wordle thematics

I'm pleased to say that Wordle has worked out much better so far, for my purposes at least, than the tag cloud generator. Part of what made this work for me is the ability to directly control and limit what text Wordle uses. The "Wordle cloud" that I posted below was generated from my blog entries on Bell's An Introduction to Cybercultures; by focusing on these entries only and not having my entire blog subsumed into the cloud generation, it helped define the kind of thematics I'm looking for.

So what does the Wordle word cloud add up to? I think there are some interesting implications for analytical and reflective modes of reading that deserve exploration. At first glance, Wordle foregrounds two things: a selection of major thematic (or at least repeatedly mentioned) terms and an emphasis on the frequency of those terms, visually scaled to size. But we can also use it to help us understand the assumptions and values that go into particular acts of writing and reading. For instance, assuming that the Bell text was easily accessible online, we could throw it into Wordle and have a cloud generated that covers the whole book. Then, we could read the themes and juxtapositions that emerge from this cloud in light of how Bell is narrating his own, self-defined themes; do they match up? Where and how?

In a similar vein, the Wordle cloud I've posted reflects a remixing of my own interpretation of Bell's book. And it's different in significant ways. In my original postings, I talked about cyberspace as just one key term among several, but in the cloud it takes center stage. I'm also a little surprised by how small "cyberculture" is. In these ways, I can re-evaluate my own process of interpretation and even see where I may have been unconsciously emphasizing some things and de-emphasizing others.

As another kind of thematic, Wordle opens up some "new," and potentially surprising, combinations and juxtapositions of terms that can lead to new avenues for analysis. Out of this cloud, I might pull out "cyborg spaces" or "computer symbolic construction" or "political-economic transparency" or "Visible surveillance architectures" as potential (re)combinations. Some will be more useful than others, but this experiment might point to some of the gaps in how we define and employ these terms.

I do think these are potentially valuable strategies, but I also see a few limitations. First, my word cloud required a lot of set-up work. I had already read the entire book and recorded 2,387 words of thematic analysis before I generated the cloud. This gave me a pretty rich selection for the cloud to work with, but it seems antithetical to expect that kind of (and that much) traditional academic analysis to even get to that point. As a corollary, Wordle's going to be of limited use as a reading response tool unless it can be a bit more mobile. So, I'm going to try a more fragmented response to Critical Cyberculture Studies, where I go back and jot down, in a kind of "automatic" way, the responses I've had so far. I've finished the book, so I've got quite a few of these written in the margins and highlighted in the text already. Stay tuned.