The Corruption and Reform project provides data visualizations for the social connections of the Grand Rapids elite that demonstrate the complex social environment in which reform developed in the city. There are four data visualizations: Banks and Bankers, Women’s Clubs, Social Welfare Organizations, and Grand Rapids Elite. Interactions with the project allowed for some conclusions about the nodes and edges of these visualizations.
- The Banks and Bankers: The nodes are the names of banks and bankers while the edges associate a banker as a member of the board of directors of a bank.
- The Women’s Clubs: The nodes are names of women’s clubs and people, and the GR Federation of Women’s Clubs. The edges associate a person as a member of a club and the GR Federation of Women’s Clubs.
- The Social Welfare Organizations: The nodes are the names of the social welfare organizations and people while the edges associate a person or an organization as a member of an organization.
- Grand Rapids Elite: This is a combination of Women’s Clubs(2) and Social Welfare Organizations(3). The nodes are the names of social welfare organizations, women’s clubs, and people. The edges associate a person or organization as a member of an organization or club.
From the analysis, it can be deduced that the nodes are people, banks, social welfare organizations, and women’s clubs, while the edge is “a member of”. It is good to highlight some of the interactions the project enabled.
The project has a search feature, which is excellent for looking up information about specific nodes. Additionally, a bar pops up from the right side of the screen every time a node in the visualization is selected; the bar provides information about the node. Lastly, the color coding on the visualization and the group selector feature helps for easy identification of groups of nodes that are related to each other.
All the features aforementioned are very interactive. I played around with them mainly to analyze relationships between different nodes and to find answers about why certain nodes were bigger than others.
