Tag Archives: Helena Okolicsanyi

Wikipedia Site Evaluation: Elizabeth I

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As part of an exercise, the class was told to evaluate a Wikipedia entry. I chose to do my exercise evaluation on Elizabeth I of England. There is no specific reason for why I choose this particular person and/time period, it is simply the first thing that came to mind.

Based upon its sources alone, this Wikipedia page seems pretty substantial in comparison to other pages I have come across. Throughout the page, book pages have been cited along with extensive links to other information online and other books.

These are the notes that are given on the Queen Elizabeth I's Wikipedia page. It goes to over 200 notes for this page alone, not including the references listed below.

The page also links to journal articles that can be found on various databases such as JSTOR. Apart from its reference, the page is also visually pleasing by including various works of art and citing who painted these works.

I went into looking into the history of this particular Wikipedia page. The page alone has had over 500 revisions and began in November of 2001. Back then the page looked like this:

There isn’t anything including Queen Elizabeth’s relationship with Shakespeare or anything about her reign. It simply states basic information. Now the Wikipedia page looks like this:

The page contains MUCH more information than it did back in 2001. More than ten years old, this page could have been one of the first Wikipedia page as it dates back so far. Based on my observations and seeing the history of its creation, I see this Wikipedia page as credible.

Photoshopped History

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In reading Errol Morris’ string of essays on Roger Fenton’s, “Valley of the Shadow Death” along with his essay on doctored photos, I really made me think.

In particular, I was struck by Morris’ observation that, “You are absolutely right; you don’t need Photoshop to editorialize. We can go back to Mao and Stalin and Castro and Mussolini, and all these guys. All the dictators doctored photographs in order to effectively change history.” 

Not only can doctored photos impact society, but the actual words that follow a photo can also. I had never thought of simple words being able to change the perception of an image. As Morris points out, doctored photos have appeared even before the age of computers. Photos were used in propaganda. Dictators such as Hitler and Stalin frequently doctored photographs. I began to think what photos Hitler had doctored. Much like Stalin, Hitler frequently removed people from his high command if he felt that they were opposing him or was suspicious of them.

It made me begin to want to do my own research on the subject of historical doctored photographs. I began my search with Google typing in Joseph Goebbles and Hitler. Joseph Goebbles was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and had a very complicated relationship with Hitler.

I came upon this image.

In the first image no one appears to be standing to the left of Hitler but a woman with her hair pinned up. However, in the second image, Joseph Goebbles appears. Leader such as Hitler and Stalin both airbrushed people that fell out of favor out of photographs.

I decided I wanted to look more into the art of doctoring images, something that is not only relevant in today’s images, but also in images of the past. In the case of the Roger Fenton’s photos, no one still seems to know a conclusive idea as to when each of the photos were taken, and which one was taken first.

Along with the image included in this post, doctoring images isn’t something of the present. In fact, it’s very much something of the past as Dr. Harry Farid of Datrmouth note in a presentation he gave on what is called Digital Forensics,

When we talk about digital foresnsics, we probably have the notion that this is something relativey new and modern and an artifact of the digital age, digitical cameras, and digital computers. But the reality is that for nearly as long as photography has  been around people have been making doctored photographs.

In his lecture, Dr. Farid points to a very famous image of Abraham Lincoln.

However, this picture is in fact, not a real photograph of Abraham Lincoln. It’s photoshopped. Instead, Abraham Lincoln’s head was placed onto then Senator John Calhoun’s body. Historians are unsure as to why  they decided to doctor the image. Historians believe that it was due to Lincoln’s poor posture that they replaced the head of Calhoun with Lincoln’s as seen below:

John Calhoun

It’s very clear that the image was doctored in order to present a more, “heroic image of Abraham Lincoln.” However, Dr. Farid states that the news even doctors photographs. Organizations such as Fox News and Time magazine have doctored photographs, making the Associated Press worried about the lack of trust individuals have on photographs in order to tell a story.

What all of these article have made me think of is that idea of what is an authentic photograph. In reality, what do we actually know as being a real photograph of real event? How do we actually know something hasn’t been altered? I am still perplexed by the notion of old doctored photographs as it still seems as though it’s something of the present and not of the past, as in the case of these pictures. Even if it’s not airbrushed or drastically changed, photographs such as the Roger Fenton ones still are questionable in terms of their authenticity.

I turned to the George Mason’s library database, in hopes of getting some concrete answers. I came upon an article written by Timonthy W. Maier, When Your Eyes Tell You Lies, along with Bill Marsh’s piece from the New York Times Upfront section entitled, Can You Belive Your Eyes focusing on historical photo doctoring such as Stalin’s famous airbrushed images. They may be useful to someone else who finds doctored images as interesting as I do.

 

Scavenger Hunt

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For this week’s post, our class was assigned an online scavenger hunt. The items we had to search for, we were encouraged to not use our handy friend Google.

Below are the items we had to look up and the process I went through in finding them:

1. An op-ed on a labor dispute involving public school teachers from before 1970.


For this item, I simply went to the Pro-Quest database, which is accessible to GMU students. I went to the Historical newspapers section of Pro-Quest. I selected the “Advanced Search” section and typed in “labor AND public school.” I also selected the option to narrow down my search results, by selecting “before 1970” of any month and any day. I then went to the drop-down menu and selected only for editorial selections to be searched in. I knew I had to specifically look for a way to narrow down reports of labor disputes with public schools from what I was looking for, which were op-ed/editorial pieces.

I found a lot fewer results that matched with my search topic, meaning I had properly narrowed down my topic out of all of the information I had before. The first of which included a piece from the New York Times October 28 1928.

This is just one of two search results that appeared when I searched. Another included a similar piece from the Christian Science Monitor on November 1, 1927. Both dealt with issues going on in Great Britain.

Overall, this item I did not find hard to find.

2. The first documented use of solar power in the United States

This item was a little bit harder to find. I found a feature piece from the New York Times, however it dealt with solar power in Israel. However, I later realized the assignment asked for the United States. So I went further down my search results. I did the same process as I did with the Op-Ed piece, however I removed the date limitation.

I had to narrow down my search even more by only searching items before 1989, as anything before 1990 would be irrelevant as solar power started being used in the 1990’s. Then I had to narrow down my search even more by replacing the phrase, “Solar panel” with “Solar Photovoltaic power AND United States.” Solar Photovoltaic was being used in many of my search results, so I decided to only search items with this phrase instead.

What I ended up finding each time were reports of the first solar pond, but of the first use of solar energy.  I then found that I wanted to change the date to be before 1982. As a result, my search was even more narrow to only 465 results. However, I’m still not sure if I ended up finding what I needed. Many reports discussed the first solar house, or the first use of commercialism solar power, not the first use of just ANY solar power within the United States.

So I failed by using my friend Google to help me find the timeline for the, “history of solar power.” It directed me to a timeline from the U.S. Department of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. While I did not find the first account of solar power use in the United States, I was still able to find a reputable source of exactly what I was looking for.

What I found the problem with databases is that you have to know EXACTLY what you are looking for and EXACTLY how you are going to find it. In the past, I’ve had trouble finding sources on databases before because there is just so MUCH information, that it’s hard to find out exactly what you were looking for in the first place. However, with Google I only had to type in one thing and I instantly got what I was looking for. Initially, searching for something via Google doesn’t blind you from all of the search results you are inevitably going to get if one simply goes head first into a database expecting to find something.

3) The best resource for the history of California ballot initiatives, including voting data.
For this item I knew I needed to look somewhere else besides historical newspapers. I instead went to the the library set of databases and went to the letter “D” to find Data.gov from the United States Government website.

I wasn’t 100% sure what I was supposed to be looking for. So I typed in, “voting data for ballot initiatives in California,” and came to the University of  California-Berkley’s library site. Detailed in it, it gave me a .pdf of the history of the voting initiatives in California. Within this, I found the date October 10th, 1911 for when, “the initiative process was established in California by a margin of 168,744 to 52,093 votes cast for Senate Constitutional Amendment (SCA) 22. S.”

Using that date, I decided to go to the Pro-Quest Historical newspaper data base to find a press clipping of this information to make sure that what I was getting was factual. I searched, “California AND voting initiative” narrowing down my search to only show results before 1912. I came up with 252 search results and a press clipping from the newspaper Outlook in American Periodicals from October 21, 1911 (.pdf).

What this exercise taught me is that Google is the first stepping stone. It’s really difficult to navigate around databases, particularly when you aren’t an expert on a topic. This is because you don’t know what you’re looking for or where to start. With the second item, I had a very difficult time trying to find the first use of solar power because it wasn’t called solar power to begin with. While Google isn’t the answer for everything, it’s a good first start to doing some small background research to make sure you know exactly what you are looking for.