Our age is truly the age of Big Data. Every day we tweet, write posts and upload photos to Facebook and Instagram and send messages through WhatsApp to keep in touch with our friends and relatives. While doing this, we might not be aware that we are constantly producing new data, thus only increasing the amount that is already out there. As…
In the last couple of years we have seen multiple instances in which cultural heritage was destroyed, either due to intentional destruction by humans or because of an unfortunate accident. In 2014 we saw terrorists destroying historical artefacts across Syria and Iraq, in 2018 the national museum of Brazil was heavily damaged in a large fire, and just this year both the…
Today I would like to say a few things about Assassin’s Creed. The main motivation for this choice is personal interest and a slight obsession with Ancient Egypt. Yes, I am talking about Assassin’s Creed Origins. I would like to give you readers a warning, in case you have never heard about/played any of the Assassin’s Creed games yourself. It is not…
As I am using these articles to explore the opportunities of several digital media for historians, I would like to focus today on the subject of video games, which have become an influential part of mainstream culture. Historians might be a bit reluctant to discuss them in combination with historical research, but I would actually like to argue in favour of this.…
In my article from last week, I wrote about the censorship of historical footage which was uploaded on YouTube. In that article I tried to explain why YouTube is popular with institutions for sharing historical footage. I mentioned that YouTube removed videos and even briefly suspended accounts that uploaded historical material. In this week’s blog I would like to take a more…
Did you ever wonder if one of your ancestors has been to court, or maybe even served time in prison? With the help of online databases, you might be able to find out. Besides databases containing data on court records, there is also a lot of data to be found on prison registrations. But take aside our interest to find out about…
In the field of history, GIS (Geographic Information System) is a well-known type of software. Already the term HGIS (the extra H stands for historical) is being coined to describe the usage of GIS by historians. So why do historians use it and what are its advantages? GIS in historical research For those who have never heard of GIS, I recommend to…
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” Although academics should prefer to read a thousand words above just looking at an image to draw conclusions, there might still be some truth in the above mentioned phrase. In most cases, imagery is very powerful to send a message across or convey emotions to the viewer. It is therefore not strange that it has…
The last blog already. And what better way to start it then with a quote from Margaret Mitchells Gone With the Wind? For this last blog I want to summarize what I have been trying to do with all these past blogs. When I started to do the course Digital Media, Society and Culture the class was told to do all these…
