This passed week, I've had a number of conversations and discoveries that have really helped me further develop the digital humanities project I've been working on the past few months. In a brief conversation with Matt Frye about his own research he mentioned the term, "leapfrogging." "Leapfrogging" communicates the idea that areas that have not developed "stable" or "up-to-date" technological and economic infrastructures might rapidly move themselves forward through the adoption of contemporary systems without going through a series of intermediary steps of development. With purveyors of hardware, technology, telecommunications, etc. lining up to "update" Cuba's existing technological infrastructure in the wake of an agreement between President Obama and Raul Castro to relax trade and travel restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba,
Cuba purportedly stands to experience an unprecedented amount of growth in terms of material access, or at the very least an influx of material contexts in which users could perhaps own or operate digital technologies and participate as users on the Internet and Web 2.0. This "influx of material contexts" is very important to keep in mind given the various economic realities and debilitating restrictions imposed on Cuban citizens attempting to own or operate digital technologies regardless of the setting in which such use actually takes place. Indeed, according to a recent Bendixen & Amandi Poll for Univision Noticias - Fusion in collaboration with The Washington Post, it was reported that only 16% of Cubans living in Cuba have access to the Internet. And while these poll results might lead some to simply assume that Cubans living in Cuba as a whole would stand to benefit from a surge in material access, it is still important to keep in mind the manner in which the aforementioned economic realities and restrictions have tempered the use of digital technologies and the Internet in profoundly different ways for various populations.
In the past couple of years, Roots of Hope, an organization comprised of students and young professionals seeking to empower youth in Cuba to become authors of their own futures, have organized events in which computer programmers and coders from all over the globe are invited to explore the prospects for combating Internet restrictions in Cuba and to develop ideas, applications, and "innovative technology solutions" that speak directly to the existing hardware, literacy, and access limitations that serve as the foundation for the relationship between Cuba and technology.
These are very important contexts for me to consider as I move forward with my project in the digital humanities, in that they challenge me to re-consider the approach I am taking to the notion of digital rhetorics among Cubans living in Cuba. With all of these and more interested parties vying to enter the conversation around Cuba's digital and telecommunications future, I remain focused on how we might imagine and enact these futures in conversation with Cubans living in Cuba themselves.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Saturday, April 4, 2015
StoryCorps, a Mobile Application and a Web site
This past week I explored StoryCorps, a digital storytelling application designed for multiple mobile platforms (Personally, I used my Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 to navigate the application). StoryCorps allows users to conduct interviews with individuals and share them in a vast and burgeoning archive of other interviews collected within the application itself. Overall, it was relatively easy to find (I used the Google Play Store), download (It was only 37.5 MB), and sign up for (It only asks for a Username, Email, and Password, with other optional information). The interface is user-friendly and easy to navigate, with a rather simplified drop-down menu that includes just six options (including logging out). Below I will provide a brief narrative of my specific "user experience" of StoryCorps. Many of the observations that I make in my brief narrative will be expanded further when I articulate the terms of prospective pedagogical applications of StoryCorps in a DTC 101 course or otherwise.
In the "About StoryCorps" tab, they announce that their mission is to "provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives." They also indicate that interviews that are recorded with StoryCorps are preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The language used throughout the application itself is exclusively English without any recognizable options for alternative language or access options.
In looking at the interviews that were archived in the "Browse" tab, I was a bit dismayed by the lack of options available for users to somehow conduct more dedicated and specific keyword searches, thus making it a bit difficult to understand or manipulate the logic of how interviews were initially organized. However, users do have the option to "like" (indicated by the heart) or "friend" (indicated by the plus sign beside the outline of a human body) other users. In this sense, users can personalize their own "People I Follow" pages, though there were no options available to comment on or interact with these same or other users on the mobile application.
Though I did not myself conduct and record an interview with the StoryCorps mobile application, I was very much intrigued by what Melanie Kill dubs, the "hard and soft infrastructure" ("Teaching Digital Rhetoric") of the application in terms of how users are limited in many ways by the existing infrastructure and design components imposed within the platform ("hard infrastructure"), yet also offered unique and important avenues within the platform with which to carve out spaces for more personalized manipulation and agency ("soft infrastructure").
As it stands, StoryCorps generally requires that interviewer(s) and interviewee(s) occupy the same physical space, therefore limiting interview options based on mobility and geographical proximity. While StoryCorps does provide rather extensive and generally categorized lists (ranging from "Family Heritage" to "Love & Relationships" to "War") of sample questions with which to organize and conduct interviews, they also provide options to "Write your own question" as well. What is more, after users complete their interviews they are also invited to provide a title, summary, keywords (which includes keywords that are: "General (ex. birth, marriage, war)"; tied to an "Organization (ex. TED, YMCA)"; and/or related to specific "Places (ex. Chicago, IL)"), participant information (which includes: "First Name (required)", "Last Name (optional)," and Email (optional)"), and location ("City," "State/Region/Province," and "Select Country"). Though I certainly appreciated and valued the capacity with which users might generate and include all of this sort of personalized information, it was unclear how this information could actually be used by users of the StoryCorps mobile application themselves if that information if it is neither made available for perusal in the "Browse" tab nor made searchable with any kind of search field.
Many of the limitations I've described above with regard to the lack of search options available in the StoryCorps web application vexed and gave me enough pause to the extent that I decided to visit the StoryCorps Web site itself. Without engaging in an exhaustive study of the affordances and capabilities available to users on the StoryCorps Web site, I will certainly say that it is far more complex and dynamic than its counterpart, the mobile application. For example, it offers: playlists, recording locations, programs and initiatives, and, most importantly, a search field in which users can find other interviews in accordance with their own keywords and search criteria. The distinctions that I recognized between the mobile application and the Web site really helped me to develop some provisional and half baked activities and assignments which might be used in a DTC 101 course.
While I see quite a bit of value in actually composing with StoryCorps, though, I was primarily interested in the varied levels of affordances and design features that distinguished the mobile application from the Web site. This line of inquiry is intriguing to me, because it highlights the ways in which mobile applications are not simply digital surrogates of the Web sites that they emerge from but profoundly different platforms with which to accomplish comparable tasks. Which is to say, I could certainly imagine a longer sequence of assignments that use StoryCorps, a sequence that begins at the level of "listening to" and recognizing design features and affordances between and among the Web site and mobile application and then moving to actually using the platform itself to conduct and archive interviews. With StoryCorps providing a number of sample questions that users can use in the course of their interviews, it would be valuable to have students perhaps conduct a series of interviews in which they use these sample questions for some interviews and others where they design their own questions. Having students use as well as reflect on their use of StoryCorps in these different registers would go a long way in really simulating the "hard and soft infrastructure" of the digital storytelling platform. I also see quite a bit of potential in asking students to consider the rhetorical implications of the choices they elect to make in the course of their composing the title, summary, keywords, participant information, and location. This is all food for thought, though I am sure I will continue to flesh this out in the days that come.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Answering "the why DH question": Cuban Digital Rhetorics and the Emergence of a Broader Ecology of Interactional Prospects
As I move closer and closer to composing, revising, and submitting a proposal for my digital humanities project regarding the topic of Cuban digital rhetorics, it is important to also pause at this stage in order to meditate on how and why, specifically, the digital humanities might serve as an appropriate platform for my particular project. In once again broaching the concerns, readings, and topics that emerge from existing digital humanities projects, scholarship, and pedagogies, I begin to understand that my prospective efforts to explore Cuban digital rhetorics is embroiled in the sorts of questions and conversations about language, literacy, and culture that comprise what has come to constitute the digital humanities as a deeply-sensitive and incisive platform for organizing, delivering, and welcoming content or information in digital spaces. Indeed, the aforementioned questions and conversations within my particular project crop up issues ranging from access (in all of its varieties) all the way to collaboration and critical engagement. In what follows, I hope to provide a brief and exploratory snapshot of the manner in which a majority of the primary concerns espoused within the digital humanities also inhere in the work that I aim to engage in with my own digital humanities project regarding the topic of Cuban digital rhetorics.
In order to help situate my ultimate claim that the digital humanities are ultimately indispensable to conversations about Cuban digital rhetorics, it is first important to understand the role that access and surveillance have played within interpersonal rhetorics between and among Cuban peoples inside and outside of Cuba itself. Interpersonal rhetorics are an integral context through which to analyze all of these issues because of the ongoing and general (but not complete) absence of interactional prospects between Cuban citizens and those who reside outside of Cuba. In many ways, these diverse but interrelated Cuban populations and their interactional prospects have been shaped and re-organized by revolutions, diasporas, and discontent. Having experienced at least three major waves of diasporic and migrational activity away from Cuba for various political, religious, economic, and familial reasons since the late-1950s, the Cuban population has generally experienced the sorts of fractures and traumas that problematize efforts to articulate and deliver a stable conceptualization of what constitutes Cuban identity or Cuban rhetoric writ large. Made all the more extreme by the broad and inescapable ideological underpinnings that have informed the United States governments' long-standing embargo against Cuba and the ever-palpable stink of enmity that has inhered in the relationship between these nations, interactional prospects among Cuban peoples inside and outside of Cuba have been dictated and surveilled to the extent that little or no direct or productive interaction has taken place between these Cuban populations following the aforementioned diasporic and migrational activity. Despite even the most recent and unprecedented developments within diplomatic relations between the nations, interactional prospects as a whole have remained rather limited by virtually insurmountable issues of access and surveillance, foregrounded and in effect maintained by the Cuban government itself.
Though the number of Cuban citizens who currently have even temporary material access to digital technologies, including cellular phones, personal computers, and other related digital media still remains paltry compared to much of those Cuban populations residing outside of Cuba, as these numbers continue to rise more and more Cuban citizens are making their digital presence felt by extending their interactional prospects into platforms ranging from e-mail, blogs, social media, Wikipedia, and so forth. These Cuban citizens have therefore taken to and operated digital media and digital technologies in rather profound, creative, and important ways, ways that cannot necessarily be reduced to an umbrella term, like "digital literacy." Rather, they have carved out unique and personalized digital spaces in which new and exciting rhetorics and interactional prospects have emerged, many of which have been used to establish a generalized digital presence that aims to reach as wide and robust an audience as possible.
My interests within my own digital humanities project about Cuban digital rhetorics is certainly concerned and cognizant of the ways in which increased levels of material access have allowed some (not all) Cuban citizens more opportunities to expand their wheelhouse house of interactional prospects and to construct more public and socially-visible identities within various digital media and digital technologies. However, I am perhaps even more interested in how these emerging trends towards increased material access to digital media and digital technologies have prompted many Cuban citizens to expand their interactional prospects in the direction of more private, dedicated, and interpersonal rhetorics, rhetorics that have led many-a-Cuban back to the friends, families, and communities they lost complete touch with following the diasporic and migrational activity that followed from the events of the late-1950s onward. Considering the deafening silences and perhaps even enmities that existed between and among the Cuban populations residing inside and outside of Cuba, these interpersonal contexts ought to play a more significant role in how we consider, discuss, and circulate information about Cuban rhetorics, digital or otherwise.
The digital humanities serves as an appropriate and timely platform for doing work in and around Cuban digital rhetorics, because it offers unique and important opportunities to really explain and situate this push towards increased interactional prospects within the very medium that seems to be expanding these prospects in many different (yet interrelated) directions at once. In order to construct, frame, and preserve the space that might host this sort of digital humanities project as one that might facilitate collaboration and participation between and among the Cuban populations residing inside and outside of Cuba, though, it will at the very least be important to ensure that the terms and coding that organize this space are designed in accordance with much of the existing hardware and software in Cuba. While this might not resolve issues of material access in the short- or long-term, it might allow content contributors, coders, software developers, etc. in Cuba to co-construct and (hopefully) co-habit this digital space. In giving deep consideration to seemingly "micro-level" concerns with development, though, these methods will also impact opportunities for end-users as well. Moreover, locating this digital space within concerted efforts to speak more directly to minimal hardware and software requirements or capabilities will frame this digital humanities project as one that is deeply concerned with the sort of critical engagement with existing digital technologies that constitutes much of what theorists dub, "creating," as opposed to its swift and uncritical counterpart, "making." Ultimately, I see a great deal of potential in the marriage between my project about Cuban digital rhetorics and the sorts of affordances and possibilities inherent to the digital humanities, affordances and possibilities that I hope to continue to expand on as I massage and refine my proposal.
In order to help situate my ultimate claim that the digital humanities are ultimately indispensable to conversations about Cuban digital rhetorics, it is first important to understand the role that access and surveillance have played within interpersonal rhetorics between and among Cuban peoples inside and outside of Cuba itself. Interpersonal rhetorics are an integral context through which to analyze all of these issues because of the ongoing and general (but not complete) absence of interactional prospects between Cuban citizens and those who reside outside of Cuba. In many ways, these diverse but interrelated Cuban populations and their interactional prospects have been shaped and re-organized by revolutions, diasporas, and discontent. Having experienced at least three major waves of diasporic and migrational activity away from Cuba for various political, religious, economic, and familial reasons since the late-1950s, the Cuban population has generally experienced the sorts of fractures and traumas that problematize efforts to articulate and deliver a stable conceptualization of what constitutes Cuban identity or Cuban rhetoric writ large. Made all the more extreme by the broad and inescapable ideological underpinnings that have informed the United States governments' long-standing embargo against Cuba and the ever-palpable stink of enmity that has inhered in the relationship between these nations, interactional prospects among Cuban peoples inside and outside of Cuba have been dictated and surveilled to the extent that little or no direct or productive interaction has taken place between these Cuban populations following the aforementioned diasporic and migrational activity. Despite even the most recent and unprecedented developments within diplomatic relations between the nations, interactional prospects as a whole have remained rather limited by virtually insurmountable issues of access and surveillance, foregrounded and in effect maintained by the Cuban government itself.
Though the number of Cuban citizens who currently have even temporary material access to digital technologies, including cellular phones, personal computers, and other related digital media still remains paltry compared to much of those Cuban populations residing outside of Cuba, as these numbers continue to rise more and more Cuban citizens are making their digital presence felt by extending their interactional prospects into platforms ranging from e-mail, blogs, social media, Wikipedia, and so forth. These Cuban citizens have therefore taken to and operated digital media and digital technologies in rather profound, creative, and important ways, ways that cannot necessarily be reduced to an umbrella term, like "digital literacy." Rather, they have carved out unique and personalized digital spaces in which new and exciting rhetorics and interactional prospects have emerged, many of which have been used to establish a generalized digital presence that aims to reach as wide and robust an audience as possible.
My interests within my own digital humanities project about Cuban digital rhetorics is certainly concerned and cognizant of the ways in which increased levels of material access have allowed some (not all) Cuban citizens more opportunities to expand their wheelhouse house of interactional prospects and to construct more public and socially-visible identities within various digital media and digital technologies. However, I am perhaps even more interested in how these emerging trends towards increased material access to digital media and digital technologies have prompted many Cuban citizens to expand their interactional prospects in the direction of more private, dedicated, and interpersonal rhetorics, rhetorics that have led many-a-Cuban back to the friends, families, and communities they lost complete touch with following the diasporic and migrational activity that followed from the events of the late-1950s onward. Considering the deafening silences and perhaps even enmities that existed between and among the Cuban populations residing inside and outside of Cuba, these interpersonal contexts ought to play a more significant role in how we consider, discuss, and circulate information about Cuban rhetorics, digital or otherwise.
The digital humanities serves as an appropriate and timely platform for doing work in and around Cuban digital rhetorics, because it offers unique and important opportunities to really explain and situate this push towards increased interactional prospects within the very medium that seems to be expanding these prospects in many different (yet interrelated) directions at once. In order to construct, frame, and preserve the space that might host this sort of digital humanities project as one that might facilitate collaboration and participation between and among the Cuban populations residing inside and outside of Cuba, though, it will at the very least be important to ensure that the terms and coding that organize this space are designed in accordance with much of the existing hardware and software in Cuba. While this might not resolve issues of material access in the short- or long-term, it might allow content contributors, coders, software developers, etc. in Cuba to co-construct and (hopefully) co-habit this digital space. In giving deep consideration to seemingly "micro-level" concerns with development, though, these methods will also impact opportunities for end-users as well. Moreover, locating this digital space within concerted efforts to speak more directly to minimal hardware and software requirements or capabilities will frame this digital humanities project as one that is deeply concerned with the sort of critical engagement with existing digital technologies that constitutes much of what theorists dub, "creating," as opposed to its swift and uncritical counterpart, "making." Ultimately, I see a great deal of potential in the marriage between my project about Cuban digital rhetorics and the sorts of affordances and possibilities inherent to the digital humanities, affordances and possibilities that I hope to continue to expand on as I massage and refine my proposal.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Friday, March 13, 2015
Dear Instructor . . .
Dear Instructor,
I am writing to you in response to Mark Sample and Kelly Schrum's article, "What's Wrong With Writing Essays: A Conversation." Seeming as how you've assigned this article in the context of the ENGLISH 101 curriculum, I am inclined to believe that at least some of what Sample and Schrum are discussing here could play an important role in the work that we do throughout the semester.
Up to this point in my academic career much of my experience as a composer has taken place within "conventional" text-based genres and media, which inspires both excitement and anxieties as I come into contact with this new communicative frontier. On the one hand, there is quite a bit of value in "integrat[ing] more and more public writing" (87) into the ENGLISH 101 curriculum. This move to further underscore the social implications involved in the act of composing is very important to me. It not only raises the stakes for the work I will engage in throughout my composing processes, it might also serve as a generative space in which my readership is not only limited to the confines of the ENGLISH 101 classroom or the academy writ large. Indeed, this sort of "public writing" problematizes my own anxieties about academic writing acting as the equivalent of playing for an empty auditorium, so to speak. For this reason, the prospect of "moving away from asking students to write toward asking them to weave. To build, to fabricate, to design" (89; italics in original), is something I welcome with open arms.
However, while I agree with Sample and Schrum when they suggest that "the only thing a student essay measures is how well a student can conform to the rigid thesis/defense model" (87), I am also quite tentative and anxious about completely embracing unfamiliar genres and media that I am not entirely prepared to use and navigate critically. I trust that these sorts of assigned projects will not be foisted on we unsuspecting students, and that there will be a measure of course scaffolding in which you help us construct bridges between our existing knowledge base about text-based conventions and the alternative genres and media that might allow us to communicate more thoroughly and creatively with a wider public audience.
In their article, Sample and Schrum extol the virtues of making students uncomfortable but not paralyzed (96). I am hoping that as the semester progresses I will be able to strike a comfortable balance between these feelings of discomfort and paralysis. I am more than happy and willing to step outside of my comfort zone and "try on" new ways of thinking and being. I hope that both my excitement and anxieties are well taken, but please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions, comments, or concerns about anything I have said here. Thank you so much for your willingness to think outside of the box in terms of the work that we do inside and outside of the ENGLISH 101 curriculum. This will certainly make all of us more versatile and socially-conscious composers as we engage with new and exciting genres and media. Have a wonderful day!
Sincerely,
Mark Daniel Triana
Washington State University Student
I am writing to you in response to Mark Sample and Kelly Schrum's article, "What's Wrong With Writing Essays: A Conversation." Seeming as how you've assigned this article in the context of the ENGLISH 101 curriculum, I am inclined to believe that at least some of what Sample and Schrum are discussing here could play an important role in the work that we do throughout the semester.
Up to this point in my academic career much of my experience as a composer has taken place within "conventional" text-based genres and media, which inspires both excitement and anxieties as I come into contact with this new communicative frontier. On the one hand, there is quite a bit of value in "integrat[ing] more and more public writing" (87) into the ENGLISH 101 curriculum. This move to further underscore the social implications involved in the act of composing is very important to me. It not only raises the stakes for the work I will engage in throughout my composing processes, it might also serve as a generative space in which my readership is not only limited to the confines of the ENGLISH 101 classroom or the academy writ large. Indeed, this sort of "public writing" problematizes my own anxieties about academic writing acting as the equivalent of playing for an empty auditorium, so to speak. For this reason, the prospect of "moving away from asking students to write toward asking them to weave. To build, to fabricate, to design" (89; italics in original), is something I welcome with open arms.
However, while I agree with Sample and Schrum when they suggest that "the only thing a student essay measures is how well a student can conform to the rigid thesis/defense model" (87), I am also quite tentative and anxious about completely embracing unfamiliar genres and media that I am not entirely prepared to use and navigate critically. I trust that these sorts of assigned projects will not be foisted on we unsuspecting students, and that there will be a measure of course scaffolding in which you help us construct bridges between our existing knowledge base about text-based conventions and the alternative genres and media that might allow us to communicate more thoroughly and creatively with a wider public audience.
In their article, Sample and Schrum extol the virtues of making students uncomfortable but not paralyzed (96). I am hoping that as the semester progresses I will be able to strike a comfortable balance between these feelings of discomfort and paralysis. I am more than happy and willing to step outside of my comfort zone and "try on" new ways of thinking and being. I hope that both my excitement and anxieties are well taken, but please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions, comments, or concerns about anything I have said here. Thank you so much for your willingness to think outside of the box in terms of the work that we do inside and outside of the ENGLISH 101 curriculum. This will certainly make all of us more versatile and socially-conscious composers as we engage with new and exciting genres and media. Have a wonderful day!
Sincerely,
Mark Daniel Triana
Washington State University Student
Friday, February 27, 2015
Making Ground on a Prospective Project in the Digital Humanities
A couple of months back I posted a blog entry in which I started to map out a prospective project in the digital humanities regarding issues of language, literacy, and culture and their intersections with Cuban digital practices and uneven access to technologies in Cuba. At the time I used Trevor Owens' blog on where to start on research questions in the digital humanities, particularly his emphasis on Joe Maxwell's ideas about the interactive components of research design. In this blog entry I will once again use the five distinct moves/stages/elements that Maxwell articulates in his approach, which includes:
1) goals, which clarifies the purpose for doing research;
2) conceptual framework, which refers to the specific literature(s), field(s), and experience(s) one is drawing on;
3) research questions, which clearly disseminates the statement(s) and question(s) one is working with in their project;
4) methods, which provides insight into the ways in which one will address and/or answer the aforementioned statement(s) and question(s); and
5) validity concerns, which address the limitations and biases that might inform one's approach to the project.
Below you will find my revised responses to Maxwell's five distinct moves/stages/elements, responses that are further informed by the readings I have engaged with regarding the digital humanities and my independent research on my specific topic. My hope is that my work in this blog entry reflects my willingness to adopt and practice Owens' iterative approach to bringing personalized projects in the digital humanities to fruition within the context of a sustained and thorough process.
1) Goals:
I still remain committed to carving out spaces in which to discuss Cuban digital practices, but I have also become very interested in how my project might provide unique opportunities to collaborate across Cuban populations, be they from Cuba, the United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, or otherwise. In considering BOTH end users as well as coders, programmers, and other collaborators I would very much like for my project to somehow represent not only Cuban digital practices in terms of citizens of and in Cuba but also those Cubans residing outside of Cuba. My hope is to illustrate the ways in which the major Cuban diasporas that took place in the wake of the Cuban Revolution have marked and had an impact on digital practices for ALL Cubans. In this sense, matters of identity, geopolitics, surveillance, paranoia, kinship, etc. will play a prominent role in the shape that my project will eventually take. Ultimately, though, this requires deeper consideration of what or who qualifies as a collaborator and what or who qualifies as the subject for content. Which is to say I have become more and more uncomfortable about directing the Western and "diasporic" gaze at the Cuban population in Cuba.
2) Conceptual Framework:
As you will see, I have expanded the scope of my research considerably. This will be a rather long list of prospective sources I might use to form the conceptual framework for my project and it will surely become even more robust as time goes on. That being said, I will do my best to rein myself in and be careful about the sources I decide to give precedence. What follows is the list of prospective sources that I am considering:
1) goals, which clarifies the purpose for doing research;
2) conceptual framework, which refers to the specific literature(s), field(s), and experience(s) one is drawing on;
3) research questions, which clearly disseminates the statement(s) and question(s) one is working with in their project;
4) methods, which provides insight into the ways in which one will address and/or answer the aforementioned statement(s) and question(s); and
5) validity concerns, which address the limitations and biases that might inform one's approach to the project.
Below you will find my revised responses to Maxwell's five distinct moves/stages/elements, responses that are further informed by the readings I have engaged with regarding the digital humanities and my independent research on my specific topic. My hope is that my work in this blog entry reflects my willingness to adopt and practice Owens' iterative approach to bringing personalized projects in the digital humanities to fruition within the context of a sustained and thorough process.
1) Goals:
I still remain committed to carving out spaces in which to discuss Cuban digital practices, but I have also become very interested in how my project might provide unique opportunities to collaborate across Cuban populations, be they from Cuba, the United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, or otherwise. In considering BOTH end users as well as coders, programmers, and other collaborators I would very much like for my project to somehow represent not only Cuban digital practices in terms of citizens of and in Cuba but also those Cubans residing outside of Cuba. My hope is to illustrate the ways in which the major Cuban diasporas that took place in the wake of the Cuban Revolution have marked and had an impact on digital practices for ALL Cubans. In this sense, matters of identity, geopolitics, surveillance, paranoia, kinship, etc. will play a prominent role in the shape that my project will eventually take. Ultimately, though, this requires deeper consideration of what or who qualifies as a collaborator and what or who qualifies as the subject for content. Which is to say I have become more and more uncomfortable about directing the Western and "diasporic" gaze at the Cuban population in Cuba.
2) Conceptual Framework:
As you will see, I have expanded the scope of my research considerably. This will be a rather long list of prospective sources I might use to form the conceptual framework for my project and it will surely become even more robust as time goes on. That being said, I will do my best to rein myself in and be careful about the sources I decide to give precedence. What follows is the list of prospective sources that I am considering:
1) Banks, Adam J. Race, Rhetoric, and Technology:
Searching for Higher Ground.
2) Coté, John. “Cubans Log On behind Castro’s Back.”
3) Edwards, Charlie. “The Digital Humanities and Its
Users”
4) Hernandez-Reguant, Ariana. “Radio Taino and the
Cuban Quest for Identi . . . que?”
5) Hoffman, Bert. The Politics of the Internet in Third
World Development: Challenges in Contrasting Regimes, with Case Studies with
Costa Rica and Cuba.
6) Junqueira, Eduardo S., and Marcelo E. K. Buzato. New
Literacies, New Agencies?: A Brazilian Persepctive on Mindsets, Digital
Practices and Tools for Social Action in and Out of School.
7) Liu, Alan. “Where is Cultural Criticism in the
Digital Humanities?”
8) McPherson, Tara. “Why Are the Digital Humanities So
White? or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation.”
9) Pedrazza, Silvia. Political Disaff ection in Cuba’s
Revolution and Exodus.
10) Press, Larry. “Cuba, Communism, and Computing.”
11) Press, Larry and Joel Snyder. “A Look at Cuban
Networks.”
12) Rubira, Rainer, and Gisela Gil-Egui. "Political
Communication in the Cuban Blogosphere: A Case Study of Generation Y."
13) Valdés, Nelson P. and Mario A. Rivera, “The
Political Economy of the Internet in Cuba.”
14) Vazquez, Naghim. “Cuba in the Window of the
Internet.”
15) Venegas, Cristina. Digital Dilemmas The State, the
Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba
16) Vicari, Stefania. Blogging politics in Cuba: the
framing of political discourse in the Cuban blogosphere
17) Voeux, Claire, and Julien Pain. “Going Online in
Cuba: Internet under Surveillance.”
3) Research Questions:
1) To what extent have various populations and demographics in Cuba had material access to digital technologies over past decade or so?
2) In what capacity are Cuban citizens introduced to and/or given free reign to use digital technologies?
3) How do those engaging with various interfaces and digital technologies in Cuba compare to other "Western" societies, whether "democratic," "communist," or otherwise?
4) How have the major Cuban diasporas that have taken place since the Cuban Revolution helped shape communicative, digital, and rhetorical practices for Cubans within and outside of Cuba?
5) How might Cubans within and outside of Cuba create safe and collaborative spaces in which the "gaze" and focus is better distributed, transforming collaborator into subject for content, and vice versa?
4) Methods:
This project will certainly require that quite a bit of qualitative research actually take place within and outside of Cuba. However, I would first like to review more of the literature on issues of access to technology and digital literacy as they pertain to all Cubans to get a better sense of the social and critical landscape I am working in. It would also be helpful to get more information about the sorts of projects that academics throughout the world might be conducting in and around Cuba as of now. The Cuban government does grant "educational" visas, so it will be important to see where my project might fall in the miasma of research being conducted in and around various Cuban populations. It will be imperative that I engage with sources that are in both English and Spanish, and that I cast a rather wide net in terms of collaboration across contexts and Cuban populations.
5) Validity Concerns:
As much of the substance of this project will likely emerge in the context of qualitative research, there is certainly potential for my findings to be both limited as well as biased. I am generally working off of the presumption that digital literacies and digital practices in Cuba are fundamentally different and unique, so it will be important for me to rein myself in and not project these notions onto my findings. In line with this idea that digital literacies and digital practices in Cuba are different and unique, I must also be cautious and suspicious about the terms, vocabularies, and assumptions that I use and make as I articulate my findings. I believe that expanding my project to include Cuban populations (in the plural) whether residing inside or outside of Cuba will certainly help to temper some of the limitations and biases of my project. Ultimately, I will have to think a bit more about what this will look like and how I will be able to collaborate with others to make the project work and be both fruitful and accessible for most if not all Cuban populations inside and outside of Cuba.
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