Briefs

... (MENAFN - Khaleej Times) THE impact of the digital revolution is unmistakable. Emails have replaced letters and memos; IP telephony and instant messaging have replaced telephone calls; audio and video content are now "broadcast" online on channels like YouTube, and friendships are maintained and built over social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook.

... a new field dedicated to the tracking and examination of what the digital cultural data says about humankind is emerging. It is what Manovich calls "cultural analytics", seen as a logical development as the study of humanities that increasingly involves digital media and IT.This term, cultural analytics, was coined to deliberately invoke connections with the existing study of web analytics, business analytics and visual analytics, Manovich explained. He envisions the study of cultural analytics to involve interactive visualisation, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and data analysis for the research, teaching and presentation of cultural artefacts 
and processes.

To Manovich, cultural analytics has the potential to generate new approaches for studying cultural history and contemporary culture. He argued: "If slides made possible art history, and if the movie projector and video recorder enabled film studies, what new cultural disciplines may emerge out of the use of visualisation and
 data analysis?" The range of users of these applications goes further: humanists, social scientists, cultural critics, museums, digital heritage projects as well as cultural consumers at large. In short, the potential impact of cultural analytics - while a relatively niche field for now - is far and wide-ranging.

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