«How Digital Are the Digital Humanities? An Analysis of Two Scholarly Blogging Platforms»

Cornelius Puschmann y Marco Bastos
«How Digital Are the Digital Humanities? An Analysis of Two Scholarly Blogging Platforms»
PLoS ONE 10(2): e0115035


Extracto del apartado Discussion.

«The results reported in this study can be summarized in two parts. Firstly, we found a substantial oneway dependency of DH (Digital Humanities) terms on their unprefixed counterparts, as most blog posts dedicated to DH also included references to the corresponding humanities term (89% on HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory platform) and 98% on Hypotheses). DH related labels are considerably more frequent in HASTAC pointing to an unequal adoption of Digital Humanities related terms in different local contexts. Secondly, we found a tendency in Hypotheses towards focused thematic areas representing disciplinary interests contrasted with a tendency to discuss more general, crossdisciplinary themes in HASTAC.

»In terms of institutional branches of humanities research, history is the areas with the largest number of posts across the networks for the sample of topics considered in this study. Areas that are not traditionally associated with humanities research (or institutions that support the field), i.e. library and media, also account for a considerable portion of the posts. We also found considerable topical differences between the two platforms. While traditional areas of the humanities and social sciences (History, Art, Law) are clearly represented in Hypotheses, HASTAC is topically more crossdisciplinary and less focused on single disciplines.

»Some of these topics show considerable overlap between the networks (i.e. Social Media and Data), highlighting the fact that there are areas in which users of HASTAC and Hypotheses have similar interests, while others are considerably more predominant in one of the networks. Although both networks are on the forefront of the Digital Humanities research agenda, they present considerable differences in how explicitly they use new disciplinary labels (HASTAC) and address wellestablished disciplinary themes without explicitly associating them with DH (Hypotheses).

»The differences we observed highlight that two platforms that attract broadly similar user communities may still differ considerably with regards to topics. We interpret the differences in adoption of Digital Humanities terminologies and topics across the networks to mirror different developments in DH. Whereas digital learning, digital literacy, and particularly digital scholarship are particularly prominent labels on HASTAC, Hypotheses is mostly focused on digital libraries, digital history, and digital archives.

»These differences are of qualitative and quantitative nature reflecting not just the personal preferences of bloggers and users, but may also indicate broader conceptual differences. While blog posts in HASTAC tend to raise issues suitable for (controversial) discussion, contributions in Hypotheses more closely mirror traditional expository humanities genres (e.g. book chapters or essays). Moreover, while HASTAC is a social network in which users can create profiles and interact with other users by posting and commenting on content, Hypotheses is a publishing platform with lesser emphasis on community building than HASTAC, and a closer alignment with traditional genres of publishing.

»The content of each network also presents considerable variation in terms of formats and style. The prominence of Topic #12 (Chatter) in HASTAC indicates that HASTAC’s blog entries are conceptually more like casual conversation rather than academic writing. As blogs serve different purposes for different users, the data necessarily includes posts of different genres comprising of short essays, conference reviews, book reports, group discussions, and general academic advertising. While HASTAC and Hypotheses are interdisciplinary in character, they have a strong slant towards the humanities, particularly towards learning and digital media on HASTAC, and specifically towards history on Hypotheses. Common to both networks is the small proportion of users producing the large majority of the content, which leads to a typical longtail distribution of content within the platforms.

»In the last instance, the results reported in this study show that the variety of terms and topics associated with DH is locally configured and reflects different conceptualizations of what constitutes DH. We expect this study to be informative for future research grappling with the rapid establishment of DH in humanities departments. At any rate, it will be interesting to follow the ongoing maturation of both platforms and their respective approaches to scholarly blogging, as well as the different conceptualizations of Digital Humanities scholarship in North American and European contexts.»