This week I explored “Using Palladio to Visualize Ads,” by Clare Jensen, Kaitlyn Sisk, and Aaron Braunstein. This network analysis project visualizes the paths of enslaved people who escaped by examining jailers’ notices. The visualization was created using Palladio, an online web-based platform developed by Stanford University’s Humanities + Design Lab. Palladio visualizes data in a variety of different ways such as maps, network graphs, and data tables.
The researchers began by closely reading “runaway slave” advertisements from newspapers in Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas. From these advertisements, they hypothesized that Texas had different runaway destination patterns compared to Mississippi and Arkansas. To gain a better understanding of the start and end locations, the next sources they examined were jailer’s notices which contained information about where the enslaved person had escaped from and then where they were captured. These findings allowed for an educated guess to be made of where they were heading. To visualize these potential paths, geographic maps were created using Palladio.
Three maps were created using jailers’ notices in Bexar County, Texas, Jefferson County, Mississippi, and Pulaski County, Arkansas. Each map takes place between 1840 to 1842 and uses a similar number of advertisements, around 20. In this data visualization, the nodes are the locations of the county jail and the reported location where they had escaped from, with size representing count. The edges are the paths between both locations which provide patterns into what direction they were going for freedom.
This project unfortunately does not allow any interactions with the maps. At the time of publication, Palladio’s user interface was very limited which forced the researchers to use screenshots to present their results. This definitely impacted my engagement with the project because the maps were not very informative. I would have liked to explore the maps in detail and view what location each node represents. Despite not having an interactive interface, this network analysis project is very interesting and I would recommend checking it out.
