2.6. Follow the protocol: words, from manual curation to Tableau

Duration: 45 min

Goals

• Curate a list of words in a Google Spreadsheet
• Check a new notebook to harvest the edit history from a semantic angle
• Visualize the data you have harvested in Tableau
• Check how the curation impacts the final result

Case

The topic of energy conversion using the same two Wikipedia articles as in the tutorial 1.2:

• Space-based solar power
• Thorium-based nuclear power

Data

Download these two CSV files:

wikipedia-articles-tuto-2.6.csv

This file just contains the list of the two articles.

words.csv

It just contains the list of 2,488 words mentionned in either articles. It was extracted from the text-enriched version of the article list passed into this 🍕 notebook. The text content of the articles was previously harvested by this other 🍾 notebook.

Protocol

We ask you to enact this protocol (notice that parts of it has already been completed to get to the list of words you downloaded above):

• Make a selection of 5 to 20 words from the list, with the following criteria:
  • Each word must be represented in both articles
  • The words should be as varied as possible (so that they make differences appear)
  • If there are too many words to pick, then those mentionned the most must be prioritized
• Put these words in a small CSV file. It may look like this.
• Extract the revisions of either article that contain either of your words.
  • Use this notebook: 🍱 Wikipedia words and articles to edit list with words.
  • One input is the CSV article list you downloaded above
  • The other input is your small list of words
  • You should obtain a file like this one.
• Visualize that data in Tableau (no need to annotate). Use the same approach as in the tutorial 1.4.
• Bonus: do you see a data-driven story in this visualization?

It might look like this:

Remark: The curation of terms is different to that of the tutorial 1.4, so even if the case and the visualization approach is the same, the data-driven narrative is not the same.

Documents produced

Keep somewhere, for sharing, the following document:

• The (unannotated) visualization (JPEG or PNG)

Next tutorial

Take a break before this:

 2.7. Extend the protocol: natural language processing (45 min)

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Relation to the course readings

• Thoughts and principles on query design are covered in Rogers, Richard. (2017). Foundations of Digital Methods: Query Design The Datafied Society: Studying Culture through Data, eds: M. Schaefer and K. van Es
• The process of getting data through scraping, crawling and calling APIs is covered in Chapter 6: Collecting and curating digital records of Venturini, T. & Munk, A.K. (2021). Controversy Mapping: A Field Guide.
• The intricacies of Wikipedia and the different ways in which the platform may be reappropriated for controversy analysis are covered in Weltevrede, E., & Borra, E. (2016). Platform affordances and data practices: The value of dispute on Wikipedia Big Data & Society, 3(1).