I have been called out of town to deal with a family health emergency, and I have lined up some people to help you through a couple video analysis activities in my absence. You are still welcome to email me with questions, but I will not hold real-time office hours this week.

Learning Goals

The learning goals for this week are

  • collect network data from video
  • collect data about speaking roles from video

Activities

On Monday, you’ll watch the pilot from Once and collect data about

  1. who talks to whom
  2. who appears in scenes with whom

On Wednesday, you’ll watch the pilot from Supergirl and collect data about

  1. the gender of the character who is speaking and for how long
  2. the race of the character who is speaking and for how long

Materials

For Monday, you’ll need some way to take notes whether on your computer, on a mobile device, or on paper. You will need to upload your notes to GitHub, even if what you upload is a picture of the data you collected on paper.

For Wednesday, you’ll need to download GenderTime for iOS or Android and bring your phone/tablet. If you don’t have a phone or tablet, bring paper and something to write with.

Key Concepts

Monday

  • network - set of relations between objects; in this class, we’re interested in social networks that are between people or other social actors (e.g., groups)
  • node - objects in a network; in today’s case, an individual (the character, not the actor)
  • edge/tie - connections between objects in a network; in today’s case, we have two different kids of ties - association and dialogue.
    • association - a tie exists between two people when they appear in the same scene; is not directed
    • dialogue - a tie exists between two people when one talks to the other; is directed

Wednesday

Review Harry Potter readings:

  • attending to words use by and about girls/boys
  • Heilman: representations obscure and justify oppressive practices
  • Hellman: plaisir - pleasure from familiar; jouissance - pleasure from being unsettled

Key features of digital humanities:

  • collaborative
  • computational
  • public
  • transmedia, multi-media
  • open
  • generative, productive
  • iterative, failure

Additional Info

Originally I had planned to introduce network analysis and then do this activity, but this order will work as well. You should check the updated Schedule for more info on what’s coming up. We are leaving text behind for a bit while we focus on analyzing and producing videos, analyzing networks, and then choosing topics for your final projects.