In working with digitized materials, there can be a variety of information contained in any collection of data. There is not one digital tool alone that can fully reveal all of the information contained in a data set. Different digital tools such as text mining/topic modeling, mapping, and networks and visualizations, each reveal a different part of the information contained within one set of data.
In my personal work with digital tools, the data set I used came from the WPA Salve Narratives, which was a collection of interviews of former slaves conducted between the years 1936-1938 as part of the Federal Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration. I used this same data set for each of the different tools to conduct a text analysis with Voyant 2.0, mapping with kelper.gl, and a network analysis with Palladio. Using each of these different tools, reveal something different about the text that was unique to that particular tool.
Text Analysis with Voyant 2.0:
Text analysis is used to reveal certain patterns or themes found in the actual text of a set of information, such as the most common words used, the use of certain terms, and patterns of word use. These patterns all related to the use of different words contained in a set of texts. For the WPA Slave Narratives, this involved looking at the text of the actual interviews that was recorded. Voyant used several different tools to reveal the patterns of word use contained in the text. The patterns included how many times certain words were used, what words were unique to certain states, and the location of certain words within the text. All of these tools analyzed the physical text of the WPA Slave Narratives.
Mapping with kepler.gl:
Mapping can be used with information that relates to a specific geographical locations. This is information in a digital source that deals with specific places. This tool allows the different locations to be placed on a map to discover and analyze different relationships and trends within a collection of geographical data. This involves collecting data about different location from a digital source. For the WPA Slaves Narratives, the different locations collected were where the interview was conducted, and where the person interviewed was enslaved. Kepler.gl can be used to create a variety of different types of maps, such as point, cluster, heat, time, category, and network maps, to analyze a collection of geographical data. Each of the different types of maps allow for the discovery and analysis of different relationships and trends within a set of data. For the WPA Slave Narratives, the maps revealed trends in the location of different categories of the interview such as, what type of slave the person interviewed was, where the highest amount of interviews took place, and a comparison between the interview took place and where the person interviewed was enslaved.
Network Analysis with Palladio:
Network analysis is used with information in a digital source about different sets of relationships. These relationships can be between different people, different places, different time periods, or different objects that are in some ways connected to each other. Networks and visualization tools can reveal details of the nature of different relationships between different items. Palladio creates a series of cluster graphs that are based on different networks described in a series of data. This involves collecting certain characteristics contained in a data set. Some of the characteristics I looked at for the WPA Slave Narratives were, who the interviewer was, where the interview took place, where the person interviewed was enslaved, the sex of the person interviewed, what type of slave the person interviewed was, and the age of the person interviewed. Different characteristics were compared against each other to discover and analyze the relationship between them.
Each one of the three different tools was used to reveal something different about a common digital source. Individually, each tool can be used to analyze and evaluate one aspect of a source. When they are used together, they allow for a much more complete picture of the source as a whole. For the WPA Slave Narratives that I used, using all three tools revealed how complex and rich with information this source is for studying the lives of former slaves in the United States.
