For my network analysis, I chose to explore Six Degrees of Francis Bacon. This particular project focuses on Francis Bacon who was a lord chancellor, politician, and philosopher as well as prominent figure during the Enlightenment. It’s a network based on the “six degrees of separation” which is an idea that states that everyone is six or fewer social connections from each other.
What (or who) are the nodes and what are the edges?
Each node represents a person, and the nodes vary in size depending on the “importance” of the individual. With Francis Bacon being the central figure in this network, his node is of course the largest one. The second largest node are other historically significant figures like Thomas Hobbes and Queen Elizabeth I who were all directly connected to Francis Bacon. Then, the smallest nodes are people who were indirectly connected to Francis Bacon through some other significant figure. When you click each individual node it also gives their title and year of birth as well as year of death. Each edge represents a relationship between two people which can be family, work, or friendship.
What interactions does the project allow?
You are able to click on any one node and be able to see every node that is directly connected to it (one degree of separation). To me this is really helpful especially if you are only interested in one person and their relationships because the network itself is really dense and is pretty much impossible to be able to tell who is connected to who without focusing in on one node. You are also able to click on individual edges to see the occupations of the two connected people and filter nodes by occupation/title. All these features allow you to do more than simply look at a dense network, and I feel like it does a better job of presenting information when comparing to more traditional methods like books and journals.
