The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous Sherlock Holmes stories. In the archive, I have included some of the various television and film adaptations that have been created recently.
Items:
holmes
Assignment 2: Omeka
Here is my exhibit:
http://holmesiana.net/exhibits/show/opticaltechnologies/opticaltechnologies
Here is my collection:
http://holmesiana.net/collections/show/20
Here are my items:
http://holmesiana.net/items/show/119
http://holmesiana.net/items/show/104
http://holmesiana.net/items/show/86
Head In The Word Clouds, Feet On The Ground
Story: Scandal In Bohemia
Overall, I thought that the word cloud project was an interesting experience for sure. After listening to our guest speaker go over how the aesthetics of a data platform can truly effect how it’s absorbed by the audience, I was eager to delve into it. However, once I got into it I came to the conclusion that they aren’t really that informative. If you’ve already read the story, then of course it’s going to reinforce the common themes present in the readings! Despite my thoughts on this, I did like the design factor of the project and hope that we can do more of that this semester!
Here is my first word cloud, from Voyant. Overall, I thought that it turned out well. But the program was not very user-friendly. It appeared that it needed to be updated. I wasn’t sure if there was a way to change the colors, shapes, or alignment of the words because it was confusing to use. Also, the jargon used like “corpus” was outdated and I wasn’t sure what it even meant.
In terms of the words present, I wasn’t really surprised at all which were the most popular.I feel as if the largest word in all of our projects is going to be Holmes.
The same can be said for the following word cloud, from Wordle.
I really liked using this tool a lot more because it was very straight-forward. User friendly programs are a huge plus in a project like this! As I just said, the words that appeared didn’t really surprise me all that much, either. Both of my word clouds are pretty similar, I think. King and photograph are two of the larger words up there, and as we know from reading the story, those are two important themes.
In part of this assignment, we also had to read two articles. I thought that the second one was pretty comical, and at the same time, agreeable. Because I’m a journalism student, I saw exactly where the author was coming from in terms of how a word cloud sometimes doesn’t illustrate the substance of a story at all. In journalistic writing, we actually avoid using similar words if we possibly can, unless it is the proper title of document, a study, a group, the name of a person, etc. We try to use synonyms as much as we can to crack any monotony in the bud and make our writing more colorful and appealing. In short, there’s probably close to 10 different words that can be swapped out throughout a story that essentially mean the same thing.
“Prettiness is a bonus; if it obliterates the ability to read the story of the visualization, it’s not worth adding some wild new visualization style or strange interface.”
In fiction works, such as a Holmes story, I noticed that word clouds are totally useful in illustrating some of the main concepts that are present. I think that analyzing word usage this way definitely has its benefits, but the analysis can’t end there. One of the larger duties in analyzing text is being able to identify what these themes actually mean. I do not think, however, that word clouds can substitute the true analytical thinking needed to process what these themes mean in the grand scheme of the plot. The initial thought of the word clouds is cool, but I think that there may be better tools out there to successfully show the themes of the story that looks more into substance and not just the word count.
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Jacob Harris of the New York Times writes in his article titled “Word Clouds Considered Harmful” that “visualization is reporting” and goes on to say visualizations should “…pare away extraneous information to find a story in the data…to help the reader understand the basics of the subject…” For many reasons I find these expectations especially hard to satisfy with word clouds. Not so much because they contain extraneous information but rather information that only just begins to lend itself to comprehensively conceptualizing a story. The data is comprised of individual words which in many ways are significant to the tale, but does nothing to elaborate on how they relate to tell the story. This lack of conceptual depth can easily lead the interpreter of the visual to invalid conclusions. Harris also adds a helpful bit of advice to anyone interested in creating data analysis visualizations when he claims “Prettiness is a bonus; if it obliterates the ability to read the story of the visualization, it’s not worth adding”
Considering all of the aforementioned, when deciding which program to use for visualizing a contextual analysis of Aurthur Doyle’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band, I based my decision on an incentive to analyze the text as practically as possible. Therefore I chose to sacrifice the customizable aesthetics of wordle for the more customizable analysis offered by voyant.
The trade off, initially inclined to improve the effectiveness of the analysis, did little to enhance an understanding of the story for any potential reader. For someone who has never read the story there are ceaseless misconceptions this cloud could beget. For instance one with no prior exposure to the story might see the words “died” and “watson” of similar size and perhaps infer that Watson meets his fate or even “holmes” considering his name is also a part of the cloud. These words present the subjects and topics that arise in the story but give no insight as to how they collectively form conflicts/resolutions or characters and setting which without any prior knowledge of the tale makes them near useless. Analogously like being given only a few of the most abundant ingredients in a recipe without other vital ingredients and instructions on how to mix them to make the desired end product. The most practical application for this word cloud, although no groundbreaking achievement, would be to highlight significant themes to reference for someone who already read The Adventure of the Speckled Band and knows how those themes actualize the story.
“A Scandal in Bohemia” Word Cloud
Many people hold word clouds, wordle in particular, in a negative light. While I agree that, yes, sometimes word clouds can complicate things more than they clear things up and make posts look messy, if done correctly they can be quite useful.
Above is a word cloud of the short story A Scandal in Bohemia, by Arthur Conan Doyle. I used wordle to create this visual because I knew how to work it and I found it was best suited for what I wanted to do. If someone were to look at this word cloud, they would already know that the story was about Sherlock Holmes, a king, and a photograph because those are the biggest words in the cloud. The black and white color scheme makes it easier to read because the black words stand out against the white background. I enjoyed picking which font to use, though it was frustrating because a lot of them were very hard to read. I picked this font because I felt it had more of a Victorian feel than any of the others. So, right off the bat, someone would already know that this Sherlock story was about a king and a photograph, and also, if he was using his context clues, that it was written a long time ago.
I think word clouds are best left to help someone get a basic understanding of a book or of an idea, not to be used in a serious argument unless it is absolutely necessary. All and all, there is a time and a place for word clouds, and if you’re a beginner with web tools, wordle can be very useful.