In Brian Sarnacki’s presentation of social network data in Grand Rapids, Corruption and Reform, the city’s elite and the organizations they belong to are displayed in order to show the social awkwardness of reform. This is done through four visualizations, all of which are binodal. In “Banks and Bankers, 1902”, the nodes are banks and their directors, and the edges connect members of bank boards of directors to the banks they directed. In “Women’s Clubs, 1914”, the nodes are women’s clubs and women, and edges are the clubs women belonged to. A similar pattern holds true for “Social Welfare Organizations, 1914”, except women’s clubs are replaced with social welfare organizations, and it is no longer segregated by sex. Lastly, “Grand Rapids Elite (Combination), 1914” combines the last two networks into one.
This program isn’t tremendously interactive, but you are able to click on information in nodes, which hyperlinks you to the connections of that node. This made it easier to see which groups each person was connected to, and made the project slightly more entertaining.
2 thoughts on “Network analysis – Corruption and Reform”
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This is an interesting an example of the question we were asking in class- is every research project necessarily better in a digital format? Maybe if some more interactive elements were added it would make sense, or if they are trying to reach a large group of people a digital format is preferred. Nonetheless, still a cool project/idea!
This is a great example of data that could have been improved by being in a digital format, but it just short of that mark! There’s so much room for interactivity here, the data is very interesting , but the presentation of the data itself is kind of bland. An interesting idea, but I wish the project had just gone a little bit farther!