The promises and perils of a digital geohumanities

Bibliographic Data

ID2406192
AuthorsMike Crang (0000-0001-7678-8496, Durham University, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume22
Issue2
Pages351-360
Publication date2015-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCultural Geographies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1474-4740 • E-ISSN: 1477-0881
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1474474015572303
OpenAlexW2033475714
LanguageEN
Citations received23
References cited20

This intervention asks to what extent developments of digital media offer new objects that demand new methods and to what extent they create new methods that might be applied to older cultural fields creating a digital geohumanities. It argues that digital media sometimes reanimate older debates and issues not only in what we study but how we do so, and their significance may be less in new techniques than altering the general tools of our trade in cultural geography. This article looks at both new digital cultures, such as gaming and new converging media, and new methods, be they analysing the data exhaust of digitally mediated social lives or using new software in literary analysis. Profound tensions exist between quantitative imaginaries of a massive stock of texts yielding determinate meanings and deconstructive visions of texts yielding indeterminate and proliferating meanings. Big data sit uneasily with big interpretation. This article suggests a materialist semiosis is needed to attend to the permutations where new digital techniques may form affective technologies conveying meanings as much as effective analytical tools

Aesthetics · Art · Digital media · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Materialism · Media studies · Social media · Sociology · Vision · World Wide Web · Anthropology · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Digital Humanities and Scholarship

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access