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School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics · ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
Digital technologies have infiltrated nearly all aspects of our existence, covering each natural and cultural urge from ordering food, checking our banking details, finding a partner, or paying our taxes. Our interactions with new digital and computational technologies affect how we think of ourselves and our cultural heritage, both individually and collectively; they influence the ways in which we interact socially and politically; and, they affect how we determine public and private spaces in an increasingly connected world. Our digital legacies even outlast our lives, preserving some part of us even once we are gone. Regardless of the level of involvement, we are all living in the digital era. This course engages the students to discuss some of the key ways in which the digital has affected our lives, and what it really means. We examine different manifestations of human culture as it occurs online, pulling in examples from social media, the cultural heritage sector, even the Dark Web. We examine the ethical implications for collecting data about people, critique the ways in which information is presented and retrieved online, discuss popular trends and online behaviours, and tackle questions related to some of the less pleasant aspects of online culture. In order to do so, we need a thoughtful, ethical, critical, and interdisciplinary approach to the study and development of technology. Technology should be understood together with, and in the context of, understanding humanity. Understanding the technology alone is not enough, we need to understand how technology and humanity interact. Examples of topics and methods covered: Crowdsourcing, Social media analysis (social networking, sentiment analysis, etc), AI and ML methods and problems, Gaming and gamification, Linked Data and Knowledge Representation, Tech utopias/dystopias, Privacy and trust online, Ethics, research, data etc
Presentation on digital tools or methods (10 minutes)
Learning outcomes 1, 5
Presentation on digital project or resource (10 minutes)
Learning outcomes 1, 3, 4, 6
Plan for development of Digital Resource (1500 words)
Learning outcomes 2, 3, 4
Digital Resource (2500 words equivalent)
Learning outcomes 2, 3, 4
Class presentation ( 5 to 6 minutes)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 5, 6
130 hours of total student learning time made up from: a) 36 hours of contact over 12 weeks of weekly 3-hour seminars; and b) 94 hours of independent student research, reading and writing. Work Integrated Learning Projects Students are expected to critically evaluate not only their computational tools, but also the data they work with, and to create a new digital resource that has been thoughtfully developed with a critical understanding of how both society and technology affect it. Students typically work alone (although this could also be a group assignment) to find, access, and evaluate a data source, such as a real-world dataset from data.gov.uk. They are expected to familiarise themselves with the data, and to critically evaluate it for bias, omissions, etc. Students are then required to find a methodology or tool they can similarly critically evaluate for strengths, limitations, transparency, etc. This often requires the students to learn how to use that method or tool, so they can successfully evaluate its functionality. Students also create a digital resource, which they also need to critically evaluate in terms of the data and the methodology and their suitability. Students must create plans and write reports, as well as present on their findings. The core (transferrable)skills students acquire on this course are: Ability to apply their disciplinary knowledge to a complex problem space; ability to understand the inherent nature of data being always retrospective; to be able to discuss the subjectivities and biases (not always negative ones!) that affect the way data is collected and presented; to be able to critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their chosen digital tools and methods. Other Information No specific prior knowledge or technical skills are required, this course welcomes students from a range of diverse disciplinary backgrounds.
NA Preliminary Reading Halford, S., Pope, C. and Carr, L. (2010)A manifesto for Web Science. Erickson, John and Gradmann, Stefan (eds.) At Proceedings of the WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line Proceedings of the WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, United States. 26 - 27 Apr 2010. pp. 1-6. Hall, W., Hendler, J., & Staab, S. (2017). A manifesto for web science@ 10. arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.08291. Programming Historian - The Programming Historian is a peer-reviewed academic journal of digital humanities and digital history methodology. It publishes tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate research and teaching.