The first aspect that strikes me is that digital humanities is trying to be open and accessible to the mass crowd. Serious academia used to be limited to communication among scholars, but it was difficult to reach the vast majority. Through more diverse forms of media, digital humanities is trying to disseminate content to the mass crowd. Textual analysis is boring and incomprehensible to most people, while multimedia formats like graphs and videos are more accessible and comprehensible to the masses. I think the difference indicates a shift from humanities to digital humanities.

Secondly, I think the collaborative research pattern is also a significant factor that shows the transition. While past humanities research has tended to focus more on the subjective interpretation of the material by professionals, digital humanities projects tend to involve more members, demonstrating the importance of teamwork and collaboration. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. The good side is that the project members’ expertise in each area maximizes the value of the project. However, the possible disadvantage is that the subjectivity of humanities research is weakened by compromises within the team. The project may turn it into a mere use of digital tools to present humanities research materials or simple and objective analysis of data, rather than using digital tools to generate perspectives on humanities topics.