Gender, Networks, and Artistic Success: A Computational Analysis of Jazz History
- Hosting organisations
- Central European University (CEU)
- Responsible persons
- Mark Wittek
- Start
- End
The project “Gender, Networks, and Artistic Success” focuses on conducting a comprehensive analysis of jazz history to explore the interplay between gender, collaboration networks, and artistic success. Its primary goal is to investigate gender-specific inequalities in jazz music and analyse historical trends in gender representation over a period of more than 160 years.
About the Project
At the core of the project is the use of the Tom Lord digital archive, which contains information on over 1.5 million jazz musicians and their collaborations. By employing advanced digital methods such as network analysis and machine learning, the dataset will be enriched and analysed to understand the role of gender and network positions in artistic success.
Key steps include:
- Automatic Gender Classification: Musicians will be automatically classified by gender based on their names. To ensure accuracy, a portion of the data will be manually annotated by experts.
- Reconstruction of Collaboration Networks: Networks will be derived from recording sessions to analyse the positions and influence of musicians.
- Statistical Modelling: Relational hyper-event models (RHEMs) will be applied to study how gender representation and the success of female musicians in jazz have evolved over time.
The project aims to make its findings accessible not only to the academic community but also to the general public. To achieve this, an interactive website will be developed, featuring aggregated results, network visualisations, and gender-specific analyses. This platform is designed to appeal to researchers, journalists, citizens, and policymakers alike.
By employing innovative methods to analyse cultural data, the project contributes to the advancement of the Digital Humanities and provides new insights into gender representation in jazz music. Furthermore, it supports the mission of CLARIAH-AT, CLARIN-ERIC, and DARIAH-EU by enriching digital archives and making their contents accessible for research and public engagement.