For a final digital history review, I decided to challenge myself and look back at my experience with Voyage. Having struggled with last week’s assignment, I tried to expand on my previous attempt at researching Hawaiian newspapers and their coverage of tourism. I tried to find trusted and recent news articles I could access without a paywall, which is usually easier said than done. I compromised with Hawaii News Now which seems to be a general local news station. Because the online news articles were shorter than I had hoped, I copied three articles all focused on the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) and filtered them through Voyage to see what the most used words were compared to some of the first American-centered newspapers that began circulated in Hawaii as settlers became more populous on the island. In terms of the rest of Voyants features, I still struggled with both navigating the website as well as finding time to dedicate to navigating on top of finals and graduation. I decided to leave everything on the default setting again and just focus on how the words from recent articles compare to the old.
My results were equal parts expected and surprising. Out of all the words found within the three articles, the words “said”, “tourism”, “Hawaii”, “visitors”, and “HTA” came up the most frequently. I was not surprised that a verb like “said” would be used in an article, but I am surprised that Voyage would see it as an important word to highlight when I wouldn’t. Potentially, it could be useful to look at who exactly “said” what throughout the articles to better contextualize the content of the articles. Hawaii News Now is a news department affiliated with CBS so it seems similar to Austin’s Hawaiian Weekly being a general American news network that focuses on news in Hawaii. Because Hawaii is now a US state, Hawaii News Now addresses Hawaii by its name way more than Austin’s Hawaiian Weekly, but it also addressed tourists as well as the HTA frequently which is expected because I was purposefully seeking out articles about those topics. These specific Hawaii News Now articles look at how the HTA is viewed by both Hawaii “residents” and Hawaii tourists, while the residents mentioned in the articles claim to have more accepting views of tourism after COVID regulations have lessened, there are still points of contention and even some talk about abolishing the HTA as an authority. When the term “residents” is used, it is difficult to figure out the overall demographics of the residents, especially figuring out how many are indigenous to Hawaii and how many may be settlers that have taken permanent residence in Hawaii over time.
I still had issues with the learning curve needed for Voyage so it is still one of my least favorite tools I got to work with during the term. If I had to choose a favorite, it would probably be Audacity and recording podcasts about video games. I am aware that I probably had some advantage with Audacity because I have previous experience with audio recording and editing, but the process of recording a discussion about The Oregon Trail and When Rivers Were Trails was a highlight of my work during the term because it was an assignment where I felt like I was genuinely taking what I was learning in class about digital history and both applying it to current events as well as taking class discussions outside of the classroom and into greater discussions with my friends and potentially others. It also helped me connect to conversations I had been having in Archives and Special Collections where my boss had discussed wanting to push for funding to get recording equipment for an oral history project with Knox Alumni. While the recording and editing aspect of an oral history will take a learning curve or professional assistance, I think the accessibility of a recording, if done with consent by a people is a great way to keep the tradition of oral history active and can lessen the need for histories to be recorded in a written way when a culture may not prioritize writing or other historically “academic” forms or record keeping.
Despite blocks in the road with learning so much new technology in ten weeks, I felt like I got a lot of great experience with digital history and learning about its applicability. As we have discussed in class, much of what we know about utilizing technology for educational purposes is very recent. Even well-educated authors such as Jennifer Wemigwans acknowledged that academia does not fully know what to do with the sheer amount of technology we can access or what consequences it could have for the future. Being a student, I am usually on the side of education where I am using digital tools as an instructor has told me to. In this class, I felt like I was able to get experience being on the other side of the equation and being able to explore potential educational tools, some I could see myself using in the future as well as some I would rather not. I also recognize to have this much access to an academic environment with the ability to use these tools is a great place of privilege, similar to Wemigwans, I believe that to properly utilize the technology it needs to be the most accessible both in terms of a learning curve and how it can realistically be used to help historically disenfranchised groups of people. In my experiences in the library and information science field, there are a lot more digital-born historical artifacts that people want to preserve and archive. Because everything is so new, I accept that sometimes there are not going to be answers to every question we have about digital history. Still, I feel grateful I was able to be a part of this class and get my foot into more conversations about humanities and technology where they can truly meet together. I feel like this has prepared me for greater conversations in my future career path as well as everyday life having to use technology for non-academic goals.
