Development and Application of Digital Humanities Research Platform with Observation Tool of Viewpoint Migration and Age Division

Abstract

This study aims to develop “Observation Tool of Viewpoint Migration and Age Division” for supporting research on digital humanities, allowing humanists dividing texts with time continuity into several phases to train word vectors. Word vectors are regarded as the reference for relational vocabulary with the highest relevance in various phases to mine input keywords. Clustering is also applied to assist users in analyzing whether two neighboring phases require split or merge to determine better perspective change observation vocabulary and phase division. Meanwhile, real-time interaction interface is provided for assisting users, through human-computer interaction, in grasping a wide range of contexts with specific subjects in texts with time continuity. Experimental research is applied in this study to compare the significant promotion of comprehension of specific subjects in texts and the remarkable change in cognition of research subjects before and after using “Observation Tool of Viewpoint Migration and Age Division”. Technology acceptance questionnaire, and semi-structured interview are utilized for understanding the experiment objects’ opinions and perception of “Observation Tool of Viewpoint Migration and Age Division”. The experimental results reveal that the experiment objects, after using “Observation Tool of Viewpoint Migration and Age Division”, significantly promote the grasp of specific subjects in texts. Furthermore, the interview data and technology acceptance scale reveal highly positive evaluation of the experiment objects on “Observation Tool of Viewpoint Migration and Age Division”. It presents that such a tool could rapidly and conveniently allow them to understanding the context of specific subjects in large amount of texts with time continuity.

Keywords

• digital humanities
• text mining
• information visualization
• works of mr. lo chia-lun