Election App – Corey, Jim, Hannalore, Anna

November 5, 2012 by

This innovative app, available through mobile devices,  will allow users to look at historic elections in terms individual stances on military support. This app will avoid the traditional blue/red U.S map depiction and will instead offer the opinions of presidential candidates regarding military spending. Users will be given quotes and audio clips from actual presidential candidates and will then be prompted to match the stance to the correct candidate. This decision will be timed in order to discourage users from googling the answer. Research for this program will rely exclusively on primary sources, such as newspapers, video and audio clips and more recently tweets.

The purpose of this app will be to offer users different   perspectives on a continually important issue. It will also highlight how the issue of military spending does not always follow party lines. It will also debunk many of the common stereotypes regarding who supports military spending and why. The expected audience for this app is high school to college aged students and history enthusiasts. We hope that this app will encourage users to ask new questions regarding election issues.

Filed Under: Elections

Political Party Changes in Reflection to Party and Social Values

November 5, 2012 by

Nicole Kinney, Aaron Elfering, Adam Frickey

Our project is a visual representation of demographic shifts over time in parties represented by the face of an average party voter. Certain policy changes and historical events have significant effect on the average voter of each party. It is important to note that parties have gathered voters from widely different demographics over the last 150 years. Our project would be presented in a website with a central image and interactive time bar below it. By dragging across the timeline, the image changes to represent the average voter of that period and facts or ideals that may have influenced their voting habits. Factors considered would include age, race, economic class, and gender. To present further detail, background images will be included, such as religious items, common workplace tools, clothing, or environment. This will prevent the need for cumbersome or excessive reading, while a link could provide access to additional information to more interested users.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Topic: SNL & Presidential Candidates

November 5, 2012 by

Question: How many times are presidential candidates caricatured on Saturday Night Live versus election results?

 

Compare quantitative and qualitative data.

Quantitative: How many times was each candidate caricatured on SNL from 1975 to 2012?

Quantitative: Ratings for individual episodes featuring caricatures compared to election turnout figures, based on demographic figures.

Quantitative: Margin of victory of candidate in both numbers and percentages.

Qualitative: How are they portrayed?

 

All data will be presented in an interactive map that will be available online.  Clips from the episodes will be available by candidate and year.  Comment section will allow viewers to interact with the information.

by April, Molly, Charles and Stephen

 

 

Filed Under: Elections

Digital history for U.S. elections

November 5, 2012 by

In this course thus far, we have discussed:

  • the digital humanities, broadly defined
  • big data (its uses and abuses, advantages and liabilities)
  • data curation
  • digital preservation (including preservation of election-related websites)
  • digitization of primary sources
  • text mining
  • metadata for museum collections
  • augmented reality
  • digital storytelling (including games)
  • the importance of place in historical interpretation (and different ways to approach the study of place)

Today I want you to consider the past 50 years of U.S. presidential elections and find a way to present them—or a portion of them—to the public (high school students and older) in an innovative way that uses digital history methods.  You might focus on a particular subset of the voting public (demographic, geographic), a period of time, media coverage of campaigns, or an issue that arises regularly in presidential elections (e.g. the economy, reproductive rights) and how it affects voting patterns. Write a blog post describing how you would research and build your project, its user experience, and what its intended audience would be.  Share as well why you chose your particular focus for this project.

So, for example, you might propose a project that tracks shifts in voting by race or ethnicity over the past 50 years, provide some explanations for these shifts, and ask your project’s audience to vote (or better yet, argue) for their favorite interpretation of this data.  I encourage you to be provocative.  You might, for example, begin with, “No Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote since 1964, and it’s forecast that President Obama may win 80 percent of the minority vote this year. That said, some political scientists maintain that, because of changing U.S. demographics, this is the last election in which the Republican party candidate can win by relying on white voters. Why has such a racial divide emerged among voters?”

Note: for this activity, you need to work with classmates outside of your grant proposal group.  Mingle!

Please vote tomorrow

If you have not already voted, please be sure to vote tomorrow, November 6.  You can find your polling place using this tool provided by Google. Information on voting in Idaho, candidates for state and federal offices, and initiatives on the Idaho ballot this year, is available at the Idaho Secretary of State’s website.  The voter pamphlet available for download (PDF) includes arguments for and against each of the proposed initiatives.  If you are eligible to vote in Idaho, but aren’t yet registered, you can register at your polling place on Election Day–see question #10 on this FAQ.

Regardless of whether you are already registered to vote, remember to take a valid photo I.D.–Idaho now requires you to present one before voting.

Remember–tomorrow’s vote encompasses more than a presidential election. Educate yourself on local candidates and issues and vote.

Filed Under: Elections

Resources mentioned in class on October 29

October 29, 2012 by

OK Cupid uses big data to map who’s gay curious in the U.S. and Canada

Edmond Chang’s keynote talk on gamification for THATCamp Boise State

Filed Under: Big data, Games

Boise Wiki topic claims

October 29, 2012 by

Claim your topic in the comments!

Filed Under: Wikis

Provocations for your projects

October 17, 2012 by

Today, I want you to think about how the readings about place this week might inform or influence your upcoming assignments for this class: the grant proposal, the Boise Wiki article (undergraduates only), and the augmented reality project.

Some questions to consider:

1. Following Lewis’s example of the monument and bungalows, do you anticipate highlighting any tensions in the places you are interpreting?  If so, how will you use those tensions in making your arguments about a place?

2. Which of Henderson’s “four dominant discourses on landscape”—landscape as landschaft, landscape as social space, the epistemological landscape, and the apocryphal landscape—will inform your projects?

3. Will the historical interpretation in your projects lean more in the positive or normative direction?

4. Hillier’s chapter on redlining in Philadelphia describes patterns of lending to home buyers and concludes that mid-twentieth-century redlining “is a more complicated process than many historians have appreciated” rather than a story of racial discrimination (88).  Still, her essay has relevance to home-buying and mortgage-lending issues today.  Will social justice, or at least informing ongoing policy discussions, be a guiding principle or goal of your project?

5. Beveridge’s essay on immigration, ethnicity, and race in New York highlights how GIS showed that although metropolitan New York is growing more culturally and racially diverse, it is also more segregated than ever.  If you’re proposing to use GIS in your grant proposal, what concepts or phenomena do you hope it will similarly clarify?

6. Cunfer’s piece on the Dust Bowl contests the common conception that human activities were the primary cause of dust storms in the 1930s.  Do you expect your project to disabuse historians and others of common misconceptions? If so, how will you make your case sufficiently strong to change people’s minds about what they think they know?

7. Fiege argues that historians and others studying the western U.S. must consider the intersection of private property and nature, both in terms of their physical presence (e.g., fences, cultivated fields, water, wildlife) and cultural beliefs (e.g. sanctity of private property, ideas about wildlife management).  How might a consideration of the ecological commons influence your project’s interpretation of a place or phenomenon?

8. Cunfer’s and Pearson and Collier’s chapters in Past Time, Past Place and Fiege’s chapter in Everyday America draw on both environmental and cultural data and history.  Would such a synthesis benefit your project?  Why or why not?  What kinds of data and evidence are you going to use, and how are you planning to synthesize them into a coherent project?

9. Sewell shows how, despite attempts to create separately gendered spaces (offices and department stores, for example), the reality of gendered interaction in downtown San Francisco, especially at street level, was more complicated.  How is your ongoing work on your project balancing the analysis of geographical or architectural space with research into the actual historical interaction among people in that space?

10. Rojas takes an environment that is familiar to him—the streets and yards of East Los Angeles—and makes them comprehensible to readers who might find the spaces and interactions foreign or even (at first glance) undesirable.  How does your project make comprehensible and interesting a concept, phenomenon, or place people might find unfamiliar, uninteresting, or even strange?

Filed Under: GIS, maps, and landscapes, NEH grant proposals

Through Boise…

October 15, 2012 by

Molly & Ellie

Begin at Lucky Peak
Travel down Warm Springs Ave. (Warm Springs Historic District, Old Idaho Penitentiary & Pioneer Cemetery)
Ave B North
Fort Street to Robbins Rd.
Robbins Rd. to Collins Rd.
N. VA Hospital Loop past the VA Medical Center
5th St. to Hays to 6th St.
6th St. past the Capitol & Old Ada County Courthouse
6th St. past the Basque Block
Front Street to 13th (Linen District – dying area)
13th St. to Hays
Hays to Harrison Blvd.
Harrison Blvd. to Hill Rd.
Hill Rd. to 36th
36th to Veterans Memorial Parkway (Old Soldiers Home at Veterans Memorial Park)
Veterans Memorial Parkway to Chinden
Chinden Blvd to Eagle Road. (booming area)

Filed Under: GIS, maps, and landscapes

Scenic Sunday (Cross) Section

October 15, 2012 by

Ryan Regis

April Raine

Eric Schooley

Just like the pioneers, come from the East. (I-84) This will lead you nicely onto the Gowen exit which takes you to Federal Way (on this piece you will be given a panoramic view of the valley you are about to explore, as well as the famous Table Rock) and then Turn on Apple. Apple leads to Park Center (an long-settled and affluent part of town, with lots of historical markers of interest), and then onto Beacon to Broadway (look to your left and you will get to see a part of campus and the BSU stadium) and then left on Idaho which will lead downtown past the Capitol (take note of the neo-classical architecture of the Capitol Building, complete with a Golden statue of Nike atop the dome). After a few more miles, head North on 13th (if you’re quick, and equipped with our interactive app, you may see the area which used to be Boise’s only ethnic enclave, China Town!) towards Hyde Park (an interesting area due to the confluence of new money in older areas, traditionally populated by lower income residents). After a lovely view of the neighborhood and big trees, head west on Hill Road for a quick jaunt through what could be described as semi-urban ranches which used to be much more prevalent in this area. Soon, you will find Hwy 55, take a left to the south, and then right on State, which will lead to a left turn to the South on Eagle Road. Eagle will lead to Chinden Boulevard where you will take a right (west) (here we find an industrial center of the valley, a center which used to be much more active). Soon you will find the City of Caldwell, our trip is over! Good luck getting home without our help!

 

 

Filed Under: GIS, maps, and landscapes, Uncategorized

An Ode to Mobile Boise

October 15, 2012 by

Ana, Aaron, Kyle, Jim

This cross section revisits the history, and importance, of transportation to the development of Boise. Starting with the early years trollies and wagon trails, moving into urban sprawl, air traffic and freeways, ending with the transformation into a bicycle friendly city. This cross section might encourage people to ask the question “How does a city provide transportation to its citizens? How has it changed, and what are the challenges facing city planners for the future of transportation in Boise?”

Start: Trolley House: To view the early history of traveling by electric street cars.
Military Reserve: see the old wagon trail to Idaho City.
Greenbelt: The importance of public pedestrian traffic.
Boise Municipal Airport (Boise State University): Imagine BSU as an airport.
Train Depot: Imagine travelers arriving in Boise.
Down Americana: To see how city planners wanted people to drive into downtown.
Connector (1-84): Travel through Boise’s suburban neighborhoods on a freeway.
Fairview view exit: Strip malls and the importance of cars to current modes of travel.
Car lots: The reliance on cars for traveling in Boise.
Cole, Mall: The suburban shopping center, limited public transportation and limited bicycles and pedestrians.
Veterans Memorial: Bicycles and cars sharing space.
Hill Road Bicycle memorial: The conflict between cars and bicycles.
Hyde Park and the North End: Watch hipsters on fixies.
8th and Idaho: City planners reduce car lanes and encourage pedestrians and bicycles

Filed Under: GIS, maps, and landscapes
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