I plan on using Zotero to help manage my citations and Tableau Public for data visualizations in my project. First, saving sources to Zotero’s application has enabled me to keep track of useful information for my digital essay. Typically, I find myself creating a long list of links that often gets confusing and complex to refer back to. However, Zotero makes management of sources comparably easy. With its integrated Google Docs plugin feature, I canContinue reading
If I was to tell future students of DCI101 one thing, I would recommend that each student read and be ready to discuss 1-2 articles in addition to what Professor Abdoney assigns. By reading up to three articles related to the assigned topics before classes, student discussion will be more interesting, intense, and informative. Since most of this class is discussion based, I believe that it is important that each student participate in discussions withContinue reading
To create a map visualization, I used Tableau Public. This software was created by Christian Chabot, Chris Stolte, Andrew Beers, and Pat Hanrahan. They later sold the company to SalesForce. While this software is not open source, it is free to use. Tableau users can start up the software on a browser or downloaded application on any OS. To add data, enter editing mode and click the “New Data Source” icon. Upload your data inContinue reading
I chose to write about the Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia from 1788-1930. This project is an interactive map of massacre sites of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander people, colonizers, and more. While the project generally aims to raise awareness and provide information of Australia’s muddled and overlooked history, it also has four specific objectives as well. They aim to identify record sites of massacres, provide a well-structured map of the data, inform public debate aboutContinue reading
My individual meeting with Professor Abdoney was productive. First, we addressed my sources and their credibility and usefulness for my topic. I learned that some of my sources, like a New York Times article, are not necessarily credible, so I will need to find additional academic sources to support my stance. Second, we also discussed the fact that academic sources discussing the benefits and positive aspects of Deepfakes may be difficult to find. As aContinue reading
Digital Essay Proposal The topic of my project is understanding and analyzing the benefits of DeepFake technology. As I browsed articles discussing DeepFakes, their content was overwhelmingly negative. Authors consistently wrote about its harm to society, citing that the technology was abused by people interested in impersonation, blackmail, etc. While this reality is likely true, I wanted to address its underrated benefits as well. To further focus my topic, I want to ask the followingContinue reading
I decided to write my post about the Twit Lit project, created in 2017. The founder and principal investigator behind this initiative, Christian Howard-Sukhil. She is a digital humanities and postdoctoral fellow at Bucknell University, and has composed a project team of student researchers. Collectively, the team aims to collect, measure, and study the writing community of Twitter. More specifically, their source of data is the amateur tweets, as the project authors believe it isContinue reading
Data Visualizations: Google Sheets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MOd0-pGE0SpvKcVJhGMf6Dj2zZ29QFWuuC46ckZtRFI/edit#gid=0 RawGraphs: https://app.rawgraphs.io/ Crafting these data visualizations was surprisingly difficult. I found it hard to determine which graphs used which types of data (categorical or numerical). When I did make the determination, I found that I lacked much numerical data, limiting myself to a select few types of visualizations. I tried for hours to create a map of the United States, which I would use to display where each respondentContinue reading
Benefits of DeepFakes: Research Prep Brainstorming keywords: I first starting searching for my topic using keywords like “benefits of deepfakes” and “pros and cons of deepfakes.” I quickly found there were other keywords used in articles that were the result of my searches. For example, Deepfake technology is commonly referred to as “synthetic media” and “visual artificial intelligence.” The articles also commonly reference pros or benefits as “positives” and “using for good.” Sources: GoogleContinue reading
I would like to apply discursive interface analysis to reddit.com. This website is a network of communities where people can dive into a wide variety of different topics. First, the functional affordances, or design features that help users achieve goals, of Reddit primarily focus on community-related features. These include, but are not limited to, creating posts, joining communities, chatting with other users, upvoting and downvoting posts, and commenting on posts. Second, the cognitive affordances, orContinue reading
