Title: Narrating Networks,
Abstract: Networks have become the de facto diagram of the Big Data age (try searching
Google Images for [big data AND visualisation] and see). The concept of
networks has become central to many fields of human inquiry and is said to
revolutionise everything from medicine to markets to military intelligence.
While the mathematical and analytical capabilities of networks have been
extensively studied over the years, in this article we argue that the
storytelling affordances of networks have been comparatively neglected. In
order to address this we use multimodal analysis to examine the stories that
networks evoke in a series of journalism articles. We develop a protocol by
means of which narrative meanings can be construed from network imagery and the
context in which it is embedded, and discuss five different kinds of narrative
readings of networks, illustrated with analyses of examples from journalism.
Finally, to support further research in this area, we discuss methodological
issues that we encountered and suggest directions for future study to advance
and broaden research around this defining aspect of visual culture after the
digital turn.