Digital and Computational Studies Blog

Bowdoin College - Brunswick, Maine

Digital and Computational Studies Initiative

DCSI Event on Campus

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This week, there will be a Digital and Computational Studies Workshop.

Digital and Computational Studies Workshop

Tuesday, November 10th | 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Location: Room 304 (North), VAC
Open to the Bowdoin Community
Sponsored by the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative

This Digital and Computational Studies Workshop is open to both students and faculty. Discover how social network analysis can answer questions in the social sciences, humanities, and sciences. The workshop will focus on the 2016 Election. Participants will learn about campaign finance networks and basic network analysis concepts. People can also work on their own network data.

 

Digital and Computational Toolbox: Gephi

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Gephi is an interactive visualization platform. It forms network connections based on the relationship of data inputs. Gephi is open-source, which means that anyone can access it and users can also help improve the Gephi’s design and functionality. Gephi can generate data visualizations for different kinds of networks, graphs, and complex systems. Gephi enables you to create visual representations of data that could uncover hidden network connections. Users can then understand the intricacies and underlying trends in graphs. The two basic elements of Gephi visualizations are nodes (essentially a data point) and edges (connection between two or more nodes).

Gephi is already being used in DCS classes and projects at Bowdoin. This fall, students in Introduction to Digital and Computational Studies (INTD 1100) used Gephi to visualize Joshua Chamberlain’s correspondence network. The visualizations below represent Chamberlain’s overall correspondence during the Civil War. Students visited Bowdoin’s Special Collections and Archives to see the original Chamberlain letters and then created data visualizations in Gephi.

CivilWar2 CivilWar1

Further Reading: Visualizations and Historical Arguments by John Theibault.

Matthew W. Wilson Lecture: Quantified Self-City-Nation: Digital Systems for Attentional Control

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matt_23_harvard-cropQuantified Self-City-Nation: Digital Systems for Attentional Control

Monday, April 28
7:00 p.m.
Lancaster Lounge, Moulton Union

– Open to the public –

Matthew Wilson’s presentation draws parallels between the rising consumer-electronic sector associated with personal activity monitors and the rapid visioning of smart urbanism. He interrogates developments in interoperability and propriety, competition and habit, fashion and surveillance. He addresses the social-cultural and political implications for this refiguring of spatial thought and action as well as the capacities reinforced and developed through the implementation of these technologies and techniques.

Matthew Wilson is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University and Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky, where he co-directs the New Mapping Collaboratory. Matt holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Washington. His website is http://matthew-w-wilson.com.

Sponsored by Bowdoin’s Digital and Computational Studies Initiative.

Lecture: Jessa Lingel “Facebook is Anti-Drag” (3/31 @ 7pm)

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Jessa Lingel, Lecture

Facebook is Anti-Drag:
Issues of Online Community and Communication

Lingel copy

  • 3/31/2014 | 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
  • Location: Moulton Union, Lancaster Lounge
  • Event Type: Lecture
  • Sponsor: Digital and Computational Studies Initiative
  • – Open to the Public –

Online technologies have provided a means of storytelling, visualization, community building, and educational resources that have particular significance for groups that have been historically disenfranchised.

Jessa Lingel addresses the role of technology in the lives of a specific queer community, performers in Brooklyn’s drag scene. Her talk addresses both the benefits and limitations of social media platforms for members of this particular set of queer lives and the intersection of queer theory with internet studies.

Jessa Lingel is a postdoctoral research fellow at Microsoft Research New England, working with the Social Media Collective.

First DCSI Hackathon on February 26th, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. in the VAC

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HACK MUCH?

Well, now you can.

Announcing the 1st Digital & Computational Studies Initiative Hackathon!

A hackathon is a space for programmers and designers, from novices to experts, to collaborate intensively on software projects.

Come start or work on a project, learn a new coding language, visualize your data, or study how to protect your online privacy!

VAC 3rd Floor
February 26th, 6pm-9pm