What do we see when we look at networks: Visual network analysis, relational ambiguity, and force-directed layouts

Abstract

It is increasingly common in natural and social sciences to rely on network visualizations to explore relational datasets and illustrate findings. Such practices have been around long enough to prove that scholars find it useful to project networks in a two-dimensional space and to use their visual qualities as proxies for their topological features. Yet these practices remain based on intuition, and the foundations and limits of this type of exploration are still implicit. To fill this lack of formalization, this paper offers explicit documentation for the kind of visual network analysis encouraged by force-directed layouts. Using the example of a network of Jazz performers, band and record labels extracted from Wikipedia, the paper provides guidelines on how to make networks readable and how to interpret their visual features. It discusses how the inherent ambiguity of network visualizations can be exploited for exploratory data analysis. Acknowledging that vagueness is a feature of many relational datasets in the humanities and social sciences, the paper contends that visual ambiguity, if properly interpreted, can be an asset for the analysis. Finally, we propose two attempts to distinguish the ambiguity inherited from the represented phenomenon from the distortions coming from fitting a multidimensional object in a two-dimensional space. We discuss why these attempts are only partially successful, and we propose further steps towards a metric of spatialization quality.

Grounding force-directed network layouts with latent space models

“…ings with FDLs, nor what constitutes an appropriate algorithm choice for different network data from the range of FDLs available-points also highlighted recently in [8,11]. We argue and show that explicit interpretability can be provided by latent space approaches, which have the goal of embedding a network in an underlying social space, and where distances between nodes can be interpreted as proximity in this space.…”

“…They were not only used for illustrative purposes [1,3,5], but also to explore and analyse network data [2,[6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…If one wants to take network layouts seriously, an approach highlighting the underlying assumptions of a layout and guiding its interpretation is necessary. While some might claim that the visualization of a network only serves illustrative purposes, their wide-spread use, not only for exploration and illustration, but also visual analysis of networks [2,[5][6][7][8][9] underscores the necessity of this enterprise: Exploration and interpretation are, in practice, guided by force-directed layouts for many researchers from a variety of disciplines.…”

Binge Watching and the Role of Social Media Virality towards promoting Netflix’s Squid Game

“…In order to compare the network of Squid Game, an SNA of Chicago Party Aunt was also conducted for the same time period as this was also the show's premiere on Netflix, shown in Figure 3. Similar to before, the graph's vertices were grouped using the Clauset-Newman-Moore cluster algorithm (Koren & Harel, 2003), and the graph was laid out using the force-directed layout algorithm (Venturini et al, 2021). Within this network, there were 387 Twitter users and 684 connections between Twitter users.…”

La manipolazione degli scoop giornalistici: il caso della junk news sulle foibe e la campagna elettorale del 2018

“…Poiché questi valori estremi sono molto rari in un contesto 1 L'algoritmo di visualizzazione crea infatti dei cluster a partire dalla vicinanza tra due nodi del grafo, considerando tale vicinanza sia come uno scambio di informazioni diretto sia indiretto (ovvero mediato da un terzo nodo). Applicare tale strumento al concetto di reti digitali è quindi particolarmente utile a individuare comunità omogenee per pratiche o opinioni (Venturini et al 2021). 2 Con echo-chamber o cassa di risonanza si intende un'ambiente digitale in cui informazioni, idee o credenze più o meno veritiere vengono amplificate da una ripetitiva trasmissione e ritrasmissione all'interno di un ambito omogeneo e chiuso, in cui visioni e interpretazioni divergenti finiscono per non trovare più considerazione (https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/echo-chamber_(Neologismi)/) reale, all'interno dello spettro di valori compreso tra -1 e +1, l'indice E-I diventa una misura affidabile della tendenza di un nodo a collegarsi a nodi della propria comunità.…”