Boundaries Extensions and Challenges of Visualization for Humanities Data Reﬂections on Three Cases Rongqian Ma

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Boundaries, Extensions, and Challenges of Visualization for Humanities

Data: Reﬂections on Three Cases

Rongqian Ma*

Indiana University Bloomington

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses problems of visualizing humanities data of var-

ious forms, such as video data, archival data, and numeric-oriented

social science data, with three distinct case studies. By describing

the visualization practices and the issues that emerged from the

process, this paper uses the three cases to each identify a pertinent

question for reﬂection. More speciﬁcally, I reﬂect on the difﬁculty,

thoughts, and considerations of choosing the most effective and suf-

ﬁcient forms of visualization to enhance the expression of speciﬁc

cultural and humanities data in the projects. Discussions in this pa-

per concern some questions, such as, how do the multi-modality of

humanities and cultural data challenge the understanding, roles, and

functions of visualizations, and more broadly, visual representations

in humanities research? What do we lose of the original data by

visualizing them in those projects? How to balance the beneﬁts and

disadvantages of visual technologies to display complex, unique,

and often culturally saturated humanities datasets?

Index Terms:

Human-centered computing [Visualization]: Visual-

ization application domains—Information visualization

1 INTRODUCTION

Visual technologies have been widely used for digital humanities

research. Visualization in the digital humanities sits at the inter-

section of the DH scholarship and that of the visualization, having

attracted discussions from scholars in both ﬁelds. According to

Bailey and Pregill (2014), “twenty-ﬁrst-century humanities scholars

ﬁnd themselves in the midst of a visualization renaissance of sorts

with information analysis and visualization literacy recognized as

fundamental skills in the academy” [1]. The use of visualizations

for interpretation and analysis has been advocated since the 2000s,

especially in traditional humanities research areas such as literary

studies where Moretti (2005) published his inﬂuential work titled

Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History [10].

A massive number of projects and visualization tools have been de-

veloped to assist with humanities inquiries and research exploration,

covering various types of humanities data and analyses including

the spatial visualization, temporal visualization, textual visualiza-

tion, and 3D visualizations [11]. From the literature, two interesting

themes emerged: (1) the nature of data in the humanities research

context; and (2) principles of humanistic visualizations.

1.1 Nature of Humanities Data

Discussion of humanities visualization should ﬁrst beneﬁt from an in-

depth exploration of the connotations of data for humanities subjects

and topics. As illustrated by Sch

och (2013), “most of the colleagues

in literary and cultural studies would not necessarily speak of their

objects of study as data. If you ask them what it is they are studying,

they would rather speak of books, paintings and movies; of drama

*e-mail: rm56@iu.edu

and crime ﬁction, of still lives and action painting; of German ex-

pressionist movies and romantic comedy. . . . Maybe they would

talk about what they are studying as texts, images, and sounds. But

rarely would they consider their objects of study to be data” [12].

However, the mass digitization of cultural and humanities materi-

als has introduced new occasions, as therefore unique challenges,

for scholars working with cultural materials in humanities-oriented

research. From another perspective, this quote also aptly captures

the unique characteristics of data in the humanities research context,

which has been explored and discussed in existing scholarship.

For instance, Borgman (2010) discussed the unique characteristics

of humanities data compared with those in scientiﬁc research con-

texts [2]. Unlike natural or social scientists whose data usually come

from experimental observations and are clearly different from “pub-

lications,” humanities data are “innumerable” and their boundaries

with publications are “fuzzy.” On one hand, “publications and other

documents are essential sources of data to humanists: Newspapers,

unpublished correspondence, diaries, manuscripts, and photographs

are among the most heavily used sources by academic historians, for

example. They are analyzed for facts, evidence, themes, and inter-

pretations.” On the other, “almost any document, physical artifact,

or record of human activity can be used to study culture. Humani-

ties scholars value new approaches and recognizing something as

a source of data (e.g., high school yearbooks, cookbooks, or wear

patterns in the ﬂoors of public places) can be an act of scholarship.”

Humanities data are also distinctive from scientiﬁc data due to

their “dispersion and separation from context:” “Cultural artifacts

are bought and sold, looted in wars, and relocated to museums and

private collections. International agreements on the repatriation of

cultural objects now prevent many items from being exported, but

items that were exported decades or centuries ago are unlikely to

be returned to their original sites. Those who hold cultural artifacts

create the records that describe them, and thus the records are also

dispersed” [2, 4].

In addition to the unique forms and characteristics, humanities

data are also distinct in terms of their value- and interpretation- laden

nature. Drucker (2011) highlighted this aspect with the notion of

capta [3]. Compared with the widely known concept of data, which

refers to “things given” in Latin, capta is a taken, which captures

the interpretive nature of humanities inquiries. This understanding

of humanities data supports Drucker’s theories of a “humanistic

visualization,” which has also been shared and developed in the

ﬁeld.

1.2 Principles of Humanistic Visualization

Following the unique characteristics of humanities data, the next

question is: How to design the best visualizations for humanities

data? One important theme of discussion in the emerging scholarship

on DH visualization has focused on what is the value of visualization

in digital humanities research, and what a “humanistic visualization”

should look like and hypothetically be different from visualization

in general (e.g., scientiﬁc visualization or information visualization).

Jessop (2008) argued that visualization should be a scholarly activity

in the digital humanities, not simply a technique or a tool, which

means that they are highly interwoven into humanities inquiries

arXiv:2210.03630v1 [cs.DL] 7 Oct 2022

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Boundaries,Extensions,andChallengesofVisualizationforHumanitiesData:ReectionsonThreeCasesRongqianMa*IndianaUniversityBloomingtonABSTRACTThispaperdiscussesproblemsofvisualizinghumanitiesdataofvar-iousforms,suchasvideodata,archivaldata,andnumeric-orientedsocialsciencedata,withthreedistinctcasestudies...

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Boundaries Extensions and Challenges of Visualization for Humanities Data Reﬂections on Three Cases Rongqian Ma

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