Digital Methods Tool Medley

Digital Methods Summer School 2015, Amsterdam, 29 June - 10 July

Anne Helmond @silvertje

Tomás Saraceno, galaxies forming along filaments, Venice Biennial 2009

Thanks to

•  Erik Borra •  Emile den Tex

•  Bernhard Rieder

Medley?

•  a diverse assortment or mixture •  a musical composition made up of

a series of songs or short pieces

Digital Methods Initiative (DMI): new methods and tools for social and cultural research

DMI tool database

tools.digitalmethods.net

DMI tool database

tools.digitalmethods.net

Cablegate

•  Research question •  Operationalization

•  Method: often a chain of tools

The Response of the Source

Question: Do the sources acknowledge cablegate? 1.  Get all links for US embassy websites:

http://www.usembassy.gov/ 2.  Compile list of embassies mentioned in cables:

http://wikileaks.ch/cablegate.html 3.  Compare lists 4.  Query mentioned embassies for:

1.  Wikileaks 2.  "Julian Assange” 3.  Assange 4.  Cablegate

5.  Get number of cables per embassy 6.  Visualize output

Aim: get links

Tool: Link ripper

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/linkRipper/

Result: links!

Repeat & paste in spreadsheet

Tool: Triangulate

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/triangulate/

Aim: Acknowledgement of leak?

Tool: Googlescraper

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/scrapeGoogle/

Result: tagclouds (starting point for further analysis)

The nationality of rights types

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/NationalityofIssues

Search as research

[…] the point of departure of search as research, or societal search, may be summarized as follows: we look at Google results and see society, instead of Google. That is to say, including its ‘artifacts,’ engine results put much on display – from source competition and standing to longevity and commitment (Rogers 2013: 110).

Research question

Can the search engine Google be repurposed to show which rights are specific per country?

Query Google countries

.nl (Dutch), .be (Dutch, French), .com/.co.uk/.com.au/(English), .it (Italian), .ro (Romanian), .md (Moldavian), .ca (French, English), .fr (French), .de/.at/.lu (German), .fi (Finnish), .se (Swedish), .ee (Estonian), .ru (Russian)

“Query design”

“Query design” is the practice of formulating a query so the results can be interpreted as indications and findings (however clue-like), as opposed to mere information retrieved or optimization and manipulation exposed (however fascinating) (Rogers 2013, 111).

“rights” in national terminology

•  Google.se with query “rattigheter” (13.07.09) •  Google.fi with query “oikeudet” (13.07.09) •  Google.ee with query “oigused” (15.07.09) •  Google.lv with query “tiesibas” (16.07.09) •  Google.co.uk with query “rights” (13.07.09) •  Google.nl with query “rechten” (13.07.09) •  Google.fr with query “droits” (14.07.09) •  Google.pt with query “direitos” (14.07.09) •  Google.es with query “derechos” (13.07.09)

The nationalities of rights types

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/NationalityofIssues

The nationalities of rights types

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/NationalityofIssues

The nationalities of rights types

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/NationalityofIssues

Mapping the Dutch blogosphere

https://www.issuecrawler.net/

Tool: IssueCrawler

Result: network graph

IssueCrawler -> Gephi

The historical Dutch blogosphere

Source: Wayback Machine

https://web.archive.org

Aim: Get links

Tool: Harvester

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/harvestUrls/

Dutch blogosphere: active blogs Tool: Censorship Explorer

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/proxies/

Dutch blogosphere (in)active blogs

Tool: Censorship explorer

Tool: Censorship explorer

https://mappingiranonline.digitalmethods.net/

Tool: Dorling map generator

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/dorling/

Tool: Instagram scraper

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/instagram/

Result: images + (meta)data

Tool: DownThemAll!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/

Tool: DMI Twitter Capturing and Analysis Toolset (DMI-TCAT)

https://github.com/digitalmethodsinitiative/dmi-tcat

Tool: YouTube Data Tools

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/netvizz/youtube/

Tool: Netvizz

https://apps.facebook.com/netvizz/

Tool: Tracker Tracker

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/trackerTracker/

BONUS TOOLS!

Open Refine

http://openrefine.org/

Open Refine

http://openrefine.org/

Palladio Palladio is a web-based platform for the visualization of complex, multi-dimensional data.

http://palladio.designhumanities.org/

Tools from our colleagues in Paris

http://tools.medialab.sciences-po.fr/

Tool: Table 2 Net

http://tools.medialab.sciences-po.fr/table2net/

Tools from our colleagues in Milan

http://raw.densitydesign.org/

Tool: RAW

http://raw.densitydesign.org/

kthnxbai!

www.digitalmethods.net Anne Helmond @silvertje

Tomás Saraceno, galaxies forming along filaments, Venice Biennial 2009