As part of the Digital Humanities Open Office Hours series, the NULab and Digital Scholarship Group co-hosted the lightning talks event “Digital Stories for Justice.” This event featured social justice research projects presented by Yukun Yang (Network Science), Sam Kemp (English, Northeastern University London), Vaishali Kushwaha (Public Policy), and Cassie Tanks (History). Many of these projects center community collaboration and shed light on complex histories. Cassie Tanks noted that her project is currently seeking student research assistants and Vaishali Kushwaha encouraged those interested in her project to contact her for potential collaboration.
Yukun Yang first presented his project Mapping Real-World Migration Flow Network Using Context-Rich Social Media Data. This project contextualizes individual migration within broader collective influences and impacts using Reddit data. Researchers retrieve posts from the subreddit r/IWantOut, where users seek and give migration advice pertaining to specific locations. Users often post their current country, the country they would like to migrate to, their rationale for migrating, and aspects of their identity such as age and sexuality in a semi-structured format in their initial post and others respond to the post with migration advice. Computational methods are used to automatically extract aspects of user identity and location information. This data can then be used in analysis at the macroscopic level to understand overall intentions and make sense of patterns relating to real world events, and at the microscopic level to understand patterns of social interaction and online social support in migration advice seeking communities. The results Yukun Yang presented during his lightning talk primarily pertain to the macroscopic level. These describe where users wanted to migrate from and to. This flow information was then normalized by time, revealing trends in which locations had a net gain, net loss, or were balanced over time in terms of migration. In the future, Yang plans to conduct a migration trend overview and a study of U.S. migration trends integrating content analysis of migration rationale and interrupted time-series analysis to understand the impact of political events on migration.
Sam Kemp spoke about the Wapping Dispute project. This project illuminates the complex history of the 1986 Wapping Dispute between the Fleet Street Printworkers union and News International. The Wapping Post was an important, but previously understudied, instance of strike literature associated with the Wapping Dispute. The project digitized the Wapping Post and interviewed union members on the role of strike literature. Using Wapping Post headlines, the researchers identified the locations of events during the dispute. Regeneration of Wapping has led to little physical evidence of the dispute, with the exception of a small piece of barbed wire found by the researchers as they walked the area. Through mapping, this project reveals the story of strike literature. This psychogeographical aspect of the project is also complemented by Radical Landscape poetry in the form of a GIF sequence and a Fortress Wapping chapbook of poems.
Vaishali Kushwaha presented the Unveiling of Human-Environment Digital Narratives project, which integrates digital proficiencies and environmental education through community-centered workshops with a focus on empowering participants in the Global South. She collaborated with the Centre for Environment Education to host a pilot workshop in Ahmedabad, India. Community members from a variety of backgrounds, including K-12 educators, attended the workshop. During the workshop, participants learned how to use StoryMap and Timeline to tell data driven stories about human-environment relationships. Participants’ narratives include StoryMaps by Hadiyel Komalben Nareshbhai on Folk Dances of Indian States and by Mansi Jani on Biodiversity Hotspots; as well as Timelines by Ansh Dattani on Kaladhar Mutwa’s Oral History on the Evolution of the Baani Landscape and by Pushti Trivedi on The Asiatic Lion: A Majestic Journey. One participant, Jogendra Rajora, brought a multilingual element to the project by completing a CEE Timeline in Hindi. These are just a few examples of the varied projects participants completed at the workshop that are available on the Human-Environment Digital Narratives website. In addition to skill development, the project further aims to create a database of digital narratives contributed by workshop participants to help inform the public, researchers, and educators. Vaishali Kushwaha plans to continue building partnerships and encourages those interested in the project to contact her for potential collaboration.
Cassie Tanks discussed her project After the War: A Collaborative Public Digital History Project. This project aims to “uplift histories of Black veterans, veterans of color, and others who have been marginalized in THEIR WORDS, when possible.” It does so by collaborating with veterans and those in their local communities to tell their stories. These stories help reveal links across time and space that break down the periodization that might isolate veterans from one another. They also created space for discussions about race and class across geographies. This project shows how the long history of public service of the Black community and other communities of color is an integral part of American history and world history. The project is currently seeking student research assistants “who identify with local Black communities and communities of color.” Student research assistants would be trained in digital humanities tools. In the future, the project plans to develop and archive exhibit and map enlistment cards.
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