Digital hermeneutics: from interpreting with machines to interpretational machines (original) (raw)
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The hermeneutic problem posed by digital humanities
Revista de Teoria da História, 2022
This article aims to present the hermeneutic problem related to the emergence of the research field widely known as digital humanities. In general, at the epistemological level, this problem involves the consideration of a theory of historical interpretation that articulates research methods and techniques with digital objects in their symbolic character. At the ontological level, it highlights the need to take into account the constitutive aspects that make this theory of interpretation possible. By examining the historical-philosophical foundation of the hermeneutic paradigm, as well as the engagement of human sciences at large — and history in particular — with digital technologies, we have come to the conclusion that a digital historical hermeneutics needs to go beyond epistemological and methodological reflections towards the questioning of the ontological conditions not only of human understanding but also of machine interpretation.
Digital Hermeneutics as Hermeneutics of the Self
Discipline Filosofiche 30/2: 187-203, 2020
In this article, the author deals with the status of the self and personal identity in the digital milieu. In the first section, he presents his general approach to digital media and technologies, which he has called "digital hermeneutics." He distinguishes between three perspectives in digital hermeneutics, namely the deconstructive, epistemological, and ontological approaches. In the second part, he focuses on digital hermeneutics as hermeneutics of the self. He compares Paul Ricoeur's narrative identity to Pierre Bourdieu's habitus. His first thesis is that the habitus can be seen as a concept of subjectivation that neglects an important part of the subject. Narrative identity offers, in this sense, a remedy to such negligence. His second thesis is that today's digital media and technologies are closer to the Bourdieusian habitus than to the Ricoeurian narrative identity. In other words, digital machines and technologies are "habitus machines" both in their structure and in their effects. In the conclusion, the author accounts for three potential responses to the habituation of our selves online. He also introduces the concepts of "digital agency" and "digital citizenship."
Some Reflections on Digital History and Hermeneutics
Low Countries Historical Review 4/2013
"Veins filled with the dilluted sap of rationality. A critical reply to Rens Bod". This article argues – in contradiction to the thesis developed by Rens Bod – that the hermeneutic tradition of humanities is not obsolete, especially when trying to understand the opportunities and challenges of using digital technologies for future research. The practice of digital history will have to be based on the critical analysis of the creation, enrichment, editing and retrieval of digital data as much as on the application of classical source criticism and historical contextualisation. If 'content' or rather 'data' is king in digital humanities, as imagined by Bod, context is its crown – at least for digital historians.
SOCIAL DIGITAL HERMENEUTICS OF CYBER-TEXTS
The paper presents analysis of main principles of explanation and understanding used in social digital hermeneutics that studies peculiarities of cyber-texts; differences of digital hermeneutics from classical one are determined; interpretative practices of social digital hermeneutics are analyzed. Keywords: social digital hermeneutics, strategy of understanding, strategy of explanation, temporal distance, deconstruction.
Review of Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools: How to Philosophize with a Digital Hammer, by Stefano Gualeni (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 194 pp., ISBN: 978-1137521774
To advance the study of digital politics it is urgent to complement data analytics with data hermeneutics to be understood as a methodological approach that focuses on the interpretation of the deep structures of meaning in social media conversations as they develop around various political phenomena, from digital protest movements to online election campaigns. The diffusion of Big Data techniques in recent scholarship on political behavior has led to a quantitative bias in the understanding of online political phenomena and a disregard for issues of content and meaning. To solve this problem it is necessary to adapt the hermeneutic approach to the conditions of social media communication, and shift its object of analysis from texts to datasets. On the one hand, this involves identifying procedures to select samples of social media posts out of datasets, so that they can be analysed in more depth. I describe three sampling strategies – top sampling, random sampling and zoom-in sampling – to attain this goal. On the other hand, “close reading” procedures used in hermeneutic analysis need to be adapted to the different quality of digital objects vis-à-vis traditional texts. This can be achieved by analysing posts not only as data-points in a dataset, but also as interventions in a collective conversation, and as utterances of broader “discourses”. The task of interpretation of social media data also requires an understanding of the political and social contexts in which digital political phenomena unfold, as well as taking into account the subjective viewpoints and motivations of those involved, which can be gained through in-depth interviews, and other qualitative social science methods. Data hermeneutics thus holds promise for a closing of the gap between quantitative and qualitative approaches in the study of digital politics, allowing for a deeper and more holistic understanding of online political phenomena.
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