Project Ideas - Ricardo

changed due date to March 09, 2020

added Mutual help project labels

The following are some rough and quite general thoughts on my project:

I have been working for a while now on a specific form of digital text analysis. The fundamental idea is to make visible in which ways texts construct and form time(structures) by identifying and classifying each formulation and word referring to time. The aim is to be able to grasp the time-consciousness of past societies. The means to achieve this is digital text annotation (markup). With a predefined time-focused tagset texts can be annotated and the statistics evaluated. The first step is to identify the formulations concerning time in order to systematize them in a second step by choosing the matching tag. Since the tags in this case are semantic categories – they bear meaning – the process of annotation is in fact an interpretative effort (of bits and pieces) of a text. Once finished with a text this process is not visible, only the placed tags and the statistics remain. The changes and decisions leading to the concluding tag-placements and thus the underlying interpretation are gone.

Using GitLab especially the “Commits”-feature I think it could be possible to bring the underlying process of annotation to light. (But I will look also for programs maybe better suited for this.) The first step would be to choose a text and edit it in an editor suitable for GitLab. Then the annotation of this text would follow. Last but certainly not least the evaluation of the generated data on two levels would conclude the project. On two levels because there is the data resulting from the annotation but also data concerning the process which led to the resulting data. By including also the latter not only the results of an analysis are presentable but also the underlying interpretative process can be revealed and thus also becomes sharable and discussable.

The insights I hope to get from this project are mainly methodological: While experimenting with source material in digital spaces, I am aiming for a reflection on combining statistical analysis and hermeneutic processes. A combination I think is crucial when thinking about the humanities in a digitalized world.

mentioned in issue #26

In accordance with the basic insights I had in this course so far, lately I thought about the accessibility of my work and ways to share it – thus this comment is an updated version of my project. As I mentioned I have been working for a while now on a specific form of digital text analysis as part of the research project „Hybrid Temporalities. Temporal Changes 1400-1600“. At the moment texts from the author Georg Wickram are being analyzed. For this matter the program CATMA is used.

Coming back to the problem of accessibility, CATMA offers a sharing function. The texts I have prepared and the annotations can each be shared individually by entering an email address and deciding if the person should have „write“ or only „read“ access. One can see how already the first questions interlinked with hierarchy are emerging. Also the person granted access to can only view the data by signing up to CATMA (which is free but nonetheless a requirement). Its limits taken into consideration the sharing feature is crucial because of the possibility to work simultaneously on the same text.

If the aim is not so much working together but making the data one has been working on accessible to others there is another possibility – namely to export the data from CATMA. I will make the exported data available on GitLab in order to bypass choosing people who can have access individually (and incidentally also storing it). This way potentially everyone can import the data into CATMA or any other annotation program and read and write (although not simultaneously with me). A limitation in this case is the know-how, that is why I will prepare a quick guide explaining the import function and put it alongside the data on CATMA. These are some basic steps to take concerning accessibility and hierarchy.

One more thing I want to bring up is that sharing the data does not say much about what the data tells me and what I make of it. That is why in addition to the material you can find an article of mine trying to make sense of the data here. I will think about the relation of data and interpretation as my project moves on but for now I will leave it at that.

Another matter I will document and if proven relevant put on GitLab is the process of changing from CATMA 5.0 to 6.0. I have not started this change yet but I am looking forward to sharing the consequences and some reflection on how the new medium changes my work with you all.

I reorganized my project folder and added some files. Also I edited my last comment in this issues and put it into the same folder as a momentarily description of my project. The changes are pending as a merge request but should soon be available. Thanks to @patrick.gut for looking at the files if he finds the time (sorry about my late update). Looking forward to talking to you all in class tomorrow!

@all I opened up a repository for my project, more on it on Tuesday!