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Overview of digital infrastructures for SSH research in Finland

Inés Matres, University of Helsinki

DARIAH-FI www.dariah.fi / @dariahfi.bsky.social

Vaasa Roadshow, 14.3.2025

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What are Research Infrastructures? RIs are support systems

(data, tools, training or consultancy) to carry out scholarly practices

FORMING A DATASET

Selecting, subsetting, live-data storage

DATA GATHERING

Data sources, access points, APIs, …

WORKING WITH DATA

Data preparation, transcription, coding, analysis, visualizations

SHARING AND ARCHIVE

Publication, access rules, preservation

SYNTHESIS & REPORTING

Presenting findings, illustrating

Data

Interactions

K. Järvelin et al., “Task-Based Information Interaction…” 2015, doi: 10.1145/2699660

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CLARIN + DARIAH ➠ FIN-CLARIAH

Since 2022: FIRI National Research Infrastructure roadmap

The language bank of Finland (CLARIN): Common Language RI
DARIAH - FI (broader disciplinary base): RI for data-intensive humanities and social sciences
7 Universities + National Library of Finland + CSC

Since 2025 Lighthouse status

Funding 2022-2029 Research Council of Finland (~2Mio yearly)

DARIAH-FI

FIN-CLARIN

Support services

Kielipankki

FIN-CLARIAH

CSC, NLF, FINNA, other national RIs

https://www.kielipankki.fi/organization/fin-clariah/

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Principles of infrastructure development

Scaling infrastructure for SSH research

We empower researchers to scale operations beyond their local horizons, developing tools that enable big-data processing, and promoting collaboration.

Knowledge network

Find interdisciplinary expertise on the use of historical and contemporary digital data, computational methods and the study of digital culture.

Spreading digital competence

We organize training and provide information about education to promote digital scholarship in every Finnish university.

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Why do we need digital and data intensive infrastructures

Case 1: Social media analysis at scale

“To simplify, if I start to process billions of words on my laptop, my computer slows down substantially”

#Suomi

#NATO

source: https://nordictweetstream.fi/

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Why do we need digital and data intensive infrastructures

Case 2: Digital cultural heritage

“Digitized collections (meta)data is heterogeneous, making it difficult to find connections across GLAM domains”

One of the ways we approach infrastructure development is by surveying and collecting needs and practices among researchers that clarify what kind of data are used or popular in research, and what are challenges in obtaining and working with digital data. In 2023 as preparatory work for DARIAH, I interviewed six researchers using photographic material for research, primarily my intention was to learn about their data-practices, that is how they access or create data, manage and use for research, where do they store it and what happens after research. Some shared challenges were 1) images were difficult to find due to the differences in descriptive information provided, lack of accurate date or geographical metadata or simply because they are not digitized, 2) when researching cultural phenomena of the past, researchers access diverse sources / archives and need of various data that provide information, context or attest for the significance of the phenomena they are interested, resulting in quite laborious searching and accessing processes. Historically different institutions have collected different materials. As result we have very fragmented and disseminated data-access points that should be easier to combine or cross-reference.

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Why do we need digital and data intensive infrastructures

Case 3: Multimodal, complex research data

“In game studies, stream interaction between video, audio and chats generate data that need to be analysed together”

Livestream: Rekkles playing LoL https://www.twitch.tv/rekkles

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Meet the DARIAH-FI Network


Inés Matres	Prof. Eero Hyvönen	Prof. Veronika Laippala	Paula Rationaho	Venla Posso	Prof. Sanna Kumpulainen	Marika Rauhala

https://www.dariah.fi/local-offices/

Prof. Mikko Tolonen (UHEL) Director

Prof. Eetu Mäkelä (UHEL)

Technical Lead

Päivi Pihlaja

Tanja Välisalo

Katri Tegel

National coordinator

DARIAH - FI is a national research infrastructure created for the needs of data-intensive social sciences and humanities (SSH) in Finland.

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DARIAH-FI resources

CULTURAL HERITAGE DATASETS & ANALYSIS TOOLS

(FENNICA, NEWSPAPERS, ARCHIVE ANNOTATION, TEXT-REUSE, SAMPOS, FINNA DATA, IN-COPYRIGHT DATA)

SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA & TOOLS (PARLIAMENT SPEECHES, MASS SURVEYS)

SOCIAL MEDIA DATA & ANALYSIS TOOLS (NORDIC TWEET STREAM, CITIZEN FORUMS)

NOISY WEB DATA (SUBSETTING DATA, MULTILINGUAL REGISTER, TOXICITY, INTERACTION, MULTIMODALITY)

STREAMED DATA ANALYSIS (TWITCH, YOUTUBE)

dariah.fi/resources (datasets, tools, video tutorials, documentation)

AVAILABLE

UPCOMING

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COUNT DOWN TO

DIGITAL HUMANITIES HACKATHON HELSINKI

until 12.4. Application period
14.–23.5. Hackathon in Helsinki

Themes: Historical newspapers, parliamentary debate, online discussion on Earth resources, New! Oral history interviews

Open to MA students doctoral researchers in humanities, computer & data science

Limited EU bursaries available

https://heldig.fi/dhh25