Feminist Approaches to Youth Sexualities

19/02/2021

Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data

REANIMATING DATA
experiments with people, places & archives

MARCH 2, 2020 BY ESTER MCGEENEY

Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/
answers; now/then
Rachel Thomson
This workshop (second in the series) focused our attention on the relationship between
the front end of the bot (written in Java and creating the interface with the user, designed
to hear and decipher their question) and the back end of the bot – the potential answers to
the question that takes the form of a data base or archive (and created in python code
within a ask container). Workshop leader Suze Shardlow encouraged us to think through
all the stages that might be involved in a simple question and answer cycle – each action
requiring construction. Here we see one attempt to map the stages involved.

reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/

1/5

19/02/2021

Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data

Suze encouraged us to juxtapose a typical commercial application for a chat bot (for
example online Pizza ordering) and our attempt to use a chat bot as an interface for an
archive made up of interviews conducted in a conversational style. So for example, the
question ‘how can I help you’ on a pizza order site is limited in its potential answers to the
menu offered by the restaurant. The questions that we might ask the WRAP archive and
the kinds of answers that could be evoked are not so constrained. So how do we begin the
process of focusing down the kinds of questions that can be asked and the potential
answers that can be given?
We could offer our users a limited set of FAQs to choose between. This would make things
easier in the short-term, but it would also mean that we miss out on discovering what it is
that contemporary audiences want to ask. It would also derail our desire to mimic
conversation – to create the feeling that the user is talking directly to Mary and to the past
that was so powerful in the rst workshop when we rst met Mary.
Thinking about potential questions also prompted a discussion about what was feminist
about our bot. Would she for example refuse to ask certain questions, suggest that people
re ect a bit more or simply suggest that they ‘google’ that one. How censorious and how
curious would our chat bot-be?
reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/

2/5

19/02/2021

Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data

We also had to think through the relationship between the questions asked through our
chat-bot today (which would be relayed to the archive) and the questions asked thirty
years ago by researchers. At one level this is an entirely practical matter – perhaps we
could simply piggy-back on the original questions, re-using these to call up original
answers. The problem with this strategy is that the interviews were highly conversational
in style – it can be hard to isolate a single question and answer as we see below in this
extract from an interview with Melanie:

Q: How about ways to stop it being sexually transmitted? Do you know how you
can not catch it, I mean what safe sex is?
A: Oh yes, using a condom.
Q: Is there anything else that would count as safe sex other than using a
condom?
A: No.
Q: Right, I’m not testing you. I’m generally trying to nd out what type of things
people know.
A: I think this is terrible actually, I really haven’t thought about it and I’m realising
that I know so little about it’
Q: For instance would something like oral sex, would you know if it had any risk
attached to it or not?
A: Well no I wouldn’t, but I would imagine that I would say it has.
Q: Right. So you’ve got a general idea of how it’s …
A: I’m assuming it has, is that right?
So, if we don’t piggy-back on the old questions, do we simply ignore them? In relation to
the above example we might train the chat bot to hear a question that includes the word
‘safe sex’ – how do you understand safe sex? Do you practice safe sex? And we might
select this particular extract from Melanie as an answer ‘I think this is terrible actually, I
really haven’t thought about it and I’m realising that I know so little about it’. This allows for
a direct relationship with the contemporary questioner and Melanie. Alternatively, the
original researcher could be treated as an integral part of the conversation. Following this
logic our contemporary user might ask a question of the archive along the lines of ‘how
was safer sex talked about in the interviews’ – allowing an extract of conversation to count
as an answer.
reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/

3/5

19/02/2021

Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data

For the members of the workshop, this question linked directly to our explorations of who/
where/ how the feminism of the project sits and the relationship between feminism then
(as captured in the approach of feminist researchers), feminism now (as captured by our
decisions as to how to engineer the relationship between the front and back end of the
bot) but also feminism (?) of the user whose questions have the potential to open the
archive up in new ways.
And this takes us to the nal key area of our discussion during the workshop which was
the relationship between a rule-based design for training our bot to make links between
questions and potential answers and a machine learning approach (Arti cial Intelligence)
approach where the bot works directly with the language of the data set rather than the
way that it is coded – having been already trained for the task using rule based approaches
that are no longer visible to us. In thinking through these alternative strategies we
considered the primary role of the chat-bot as a user-facing tool that would helps people
access the archive – rather than a tool for analysis of the archive. In terms of the ambitions
of the FACT workshop and the RAD project our aims are relatively modest – to
collaboratively build a simple chat-bot and to gain an understanding of the labour involved
in this process (FACT), and to experiment with ways of reanimating the data set to
encourage new users and to learn about the questions they may have (RAD).
As with the previous workshop we also learned about the painstaking process of coding
and that things take much longer than you might think – both in building the front end of
the chat-bot and in preparing the data for the back-end. Our immediate plan is to mark up
5 interviews with around 10 key words as a rst stage of creating a relationship between
possible questions and potential replies. On Saturday March 7th we are introducing our
pilot version of the chat-bot to her rst audience at an International Women’s Day event at
Manchester Central Reference Library where we will showcase some of the ‘reanimation
experiments’ that have been part of the RAD project.

C H AT B O T , F E M I N I S M , Q U E S T I O N S , W R A P

reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/

4/5

19/02/2021

Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data

reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/

5/5

Title	Building a Feminist Chatbot - Workshop and Collaboration
Description	In 2019-2020 the ESRC funded 'Reanimating data: experiments with people, places and archives'. Part of the project involved staging a series of reanimations using data from interviews with young women from Manchester, conducted thirty years previously as part of the Women, Risk and AIDS Project (WRAP 1988-1990). Each reanimation involved a collaboration between young women, educators and researchers and used creative methods to explore the WRAP data and bring it to life in new ways. In early 2020, Reanimating Data team members worked with the Feminist Approaches to Computational Technology Network (FACT//), founded by Sharon Webb and Cecile Chevalier. RAD teamed up with FACT on their CHASE funded training programme to see how we might create an alternative means into the WRAP dataset by creating a 'feminist chatbot'. The workshops were led by Suze Shardlow (Women Who Code London). The group not only learned basic programming skills but also reflected on what it might mean to share and interrogate these feminist interviews from the past. What kinds of questions are feasible and ethical? What might constitute an answer? The chat bot was introduced at the launching of the archive at an event at Manchester Central Reference Library in March 2020 where we also crowd-sourced potential questions that the chat bot could be programmed to answer. This item includes (i) the questions generated at this event; (ii) the code generated for the chat bot; (iii) two blog posts reflecting on the development of a feminist chat bot: 'A feminist chat bot?' and 'Feminist chat bot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then'. See also Figshare for additional fiiles
Date	07/03/2020
Subject	digital humanities digital history Feminist Approaches to Computational Technology feminist coding feminist software archives feminist chat bot
Rights	CC-BY-NC 4.0
extracted text	19/02/2021 Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data REANIMATING DATA experiments with people, places & archives MARCH 2, 2020 BY ESTER MCGEENEY Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then Rachel Thomson This workshop (second in the series) focused our attention on the relationship between the front end of the bot (written in Java and creating the interface with the user, designed to hear and decipher their question) and the back end of the bot – the potential answers to the question that takes the form of a data base or archive (and created in python code within a ask container). Workshop leader Suze Shardlow encouraged us to think through all the stages that might be involved in a simple question and answer cycle – each action requiring construction. Here we see one attempt to map the stages involved. reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/ 1/5 19/02/2021 Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data Suze encouraged us to juxtapose a typical commercial application for a chat bot (for example online Pizza ordering) and our attempt to use a chat bot as an interface for an archive made up of interviews conducted in a conversational style. So for example, the question ‘how can I help you’ on a pizza order site is limited in its potential answers to the menu offered by the restaurant. The questions that we might ask the WRAP archive and the kinds of answers that could be evoked are not so constrained. So how do we begin the process of focusing down the kinds of questions that can be asked and the potential answers that can be given? We could offer our users a limited set of FAQs to choose between. This would make things easier in the short-term, but it would also mean that we miss out on discovering what it is that contemporary audiences want to ask. It would also derail our desire to mimic conversation – to create the feeling that the user is talking directly to Mary and to the past that was so powerful in the rst workshop when we rst met Mary. Thinking about potential questions also prompted a discussion about what was feminist about our bot. Would she for example refuse to ask certain questions, suggest that people re ect a bit more or simply suggest that they ‘google’ that one. How censorious and how curious would our chat bot-be? reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/ 2/5 19/02/2021 Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data We also had to think through the relationship between the questions asked through our chat-bot today (which would be relayed to the archive) and the questions asked thirty years ago by researchers. At one level this is an entirely practical matter – perhaps we could simply piggy-back on the original questions, re-using these to call up original answers. The problem with this strategy is that the interviews were highly conversational in style – it can be hard to isolate a single question and answer as we see below in this extract from an interview with Melanie: Q: How about ways to stop it being sexually transmitted? Do you know how you can not catch it, I mean what safe sex is? A: Oh yes, using a condom. Q: Is there anything else that would count as safe sex other than using a condom? A: No. Q: Right, I’m not testing you. I’m generally trying to nd out what type of things people know. A: I think this is terrible actually, I really haven’t thought about it and I’m realising that I know so little about it’ Q: For instance would something like oral sex, would you know if it had any risk attached to it or not? A: Well no I wouldn’t, but I would imagine that I would say it has. Q: Right. So you’ve got a general idea of how it’s … A: I’m assuming it has, is that right? So, if we don’t piggy-back on the old questions, do we simply ignore them? In relation to the above example we might train the chat bot to hear a question that includes the word ‘safe sex’ – how do you understand safe sex? Do you practice safe sex? And we might select this particular extract from Melanie as an answer ‘I think this is terrible actually, I really haven’t thought about it and I’m realising that I know so little about it’. This allows for a direct relationship with the contemporary questioner and Melanie. Alternatively, the original researcher could be treated as an integral part of the conversation. Following this logic our contemporary user might ask a question of the archive along the lines of ‘how was safer sex talked about in the interviews’ – allowing an extract of conversation to count as an answer. reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/ 3/5 19/02/2021 Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data For the members of the workshop, this question linked directly to our explorations of who/ where/ how the feminism of the project sits and the relationship between feminism then (as captured in the approach of feminist researchers), feminism now (as captured by our decisions as to how to engineer the relationship between the front and back end of the bot) but also feminism (?) of the user whose questions have the potential to open the archive up in new ways. And this takes us to the nal key area of our discussion during the workshop which was the relationship between a rule-based design for training our bot to make links between questions and potential answers and a machine learning approach (Arti cial Intelligence) approach where the bot works directly with the language of the data set rather than the way that it is coded – having been already trained for the task using rule based approaches that are no longer visible to us. In thinking through these alternative strategies we considered the primary role of the chat-bot as a user-facing tool that would helps people access the archive – rather than a tool for analysis of the archive. In terms of the ambitions of the FACT workshop and the RAD project our aims are relatively modest – to collaboratively build a simple chat-bot and to gain an understanding of the labour involved in this process (FACT), and to experiment with ways of reanimating the data set to encourage new users and to learn about the questions they may have (RAD). As with the previous workshop we also learned about the painstaking process of coding and that things take much longer than you might think – both in building the front end of the chat-bot and in preparing the data for the back-end. Our immediate plan is to mark up 5 interviews with around 10 key words as a rst stage of creating a relationship between possible questions and potential replies. On Saturday March 7th we are introducing our pilot version of the chat-bot to her rst audience at an International Women’s Day event at Manchester Central Reference Library where we will showcase some of the ‘reanimation experiments’ that have been part of the RAD project. C H AT B O T , F E M I N I S M , Q U E S T I O N S , W R A P reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/ 4/5 19/02/2021 Feminist chatbot 2: front /back, questions/ answers; now/then – Reanimating data reanimatingdata.co.uk/uncategorized/feminist-chatbot-2-front-back-questions-answers-now-then/ 5/5

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