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Professor Crystal Hall

Social Media, Film, Gender Identity in Final Project by Sophie Washington ’19

July 11, 2019 By Professor Crystal Hall

In Spring 2019, Sophie Washington completed an Independent Study with Professor Erin Johnson (DCS and Visual Arts). Here is the final product:

This short film is a visual essay and research documentary exploring the ways that recent filmic media from the early to late 2000s produced in Hollywood and online media (social media, online games and chat rooms) has shaped a cultural understanding of media-induced femininity. These notions of femininity are internalized by young women growing up in the 2000s and reproduced via the 21st century modes of identity through online profiles and social media accounts. Digital identity in millennial and Gen Z young women is a result of mixing both technology and social media with iconic cult films from the past two decades. Young women are both cognizant of and shape their identity based on a perceived, shared identity that has seeped through layers of media culture specifically since the advent of online and social media, with Hollywood’s help during the golden age of the “chick flick.” Cultural and historical influence in Hollywood films of the 2000s created distinct ideas of femininity and a combined digital experience of early online games and chatrooms shows distinct ties to contemporary shared and mass online identity in millennial young women, seen again through another wave of Hollywood films about young women’s self-expression online.

Tariffs and Contextualized Data Science: Independent Study by Liz Schilling ’19

July 10, 2019 By Professor Crystal Hall

In Spring 2019, Elizabeth Schilling completed an Independent Study titled “Chinese-American Trade 1970-2018.”

Her work builds on DCS 1200 “Data Driven Societies” and research in History and Economics. Liz had to digitize much of the early data related to trade between the two countries, and she examined the place of tariffs in economic shifts. She wrote a thorough data biography and analyzed the quantitative information from multiple perspectives. Here is a link to her site:
https://sites.google.com/view/lizschilling

Being a “Berktern”: Sabina Hartnett ’18 reflects on Summer 2016

June 7, 2017 By Professor Crystal Hall

Sabina Hartnett ’18Professor Crystal Hall and Sabina Hartnett ’18 recently reflected on Sabina’s experience as an intern with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University in Summer 2016. Look for announcements about future opportunities as a “Berktern” in February!

Prof. Hall: First, can you describe your internship? What was the big picture? What was your day-to-day work like?

Sabina: Last summer I worked at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. I worked specifically on the Lumen Project (lumendatabase.org) which is a third party transparency website publishing takedown notices (primarily DMCA related). You can kind of think of it as a graveyard for online, albeit often copyright infringing, content. We published notices from a variety of sources, the largest being Google and Twitter. The takedown notices were most often a result of copyright infringement, but were also comprised of defamation notices, trademark, and court orders among other things. Day-to-day I spent time on all levels of the project; I spent time manually parsing through notices and redacting confidential information, I read about current copyright/piracy/torrent/defamation/cyber-law related news and curating our project’s Twitter content, I wrote blog posts, and I conducted individual research on a subset of the data.

Prof. Hall: How did the internship connect with your DCS courses and research?

Sabina: ​While my project dealt with a very niche part of online content-sharing and the importance of collecting data (we can consider Lumen’s database of notices Big Data), I found it incredibly useful to have a DCS background and thus context. From DCS I got a taste of the importance of various data collections and analyses and was better able to appreciate my project and its significance. Not to mention that, for my individual research I did all my analysis (both qualitative and quantitative) and visualizations in R!

Prof. Hall: What advice do you have for anyone thinking about applying for a Berkman Center Fellowship or a similar summer experience?

Sabina: The Berkman Klein Intern program is AWESOME- they do a great job of bringing in a variety of people from a range of backgrounds to build a cohesive and productive community. I had a blast getting to know the other interns as well as some of the Center’s fellows and staff. I would encourage people of all academic backgrounds to consider applying to this internship as well as any similar ones, it’s a great way to expose yourself to new thought processes, ideologies, and academic approaches! It’s amazing to see how so many disciplines can overlap and work together to productively solve real world problems and conduct academic research. My only caveat (for any and all researchers) is to be wary of burn-out, going right from Bowdoin, to another academic setting, back to Bowdoin is tiring. But if you find an opportunity as exciting as the Berkman Klein Center – it is 110% worth it!!

Digital Study of Gossip in Jane Austen

May 22, 2017 By Professor Crystal Hall

Phoebe Bumsted '17
Phoebe Bumsted ’17

In Fall 2016 and Spring 2017, English and Computer Science major Phoebe Bumsted conducted an independent research project “A Digital Study of Gossip in Emma“. The results of her work can be found in the following blog posts:

Introduction

About the Chapters

Methodology

Graphs – the Novel

Graphs – Volume 2, Chapter 3, To

Graphs – Volume 2, Chapter 3, About

Graphs – Volume 2, Chapter 8, To

Graphs – Volume 2, Chapter 8, About

Unpursued Routes

Conclusion

Works Cited

Great work, Phoebe!

Liberal Arts and Technology: Charlotte Carnevale Willner (’06) and Dave Willner (’06) at Bowdoin Breakfast

March 10, 2017 By Professor Crystal Hall

Bowdoin alumni Dave Willner (’06) and Charlotte Carnevale Willner (’06).

The Spring 2017 Bowdoin Breakfast guests are Charlotte Carnevale Willner (’06) and Dave Willner (’06). Charlotte and Dave work, respectively, at Pinterest (Safety Manager) and Airbnb (Head of Community Policy) in the San Francisco Bay area. Having majored in Humanities (Art History and Anthropology/Arctic Studies), they both started fresh out of Bowdoin at Facebook, in the areas of conflict resolution and safety services. As young people in emerging fields at Facebook, they were in charge of making decisions about data and content during incredible times, and attribute their liberal arts education to helping them with the problem solving they faced.

DCS is excited to host the Willners in DCS 1200 on March 27 and DCS 2017 on March 28. In addition, we invite students and colleagues to join us in the VAC 3rd Floor Common Area at 4:00 on March 27 for an informal conversation about the role of the Liberal Arts in Silicon Valley. Light refreshments will be served.

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Digital and Computational Studies Blog

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