The tool that I am explaining in this tutorial is the Network Graph tool through Flourish Studio. The tool allows you to show different connections and overlaps in a data set. For example, it can be used to show how characters interact in a book or tv show, how different words, how all of your friends are connected together, how different social media trends are connected, etc. It can be a useful tool for Digital Humanities projects as they are often using lots of different sources to find connections and overlaps between many different sources. Network graphs are a great tool for visually displaying these types of connections.
Step 1: Finding Your Data
For making a network graph with Flourish, you need data that has what are called “nodes” and “targets”. The node is what you are branching off from, and the target is the branch. For this tutorial I will be using a data set that I created about one of my favorite TV shows- FRIENDS. I found an an article that has all of the different romantic relationships in friends, and created a spread sheet from this data
Step 2: Organizing the Data
Fusion has a specific format that it likes, where you have a “source”, “target”, and “value”. My source is the main friend (Joey, Phoebe, Ross, Rachel, Chandler, and Monica), and the target is their romantic partner. I placed a value on how important each character is to the show. I then uploaded the data to the Network tool in flourish.
Step 3: Creating the network
For the flourish network analysis to work, you also have to give the data an “ID” and a “Group”. My ID was the character that the friend is connected to. I grouped them by my rating of how important I think that they are to the show
IMPORTANT TIP: make sure that your sources also have an ID of their own, or they will not show up on the network graph
Step 4: Adding Labels and Cleaning It Up
The maps by themselves look good, but it is helpful to customize the graph to make it as clear as possible. For example, I like to add labels to all of my points
Step 5: The Final Product
With a few tweeks and personal formatting preferences, you should have a network graph! You can easily embed it into whatever DH project you are working on with the “Export and Publish” button on flourish.
Further Resources
If you want to learn more about how to make network graphs, check these out:
3 thoughts on “Tutorial- Network Analysis With Flourish”
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I like Flourish Studio’s Network Graph tool. It is accessible to users with a wide range of skills, as I have noticed some Network Graphs are complicated to manage. Your tutorial also made understanding how it works a lot simpler. I also like your example, as it shows how Network Analysis can be applied to many different areas.
I really like this tutorial; I think that Flourish is a really useful data visualization tool that doesn’t require much coding background to use. I worked with it for my midterm but never did a network analysis in it so this was a fun tutorial to follow along with. I feel like you did a good job laying out the steps for using the tool as well as how to set up the data for using it. I know my first time around I had a hard time with formatting the data in Flourish so I like that you added that note in.
The tutorial was easy to follow! Tools like these have made me think about our discourse on whether or not humanists should learn to code. Admittedly, there’s a ton of stuff that you can do without ever needing to write a single line of code as you have shown here. Something that I’ve also recognized even further is that even without having to code, there’s still a great deal of labor that needs to be applied especially with regard to the data. Hard work comes in all shapes and sizes, and I’m excited to see more cool stuff on the no-code side of things!