NarDis: Narrativizing Disruption

This project investigates how CLARIAH’s exploratory search and linked open data (LOD) browser DIVE+ supports media researchers to construct narratives about events, especially ‘disruptive’ events such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters. This project approaches this question by conducting user studies to examine how researchers use and create narratives with exploratory search tools, particularly DIVE+, to understand media events. These user studies were organized as workshops (using co-creation as an iterative approach to map search practices and storytelling data, including: focus groups & interviews; tasks & talk aloud protocols; surveys/questionnaires; and research diaries) and included more than 100 (digital) humanities researchers across Europe.

Insights from these workshops show that exploratory search does facilitate the development of new research questions around disruptive events. DIVE+ triggers academic curiosity, by suggesting alternative connections between entities. Beside learning about research practices of (digital) humanities researchers and how these can be supported with digital tools, the pilot also culminated in improvements to the DIVE+ browser. The pilot helped optimize the browser’s functionalities, making it possible for users to annotate paths of search narratives, and save these in CLARIAH’s overarching, personalised, user space.

The pilot was widely promoted at (inter)national conferences, and DIVE+ won the international LODLAM (Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museums) Challenge Grand Prize in Venice (2017).

The principle investigators of the NarDis project are dr. Sabrina Sauer (University of Groningen) and dr. Berber Hagedoorn (University of Groningen).