Author Archives: mslamani

How to use Voyant Tools ? Analysis of the text “Time for Outrage” by Stephane Hessel

Time for Outrage

This body of text that I chose for an analysis with Voyant Tools is from Stéphane Hessel’s book  “Time for Outrage.(page 1 to 4) Stéphane Hessel was a member of the Resistance to the Second World War, a diplomat and a writer. In 2010 he published his manifesto “Indignez vous” in which he encourages the younger generations to maintain a power of indignation.

This manifesto is engaged politically and socially.The use of Voyant Tools and in particular the word cloud allows a clearer understanding of the text. Indeed, we see several words that reveal the fundamental ideas of the text as the word ‘resistant’ that is at the heart of the speech of Stéphane Hessel, this word is the most frequently used word: Voyant tells us that it has been used more than 30 times in 4 pages. This allows us to draw a first conclusion, the use of a repeated word can anchor in the memory of the reader, the idea that the author wants to communicate. In a broader vision we also see the words ‘youth’, ‘money‘, and ‘inequality‘, ‘democracy‘ giving us a good idea of the topics that will be discussed.

 

The illustration of the frequencies shows us the thread of the author’s thought. Thus we can see that the word resistance appears at the beginning of the text blatantly, then that it is the word story that takes over in the last segments. Based on this graph we can therefore correlate the terms.

Nevertheless, we must keep a critical perspective on the use of Voyant. It can be seen that the tool considers words as “to” or “was” as important words in the corpus. Moreover, what is lacking is what software of this type cannot yet never give out is the possibility to understand the ambiguity of words that will not be captured by Voyant.

All the philosophical and positive dimensions of Hessel’s discourse are transcribed schematically and synthetically. The use of a tool like Voyant can allow the rapid understanding of a complex text like that of Hessel and allows us to grasp the main thesis of the author quickly. For all that, can one truly grasp the speech of a man through the machine? This is one of the questions that is raised in the digital humanities.

 

Merwan Slamani

Project Management and the Digital Humanist

Dr. Lynne Siemens , an Associate Professor in the at the University of Victoria explores in her article the relationship between digital humanities and project management. She asks how team management can be a necessary method for developing projects in the digital humanities. Indeed, she notes that academics in the humanities are often not used to working as a team. For her, project management becomes an indispensable tool for leading a project to success. She defines project management as “a set of principles, methods and techniques for effective management of objectives-oriented work in the context of a specific and unique organizational environment.” (page number!) Siemens shows us methods to carry out project management as efficiently as possible. First of all, you have to define your project in a clear way so that the whole team understands what it is about and thus avoid misunderstandings and wasting time. Once the project is clearly defined, Siemens shows us the importance of making a back planning so that the assigned tasks are defined, and that we can already get an idea of the efforts that need to be put into it and the objectives that are to be set. Practically, she recommends the use of a tool called “the network” ,illustrating the interdependencies between the tasks and the researchers who carry them out. This tool allows to predict the quantity of resources used for each task which can help prevent trouble when deadlines are missed or when a team member can no longer perform the assigned task so that a plan B can quickly be found. It is crucial to establish a tracking process for each project in order to be able to adapt to the changes that occur and sometimes to question the plan established previously, but especially to have a vision of the progress of the overall project by questioning, for example, the success of one of the candidates to carry out his project, and if not have an instrument for finding the reasons for it not succeeding. Siemens then explains the tools used to carry out the project and points out that sometimes researchers do not live in the same country. She recommends using digital tools such as Outlook, Omiplan or Dropbox. Nevertheless, the emergence of digital tools should not prevent maintaining a real-life link in the team. It is important to set appointments and meet face-to-face.

Moreover, a team must define its own charter to communicate, but also to find a leader who will have the essential task of maintaining the unity and the smooth running of the team work and the project.

Finally, Siemens emphasizes the role of feedback that is crucial at the end of the project. The team must analyze its strengths and weaknesses and make sure that everyone trys to understand why.

Lynne Siemens shows us in this article the benefits of the steps and the tools to carry out a project in the best way possible.

Merwan Joly-Slamani