1. Statement of the historical question we seek to answer
“What are the similarities and differences of the promises related to economic, foreign policy and domestic social issues made by George W. Bush and Barack Obama during their presidential campaigning?”
2. Our group’s division of labor
We decided to divide our research work based on how they relate to 3 major topics. These topics are economic, social and war. Tatsiana is researching economic issues such as deficit spending and taxes. Philip is gathering information related to national security – the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantanamo base closure. Estevan is focused on researching domestic social issues that may include healthcare and environment.
3. Overview of the sources that we plan to use at this stage
These are some of the sources that we potentially plan to use for our project. These sources point to various issues discussed by both presidential candidates during their presidential campaigns. We looked at Bush’s election campaign in 2000 and 2004, and Obama’s election campaign in 2008 and 2012. Here we included video material, textual and data mining analysis.
George W. Bush acceptance speech
2000 Presidential Debate
Presidential Debate 2004
The Broken Promises of George W. Bush
Bush-Cheney 2000 website
Bush-Cheney 2000 – Energy website
Obama Declares Plan to Cut Deficit in Half
Obama’s record of broken promises
Barack Obama on Lobbyists and His Campaign
CNN Discusses Obama’s Hypocrisy on Lobbyists
Obama and the Bush Legacy: A Scorecard
Historical Military Pay Rates
4. Is the data will be broad enough to address our question, but also manageable within our timeframe for producing these projects?
During initial stage of our research we came to realization that our topic can be too broad and, as a result, decided to focus only on economic, foreign policy and domestic social issues discussed during presidential campaigns. Also, we narrowed on just two presidential candidates Bush and Obama. This still leaves us with large amount of material for our analysis since these two presidential hopefuls made extensive list of promises during their run for the top US political office.
Reading:
- Philip J. Ethington, “Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge: A Multimedia Essay to Accompany the December Issue of The American Historical Review.”
Group Work:
- Your group should be prepared to present a preliminary “inventory of assets” for your project; a list of sources (or potential sources that you will locate) that will propel your argument. Be sure that these sources represent our distribution areas of spatial history, data mining and analysis, textual analysis, and visual and aural culture.
I’m sure you’re aware that Baruch is closed on Monday. We still plan on allowing you to use Wednesday’s class time to meet with your groups. Prior to this, however, we’d like each group to post an updated research strategy to the the blog by 8 am on Wednesday. We will comment on these posts in detail, and each member of the group is responsible for offering substantive discussion of our responses in the comment section of that original post. Doing so will be part of your project grade.
Your blog post should offer the following in as much detail as possible:
- a statement of the historical question you seek to answer
- a review of how your group divides labor
- an overview of the data, archives, and other primary sources that you plan to use at this stage
- be sure that spatial history, data mining and analysis, textual analysis, and visual and aural culture are represented in this overview.
- an understanding of the chronological scope of your project. Ask yourself if the data will be broad enough to address your question, but also manageable within our timeframe for producing these projects.
Your meetings towards the end of the week should incorporate our responses, and then next week’s class sessions will be split between discussing readings — make sure you do them, there may be a quiz! — and establishing a structure and a set of tools for you to begin production of your project in earnest.
As always, let us know if you have any questions. Stay safe in the storm.
Luke and Tom
How could your group use text mining to answer the historical question(s) you’ve proposed thus far?
Our group could use text mining to answer the historical questions we had proposed by narrowing down keys word, sort different type of document, seek out specifics information, and determine correlation between different documents.
First off, our group could start text mining for keys words from website or blog through wordle.com. Then, we can create a list of words that appear the most. Following that, we can theorize the relationship between the words and find out why it appears. The finding might surprise us and guide us in a different direction.
Second, we can sort out documents that are irrelevant to our research because through the general search, when we enter the war on drugs in a normal search engine, we can get ton of results. Out of all the result we get back from a regular search engine, we could get tons of unrelated hits to our topics. So by using text mining, we can sort out the irrelevant information and go to more the specifics of our search.
Finally, with text mining we can figure out the relationship between documents that might not be present in the document itself. For example, an article or report writing in 2012 might has something do with a document in the 1960s.
In conclusion, text mining is extremely useful tool to use for research and to get A in digital history class at Baruch.
Group 1
Caroline, Anton, Eli, Cameron, Leanardo
A name for your group
NET POLITICS.
2-3 historical questions you are considering answering in your project
1.) How does social media (twitter, Facebook, tumblr, reddit, etc) affect young/first time voters?
2.) How has social media and the internet affected the 2012 Presidential Election? Does social media influence first time voters to vote?
A brief description of the expected scope of your project:
We hope to focus on 2012, but using other elections for comparison purposes, on how young voters (high school seniors/college freshman) are affected by these sites. We feel that we can talk about all the memes, gifs, and twitter accounts that have popped up during the election – including that Big Bird 2012 campaign that started during/after the first presidential debate.
A list of challenges and potential problems that you are having now, or anticipate will arise as you work on the project
Currently we find a challenge to be focusing our generally broad ideas into one big topic – the internet is a huge place and memes fall in-and-out of popularity regularly, and it’s also difficult to gauge how something as abstract as the internet is affecting something as concrete as voting for a presidential candidate.
Group Members: Phillip Bleustein, Estevan Roman, Tatsiana Vashkevich
Name of Group: Group 2 ( Will change in future)
2-3 Historical Questions We are Considering:
- How does the appearance effect the outcome of the presidential election?
- What role does religious affiliation of the candidate play during the candidate campaign?
- What are the boundaries of the exaggerated/unachievable promises during presidential campaign?
A Brief Description of the Expected Scope of Our Project:
- We are hoping that we can create the parallels between common issues and facts that play important role during 2012 presidential elections and other historical presidential elections. This historic perspective may help us to uncover deep issues that truly matter and continue to be a driving force that carries winning candidate to the top.
A List of Challenges and Potential That You Are Having now, or Anticipate as you Work on the Project:
- Not being together for a majority of the project, and having to collaborate our work on our google doc.
- There are always external factor that come in to play unexpectedly and having to embrace those factors and work through them could be a problem at time.
Optional: discuss technologies, formats, and work-flow that you may employ:
- Embedding pics, video, audio, likely all through when applicable.
- Google Docs
- Youtube and Blogger
By October 3, class time:
- Read “A Practical Guide to Collaborative Documentation in the Digital Age,” The Bracero Archive.
- Come to class with some ideas for a historical argument related to the 2012 presidential election project to talk through with your groupmates.
Announcements
- Watch the presidential and vice-presidential debates at Baruch
- Categorizing posts!
Blog Posts Review
- Various shades of primary sources
- Read every type of source in a range of ways
- How do we assess the credibility of sources?
- Agency and causation
- Precision
- From sources to an argument
Reading
- Free write: what is the difference between an “archive” and a “collection”?
- Key Concepts:
- Archive vs. collection
- Provenance
- Original order
- Collective control
- Authenticity
“Materials created or received by a person, family, or organization, public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in the information they contain or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator, especially those materials maintained using the principles of provenance, original order, and collective control.
Stephen Brier and Joshua Brown, The September 11 Digital Archive: Saving the Histories of September 11, 2001, Radical History Review, Fall 2011.
- http://911digitalarchive.org/
- key concepts
- Is this an archive or a collection?
- “archivist-historians”
- born-digital vs. scanned acquisitions
- inequality of access to digital media
- review different methods of inputting information: text and image scans, emails, websites, listservs, text via form on site, images and video via upload, call-in system, collaborations with other collectors (e.g. Sonic Memorial Project and Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs), digital and analog interviews and sound recordings (including collaborations with Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, and the Chinatown Documentation Project;
- perspectives of “ordinary” people
- challenges ahead: more standardized open-source database and web publishing platform, more complete metadata, redesigned web site, permanent archival home (expected to turn over to LOC in 2013)
Group Project
Group 1
Caroline, Anton, Eli, Cameron, Leanardo
Group 2
Estevan, Tatsiana, Phillip, Jordan Burgos
Group 3
Felipe, Jordan Smith, Robert, Pablo
Group 4
Guang, Cary, William, Stephen, Shaif
Recent Comments