What Will We Do with All That Data?

ABSTRACT

The essays in this forum explore the potentials and pitfalls of computational approaches to periodical studies. Moving beyond the medium of digitization, our "Computational Periodicals" forum celebrates the computational opportunities of technical processes like term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF), digital curation tools such as Omeka, and the metadata resources of repositories like Proquest. The introductory essay to this forum highlights important questions guiding the forum by inviting our reflection on the ethical implications for periodical research in the digital age.

The way we look for things has changed. The digital tools and methods that have become standard for research in the humanities are changing even as we speak, as is our understanding of them. These changes have impacted campus culture and academic research. It was only a few years ago when a set of merchandise urging students to "JSTOR and chill" swept across the small liberal arts college campus where I taught as a visiting professor. That phenomenon spurred an in-class discussion with librarian and professor Elizabeth Rodrigues, who explained the nuances and limitations of JSTOR and the uses of interlibrary loan (ILL). And whereas even a few years ago it might have been appropriate, if not edgy, to discuss the implications of using Google to search for academic sources with first-year university and college students, higher education instructors must now grapple with the fact that their Generation Z students rely on apps like Instagram and Tik Tok to find news and information. This is to say nothing of the fact that digital technology has a somewhat vexed relationship with contemporary print media, reshaping the very form of what we read. We know that digital media has all but superseded print media like newspapers and magazines, leading to the closure and consolidation of countless contemporary newspapers and periodicals. For academics keeping a close eye on the digital humanities, our ever-evolving digital environment prompts a series of new questions: What does ethical research look like in the digital age? What are the limits of digitization, OCR, and online search tools? How will we navigate the mounds of data with which we are now faced? And within this context, what will the future of Periodical Studies look like?

This forum addresses such questions and the shifting terrain of our research environment by examining the application of digital technology to research that was previously limited to analog methods. The research featured here also probes the implications of these digital tools and methods for researchers, teachers, and students. Yes, the digital tools and methods discussed in this forum have allowed for greater access to periodicals beyond the bounds of geography or physical ability. For many researchers, reliance on resources like digital databases has become a matter of course. The possibilities for this kind of research can seem endless. But mining, surveying, and cataloging vast sets of periodicals to populate these databases also presents several challenges, both foreseen and unseen. This forum suggests that the knowledge emerging from research that utilizes digital tools and methods is powerful, but it requires scrutiny. As scholars like Safia Noble and Ruha Benjamin have shown, digital tools and cultures are shaped by very human choices and biases. These choices and biases can have a profound impact on the way we conduct research and the kinds of information we can impart to our students in the classroom. The essays in this forum demonstrate how digital humanities methods can help us to learn more about periodicals from the nineteenth century to the present. They also highlight the benefits and the potential drawbacks of digital tools used in periodical research with clear-eyedness—and at times, with skepticism. Ultimately, they advocate for further inquiry about the limits of digital humanities methods within the field.

The forum features work that sits at the locus of Digital Humanities and Periodical Studies. As Demetra McBrayer demonstrates in "Frequency Analysis in Periodical Scholarship," computational methods like frequency analysis can shed new light on diverse forms of media. Taking the historic Black newspaper the Provincial Freeman as a prime example, McBrayer uses term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) to identify the major topics of concern to the Provincial Freeman's editors and readers. What emerges from research involving TF-IDF is not just a deeper sense of the idiosyncrasies of the Provincial Freeman and its editors, but a more fulsome view of some of the tactics used to aid refugees from chattel slavery and Black immigrants to Canada in the mid-nineteenth century. The surprising result challenges notions of what constituted radical Black feminism in the nineteenth century. Here, the use of TF-IDF provides us with new sets of data that advance knowledge and leaves us with deeper questions about how a Black radical feminist can reconcile her commitment to Black liberation with popular economics and economic analysis.

Digital Humanities projects designed with the classroom in mind, like Periodical Poets, also make a robust contribution to discourses about Black literature and periodical culture. Charline Jao's Periodical Poets, "a catalogue of over 700 poems printed in New York City periodicals run by Black editors in the nineteenth century," establishes Black periodicals as rich sites of literary inquiry and extends our understanding of the relationship between early Black politics and poetics. This fascinating Omeka project also draws clear connections to advanced literary scholarship and potential teaching applications. For example, Omeka's search tool allows Periodical Poets users to probe the poems' titles, bodies, authors, and other publication information in ways that can create new clusters of knowledge and lead to further inquiry. Periodical Poets also acts as an accompaniment to recent publications like Matt Sandler's The Black Romantic Revolution and Patricia A. Matthew's recent special issue of Studies in Romanticism on "Race, Blackness, and Romanticism."

Finally, "Not Necessarily the 'Most Comprehensive Collection,'" by Marisol Fila and Sigrid Anderson, outlines the need for Critical Database Studies and urges researchers to consider deeply how their methodologies and the information on which they rely are influenced by the invisible hand of the digital archive. Using the L.A. Times as a case study, the authors form a rallying cry for the application of critical archival studies methodologies when encountering digital archives. They also extend recent contributions to the field by scholars like Benjamin Fagan and Roopika Risam by cautioning us about the way digital archives can reify differences that have characterized some analog repositories and classification systems.

The result of these interrelated inquiries is a forum that, quite simply, advances new knowledge in the field of digital humanities and periodical studies. As Demetra McBrayer argues, "Frequency analysis, and quantitative analysis more broadly, make apparent new considerations about newspapers, and they beg us to ask many complicated questions about our work and results. We can and should work to rectify scholarly or archival gaps and silences in our work. Computational methods provide a beginning for that work." The same attention to ethical considerations informs "Not Necessarily the 'Most Comprehensive Collection.'" In that article, Fila and Anderson ask us to reject "the illusion of seamlessness and comprehensiveness created by the databases themselves" and instead "strive for a better understanding of the databases and datasets that underpin their scholarship, including the sources and analog archives and collections on which the digitized versions are built." They insist that researchers must take a step back from the tools that they use, understand the context of the sources in the databases they use, and know the limitations of the tools with which they work. The impact of a heightened sense of criticality around digital tools marks a continuum between periodicals of the past and contemporary research. In other words, as Charline Jao states, "By observing the same mobilization, interrogations, and developments that intrigue us in the nineteenth-century, modern technologies should find much to guide them in these periodicals." These essays speak to the ways that, when used mindfully, digital tools can help us to learn from and about the past while building towards a more equitable future.

The contributors to this form consider the implications of their tools and methods in ways that are transformational. McBrayer suggests that "what we are required to do as responsible scholars with reparative work in mind is to consider the historical moments, systems, and communities in which our data is imbricated, both in the past and now. In doing so, we begin rectifying the wrongs of the past and offering a more dynamic literary history and landscape to future generations." Researchers must pay attention to the historical context and the politics at play in which these sources—that is, the print and the digital—were produced, circulated, collected, and curated. Fila and Anderson tell us that "a critical approach to database studies would acknowledge up front that searches are never comprehensive, both because of the nature of archives and because underlying OCR issues mean that something as seemingly straightforward as keyword searches are not gathering everything, nor are they accurate."

When I consider the broad implications of the work in this forum, I am reminded of a line from James Baldwin's New Yorker essay, "Letter from a Region of My Mind": "What will happen to all that beauty?" In that essay, Baldwin writes about the Black life and youth on the cusp of great social change. It is a moment in which anything could happen. I think Baldwin's question is entirely applicable to the task at hand. We stand on a precipice of sorts. In this context, I might ask: What will we do with all of that data? How will we harness the vital opportunities that digital tools and technologies offer us? How will we build more just systems of knowledge and institutions with these new methods and means? What will happen to innovative work? Who will have access to it? Here, too, Baldwin offers guidance: "Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise."