{"id":19817,"date":"2018-08-03T08:45:44","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T12:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mith.umd.edu\/?p=19817"},"modified":"2020-10-08T15:59:17","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T19:59:17","slug":"little-big-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mith.umd.edu\/little-big-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Big Data"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past spring Purdom Lindblad<\/a> and I<\/a> had the opportunity to participate in several praxis oriented sessions involving social media data collection and analysis for Matt Kirschenbaum<\/a>‘s Introduction to Digital Studies<\/a> (MITH 610). We thought that some of the details of how we went about doing this work could be interesting to share with a wider audience, and also wanted to begin a short series of posts that showcases the work that some students generated during the class.<\/p>\n

MITH 610<\/a> introduces students to current topics and critical issues in the field of Digital Studies. MITH itself functions not just as a space for the class, but also as a laboratory for experimenting with digital methods, and getting acquainted with people on campus (and in the DC area) who are doing work in the digital humanities.<\/p>\n

For example this past Spring MITH 610 was broken up into 3 modules: Reimagining the Archive, Media Archaeology and Data Stories. In the Data Stories module we worked with students to understand how social media APIs operate, and explored how to do data collection and documentation while being guided by the principles of Advocacy by Design<\/a>. Advocacy by Design centers ethical questions of why<\/em> we are interested in pursuing particular sets of research questions in order to better understand how<\/em> we carry out the research, interpret our findings, and speculate about possible futures that they entail. These conversations compel us to ask how people are represented in, or are subjects of, academic work. Who reads and uses our work? Who collaborates and contributes to our work? Providing a welcoming and collaborative space for asking these questions is a central part of MITH’s vision for digital studies at UMD, which you can also see reflected in its core values<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One somewhat mundane, but never the less significant, challenge we often face when working as a group with different technologies is what we call The Laptop Problem<\/em>. Fortunately, students come to class with a computer of some kind. It’s almost a given, especially in a field like digital studies. On the plus side this means that students arrive to class already equipped with the tools of the trade, and we don’t need to manage an actual set of machines for them to use. However on the down side everyone comes with a slightly different machine and\/or operating system which can make it very difficult for us to craft a single set of comprehensive instructions for. Much time can be lost time simply getting everyone set up to begin the actual work.<\/p>\n

We were also stymied by another problem. In introducing social media data collection we wanted to go where the Digital Humanities generally (and wisely) fears to tread: The Command Line<\/a>. In the previous Media Archaeology module, students examined and experimented with MITH’s Vintage Computing<\/a> collection, which involved working directly with older hardware and software interfaces, and reflecting on the affordances that they offer. If you are curious about what this involved here’s a short Twitter thread by Caitlin Christian-Lamb that describes (with some great pictures) some of her work in this module:<\/p>\n

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SO media archeology week for @umd_dsah<\/a> MITH 610: Introduction to Digital Studies with @mkirschenbaum<\/a> happened like 2 weeks ago, but I\u2019ve been 2 Busy 2 Tweet, so here is a thread sharing many pictures and videos of using 1980s computers:<\/p>\n

— Caitlin Christian-Lamb (@christianlamb) April 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n