Virtuelle 3D-Modelle finden in den historischen Disziplinen in zweierlei Art Verwendung. Zum einen dienen diese zur Erfassung und Digitalisierung existierender historischer Objekte. Daneben dient die Erstellung von virtuellen 3D-Rekonstruktionen der Nachbildung nicht mehr existierender Objekte und Strukturen. Während technische Abläufe beider Ansätze ebenso wie methodische und wissenschaftstheoretische Aspekte in der Fachliteratur häufig und umfassend thematisiert werden, ist eine Frage nach sozialen Aspekten und sozialer Interaktion im Kontext derartiger Vorhaben bisher unbeleuchtet geblieben. Ziel der Arbeit stellt dar, eine Bandbreite und Relevanz von Aspekten der Kooperation als „Zusammenarbeit mit gemeinsamem Ziel, gegenseitiger Abstimmung, planvollem Vorgehen sowie Vorteilen für alle Akteure“ (Hagenhoff, 2004) im Kontext derartiger geschichtswissenschaftlicher 3D-Modellierungsvorhaben mittels sozialwissenschaftlicher Methoden zu beleuchten. Dabei zielt eine Darlegung auf unterschiedliche Skalierungen von Kooperation ab – angefangen bei einer Wissenschaftslandschaft über Kooperationsstrukturen bis hin zu einer Betrachtung von spezifischen Kooperationsphänomenen und -strategien innerhalb von Arbeits- und Erstellungsprozessen.

This dissertation thesis deals with the application of the concept of information distance to the social network data analysis. We consider this data as recorded acts of social action. As such, they express certain attitudes, values and intentions. We introduce a formula for calculating the Normalized Social Distance and, based on the series of case studies, we prove the usefulness and validity of this approach. The application of formal mathematical and computer science techniques to massive data records of human action in social network environments is enabled by the change brought by new media and the associated technological advancement. This change is accompanied by a gradual transition of research methods in the humanities, referred to as the onset of digital humanities. This approach is characterized by the application of quantitative methods in the field of humanities and the discovery of new data areas useful for analyses. In case of social media data, the differentiation between quantitative and qualitative methods is no longer valid. A good example is also this thesis, in which information theory specifically combines the methods of a traditional social network analysis and the Goffman's frame analysis of human action. Keywords Information distance, Normalized Social Distance, Kolmogorov...

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how six different art museums are working on digitizing their collections, and how they are made available to the public. To answer the purpose, three research questions were formulated; how the museums work with digitization, what is digitized and which programs and guidelines are used, and how the digitized material is made available to the public on the websites. The museums examined in this thesis are Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the National Palace Museum Taiwan in Taipei and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Prior to the study, previous research on digital humanities, digitization in museums, and the role of museums and their approach to digital collections, were studied. The theoretical framework used in the analysis consists of theories regarding “New media” and digital humanities, theories about “The museum process” and Actor-network theory, ANT. The method used is qualitative content analysis and semiotic image analysis of the museum websites. The results and analysis show that the museum websites differ in terms of design, functions, user-friendliness and collection content. In addition, the museums use different guidelines and software programs in the digitization process of their collections, although there is some overlap. The analysis shows that the Rijksmuseum, the Smithsonian and the National Palace Museum Taiwan are the museums in the study that have made the most progress with digitizing their collections and using interactive elements on their websites. The museum with the least developed digitization work is Moderna Museet, whose search page is the simplest and most standardized in comparison with the other museum websites.

Whereas past and current digital projects in ancient language studies have been concerned with the annotation of linguistic elements and metadata, there is now an increased interest in the annotation of elements above the linguistic level that are determined by context – like figurative language. Such projects bring their own set of problems (the automatisation of annotation is more difficult, for instance), but also allow us to develop new ways of examining the data. For this reason, we have attempted to take an already annotated database of Ancient Egyptian texts and develop a complementary tagging layer rather than starting from scratch with a new database. In this paper, we present our work in developing a metaphor annotation layer for the Late Egyptian text database of Projet Ramsès (Université de Liège) and in so doing address more general questions: 1) How to ‚tailor-make’ annotation layers to fit other databases? (Workflow) 2) How to make annotations that are flexible enough to be altered in the course of the annotation process? (Project design) 3) What kind of potential do such layers have for integration with existing and future annotations? (Sustainability)

This thesis investigates cognition and knowledge in a rich selection of late medieval Florentine commonplace books (zibaldoni) and diaries (ricordanze) with a special focus on Giovanni Rucellai’s Zibaldone Quaresimale. In Chapter Two a new methodology, named Mental Model Framework in History (MMFH), is elaborated. By studying mental processes such as categorisation and decision making, MMFH enables us to study cognition in historical documents. The dissertation is based on a computer-assisted analysis described in Chapter Three . This has brought together a number of technologies (Natural Language Processing, Semantic Web, Text Encoding Initiative) and used them according to the interpretative goals of the MMFH. Chapter Four investigates the knowledge-constructing practice of late medieval Florentines, and concludes that commonplace books and diaries were tools of information management and knowledge transmission. The core chapters study four domains of thinking: space, time, agency and perception. Chapter Five analyses social recognition and judgement in Renaissance Florence and reveals how a new ethical thought took shape, one that prepared the transition to capitalism. By applying decision and game theory, Chapter Six examines horizontal friendship, a bond that functioned as an informal but risky social insurance in Florence. Chapter Seven studies how Florentines used superlatives to construct a hierarchy of the world, with Florence on the top. This was the manifestation of a fierce competition within and outside the walls of Florence, competition that strongly influenced the social and physical environment of the city. By studying selection, periodisation and causal reasoning, Chapter Eight pinpoints the gradual secularisation of the conception of time. The thesis concludes that the late medieval revolution in information culture marked by the gradual transition from an overwhelmingly oral culture to an increasingly literate culture produced quantitative and qualitative changes in human thought. This largely contributed to the birth of modern thought, and to the late medieval transformation of the social and physical environment.

I propose a theoretical framework that describes how avatars incorporate media as an inherent part of their nature and find a hosting body in cyborgs to navigate and spawn in media. I propose the birth of a new scion that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into a conceptual being that I call “ICEVORG.” The ICEVORG expands beyond representation into the actual physical world by means of media transgression—more specifically, by the use of the Strange Loop also known as Metalepsis ICEVORG find an effective soil to thrive and interrogate our ideas of reality by means of iteration, expansion, fragmentation and naturalization. The development of the framework that explains the concept of ICEVORG happens in the interstices between fiction and reality. The ICEVORG transgresses boundaries to reach and transcend the concepts of the avatar and cyborg in order to generate meaning and pursue relevance in contemporary society. By dissecting the ICEVORG under the light of metalepsis that I am able to elaborate a framework to explain the world of post-hyperrealism and how ICEVORGS have become agents of change. Finally, in order to construct my argument, I employ autoethnography, a research methodology that allows for a more personal voice to be included as part of the research process.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a gamified crowdsourcing platform for transcription and metadata tagging of digitised text documents, and further to examine whether the platform can stimulate engagement in archives and be used as an educational resource. The case, around which the thesis project is conducted, is the governmental Archives of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its historical documents which were damaged in a fire in 2014.  Theories about engagement, archival pedagogy, and gamification guided the development of the platform. Bosnian-Herzegovinian school children, History teachers, and staff of the Archives of Bosnia and Herzegovina tested the platform and shared their thoughts of it in focus group discussions and interviews. The developed platform consists of a game interface, a database, and an interface for results viewing and searching. It is web-based, and coded in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. The platform stimulated engagement among the school children who tested it. They expressed interest in reading and learning more about archival documents, in long-term preservation of information, and in the archive’s mission and future. Judging from the discussions and interviews, the platform could well serve as an educational resource. The History teachers showed interest in using the platform in their teaching, and found support for it in the curriculum for the History subject. A gamified crowdsourcing platform has been developed, and the perception among school children, History teachers, and archive staff was overall very positive. Crowdsourcing is not just about sourcing out tasks to the crowd. Co-creation of content could furthermore stimulate learning and engagement, and thereby tie a bound between the public and the archive. Gamification can successfully make the overarching goal of crowdsourcing understandable and concrete for the platform users. / Uppsatsen syftar till att utveckla en spelifierad crowdsourcing-plattform för transkription och metadatataggning av digitaliserade textdokument samt att undersöka huruvida plattformen kan väcka engagemang för arkiv och användas som en utbildningsresurs. Det fall runt vilket uppsatsprojektet kretsar är Bosnien-Hercegovinas centrala arkivmyndighet och dess historiska dokument som skadades i en brand 2014. Teorier om engagemang, arkivpedagogik och gamification vägledde utvecklingen av plattformen. Skolbarn och historielärare i Bosnien-Hercegovina samt personal på arkivmyndigheten provade plattformen och delade med sig av sina tankar om den i fokusgruppsdiskussioner och intervjuer. Den utvecklade plattformen består av ett spelgränssnitt, en databas och ett gränssnitt för resultatvisning och sökning. Den är webbaserad och skriven i HTML, CSS, JavaScript och PHP. Plattformen väckte engagemang hos de barn som provade den. De uttryckte intresse av att läsa och lära sig mer om arkivdokument, av långsiktigt bevarande samt av arkivets uppdrag och framtid. Plattformen skulle, av fokusgruppsdiskussionerna och intervjuerna att döma, kunna användas och fungera väl som utbildningsresurs. Historielärarna visade intresse av att använda plattformen i sin undervisning och fann stöd för det i historieämnets läroplan. En spelifierad crowdsourcing-plattform har utvecklats och mottagandet av den bland skolbarn, historielärare och arkivpersonal var överlag mycket positivt. Crowdsourcing handlar inte enbart om att outsourca arbetsuppgifter till massan. Medskapande kan dessutom stimulera lärande och engagemang och därigenom knyta band mellan allmänheten och arkivet. Spelifiering kan med framgång göra crowdsourcingens övergripande mål förståeligt och konkret för dem som använder plattformen.

College students seek degrees to obtain employment in their field of interest, however, as the 21st century progresses, employers are often requiring specific skills in addition to degrees and transcripts. As students graduate with their Associates, Bachelors, and Graduate degrees, they plan to present these degrees as sufficient evidence of their qualifications. However, there is recent criticism of college degrees as evidence of qualifications. A beneficial alternative for students would be digital badges. A digital badge is a visual representation that signifies a specific achievement with detailed metadata attached. Digital badges in first-year writing courses would benefit students as they develop specific writing and critical thinking skills as prompted by the curriculum. First-year writing digital badges can include: researching, synthesizing, writing process, constructing authority, etc. as deemed appropriate by the instructor. Ultimately, students will display their badges on their resumes, CVs, or any other document verifying their achievements.

Wikipedia consists of an online encyclopedia created by users worldwide who collaborate to distribute knowledge and edit information in real-time. Although Wikipedia's accuracy has been a disputable and debatable issue in many recent studies, little academic research has systematically addressed how users interact with the platform's storytelling tools and how do they perceive and use Wikipedia's infrastructure, such as interactive tools. This exploratory study fulfills this gap and sheds light on users' perceptions about Wikipedia's interactivity. Moreover, Wikipedia is approached as an online community where collaboration, co-creation, and knowledge distribution play an important role. Therefore, it can be studied under the scope of Digital Humanities as well. The theoretical framework of interactive storytelling and digital communication suggests that hyperlinks, page preview bottoms, or interactive catalogs are applied in Wikipedia's environment to help users absorb information and construct their narratives. The findings of this thesis offer practical insights on how Wikipedia's interactive storytelling tools empower users with the ability to develop their stories and become editors/authors and provide a foundation for further academic research on user experience and how to improve interactivity and digital communication in Wikipedia

This purpose of this dissertation is to utilize womanism and ratchetness to determine how the actions of Tyler Perry’s Madea and Christianee Porter’s Miss Shirleen characters represent Black women’s agency through their ratchet actions. This dissertation analyzed two Tyler Perry films and five Miss Shirleen videos to determine whether their actions conveyed cultural and liberative significance beyond entertainment. This research discovered that both characters engaged in resistance to disempowering narratives through actions that embraced a radical subjectivity and subsequent dismissal of respectability politics that embraced the strengths of Black womanhood in affirming, creative, and audacious ways. This dissertation also found that ratchetness and womanism as liberative agency leave room for Black women to redefine themselves and evolve based on their own indigenous knowledge and create a language that is familiar and uplifting for themselves. Moreover, Black women can be ratchet, womanist, and respectable simultaneously regardless of class status thereby rejecting a pathologized Black womanhood.