Intro:
Our group is provided with Mack Diary as our resource. We decide to analysis the Diary and compare it with Powell Diary. We made this decision because those two diary wrote stories about the same group of people and both of the authors lived in Shamokin. But they were wrote in different time. We would like to explore if this time shifting changes moravian’s life. We expect to find differences in their life from their words.
The project is basically divided into 2 different parts: Data collecting and data analyzing. In Data collecting process, we create a database about people and places. The database can be used not only on what we’ve done this time — a gephi network analysis but also can be used on creating ArcGis analysis and timemapper/glider. In Data analyzing process, we use gephi to analysis people-people connection and people-place connection. By comparing the graph we made in our Mack diary and the Powell diary gephi network, we do find some change in those moravians’ life.
I am in charge of
- Planning the process
- Collecting the data 50%
- Making the gephi network 50%
- Analyzing the data 50%
- Making presentation stuff
Database Creation and Data Collecting process:
Collecting data and creating database is the foundation of our deeper research. Therefore, it is actually the ‘phase 0’ when we are researching. We started building the database before we actually get the research topic. It is not only a ‘phase’ in our project but also a ‘part’. Qijing and I built a universal database which contains
People’s Database
- Name: The names of the people
- Race/Identity: Is the person a Moravian or a Native American
- People connection: Who are connecting with this person
- Time present: When does this person present in the diary
- Place Present: Where does this person present
- Reference: The original text containing information
Places’ Database
- Name: The name of the place
- Time Present: When does the place present in the diary
- Description: Facts about this place
We create the database by close reading the entire text. Database creation is indeed not precisely a creation or data collection but a data arranging process. It clarifies and extracts the text from the page. In database, data is not in a form of only 1 dimension. For example:
In this sentence, we know two information: ‘we’ traveled to several places. However, with a database:
We know that Anna Mack in one of ‘us’ and ‘we’ are the Moravian. Also, we know that the event happens in 9/14/1745. Data changes from an 1-d object to a 4-d object, which contains time and space. Information didn’t increase in this process but became much easier to access and use.
Gephi Analysis on Mack’s diary
Like Joseph Powell, what we researched during the course, Martin Mack was also a moravian missionary. But Martin Mack arrived in Shamokin about 5 years earlier than Joseph Powell. After making a people-people graph and a people-place graph, we find something really interesting. On the right, its the visualization of Mack’s Diary. The first difference compared to Powell Diary’s visualization is that it has 2 core characters rather than 1. When making a gephi network, especially for a diary, there must be a core character, who connects with almost everyone. Because diary is the subjective observation on this world by the author. Therefore, author knows every people and place in his diary. Two absolute characters in those two diary are Powell and Mack. However, Mack also included her wife as a core character. They always act as one in his diary but Powell ignores i.e. hides his wife’s existence. Then from this graph, we found that Mack connects with places in a direct way while Powell only connects with places with an indirect way. That means Martin Mack actually arrived in different places while Powell stayed only in Shamokin and heard from different places. Another fact from this visualization is that we noticed that Powell loves powerful people. Ordinary inhabitant and traders connect with Martin Mack the most but Powell loves to write his relationship with Shakellamy(The chief of Shamokin island) and his sons. Those differences are all results from their division of work. After the close reading of the diary, I would like to conclude that Joseph Powell is a politician and Martin Mack is an explorer. Both of them are important to the moravian’s mission. i.e. Either of them represents a phase of this mission. Martin Mack, as an explorer, wrote his diary as a travel note. Therefore, there are more personal feelings in his diary. He also loved to explore the inhabitants and surrounding villages to explore new interests. However, Joseph Powell, as a politician, wrote his story as a diplomatic record, which only includes important ‘meeting’ . Powell takes note after each meeting with chief Shikellamy and we can see how Shikellamy changes his attitude on moravians from his diary. This division of work explains three differences from the gephi network comparison. Powell depicts the things happening in a objective attitude. He is not writing a diary but recording facts. Therefore, he never mentions his wife. Powell focuses on building relationship with chief Shikellamy, so he only stayed in Shamokin but seldomly stepped outside. Also, as my blog 2 or 3, I point out that Powell is not a qualified moravian because he never thanks to the God. Now, I would like to say that I was wrong. He just didn’t have a chance to write his belif to God. Unlike Mack, who can express his emotion and feeling freely, Powell needs to be objective and a bit detached.
Conclusion: after the final project
In this course, the most interesting and important learning is not about different tools we used but an idea: we can use digital method to extract data easily from the humanity resources. I describe the process as “extract information easily” because I don’t think we are not able to get the same information as digital humanity when we use the traditional method. However, digital tools simplify the entire process. It is useful because different tools lead to different facets and by using different tools we can see those resources in different ways and get a comprehensive understanding. As what I did in this final project, to find relationship map of Powell Diary and Mack’s Diary is not an impossible work in traditional research but using a digital tool, we extract the information out and are able to explore the resource in a different angle.
Reference:
Martin, Mack. MackDiaryFaullTranslation. Trans. Katherine Faull. N.p.: n.p., 2013. Print.
Powell, Joseph. Powell’s Diary Translation. Trans. Jiayu Huang, Qijing Zheng, John Edler, Clair Maree, Matt Lucas, Madeline Purdy, Nick Miller, and Duke Repko. N.p.: n.p., 2014. Print.