Web archive analytics: Blind spots and silences in distant readings of the archived web.
In this article, we discuss epistemological and methodological aspects of web archive analytics, a recent development towards more data-centred access to web archives. More specifically, we suggest understanding both the process of archiving and subsequent steps of analysis at scale as acts of obser...
| Published in: | Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 1033 - 1049 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Sep2023
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=171389424&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 171389424 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 2055768X JEO9 jtl: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities issn: 2055768X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Sep2023 vid: 38 iid: 3 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 171389424 10.1093/llc/fqad014 ppf: 1033 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 628KB tig: atl: Web archive analytics: Blind spots and silences in distant readings of the archived web. aug: au: Donig, Simon Eckl, Markus Gassner, Sebastian Rehbein, Malte affil: Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe—Institute of the Leibniz Association, Digital Research and Information Infrastructures Department of Social Work, University of Applied Sciences Fulda Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Passau su: Web archives Web analytics Access to archives Internet content Social scientists Workflow management Latent class analysis (Statistics) sug: subj: Web archives Web analytics Access to archives Internet content Social scientists Workflow management Latent class analysis (Statistics) ab: In this article, we discuss epistemological and methodological aspects of web archive analytics, a recent development towards more data-centred access to web archives. More specifically, we suggest understanding both the process of archiving and subsequent steps of analysis at scale as acts of observation that can be questioned for their epistemological priori. Therefore, we propose the concepts of 'blind spots' (features of the live web not included upon creation in the archive) and 'silences' (latent features present in the archive but requiring a particular method to be made articulate). In particular, we address two forms of silences playing a structural role in web archive analytics, crucial to both historians and social scientists alike: abundance (or scale) and time. We trace epistemological implications of web archive analytics across an exemplary case study workflow and suggest methodological answers to the issues raised in this process. On the data extraction side, we introduce warc2corpus (w2c), a new tool for extracting granular, structured data, especially temporal information related to the creation, modification, and publication specifically of webpages. For data analysis, we demonstrate how distant reading techniques—more specifically structural topic modelling (STM)—can contribute to providing a rich, temporally structured representation of textual web archive content that in turn can be subjected to scholarly inquiry, interpretation, and re-contextualization. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: © 2019 EADH: The European Association for Digital Humanities. item: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities holder: Oxford University Press / USA dt: @attributes: year: 2023 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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