What is a network?
I found this subject to be quite interesting and complex. I don’t think I really knew what a network was or how it changes based on how mathematical one wants to get. Looking at the beautiful project that is Quantifying Kissinger, I just was not understanding all the work and research that went into this. How do we go from historians to mathematicians? (No disrespect to the historians that love math, I just can’t wrap my brain around it sometimes)
Basically, it is a visualization of the research and a network centralization is understanding how strong or weak a connection is between all these pieces. In Quantifying Kissinger we see these connections in a visual representation of larger text if there are many connections. Plus there are more lines added as the big ideas connect to smaller ones.
Math but For Historians?
As a person who never loved math, I had to adjust to this when thinking about becoming a digital historian. I see the value in these programs. I love this part of the discipline because these programs feel “techy” but they are an amazing tool. A great example of this different type of math and social research is in Social Network Centralization Dynamics in Print Production in the Low Countries, 1550-1750, by Matthew Lincoln. Lincoln takes a look at how different or changing incentives can affect how printmaking faired. We see this later in the piece that mapping and following the data can infer other questions.
One question that arises is “which of these changes might signify the influence of some outside event or other fundamental change in the ways in which these designers, printmakers, and publishers connected to each other? (e.g. were certain publishers or printmakers able to attract far more students or collaborators than we might expect given the size of that network?)” As a historian, this is a great question and a rabbit hole of research. This is how mapping at network analysis can be some of the best surprise tools for research!
The Use of Network in Other Terms
English is interesting as some words gain new or different meanings. The one that plagues my lifetime is the word “ironic.” It should mean something happens in the opposite way than what one expects. It most often used in the same context as coincidental. A similar thing happens with the term ‘network’ as time progresses. As one can imagine, there are social implications of this misuse. Those implications of using network as a metaphor are defined in “Protestant Letter Networks in the Reign of Mary I: A Quantitative Approach,” by Ruth Ahnert and Sebastian E. Ahnert. Both authors trace the thought of networks as a connection of people, things, or ideas which shapes the context in which it is used. Social Media is held in the same regard as a social network because it encompasses all of those ideas. Connecting people socially, career related, and hashtags for ideas.
Hi Emily! I was also worried about programming and some of the mathematical aspects, but found the readings very approachable. I think my favorite article on this topic was “Protestant Letter Networks in the Reign of Mary I: A Quantitative Approach,” by Ruth Ahnert and Sebastian E. Ahnert. I really liked learning about the social connections and how different roles contributed to the movement. I’d love to see an interactive version of their research. It’d be really cool to view all of the individual connections, etc. The sites like Quantifying Kissinger and Six Degrees of Francis Bacon were fascinating to explore. I really like the different ways we’re able to analyze and understand connections that may have otherwise been lost.