A Textual History of Mozilla: Using Topic Modeling to Trace Sociocultural Influences on Software Development.
This essay applies a digital humanities methodology to the study of digital media by framing software history as a problem of big data and textual criticism. While many scholars have already identified source code as an important site for the cultural study of software, this essay proposes that clos...
| Publicado en: | DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly Vol. 9; no. 3; pp. 4 - 5 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Digital Humanities Quarterly
2015
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=125676757&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 125676757 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 19384122 77X0 jtl: DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly issn: 19384122 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 2015 vid: 9 iid: 3 pid: 47240 pub: Digital Humanities Quarterly artinfo: ui: 125676757 ppf: 4 ppct: 1 formats: tig: atl: A Textual History of Mozilla: Using Topic Modeling to Trace Sociocultural Influences on Software Development. aug: au: Black, Michael L. affil: University of Massachusetts Lowell su: Cultural history Mozilla Firefox (Computer software) Computer software development Sociocultural factors Sociocultural theory sug: subj: Cultural history Mozilla Firefox (Computer software) Computer software development Sociocultural factors Sociocultural theory ab: This essay applies a digital humanities methodology to the study of digital media by framing software history as a problem of big data and textual criticism. While many scholars have already identified source code as an important site for the cultural study of software, this essay proposes that close reading is not suited to the scale and scope of modern application software. Applying text analysis tools to large bodies of source code can help address these problems as well as provide a basis for narrativizing its development and contextualization amidst a complex network of economic, political, and other sociocultural processes. Using source code produced over 15 years of development by the Mozilla foundation, this essay argues that software interfaces act as an extension of public relations narratives, often representing a developer's idealized version of their software which may not necessarily correspond with the state of the application's source code. Topic modeling Mozilla's source code allows us to explore a more nuanced narrative of development that shows how Mozilla has negotiated between the political ideals of open source software and the corporate ideology of its parent companies. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2015 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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