Abstract
This chapter addresses when and how researchers in the Digital Humanities can use a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on computer science, textual analysis, and political economy, to collect and analyze data from and about the physical and social aspects of contemporary information infrastructures. It describes a generalized procedure for data collection on, and analysis of, physical information infrastructure, highlighting selected tools to help researchers accomplish these tasks. Then, it describes a generalized procedure for data collection on, and analysis of, the socio-cultural institutions infused in information infrastructure, highlighting selected archival, information-retrieval, and language-processing techniques and tools. Examples from a study on the development and effects of international networking infrastructure in West Africa illustrate the uses and outcomes of this hybrid methodology.
Keywords
- Information Infrastructure
- Digital Humanities
- Network Infrastructure Changes
- Telecommunications Policy
- Gatekeeper State
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes
- 1.
“Index of ftp://ftp.afrinic.net/pub/stats/afrinic/.”
- 2.
“IP Address to Identify Geolocation Information,” IP2Location, accessed October 15, 2016, https://www.ip2location.com/.
- 3.
- 4.
“Index of ftp://ftp.afrinic.net/pub/stats/afrinic/,” accessed August 11, 2014, ftp://ftp.afrinic.net/pub/stats/afrinic/; “The CAIDA AS Relationships Dataset,” accessed September 20, 2015, http://www.caida.org/data/as-relationships/; Y. Shavitt, E. Shir, and U. Weinsberg, “Near-Deterministic Inference of AS Relationships,” in 10th International Conference on Telecommunications, 2009. ConTEL 2009, 2009, 191–198.
- 5.
“Homepage | Africa Infrastructure Knowledge Program,” accessed June 3, 2016, http://infrastructureafrica.org/; “Projects : West Africa Regional Communications Infrastructure Project—APL-1B | The World Bank.”; “World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends”; “Projects : West Africa Regional Communications Infrastructure Project—APL-1B | The World Bank”; Kayisire and Wei, “ICT Adoption and Usage in Africa”; “Internet Users (per 100 People) | Data | Table”; “Connecting Africa: ICT Infrastructure Across the Continent”; World Bank, “Information & Communications Technologies”; The World Bank, Financing Information and Communication Infrastructure Needs in the Developing World. Public and Private Roles. World Bank Working Paper No. 65.
- 6.
“Africa Internet Stats Users Telecoms and Population Statistics,” accessed December 16, 2014, http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm.
- 7.
For simplicity, I refer to the specific techniques that I outline here by the latter term, but you can find excellent resources on these techniques, and their histories, under any of those names.
- 8.
References
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“Index of ftp://ftp.afrinic.net/pub/stats/afrinic/.” Accessed August 11, 2014.
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“IP Address to Identify Geolocation Information.” IP2Location. Accessed October 15, 2016. https://www.ip2location.com/.
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Shavitt, Y., E. Shir, and U. Weinsberg. “Near-Deterministic Inference of AS Relationships.” In 10th International Conference on Telecommunications, 2009. ConTEL 2009, 191–198, 2009.
“The CAIDA AS Relationships Dataset.” Accessed September 20, 2015. http://www.caida.org/data/as-relationships/.
The World Bank. Financing Information and Communication Infrastructure Needs in the Developing World. Public and Private Roles. World Bank Working Paper No. 65. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2005. http://wbln0037.worldbank.org/domdoc%5CPRD%5COther%5CPRDDContainer.nsf/All+Documents/85256D2400766CC78525709E005A5B33/$File/financingICTreport.pdf?OpenElement.
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“World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends.” Accessed February 9, 2016. http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2016.
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levenberg, l. (2018). On Interdisciplinary Studies of Physical Information Infrastructure. In: levenberg, l., Neilson, T., Rheams, D. (eds) Research Methods for the Digital Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96713-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96713-4_2
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