Europeana Newspapers Information Day KB, presentation by Pim Huijnen

1. Digitaal historisch onderzoek
Op zoek naar
‘Reference Cultures’
in ‘Big Data’
Pim Huijnen
Universiteit Utrecht
Europeana Newspapers Informatiedag
KB Den Haag, 28 oktober 2014

2. Translantis
‘The Digital Turn’ & Big Data
De beperkingen van ‘Big’
Van vinden naar zoeken

3. Translantis
‘The Digital Turn’ & Big Data
De beperkingen van ‘Big’
Van vinden naar zoeken

4. www.translantis.nl

5. Translantis
Digital Humanities Approaches to Reference
Cultures; The Emergence of the United States in
Public Discourse in the Netherlands, 1890-1990
“…uses digital technologies to analyze the role
of reference cultures in debates about social
issues and collective identities, looking
specifically at the emergence of the United
States in public discourse in the Netherlands
from the end of the nineteenth century to the
end of the Cold War.

6. De Verenigde Staten als een
‘referentiecultuur’
Bedrijfsleven
Burgerschap
Consumptie
Media
Drugs & misdaad
Gezondheid

7. Amerikanisering:
bedrijfsleven & economie
1870-1914 - 1918-1940 - 1945-1989
Fordism
Taylorism
Managerism
Professionalisering
Standaardisering
Rationalisering
Productiviteit
Efficiency
Consultancy
Accountancy
Massaproductie
Massaconsumptie
Marktdenken
Krediet

8. Text mining in historisch onderzoek
KB Den Haag: ~10.000.000
gedigitaliseerde pagina’s van
Nederlandse
kranten1618-1995
Biedt belofte voor historisch
onderzoek:
transnationale geschiedenis
mentaliteitsgeschiedenis
intellectuele geschiedenis

9. Translantis
‘The Digital Turn’ & Big Data
De beperkingen van ‘Big’
Van vinden naar zoeken

10. Top-down vs. bottom-up
From: Bob Nicholson, ‘The Digital Turn’, Media History 19 (2012) 59-73,
on pp. 66-67.

11. Uit: Het Centrum, 10 oktober 1919, 4.

12. The change of scale has led to a change
of state. The quantitative change has led
to a qualitative one. […]
[B]ig data refers to things one can do at a
large scale that cannot be done at a
smaller one, to extract new insights or
create new forms of value
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger en Kenneth Cukier, Big Data: A
Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
(Boston 2013) 13.
“
Big Data

13. ≈ Distant reading
‘Distant reading’, I have once called this
type of approach; where distance is
however not an obstacle, but a specific
form of knowledge; fewer elements,
hence a sharper sense of their overall
interconnection. Shapes, relations,
structures. Forms. Models.
Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees. Abstract Models for a
Literary History (Londen en New York 2005) 1.
“

14. Franco Moretti,
Graphs, Maps,
Trees. Abstract
Models for a
Literary History
(Londen en New
York 2005) 19.

15. ‘Vraag en aanbod’

16. Histogram (SPSS)
Query: ‘manager’ (191.710 hits)

17. ‘opzichter’ (≈’supervisor’) vs. ‘manager’ in KB data

18. ‘Efficiency’ 1945-1960 (46040 hits)

20. Translantis
‘The Digital Turn’ & Big Data
De beperkingen van ‘Big’
Van vinden naar zoeken

21. De zegeningen van Big Data
volgens VMS
Vertrouw op correlaties
Maak je niet druk om ruis
“Letting the data speak”

22. The era of big data challenges the way we live
and interact with the world. Most strikingly,
society will need to shed some of its obsession
for causality in exchange for simple correlations:
not knowing why but only what. This overturns
centuries of established practices and
challenges our most basic understanding of
how to make decisions and comprehend
reality.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger en Kenneth Cukier, Big Data: A Revolution
That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think (Boston 2013) 13.
“
1 Correlaties vs. causaliteit

23. https://www.google.org/flutrends/nl/#NL

24. http://tylervigen.com

25. 10.000
Representativiteit
Artikelen per jaar beschikbaar in het digitale krantencorpus van de KB

26. 2 Ruis

27. 3 “Letting the data speak”?
Data speaks rhetorically!

28. Often these visualisations possess
spectacular aesthetic qualities which make
them powerful argumentative tools. This
begs the question of how to approach
these rhetoric qualities and in what way
the argumentative power of images can
(or should) be criticised.
Bernhard Rieder and Theo Röhle, ‘Digital Methods: Five
Challenges’, in: David M. Berry, Understanding Digital Humanities
(Basingstoke et.al.: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), p.73.
“

29. 4 t/m 8 (nee, 9!)
“
Big data is here
to stay, as it
should be. But
let’s be realistic:
It’s an important
resource for
anyone
analyzing data,
not a silver
bullet.

30. Translantis
‘The Digital Turn’ & Big Data
De beperkingen van ‘Big’
Van vinden naar zoeken

32. Eploratory text mining
[R]igorous mathematics is not necessarily
essential for using data efficiently and
effectively. In particular, working with data
can be playful and exploratory and
deliberately without the mathematical rigor
that social scientists must use to support their
epistemological claims.
Frederick W. Gibbs and Trevor J. Owens, ‘The Hermeneutics of Data and
Historical Writing’, in: Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty (eds.),
Writing History in the Digital Age (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press, 2013).
“

33. Exploratory text mining
In other words, data does not always have to
be used as evidence, but can be simply for
discovering and framing research questions.
[…] [P]laying with data – in all its formats and
forms – is more important than ever.
Frederick W. Gibbs and Trevor J. Owens, ‘The Hermeneutics of Data and
Historical Writing’, in: Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty (eds.),
Writing History in the Digital Age (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press, 2013).
“

34. ‘Playing with data’

35. Cooccurrence patronen van het woord ‘typisch’ binnen een subcollectie
documenten op basis van de query 'Vorbild/Modell/Beispiel Amerika’
in Duitse kranten

36. BILAND
Query: ‘Heredity’ (1876) (22/1465 hits)

37. BILAND
Query: ‘Heredity’ (1935) (1465 hits)

39. Histogram of topic models based on query ‘Vorbild/Modell/Beispiel
Amerika'