Faces in TIME, 1923-2014: an interactive web resource

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Speaker

Dr. Ana Jofre
Assistant Professor
SUNY Polytechnic

Brief Description

I will present a beta-version of an interactive web resource that examines an archive of Time magazine containing 3,389 issues ranging from 1923 to 2014, focusing on images of faces. The website, Faces in Time, will provide visitors with a set of tools with which to explore our data and our research findings.

Full Abstract

This is an examination of an archive of Time magazine containing 3,389 issues ranging from 1923 to 2014, focusing on images of faces. We extracted 327,322 faces from the archive, categorized all of them by gender, and obtained detailed characteristics of a subset of 8,789 of those faces.

Our research explores relationships between images and their corresponding socio-political contexts. For example, in one published study, our analysis revealed that the percentage of faces that present as female was closely aligned with larger currents in women’s history and the history of feminism . Specifically, we found that the percentage of female face images peaked as women became more active in public life, and waned in eras characterized by anti-feminist backlash. We also noted a change in tone and content as Time, from the 1970s onwards, began hiring and promoting more women as writers, photographers, and editors. This is one of several findings.

We seek to disseminate our findings to broader audiences through a web-resource with interactive visualizations that allow visitors to explore the faces, as well as the trends in the metadata that we extracted from the faces. The proposed website, Faces in Time, will provide visitors with a set of tools with which to explore our data, analysis, and findings. Digital platforms afford readers the ability to interactively re-contextualize images in a way that encourages critical thinking, positioning them as investigators rather than passive consumers of visual and media culture.

In this interactive presentation, I invite the audience to engage with a beta version of the Faces in Time website. I will present 4 visualizations, describe the design rationale of each, and allow time for the audience to interact with the site to provide feedback.

Session Objectives

Participants will engage with a new web resource that is in development, and will have the opportunity to provide feedback for improving the design. Presenter Headshot Biography Ana Jofre is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Polytechnic. Her research engages with the digital humanities, with a particular interest in creating aesthetic informative web resources.

Contact

https://anajofre.com/
jofrea@sunypoly.edu

Session Notes

Attending the presentation? Take shared notes in this Google Doc and view the final notes below.