Monica Bulger's thoughts about digital literacy » digital humanities http://monicabulger.com The Search Myth: Quality Information is Not a Click Away Tue, 08 May 2012 08:01:57 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Teaching & Learning with Digital Tools in the Humanities http://monicabulger.com/2012/01/teaching-learning-with-digital-tools-in-the-humanities/ http://monicabulger.com/2012/01/teaching-learning-with-digital-tools-in-the-humanities/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:58:06 +0000 Monica http://monicabulger.com/?p=1051 During graduate school, I participated in an experimental seminar, “Literature+: Cross-Disciplinary Models of Literary Interpretation,” taught by Alan Liu. He asked students to form groups around topics of their choosing and perform analyses using digital tools on their materials. Most students shared similar research interests and organized their projects around a content-based theme. Our group represented four different disciplines and formed around our interest in digital tools, rather than content. Professor Liu created a toybox of links to various textual analysis tools that generated visualizations, translations, data about word counts, etc. Each of us took a tool in which we were to become “expert,” and applied that tool to data we had collected for our research.
In our recently published book chapter, “Interdisciplinary Knowledge Work: Digital Textual Analysis Tools and Their Collaboration Affordances” our motley team discusses how we applied these digital tools to our research goals and collaborative work. The most important lesson our collaborative experience taught us is that working together both pushed us and liberated us to experiment with our data and methods. In fact, much like our visualizations provide a big picture view of the texts we study, the multidisciplinary nature of our process forced us to step back and view our research at a macro-level. Although our collaboration began as a class project, playing together with technologies led each of us to new and significant understandings of our texts.

]]> http://monicabulger.com/2012/01/teaching-learning-with-digital-tools-in-the-humanities/feed/ 0 Social Dimensions of Humanities Research http://monicabulger.com/2011/04/social-life-of-humanities-research/ http://monicabulger.com/2011/04/social-life-of-humanities-research/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2011 07:00:13 +0000 Monica http://monicabulger.com/?p=927 Eleven years after Brown & Duguid (2000) released their Social Life of Information, we find that even in humanities, a field that typically conjures an image of a lone scholar toiling in dusty archives, the process of research is very much a social endeavor. Last week, in collaboration with the Research Information Network, we released Reinventing Research? Information Practices in the Humanities, a study of 54 humanities scholars across disciplines such as history, English, and philosophy in 25 institutions in 5 countries. Through interviews, focus group discussions, and web history logs, we examined their use of information, dissemination practices, and collaborative activities.

The scholars we interviewed described the tradition of collaboration within their respective disciplines. Unlike the sciences, in which research frequently involves large teams and multi-authored articles, collaboration in the humanities is more nuanced. One of our case studies, The Digital Republic of Letters, traces correspondences during the Enlightenment. These correspondences include letters from Descartes, Van Gogh, and Grotius, among others. The centuries-old collaboration methods examined by this group underlie current practice. Then, letters sent back and forth reported, unpacked, tested, and developed theories. Sound familiar? The description could easily be applied to e-mail, seminars, conference presentations, or hallway discussions. Research then and now begins with the sharing of ideas.

While not overtly collaborative in the scientific practice of the term, humanities scholars engage in research that “is done in conversation.” In addition to the above examples, scholars engage this conversation through their work in archives, when they prepare materials to be digitally accessed, when they report on rare materials, making previously obscure knowledge available to a larger public. They support each other in their work by talking through ideas and texts, presenting preliminary ideas that later become papers or monographs. Primarily, their research practices are source-intensive, but the sense-making process is very much accomplished in community.

]]> http://monicabulger.com/2011/04/social-life-of-humanities-research/feed/ 0 Affinity-based browsing http://monicabulger.com/2010/02/affinity-search/ http://monicabulger.com/2010/02/affinity-search/#comments Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:33:27 +0000 Monica http://monicabulger.com/?p=488 Yesterday, I attended the RoSE Design Charrette, hosted by the Transliteracies Project at UCSB. Under Alan Liu’s guidance, many interesting, innovative interdisciplinary projects have emerged from this program.

In anticipation of attending, I read the online description of RoSE. Like seeing a movie preview, I started to imagine what I thought RoSE would be. I hoped for an improvement on current content delivery systems, in particular, I wanted something that could ease the challenge of finding high-quality information online. A couple years ago, I had a conversation with one of Transliteracies’ project members, Pablo Colapinto. As most good conversations happen, this one was over lunch and I was expressing my dissatisfaction that we weren’t living like the Jetsons yet, in particular, how they could tell their computer what they wanted to eat and it would appear on a conveyor belt.

jetsonsAs our conversation continued, Pablo asked me, “How would you like your information served?” This question has stuck with me, because it seems so necessary and practical, and yet doesn’t seem to be addressed by current systems. Why, when engaging in search or any use of the Internet, can’t the user filter information according to demographics or other preferences?

To a certain extent, online advertising practices provide a model for this type of targeted content delivery. Using psychographic (e.g., attitudes or opinions), sociographic (e.g., purchasing behaviors) and demographic (e.g., age, ethnicity, location) data, advertisers create profiles of specific types of users. Online user behaviors are culled by Google Analytics, Facebook Connect, and many others. Our offline data is also collected and connected to our online behaviors. Offline data aggregators include Acxiom, Experian, and TargusInfo. Combining data about what we buy with information about what websites we frequent, advertisers put us into affinity segments, which are basically groupings that reflect our behaviors and preferences. For example, someone who recently purchased a BMW and read TripAdvisor reviews for the Sofitel is likely to be put in the luxury segment. Likewise, someone who booked a Disney vacation and researched vaccination information would probably get categorized into a parenting segment. Using behavioral data of others in the same affinity segment, advertisers can predict the types of ads likely to interest you.

The problem here, of course, is that it’s creepy for our browsers or search engines to start targeting content delivery based on behaviors/preferences we’re not 100% aware are being collected. However, if so much data is being collected about me, I’d like to use it to make my life easier. There’s an obvious tension between privacy and convenience.

The process could be transparent. I could set my browser or search engine preferences to deliver information based on my preferences. Just like ordering a sandwich, where you get a list and tick the boxes you’d like, I’d like a preferences option with drop-downs where I could say how I want my information delivered.  I could finally have the option of filtering for the types of websites I’ll actually read.

Given the data that Google and others collect, it seems completely possible for me to enter my age, location (although I think Google already knows this), and an interest, say ‘teaching’ into a Google search and the search engine could target its results based on what others with my similar preferences selected. The results would be similar to Amazon’s “people who purchased this book also bought…” or “people who viewed this page ended up…” In essence, I could be served the information I want using filters based on information Google already collects, and using affinity segmenting to determine what I might like based on the behaviors of others with my shared filters. I think to a degree this already happens, but is often apparent in ads/sponsored links (and the process isn’t transparent), rather than actual content filtered on projected usefulness/relevance.

These preference filters could sit on top of existing search algorithms. For example, when I search for Gran Torino, my preference filters would indicate that I’m interested in teaching, so I’d be served content based on what others interested in teaching viewed in relation to Gran Torino. Ideally, instead of getting all search results related to the film, I would receive listings targeted toward classroom use or discussions related to education. At the very least, perhaps search results could be filtered based on what others in my affinity group viewed, so it would prioritize reviews, places to purchase, etc., that I’m most likely to visit and save me a bit of sifting.

Borrowing the model of affinity marketing, by categorizing myself based on preferences, I could benefit from the collective behaviors of people with shared interests. This preference filter would make the current obtuse practice transparent and adds convenience to my search.

Joseph Turow addressed a potential downside of targeted information delivery in his lecture “When the Audience Clicks: Buying Attention in the Digital Age” presented at the Oxford Internet Institute. There’s a danger that once my Google searches and news viewing starts to be delivered according to my preferences, I limit myself to only viewing information tailored to me. Potentially, as targeting becomes more sophisticated, we may lose the breadth of information currently provided by newspapers, television, and our expansive searches, and only receive information that confirms our beliefs or supports our preferences. While to a certain extent, current media options already allow us this option (e.g., Fox News), we may further limit ourselves as content delivery becomes more targeted.

So, how to tame the super-sized information portal that is the Internet without sacrificing the breadth and choice we love? I’d like a balance between sifting through a mountain of results to find a few relevant links and restricting myself from broader views based on preferences I select. Seems possible. Perhaps we don’t need to keep the filters on all of the time, but they’d be there when we need them.

As it turns out, RoSE addresses issues of humanities scholarship, namely, identifying relationships between authors and their work. While it didn’t fulfill my Jetsons’ fantasy of chocolate cake on demand, it did prompt me to dream for a bit and envision the type of search I’d like to use.

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