The network project I analyzed was “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon”, linked here:
http://www.sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/?ids=10000473&min_confidence=60&type=network
“Six degrees of Francis Bacon”, despite its name, does not center around the 17th century philosopher Francis Bacon himself. It is a digital network meant to portray the social network(s) of the early modern era – who met who, who exchanged correspondence, what groups shared members, and so forth.
There are two main sections to this project. One is the “people” section, which visualizes interpersonal relationships. In this section, each node corresponds to a person, and the edges connect the node with any other node/person they crossed paths with in history. The color and size of the node represents the degree of separation between these two people.
The other section is the “groups” section. In this section, each node is a group or category of people (e.g. “historians” or “royal society”), with the edges representing shared members between two groups. The size of the node portrays the group’s size, and the width of the edge portrays the amount of shared members.
This project allows for a substantial amount of user interaction. First off, a user can search for a network surrounding a specific historical figure, or a shared network between two people. By clicking on an edge in the People section, the user can also view the length at which two people knew each other, and the “percent certainty” historians have regarding each method of connection between them (e.g. “met in person – 88%”). Similarly, clicking on an edge in the Groups section shows the names of each shared member. Furthermore, the data can be visualized in hooke, concentric, or table formats.
The intractability of this project allows me to better analyze the specifics of early-modern-era connections and gain an understanding of how the evidence for these connections was obtained. I can also cater the project to fit my needs by accessing a specific section of this massive digital network and changing the format in which it is visualized.
