Data Visualisation June 2020
Tutors: Jonathan Blaney, Gabriel Bodard, Christopher Ohge, Naomi Wells
- This online workshop will use a mix of real-time and asynchronous teaching to introduce participants to a range of text and data visualisation tools and methods. We will work hands-on with online resources such as Voyant Tools, Tableau Public, and Raw Graphs, and discuss some of the issues and implications of visualisation in academic work and media more broadly. This event is targeted to research students and early career researchers, but all are welcome; booking is essential. Please commit to attending all three sessions. The workshop will involve sessions at 2-3pm on Wednesday June 10, Thursday June 11, and Thursday June 18, with individual and group work to be carried out in between.
Thank you for registering for the Data visualisation for Ancient and Modern History, Languages and Literature workshop jointly run by the IMLR, IHR, IES and ICS at the University of London. This training will be offered over three separate short meetings at 2pm (UK time), on Wednesday and Thursday next week and the following Thursday. It is essential that you commit to attending all three sessions, and to doing at least a couple of hours of preparation and practice between the sessions; there will also be group work and discussion.
All of the exercises involving Voyant Tools, Tableau Public and RawGraphs will involve the online versions of these tools. If you want a slightly more stable version of the tool (and to be prepared in case websites are down or similar) you may optionally install the desktop version of Voyant (https://github.com/sgsinclair/VoyantServer) and/or a 14-day free trial of Tableau (https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/products/desktop/download).
- Johanna Drucker (2011). “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display,” Digital Humanities Quarterly (2011). Available: http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html
- Risam, R. (2019). “Beyond the Migrant ‘Problem’: Visualizing Global Migration.” Television & New Media 20(6), 566–580. Abstract: https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419857679
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- Voyant Videos
- Miriam Posner's quick Voyant tutorial.
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In one tab, go to https://voyant-tools.org.
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In another tab, open the folder of Melville texts on the github repo at https://github.com/SASDigitalHumanitiesTraining/Visualisation/tree/master/datasets/melville_texts.
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We will divide into four groups:
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Group 1: Early Melville. Download (make sure to click on the Raw button before downloading) melville_typee.txt, melville_omoo.txt, and mardi.txt. Navigate to the folder in which you downloaded the texts; the folder, hold down the command or Windows button to select all three texts. Visualise in Voyant by clicking Upload.
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Group 2: Mid-career Melville. Download (make sure to click on the Raw button before downloading) melville_moby-dick.txt, melville_pierre.txt, and melville_confidence-man.txt. Navigate to the folder in which you downloaded the texts; the folder, hold down the command or Windows button to select all three texts. Visualise in Voyant by clicking Upload.
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Group 3: Melville the poet. Download (make sure to click on the Raw button before downloading) melville_battle-pieces.txt, melville_late-poems.txt. Navigate to the folder in which you downloaded the texts; the folder, hold down the command or Windows button to select all three texts. Visualise in Voyant by clicking Upload.
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Group 4: Melville's last work. Download (make sure to click on the Raw button before downloading) billy-budd.txt. Visualise in Voyant by clicking Upload.
- Each group should write up some initial impressions of what kinds of themes and ideas might be showing in these groups of texts.
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Did you edit the stop words list? (Did you notice any stop words in the results?)
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What word trends did you find compelling?
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List and take note of three prominent word linkages (hint: use the Links and/or Terms Berry feature).
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What collocates distinguished themselves in the text?
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Did keywords-in-context searches of high-frequency terms change your mind about themes and ideas?
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Export your results (or one of your individual visualisations) to a URL and post the link to the Workshop Forum.
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Have a look now at this visualisation of all of Melville's texts.
- Do the results surprise any of you, given your attention to a selection of texts before?
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