Understanding the effect of mass migration with an app
What does research data management mean in the daily practice of a researcher? In this series of interviews by RDM Support, researchers share their experiences on various aspects of research data management. In this interview, Postdoc Lorella Viola talks about her experience with building the GeoNewsMiner app with our Research Engineering team.
Lorella Viola is a postdoctoral researcher at the history department (Cultural History) in the faculty of Humanities where she researches diasporic groups and identities. Within the transatlantic project Oceanic Exchanges, she analyses how ideas, perceptions and cultures migrated from Europe to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, when the mass migration movements started. For the investigations, she uses historical newspapers written by Italian immigrants in the United States.
This app helps us understand how these groups that migrated to the United States negotiated their identities in the new host environment
GeoNewsMiner
Lorella explains: “Together with the Research Engineering team of Research Data Management (RDM) Support we have developed the GeoNewsMiner (GNM) app to visualize georeferences in these historical newspapers. This app helps us understand how these groups that migrated to the United States negotiated their identities in the new host environment. These Europeans were taking with them their history, religion, traditions and culture to the New World. But once they settled, all these factors that were part of their identities needed to be renegotiated, and within Oceanic Exchanges we try to understand in what way. Thanks to this app, researchers can visualise the data and customise their searches by selecting different filters and aggregating the data at several levels.
It’s not just about having the engineering expertise, which they clearly have, it’s about having the research mindset
“Kees van Eijden and Jonathan de Bruin, both research engineers at RDM Support, helped me and Prof. Jaap Verheul (Cultural History) build this app. It was a pleasure working with them. It’s not just about having the engineering expertise, which they clearly have, it’s about having the research mindset. This made the collaboration experience mutually beneficial which I think is the sort of engineering support researchers need and prefer. I couldn’t be happier, really. GNM gives other researchers the opportunity to build upon my work. Together with the GNM, we released a Github repository where we describe the methodology step by step. With this, other researchers can use their own dataset, and build their own app.”
GeoNewsMiner gives other researchers the opportunity to build upon my work
Americanisation
“In the literature, researchers have called the process of Transatlantic adaptation of these 20 century migrants as Americanisation. The term describes the way migrants adapted over the years to the host environment, while they were losing their ethnicity in order to become more and more American. We were therefore expecting to see a decrease in the number of references to Italian place names over time, and an increase of references to American place names. But actually, the app shows the exact opposite. A possible explanation could be the increase in the migrants’ need to affirm their identity in a foreign country. In this way, they were negotiating their identity by reinforcing their Italian identity, and this is clearly visible in the data now.”
Lorella Viola
“Working with datasets of migrants’ historical newspapers has been moving and fascinating. Reading about people’s dreams and personal stories, how they were struggling to make sense of everything. These were individuals who had never left their little village, who most likely didn’t know how to spell their name properly, and all of a sudden they were transplanted into America. This research has been an emotional journey for me. It is something that is really close to my heart, since I am a migrant myself. I am from Italy but I live here, and a big part of my family actually lives in the United States.”
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