Reflection on text analysis as thought in the course: Machines of Knowledge

In the Machines of Knowledge course, I have learned a great deal about three very important technologies. These theories are post-colonial theory, feminist theory and theory about public spheres. Thanks to these theories, I have gained a deeper understanding about many haps and mishaps in our modern-day society. To engage with the theories in a practical way, the course invited us to conduct our own text analysis with the help of digital analysis programmes. In my case, the analysis was about gender norms in men and the display of their feelings, and how this is interpreted and seen by society. Since men are often stereotyped like they need to be ‘manly’; that is, they should not cry or display emotions of any kind, for that matter. Interestingly, this principle does not apply to gay or queer men, as they are often portrayed to be overly emotional and sensitive. This is simultaneously seen as ‘not manly’, which implies that queer men are not ‘real men’. That point of view is obviously outdated and should be changed.
Through text analysis, I investigated the change and discourse of this problem. Text analysis was not something I had done before already. The course introduced me to new software to use, such as Voyant tools and text cleaner. My tutor spent a lot of time teaching us how to use the software. I found this quite a hard task. Especially cleaning the text did not seem to work as easy as it should. However, after many tries and some frustration, it worked out in the end. Voyant created clear graphs of all sorts and shapes to analyse the new-found data. Even though I did not realise it immediately at the time, this is really when the hard part starts. I found it quite the challenge to make sense of the graphs that Voyant created with my data! But, with some help of the tutor and some imaginative interpretation skills, I think the results really show new insights for the topic. I will share the new insights in another blogpost when I have added the finishing touch. I hope you have fun reading it! Until next time…