Six Degrees of Francis Bacon is a Digital Humanities project created by a team of researchers and hosted by the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. It visualizes in an interactive network the 16th and 17th century social network, originating with Francis Bacon, a Lord Chancellor, politician, and philosopher. Every node represents a person, and each edge represents a relationship with the individual around which the network is formed, the origin. When the project is loaded, the origin is pre-set to Francis Bacon. Gray edges are used to denote “statistically inferred” relationships or connections, whereas black edges denote connections contributed by users of the site.
Each edge is assigned a percentage value of how likely it is that the relationship the edge represented actually existed (the “relationship confidence level”) and the possible years in which that connection is likely to have happened. Each node, since it represents a person, is assigned the range of years the person lived for and the degree of separation from the origin. First-degree nodes have a direct connection to the origin, and second-degree nodes have some relationship with one of the first degree nodes. Degree of separation is visually represented by the size and color of the nodes: the origin node (in the home page, Francis Bacon) is the largest and a bright red, first-degree nodes are pink and medium size, and second-degree nodes are the smallest and white. This design choice, together with the fact that only the origin and the first-degree nodes are automatically labelled by name draws attention to the people more closely connected to the chosen individual, and reduces visual clutter.
Much of the project is also interactive to increase readability and usefulness. The filters tab allows the user to filter the people and relationships (the nodes and edges) by years in which the relationships and people existed, by the relationship confidence level, and by degree of node and relationship. In addition, a bar on the bottom of the screen allows the user to filter the nodes by the associated person’s occupation or association. Even though the project is named for Francis Bacon, a search tab allows the user to also view networks surrounding other individuals, like King James, networks of members within a specific group, like “judges”, networks of groups themselves, or even shared networks of two individuals, like Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle. This level of filtering and interactivity makes the project much more useful than a static chart; since a social network as vast as this is so complex and contains so many nodes and inter-connecting, web-like relationships, being able to filter the data makes the user still able to look for specific information, connections, or groups.
2 thoughts on “Network Analysis DH Projects (Claire Saunders)”
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Your blog provides clear descriptions of how a successful digital art projects should look like. You dived deeply into the analysis of its interactivity and use of color, which I like a lot. It is convinced that people are more sensitive to colors than to words, so a clear classficiation of colors can help them to understand something in a relatively short period of time. The design of the filter and links about others boosts the fun during the process of studying, which helps people to pay attention and arouses their curiosity.
Hi Claire, this a great and descript analysis of the project, from what I can tell. It’s so fascinating how people can use data visualization to meaningfully build on humorous concepts like the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” I like that this project in particular offers the “filters tab” option, which is a tool I haven’t seen in many other projects students studied here. Thank you for sharing!