Our research intends to view r/confession through the use of classical computational data analysis techniques combined with the relatively modern formulation of digital hermeneutics. In particular, following both Henrickson/Pañuela and Idhe (for a more in depth dive into these relations, see the Critical Reflection section), our research will not only reveal what the anonymous redditors are saying, but also how readers (including computational, machine readers) interpret this corpus of digital confessions. Crucially, even though the texts in r/confession are (presumably) human written, our computational mediation introduces a new layer that picks what evidence are made visible and distributes the responsibility of interpretation to not just humans but also machines. The purpose of hermeneutics here is to clarify 1) what the computational models changed, 2) how it affects our interpretation, and 3) why this matters for reading at scale.
One of the central themes that showed up throughout the entire course was that of binary oppositions. For instance, the first instance of a binary opposition was described to us in the very first week of class -- the opposition between quantative and qualitative methods of data analysis (even though we eventually reconciled with the fact that the two should form a symbiotic relationship) (Gerbaudo 108). In our research, we aim to show that the top level, binary, temporal relations like day/night and weekday/weekend can uncover deeper binary relationships embedded within the text -- like private/public, leisure/obligation, emotional/rational, etc. -- that the community subconsciously uses to sort and label confessions.