media
11/12/2020
Anychart
Network graphs can be really beautiful and informative when treated the right way. Here’s one fresh example of their great use. Kim Albrecht, Ruth Ahnert, and Sebastian Ahnert created an impressive interactive data visualization project, Tudor Networks. It provides insight into what letter correspondence of the Tudor government looked like, from Henry VIII’s accession to the throne of England in 1509 to Elizabeth I’s death in 1603. The project represents data about more than 120,000 letters from the United Kingdom’s State Papers archive, including political missives, intelligence reports, and other types of correspondence. To start with, there is a general overview that displays everyone who received or sent letters — over 20,000 people in total. Click on someone to see their communication lines. Then you can drill down to explore this person’s correspondence networks by time, in another chart, and by location, in a map. From those zoomed-in views, you are allowed to navigate down to individual letters and even read them or their synopses. It took over a year to prepare this data, and a brilliant visualization made it all so meaningful and convenient to explore. Enjoy diving into Tudor Networks.