Conceptualizing DH for Multiple Audiences: Folkvine and Chinavine

Conceptualizing DH for Multiple Audiences: Folkvine and Chinavine

Janz
Bruce

U of Central Florida, United States of America
bbjanz@gmail.com

2014-12-19T13:50:00Z

Paul Arthur, University of Western Sidney

Locked Bag 1797
Penrith NSW 2751
Australia
Paul Arthur

Converted from a Word document

DHConvalidator

Paper

Long Paper

multiple audiences
hermeneutics
folk art

philosophy
project design
organization
management
user studies / user needs
asian studies
creative and performing arts
including writing
digitisation - theory and practice
folklore and oral history
English

Understanding audiences is crucial to the design of digital humanities projects, and understanding that there may be more than one audience and designing for that should be part of the initial discussion for DH design. Past that, though, we need better theorization of the phenomenon of the audience in the digital humanities. My examples will be two DH projects I have been involved with. Folkvine (http://folkvine.umbc.edu/) and Chinavine (http://chinavine.org/) both collect and make available folk arts, the first in Florida and the second in China. The goal for both of these projects has been to serve multiple audiences. Both approached the question of multiple audiences slightly differently. Awareness of multiple audiences could lead to a more reflexive and reflective attitude for designers and for the audiences. It could be less about consumption of digital content and more about rethinking the presentation of self and community. My attempt to introduce hermeneutics here is to move past the notion that questions of audience are just questions of usability or reception. DH projects create a world between the architects, subjects, and users; this is an attempt to interrogate one aspect of that world.