Lucy’s Digital Project Reflection

My digital project, Endangered History Story Map, highlights through a visual moving map the heritage sites from different countries that have been destroyed/substantially damaged by war, civil unrest and terrorism in the 21st century. This is to simultaneously provide an outlet to remember and gain information about these sites as well as raise awareness about the forces that threaten our international history and identity.

Through this project I obviously learned a lot about the sites that have been destroyed, their history and generally their significance to identify just how big an impact its destruction has caused, especially in regards to selecting which sites I would use within my project. To add a humanity element into the project I wanted to have quotes from people who worshipped/lived near the sites and reading through those interviews were very sobering, but none the less insightful. I managed to learn storymap very easily, it is an instructive and simple interface that provides some data already for you like the map. I explored further throughout the site to tweak as much as I could from the generic options they give you, and this is seen in my embedding videos and changing background colours, and I was going to change the map marker but I think they were effective already.  I am glad that I chose storymap over my original choice in my proposal of Odyssey – as Odyssey requires more computer experience than I have particularly as it does require coding. The challenge of learning to even use the program I wanted to do for the project and complete the level of research I wanted to provide for a meaningful description of the sites for the audience was not going to happen in the timespan that I had. Luckily there are lots of storymap making options on the internet, and after looking at some ‘storymap’ ones particularly used in journalism its smooth, easy to understand and professional looking interface once completed appealed to my aims and ability. Another difficulty I faced was a moral one, as I realised through my research and looking at the project as a whole that a lot of these sites have been destroyed by Islamic extremists. Through much of my study I have developed an appreciation for Islamic history, so I by no means wanted to make the project look as if it were focalising against Islamic history especially when a lot of the sites destroyed are important places from their own history. I made a point in some of my descriptions to try and combat this and explained that it is a sad irony that for the Islamic people that their sites are being destroyed by people that have violently interpreted their own religion, to try and add some context that this is mainly a crime against the Islamic people themselves and that their history and identity is the most affected. Lastly I really had to fight my instinct to in-text reference everything, and rather go for a simple description and have the references at the bottom more similar to other story maps that I researched. Having in-text references would have made it look too academic, and not as accessible, and much of the information was shared across sources anyway as ‘common knowledge’.

My aims was to be visually appealing enough to engage an audience to raise awareness about my chosen topic, as well as have the potential to be shared and become popular to hit a large audience. Firstly I think my project is very easy to understand and navigate, a simple swipe through leads the audience to explore the site, so I think that most people can understand how to use it and where the information is. It is a lot more interesting and engaging than if I had put this information in an article style, like similar sources on the internet regarding this topic. I also believe that the information provided is succinct yet holistic, hitting vital questions of the site’s significant, where it is, and it’s history in context to the people and time. A lot of the sources I use in conjunction with the description is either a video of its destruction, which is a very powerful visual and audible source giving the destruction a real tangibility as you are confronted with it actually happening, as well as modern photos and before and after photos. These are meant to bring the audience into the site further as well as to contextualise the information on the screen, to make it less textbook and more visceral. Further I also think that the aim of being visually appealing is also achieved, the way the map moves around and the information pops up is kind of fun, and also informs the viewer through visual aids in showing the scope of the problem affecting the globe and then zooming on in specific areas – also highlighting that this is primarily happening in the Middle East. I did think that map options were a little boring and slow to load, especially considering for example the Maldives is so small compared to Sri Lanka so it looks like that topic is just in the middle of the ocean. However to make up for this, as I know zooming and loading and size is different on all computers and I cannot control that, I compensated with that by changing other colour components and having interesting photos and try and make it more of a contrast than just a simple map. As for it being shareable the link is there but I could not figure out how to embed social media icons on the main page, but of course it has the potential to be embedded to a blog if I ran one. I have shared it to my twitter, so it is more something that would rely on people sharing through social media rather than from the original site. This is an obstacle within my ‘sharing’ aim and I would definitely focus on that more next time. I also do not think it is ‘viral’ material as I initially aimed, I think it is too long with perhaps too much information and maybe an infographic of the sites would be a better medium for something to go viral; short and sweet with the message still as prominent. However I like the information I have gathered, and I think for those who have time to read it can be insightful and something new, as there is not a lot of literature on the internet regarding this topic especially not in the context of this century and all the sites together. From selected feedback from viewers the site is fun to navigate, and that the message is given very simply in a variety of ways.

There were limitations with StoryMap, I would have liked to have made it more my own as it does still use the same format as other storymaps. I could have done this though it would require more time in learning the advanced version of the system, when I felt I balanced my time quite well with all aspects of the project without having to spend more time learning a system – and its effective regardless. I also wanted to do more sites, as my list was quite extensive, however I know that audiences don’t want to read 2,000+ words of information and scroll through that many sites without the problem suddenly becoming a bit irrelevant and boring, so I kept it to 8 from different countries to emphasise the significance, really focus on those sites and the scope of the issue globally. Next time I would perhaps try a different story map with lots of sites and less information and just make it a moving journey with pictures and no words. I think to extend this it could go with a journalistic article like many story maps do on the internet, and like I said before the data could be changed into a shorter medium like an infographic.

Overall I think I have also highlighted some of the purposes of digital heritage itself, as discussed this semester: I have taken data, contextualised it into a meaning that is significant to history and heritage, and put it into a new perspective through an appropriate digital format to be accessed by the public to try and make a difference.

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