I decided to look at Mapping Decadence, which are a series of maps (built with ArcGIS) that are designed to help visualize the relationships between writers, such as Jean Lorrain and Joris-Karl Huysmans, and their publishers; the creators decided to utilize maps as a way to emphasize how location is important in such a relationship.
For a more in-depth analysis, I decided to focus on the “Mapping Decadence” map/tab. The map is accompanied by a legend: publishers are red and the authors have different colored pins (Jean Lorrain in green, Marcel Schwob in orange, Emile Bouillon in blue, and Rachilde in purple). Accompanied with the pins, for publisher, is the publisher’s name, address, and the books that were published. As for the authors, provided is the address, years he/she stayed at that address, and the books that were published at the respective address. Another cool feature of this map is the user’s ability to change the basemap from “imagery,” “streets,” “topographic,” to “oceans,” etc. This visualization would help track a curious user as to the paths the author may have taken to the publisher, or whether geography or distance affected the publisher’s and author’s relationships.
There is not much indication of whose point of view this map is from, besides that the creator was a student who was interested in tracking the social network of French writers in the 19th century. The assumptions, however, that can be pulled from this map is that these French writers and their publishers were pretty close; even if Jean Lorrain moved further from the centrality of the publishes, he would still go to the same publisher, demonstrating a strong relationship between author and publisher. However, what this map does not show clearly is that relationship between the author and publisher; the pins are displayed to indicate locations, but I feel like there should be connections (or edges) that should be drawn between the authors and respective publishers. This way, it would be easier to visualize that relationship and it would be easier to draw assumptions. Even though these maps do display the information and indicate location, it does not clearly indicate the relationships between the visuals and information.
If I were to create an alternative map, I would indicate those aforementioned lines/edges that display a clear connection between the authors and publishers, as a social network graph layered onto a map. I feel like it would better help in the analysis of the goal of these maps, which is to help visualize the relationships between the authors and publishers.