The link below takes you to the StoryMap of Edward Hurley’s journey to Louisville, Kentucky in April of 1836. https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/718c20f1a303596cbd056e01c1ddda76/gone-to-louisville-1836/index.html
Gone to Louisville 1836
Working StoryMap and Digital Analysis
The exercise this week is to answer a few questions on the experience of doing the StoryMap project and then comment on the readings about using digital networking techniques.
Doing the Storymap in the time frame with a retreat and Father’s Day in the middle of it made it. An intense experience from a schedule perspective. In other words, I was crunched to get everything done in the StoryMap, and that’s why I am late with getting the Blog in. It came down to time on the StoryMap or the Blog, and the StoryMap won, although I did cut out time to read the articles.
I put together the text portion and the design of what I was going to do from a visual perspective using Scrivener. It was easier to see what I was doing that way. Once I had it about right in Scrivener, I put it in StoryMap and ran it through Grammarly while in StoryMap. My issue with Grammarly interface was sometimes the changes took and sometimes it didn’t. Although it could’ve been me not saving the edited result in StoryMap.
On the visual side, I planned the visuals for each slide and recorded some visual options in Scrivener, Once I had collected a range of visuals, I did a trial and error with them in StoryMap. I attempted to pick the visuals that were most closely aligned to the main point of the slide I was working on. I did try to use both a background and a foreground visual that were related. If I could work photoshop better and had more time, I would put some images together into one composite image to enhance the visual experience, and overcome some of the constraints that StoryMap imposes.
My biggest issue with the StoryMap exercise was staying in the 200-300-word limit. Edward’s text alone on arrival in Louisville started at over 300 words. So, I pretty much violated the 200-300-word guideline.
Overall, I was happy with the project. I didn’t need to spend much time in learning the tool. It’s pretty straight forward. The application has enabled me to undertake and complete a project I wanted to do for my family ever since Edward’s letter surfaced. I still have a few minor edits including the need to get the bibliography correct, and to provide a link to Edward’s original letter and my transcription. But once those are done, the story of Edward’s journey and the ability of anyone to access it will be complete and I can get on to other projects.
The readings this week are on the application of data analysis and visualization techniques to networks in history projects. Graham et al. in The Historian’s Macroscope Big Digital History, give a short history of the evolution of digital technologies to analyze networks and summarize some of their applications. The point they made that really resonated with me was, “Network approaches can be particularly useful at disentangling the balance of power, either in a single period or over time. A network, however, is only as useful as its data are relevant or complete. We need to be extremely careful when analyzing networks not to read power relationships into data that may simply be imbalanced.”
Network visualizations can look make people look more interrelated and intentional than was really the case. People are complicated and the data to adequately describe those complexities is seldom there in real time let alone in archival remnants available to the historian. The digital visualizations can make our analysis using incomplete data look more explanatory and precise than is the case and lead us to draw incorrect conclusions.
Lauren F.Klein addressed the incomplete data problem directly in The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings. She acknowledged that the gaps in the archival record are difficult to address. She reviewed Trouillot’s description that gaps in the archival records can occur in four ways: the making of sources, the making of archives, the making of narratives and the making of history defined as significance. Klein uses the case of James Hemmings, a former slave of Thomas Jefferson to illustrate that gaps concerning James came as much from the making of Jefferson’s archives, and earlier historians making of narratives and significance as from any loss of primary source material.
Klein shows that digital network analysis techniques can be used to show the significance of James role as a cook in the diplomatic household of Jefferson, and his importance to Jefferson. Yet even though the techniques can overcome gaps caused by the was the sources were stored, archived, retold and made significant, the digital methods still can’t help explain why James committed suicide, and never became the cook for Jeffersonian White House.
StoryMap a Journey
Today Professor Walters asked us to review and
comment on these StoryMap examples:
Game of Thrones: Arya’s Journey; Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights
Before I get into my comments, a quick word on StoryMap. The website is an online capability mostly developed in Java by Northwestern University’s Knight Lab. The Knight Lab is a team of technologists and journalists who support innovation in the news media. For an overview, see https://storymap.knightlab.com/#overview
StoryMap gives one a free capability to make maps of journeys, broadly defined. The web site enables identification of a place and the sequential linking of places. One can input a text description about each location, and provide background and foreground images, or in the foreground case, linked videos. If one can code with Java, then one can add some capabilities and custom views.
On the two Storymaps reviewed, as one of the few people in the Universe who hasn’t followed the Game of Thrones, the StoryMap on Arya’s Journey was all new to me. The good part of the map was that as an outline of the story for the uninitiated, I could follow it. I really liked the attempt to link videos although except for one video, the video links didn’t work for me on panels one and three. Perhaps one needs an HBO account. The content creator of the Arya’s Journey changed the background colors of most the panels to provide a visual that aligned with the tone and content of the text. I got the visual point as an impression, but it made the images less clear, or the background image made the text difficult to read. Nonetheless, a great attempt and the matching of visual to the storyline helped my understanding of the feeling tone of the plot. Arya’s Journey showed me what one could do with videos (make sure the link works) and background and foreground images in combination.
With the Hieronymus Bosch Journey through the Garden of Earthly Delights, I am on the more familiar ground than with the Game of Thrones, but I must admit I never delved into its symbolism the way the content creator of this StoryMap did. The content creator used the Bosch painting as a background map, and then used subsections of the picture as a place. Then the text box was used to explain and interpret Bosch’s allegory. Just awesome! The best item in the journey and one written up by the Guardian (see https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/13/hidden-sheet-music-hieronymus-bosch-triptych-recorded) was the description of Bosch’s painted musical score on the backside of a defendant being judged. Of course, someone on the internet decided to create a choral chant rendition we could hear.(See https://wellmanicuredman.tumblr.com/post/76381088917)
I found the links took some doing to make them work but to listen to 600-year-old music scribed by Bosch was worth it. The chanted lyrics used are modern! The drawback I found was in the way StoryMap presents a map and background image. The image of a Bosch panel was clear on the left-hand portion of the screen and faded to support the text on the right. This StoryMap visual feature made it difficult to find and see all of the image that the content creator referred to in the text. Despite the limitation of the visual, I gained a much better understanding of what Bosch was saying in allegory form by having walked through the StoryMap rendition. I just wish Storymap had a more flexible visual display ability so that more of the image referred to could be easily seen.
Both of these StoryMap Journeys and the innovative attempts of the content creators to use StoryMap to tell a story got me thinking about how to apply some of these techniques to the StoryMap I am working on. What I think I am trying to understand and relate in the story of Edward Hurley’s Journey from Montgomery County Maryland to Louisville, Kentucky in April 1836 is the nature of the United States at that time and the nature of the places. The five visual channels available for that communication are map image, map icon image and placement, text background image, text foreground image, and the text itself.
In April of 1836, the Texas war for independence was happening. The fight at the Alamo just concluded. The long Seminole War was still underway. Andrew Jackson was in the last year of his Presidency. The political parties were gearing up for the election in November. Travel, particularly riverboat travel, was risky. There were 24 states in the Union. Edward’s trip started in Maryland, a slave state on a working plantation with slaves. He journeyed through Pennsylvania, a Free state, though Virginia, a slave state, through Ohio, a Free state, to Kentucky a slave state. He traveled the borderline between slavery and freedom. Abolition had become a powerful movement, and violence was already occurring twenty years before the Civil war began. Each place Edward went through was different with a range of possible themes to emphasize. To bring some of the preceding into Edward’s story, I am going to try using the combination images technique, and links to videos.
