Research Methods
Reading, organising, and planning
The first phase of the research process was very reading-heavy. I spent a lot of time reading about the causes and consequences of the war, the different debates that exist ​amongst academics in regards to the causes, the role of ethnicity, disarmament... I attempted to cover as much ground as possible in about two weeks because in order to properly define a topic, I needed to have a strong basic understanding. As I was reading I took notes both by hand and on my computer. I then organised these notes by main topics and sub-topics so that all the information would be more accessible.
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In this phase I also did research on different digital humanities that exist and began thinking about how I was going to incorporate them into my research project. Since this was a digital humanities project, I wanted to use technology as much as possible and to my advantage not just in presenting the research but in unpacking all that I was learning.
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Tiki Toki
A realisation that I had very early on was that the history of South Sudan was very long and very complicated. As I was researching, I made myself a number of timelines by hand to keep all the dates and key figures organised. I then discovered Tiki Toki and decided to use that as I was researching to organize dates. It was effective because (1) I could keep adding information out of order and Tiki Toki would organize it chronologically for me; and (2) I could use the timeline as part of my project to help my audience understand the history if they were interested.
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Tiki Toki was very simple to use. First, I created the settings for the timeline (colors, time-range, size of events, fonts...). Secondly, I inputed all the dates and events that I found relevant to the discussion of disarmament after 2005. There are more events in the period before 2005 because those were what created the grounds for what happened in the interim and post-interim period. Between 2005 and present day I added less information regarding the conflict as a whole and more information on disarmament, as that follows the logic of this research.
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Video Scribe and Adobe Premiere Pro
After finishing the timeline I really delved into the disarmament campaign that took place between 2005 and 2013. I quickly discovered that it was a mix of different campaigns targeting different groups of society. This was something that was not made clear in a lot of the previous literature that I had read. A lot of the literature I was reading discussed "disarmament" broadly without always specifying if it was former military personnel disarmament or civilian disarmament; nor what government plan the disarmament campaign was lodged under.
I began wondering what could be the most effective way to present all this information. I was afraid that if I just wrote it all out it would become very dense, long, and possibly confusing. I decided to make an explainer video. This would provide visuals to go along with the information that was being recited out loud, which facilitates learning. It also allows the viewer to play, pause, rewind, and rewatch with ease. Thinking about how to turn written notes into an engaging video also challenged me to think about the information in a new way, and resulted in me reaching new conclusions about what I was studying.
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I downloaded Video Scribe and used their free trial to make the explainer video. I watched a tutorial to get a general sense of how the program worked, but for the most part, figured it out by trial-and-error. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to add audio, news clips, and text to the video. I have previous experience with editing videos so this part did not require any sort of research.
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Visme
While making the aforementioned video I realized that there were different graphics that I wanted to include that I would have to design myself. I quickly came across Visme, which is a very powerful infographic maker. Using the free version, I was able to create a number of infographics and data sheets that I would use to supplement my research presentation. I wanted to have visuals to go with text because I find that (1) visuals really help me when learning and (2) I wanted to make the most of the "digital" aspect of this project.
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I also created infographics for every state to outline their disarmament campaign strategy. I included these in the case study map that I designed on ArcGis.
ArcGIS
During the early research stage, I learned that disarmament was carried out differently by every state. Most literature focused on the same states, and I began to wonder why that was. To organize and present all my information I decided to create an interactive map. Initially, the map was going to simply be about the disarmament campaigns. However, as I was adding information, I was still struggling to answer why some states had more disarmament activities reported and documented than other states. I began to look at the geography of the map and began thinking of possible explanations due to the topography of different areas. I discussed this possibility with a Professor, who then helped me use different map layers to further explore and support my hypotheses. Through a lot of trial-and-error I learned how to use the basic features of ArcGIS. It is a software with a lot of potential that I hope to use more in the future.
