abuses, and sharing them on social media in order to create awareness. Needless to mention, security is the core point, “If you are documenting human rights abuses, technology can put powerful people’s wrongdoings in the spotlight, or it can put you in jail.”

After the third day it got a little bit difficult. It’s hard to find relevant-interesting topic to nominate everyday. At that point, I realized it’s hard to maintain such a blog without a community, and then I totally understood the crucial role of PressForward. But also the importance of having such a digital community. So I’d like to take this opportunity to talk more about PressForward and challenges of creating a digital community, instead of keep mentioning my nominated posts.

Since June 2012, I have been voluntarily working as the digital editor of Museum Professionals Association in Turkey: www.mmkd.org.tr. The main objective is to spread national/international museological news in Turkey, and share professional knowledge. In this regard, we updated our website, redetermined categories, and also launched a blog where members can post their works, and also their interpretations about current issues. The latent goal was to create a museum community in digital. But I have to admit, it didn’t work the way it was aimed. Even each member has their personal account to upload their posts, except a few of them, they keep sending their articles, news links to me. As a volunteer, it is hard to edit all the articles: mainly changing their format into a blogpost since most of them are written as an academic paper; rewriting the news from other sources since we don’t publish copy-paste posts; finding related images because most of the members don’t send image, or just say “I don’t have any”; attributing keywords; and finally publishing it. And one more step, sharing them on social media. Even though I created a manual, and wrote down all the steps with screenshots, members did not want to be part of it. So, today, the blog is there, but it has not been updated since July 2016.

To conclude, at the end of my volunteering week as editor for Digital Humanities Now, I have conceived that digital humanities is strictly related to digital culture of the society, and it doesn’t happen overnight. So I’ll definitely introduce PressForward to the members of the Association, ask them to add it their browser’s toolbar, and retry to develop a museologist community in digital.

Image: Vando.gr

#dhpraxisdiary | Blog

#dhpraxisdiary A new category on the blog: #urbanbuzzy

A few weeks ago, I presented a part of my doctoral research at our graduate school’s, Center for Metropolitan Studies, annual conference in Berlin. Instead of talking only about theoretical framework (nor preliminary notes of my on-going field study), I aimed to display recent political cases from Turkey in order to highlight the importance of archiving born digital materials. The idea was to show some footages. In other words, during my talk, I screened short clips from three activist videos as supporting examples of my arguments. It was clear that images would talk better than I do. Indeed, they did. It was obvious in the audience’s reaction both during and after my talk. Now, I’m thinking about publishing it. But my concern is not finding the most suitable academic platform. (My research project is not there yet.) Actually, I’ve been questioning, how can I receive feedback about my talks/papers which include moving image? Especially, when image is the object, not a reference.

I’m aware that one of the most common ways to include moving image is narration. Author describes the environment, atmosphere, people, emotions, talks, etc. S/he mostly tries to benefit from the power of literature. But, seriously, today? Aren’t we in the age of digital publishing?

At this point, digital humanities appears in my mind with its huge discussion on knowledge production in digital: Social Reading. Writing-and-Sharing. Blogging-and-Social Media. Fresh New Ideas-and-On-going Discussions. Reproducing-and-Re-sharing-and-Re-discussing. Yes, this is academia. And social reading on the Internet facilitates reaching more people, especially people that you haven’t met in person yet, and collecting diversified-interdisciplinary-comments. It definitely enhances your research. Because it is beyond sending a paper to a particular email list, and hope getting some responses. Plus, emailing keeps discussion one-to-one. Social reading steers the community discussion. This is what I’m actually looking for my talks/papers: Hearing some comments. So, my new question is, how can I make this happen?

After having this question in my mind for the last few weeks by reviewing various online magazines, platforms, and blogs, I have decided to add a new category to my blog, urbanbuzzy, and post my questions about my doctoral research. -Stay tuned!-

Please, come join me, and leave your comments.
Any contribution would be appreciated.

Photo: Fatih Pınar

#dhpraxisdiary | Blog

#dhpraxis16 Documentation of urban witnessing with media archival data

Over a year, I have been conducting a research on archiving born digital materials, and my main focus is on occupy movements in Istanbul and New York, and autonomous archives. More precisely, I’m conducting a research on video activism, and their archival practices. By leaving the details of my doctoral study aside, I would like to share my (so far) unsuccessful attempt to visualize a media archival data set, and my case study bak.ma.

bak.ma is a video collective, an anonymous, autonomous, and open access digital media archive of social movements happening in Turkey. “From Gezi to Tekel workers resistance, 19 January to Hewsel, it aims to reveal the near political history of Turkey with audio-visual recordings, documentation and testimonies.” In other words, it is a way of collecting urban witnesses.

In my visualization project, my principal aim is to present the relationship between space and collective memory through visual testimonies of social movements in Turkey. Since I’m a PhD student in urban studies, I aspire to develop a digital project where one can browse all videos recorded in a city/neighborhood/street, and examine urban temporalities. In this framework, the goal is to set up a map with videos that one can play. Furthermore, the desire is to link videos through particular tags. Hence, one can continue to discover more urban temporalities in other parts of the city/in other cities, and might have the opportunity to conduct comparative analysis.

data set & methodology

bak.ma is an open to public archive. You can browse images and texts, and play videos without any registration. Signing up/logging in provides you many editorial features, such as uploading, downloading, and editing images, and adding and editing annotations. Indeed, registered users do not have access to get archival data set. Therefore, as a first step of my meta data project, I requested the archival data set from bak.ma via email. Since I know the collective members, it was easy to get in contact, and receive the data set. It is a list of 20 pages in html format, and composed of 1,022 videos.

At first gaze, it was not possible to distinguish the columns/cells in the data set, but it was pretty clear that it has its own logic. In order to discover it, I went back to archive’s website.

On the website, it is obviously seen that archive can be arranged in five dimensions: Date, categories, tags, keywords, and time of day.

From the html list I chose videoccupy as a keyword, and started to browse archive with the objective of finding its link in the data set: Is it a category, tag, or user name?

On the website, there are 29 videos categorized under videoccupy, but the data set listed videoccupy 18 times; 17 lines starting with videoccupy, and 1 mentioned in the video caption. Meanwhile, I found out on the website that the video is categorized under Gezi. So, through videoccupy keyword, I couldn’t find any direct relationship between the data set in my hand and the archive on the website.

Then I started to view the archive in different forms with the idea of “catching some relations” through different listings: View as list, as grid, with timeline, with clips, as clips, on map, and on calendar.

When I view the archive as a list, I have seen that there are further available data: Title, date, location, tags, language, and duration. Then I went back to my data set, and did a little research for “language”, and the result was null. It does not exist in there.

Then I viewed the archive on map, and I came across with a mapping similar to the one in my mind. Indeed, it was not easy to find small dots, as their sizes are directly related to the number of videos recorded in that neighborhood. Especially, finding a few videos coming from the southeastern of Turkey was impossible. And I could not.

As a result, my data set did not work. But meanwhile I discovered what I need to develop a map like the one in my mind: Date, location, and tags. My first plan is to convert the data list in html into xml / csv. I’d probably have to rewrite all data set, because there are two different data sets including the information that I need.

My next question targets to analyze archival practices: The correlation between the date of record and date of upload. I’m aware that bak.ma collects found footages, and upload them regularly. But, what is the frequency of uploading very recent videos of very recent social movements?

Last but not least, I’d be very happy to hear your comments. Since it is partly linked to my doctoral research, any contribution, in terms of research questions and/or tools, will be appreciated.

#dhpraxisdiary | Blog

#dhpraxisdiary Why are we talking about Digital Humanities?

For over a year, I’ve been thinking about digital archives. My main focus is archiving digitally born materials, and more specifically collecting urban activists’ video recordings. Since the very beginning of my research project, I’ve been reading books interrogating the concept of archive, and the impact of digital tools. In other words, I was struggling with theoretical approaches, and I had no idea about the real life. What are people doing in digital? Then I visited New York in January 2016, and thanks to my mentor in the city, got into contact with several archivists and scholars. Matthew K. Gold was one of them. I was recommended his name, because he is the co-founder of Digital Humanities at CUNY GC. Digital Humanities? Wait. What is that?

Since the minute I’ve googled Matt’s works, and texts, I got it, this would be the best place to address my questions. After having a series of email exchanges, now I am back in New York, and auditing the class of “Introduction to Digital Humanities”, lectured by Steve Brier and Lisa Rhody.

In very short, Digital Humanities “now encompasses a wide range of methods and practices: visualizations of large image sets, 3D modeling of historical artifacts, “born digital” dissertations, hashtag activism and the analysis thereof, alternate reality games, mobile makerspaces, and more.” (Lauren F. Klein, Matthew K. Gold, 2016)

Digital Humanities is strongly related to English departments. Till the first class, I kept asking myself, what is the relationship between digital and literature? Seriously. Why so obsessed? Indeed, the answer is quite simple; within the digital era, our reading experiences have been changed. Just remember the discussions emerged after epublications. Mayday! Mayday! Are printed books gonna die soon? Definitely, NO. But there is a transformation, and people from English, Literature, Linguistics, etc. are trying to discover this new period (not in a black and white perspective, but pros and cons), and also discussing the new way of knowledge production in the perspective of our new digital based experiences.

Since I arrived in New York, I have been always asked about my field study, and especially about the class. So, I decided to keep a diary on my blog by modifying the hashtag of this year’s class. (If you are interested, I definitely recommend you to follow #dhpraxis16 on Twitter.) Actually, instead of having weekly reports, I’m planning to update through various discussion topics, readings (sometimes only quotes), and projects that I stumble upon. Hope you enjoy Digital Humanities as much as I do. Or, shout out your objections. I’d love to hear your comments. Hence, we can have a discussion on the blog. Plus, it would perfectly fit in the spirit of Digital Humanities. Because it is Social-Reading and Social-Writing. I’ll talk about these topics in the up-coming posts. Stay tuned.