“Representing information as a network implicitly suggests not only that connections matter, but that they are required to understand whatever’s going on.”
Scott B. Weingart
This week in DGAH 110, we took on the broad concept of data visualization, kicking the unit off with a deep-dive into a whole slew of network-style node-and-edge graphs. Going off of what we were provided in our lab materials, I decided I wanted to try to find a more detailed version of the Network of Thrones project provided by Austin. I was lucky enough to find the project pictured above: Shirin Elsinghorst’s Network analysis of Thrones Family Ties, which is a node network detailing a graph of character relations as encountered in the GoT TV series.
This project is remarkable for a number of reasons, first and foremost, it’s built using R. For those of us who haven’t taken Intro Stat, R is an excellent tool for graphing, analyzing and processing data—but never did I think it could be used on such a grand scale. The creativity and ambition of Elsinghorst is truly impressive.
This project is a highly-specialized and well-planned implementation of a network graphic. Included characters are members of the show’s main ruling houses, covering nine classes; these dictate the color of a given node, which acts as the representation of a given character within the GoT world.
On the other hand, edge colors delineate the familial status of the different nodes. Elsignhorst clarifies the orange ‘father/mother’ edge’s existence as a standin for ‘questionable’ parental relations between characters that have either unconfirmed or unspecified relationships to other characters. As a cursory look over the project will show you, these four connections quickly create the highly complex political landscape of the GoT canon.
On her methodology, Elsignhorst stated that: “The basis for this network is Kaggle’s Game of Throne dataset (character-deaths.csv). Because most family relationships were missing in that dataset, I added the missing information in part by hand (based on A Wiki of Ice and Fire) and by scraping information from the Game of Thrones wiki.” In that, the R framework is built using publicly sourced and available data, enhanced by Elsinghorst.
An incredible amount of data manipulation and processing went into this project, far too much to be covered in a single blog post. I highly encourage anyone who’s further interested in this project to poke around the creator’s page (a technical, but highly interesting read).
—A.J.
