Brian Sarnacki’s Corruption and Reform Network Analysis presented the relations between social elites in Grand Rapids, Michigan, of whom many were involved in a Water Scandal at the turn of the 20th century.
Four different Network Analysis were presented on this website, and they were all constructed similarly. The nodes consisted of certain elitist institutions and individuals who were associated with those institutions. The four networks focused on Banks, Women’s Clubs, Social Welfare Organizations, and Grand Rapids Elites which combined the data of Women’s Clubs and Social Welfare Organizations. The most complicated and detailed network analysis is certainly the combined Grand Rapids Elites set, as pictured below.
Due to the limitations of the data sources for this digital humanities project, the edges could only be used between individuals and institutions they were associated to on record. Direct person-to-person interactions, especially those that occur outside of these organizations or off record could not be represented in this Network Analysis. There were also not a lot of overlap for the Combined Network Analysis to tell a very compeling story. However, as the author stated, “just reconstructing social connections is a difficult task, let alone judging how meaningful those ties really were”. In fact, the author said that he “seek to give the viewer an impression of the close urban world of Grand Rapids at the dawn of the twentieth century, …[focusing] on leadership of the city’s elite, rather than attempting to paint a holistic picture”.
The creation of this project seems to spring from the author’s M.A. thesis, A Small City’s Big Scandal. The author collected data from Grand Rapids Public Library and elsewhere before processing into the Network Analysis visualization which seemed to use the layout algorithm of other scholars. In addition, other information and visualization such GIS map of the neighborhood were also presented on the website along these Network Analysis.
