A historian says it’s time to consider how Big Data could change historical research
Citizen science is a digital method, which has been applied to a range of big-data scientific problems. The Zooniverse is a key player in this; having first sought the help of the crowd in classifying galaxies almost a decade ago, it now boasts 47 different projects with well over a million users. The projects hosted on their site have been bringing to the forefront concerns over who exactly is allowed to participate in science.
Even though the hierarchical structure of professional science still remains within most citizen science platforms (with the exception of the extreme citizen science movement), they have had the result of giving everyone access to the raw data of research, and an opportunity to demonstrate and develop expertise.
The methods of citizen science are now starting to be used for humanities projects. Citizen Humanities is opening up the vast archives of history to the public. A repercussion of this development is that it leads to questions as to who gets to participate in researching history, and what it means to be an expert.
I am one such ‘expert’ in doing historical research. Or at least that is what I am led to believe. Part of this expertise is due to the fact that I have read many 19th-century periodicals, and have developed a close understanding of these texts and the images that populate them. It’s also due to the fact that I have a written a doctoral thesis in the subject, vetted by people who also have PhDs in a similar area. I’ve published some research which has gone through peer review, and will (hopefully) be read other historians. And I’m currently paid to do historical research.
These are the basic conditions of becoming an expert in academia – which apply to both the sciences and the humanities. At least that is what the structures of the academic system, which have been defined and honed since the 19th century, stipulate as the necessary conditions to participate in knowledge production. ...