Digital Methods Tool Medley

Crash Course Digital Humanities, Amsterdam, 22 October 2015.

Dr. 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 lists4. Query mentioned embassies for:

1. Wikileaks2. "Julian Assange”3. Assange4. Cablegate

5. Get number of cables per embassy6. 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 issue networks

https://www.issuecrawler.net/

Starting points: blogroll from RealClimate.orgTool 1: Linkripper (get all links)Tool 2: IssueCrawler (map issue networks)

Mapping issue networks

Climate change blogs network

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 blogsTool: 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/

Script: download.sh

https://github.com/digitalmethodsinitiative/various/blob/master/download.sh

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

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

Tool: DMI-TCAT

Tool: DMI-TCAT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex97eoorUeo

Tool: YouTube Data Tools

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

Tool: YouTube Data Tools

Tool: YouTube Data Tools

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/

PalladioPalladio 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/

Gephi: The Open Graph Viz Platform

https://gephi.github.io/

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/

Videos and tutorials

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEr-xMU78XORzBKII6NGGAQ/videos

kthnxbai!

www.digitalmethods.netDr. Anne Helmond @silvertje

Tomás Saraceno, galaxies forming along filaments, Venice Biennial 2009