Uncertainty in digital history

Kocsis, Andrea (2023) Uncertainty in digital history. In: Arts and Humanities in digital transition, 6-7 JULY 2023, NOVA UNIVERSITY OF LISBON.

Abstract

This paper introduces a model to understand uncertainty in digital history. The model seeks to reduce the noise without losing multivocality in historical data. Digital humanities tend to lean towards a neo-positivist direction approaching research problems from their quantifiable side. However, even if digital, history is unpredictable, and dealing with it is embedded in the historian’s practice. History also acknowledges its limits in interpreting the sources. The discipline has reflected its interpretative approach several times in its course, starting from the question of narration (Hyden White 1980 or Natalie Zeamon Davis 1990) to multivocal interpretation of the sources (Jean-Claude Schmitt 2010). These approaches tend to agree that the interpretation provided by historians - despite making the most effort to stay true to the sources and their context - is a chosen narrative from the many. When digital methods come into the picture, the researcher has the urge to leave the inherent uncertainty of the discipline behind, which can lead to finishing on less probable results which are further from being true to the source. The aim is to find a balance between what MacEachren called precision and accuracy (1992) or what Earl Babbie named reliability and validity (1975). Both taxonomies differentiate between those two qualities of research, which decide if the study runs methodologically correctly and/or reflects reality. Digital methods and automation tend to create an imbalance between precision (reliability) and accuracy (validity) at the latter's expense. I propose to discover this critical equilibrium of working with historical data with the help of the case study of the Operation War Diary project.

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