People, Places, Things

One of the great advantages of networks as research tools comes from their abstract nature. However, there are many cases where the context of the network (not just the nodes and the interactions inherent in edges) gives additional information that can inform analysis. This context could be further information about the physical location of the nodes, additional layers of inter-connections highlighting other links between nodes, a clustering of the nodes into related groups, or simply meta-data. Contrastingly, there are cases where a network representation of a dataset can provide context to the data itself, by revealing structures and relationships within it. Whatever form it takes, considering networks in conjunction with entities they describe, and the world from which the entities are drawn, enables the researcher to consider the situation of the network explicitly.

In this satellite session we will investigate examples, particularly in the digital humanities and social sciences, where exploring and visualising the context of a network improves the analysis that is facilitated by the network. We will also seek data scientists who are interested in identifying analysis tools that can enable this type of data to be treated in a unified way, so that the contextual information isn’t lost in a sea of metrics.