Digital History And Hermeneutics

As a result of rapid advancements in computer science during recent decades, there has been an increased use of digital tools, methodologies and sources in the field of digital humanities. While opening up new opportunities for scholarship, many digital methods and tools now used for humanities research have nevertheless been developed by computer or data sciences and thus require a critical understanding of their mode of operation and functionality. The novel field of digital hermeneutics is meant to provide such a critical and reflexive frame for digital humanities research by acquiring digital literacy and skills. A new knowledge for the assessment of digital data, research infrastructures, analytical tools, and interpretative methods is needed, providing the humanities scholar with the necessary munition for doing critical research. The Doctoral Training Unit "Digital History and Hermeneutics" at the University of Luxembourg applies this analytical frame to 13 PhD projects. By combining a hermeneutic reflection on the new digital practices of humanities scholarship with hands-on experimentation with digital tools and methods, new approaches and opportunities as well as limitations and flaws can be addressed.

As a result of rapid advancements in computer science during recent decades, there has been an increased use of digital tools, methodologies and sources in the field of digital humanities. While opening up new opportunities for scholarship, many digital methods and tools now used for humanities research have nevertheless been developed by computer or data sciences and thus require a critical understanding of their mode of operation and functionality. The novel field of digital hermeneutics is meant to provide such a critical and reflexive frame for digital humanities research by acquiring digital literacy and skills. A new knowledge for the assessment of digital data, research infrastructures, analytical tools, and interpretative methods is needed, providing the humanities scholar with the necessary munition for doing critical research. The Doctoral Training Unit "Digital History and Hermeneutics" at the University of Luxembourg applies this analytical frame to 13 PhD projects. By combining a hermeneutic reflection on the new digital practices of humanities scholarship with hands-on experimentation with digital tools and methods, new approaches and opportunities as well as limitations and flaws can be addressed.

Digital history is commonly argued to be positioned between the traditionally historical and the computational or digital. By studying digital history collaborations and the establishment of the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, Kemman examines how digital history will impact historical scholarship. His analysis shows that digital history does not occupy a singular position between the digital and the historical. Instead, historians continuously move across this dimension, choosing or finding themselves in different positions as they construct different trading zones through cross-disciplinary engagement, negotiation of research goals and individual interests.

This is the first monograph to develop a hermeneutic approach to the digital—as both a technological milieu and a cultural phenomenon. While philosophical in its orientation, the book covers a wide body of literature across science and technology studies, media studies, digital humanities, digital sociology, cognitive science, and the study of artificial intelligence. In the first part of the book, the author formulates an epistemological thesis according to which the “virtual never ended.” Although the frontiers between the real and the virtual are certainly more porous today, they still exist and endure. In the book’s second part, the author offers an ontological reflection on emerging digital technologies as “imaginative machines.” He introduces the concept of emagination, arguing that human schematizations are always externalized into technologies, and that human imagination has its analog in the digital dynamics of articulation between databases and algorithms. The author takes an ethical and political stance in the concluding chapter. He resorts to the notion of "digital habitus" for claiming that within the digital we are repeatedly being reconducted to an oversimplified image and understanding of ourselves. Digital Hermeneutics will be of interest to scholars across a wide range of disciplines, including those working on philosophy of technology, hermeneutics, science and technology studies, media studies, and the digital humanities.

As media environments and communication practices evolve over time, so do theoretical concepts. This book analyzes some of the most well-known and fiercely discussed concepts of the digital age from a historical perspective, showing how many of them have pre-digital roots and how they have changed and still are constantly changing in the digital era. Written by leading authors in media and communication studies, the chapters historicize 16 concepts that have become central in the digital media literature, focusing on three main areas. The first part, Technologies and Connections, historicises concepts like network, media convergence, multimedia, interactivity and artificial intelligence. The second one is related to Agency and Politics and explores global governance, datafication, fake news, echo chambers, digital media activism. The last one, Users and Practices, is finally devoted to telepresence, digital loneliness, amateurism, user generated content, fandom and authenticity. The book aims to shed light on how concepts emerge and are co-shaped, circulated, used and reappropriated in different contexts. It argues for the need for a conceptual media and communication history that will reveal new developments without concealing continuities and it demonstrates how the analogue/digital dichotomy is often a misleading one.

This handbook provides a systematic overview of the present state of international research in digital public history. Individual studies by internationally renowned public historians, digital humanists, and digital historians elucidate central issues in the field and present a critical account of the major public history accomplishments, research activities, and practices with the public and of their digital context. The handbook applies an international and comparative approach, looks at the historical development of the field, focuses on technical background and the use of specific digital media and tools. Furthermore, the handbook analyzes connections with local communities and different publics worldwide when engaging in digital activities with the past, indicating directions for future research, and teaching activities.

This handbook provides a systematic overview of the present state of international research in digital public history. Individual studies by internationally renowned public historians, digital humanists, and digital historians elucidate central issues in the field and present a critical account of the major public history accomplishments, research activities, and practices with the public and of their digital context. The handbook applies an international and comparative approach, looks at the historical development of the field, focuses on technical background and the use of specific digital media and tools. Furthermore, the handbook analyzes connections with local communities and different publics worldwide when engaging in digital activities with the past, indicating directions for future research, and teaching activities.

"Writing History in the Digital Age began as a one-month experiment in October 2010, featuring chapter-length essays by a wide array of scholars with the goal of rethinking traditional practices of researching, writing, and publishing, and the broader implications of digital technology for the historical profession. The essays and discussion topics were posted on a WordPress platform with a special plug-in that allowed readers to add paragraph-level comments in the margins, transforming the work into socially networked texts. This first installment drew an enthusiastic audience, over 50 comments on the texts, and over 1,000 unique visitors to the site from across the globe, with many who stayed on the site for a significant period of time to read the work. To facilitate this new volume, Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki designed a born-digital, open-access platform to capture reader comments on drafts and shape the book as it developed. Following a period of open peer review and discussion, the finished product now presents 20 essays from a wide array of notable scholars, each examining (and then breaking apart and reexamining) how digital and emergent technologies have changed the ways that historians think, teach, author, and publish"--