Digital Humanities
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Network Visualization of the Rocky Flats Oral History Collection

Opened in 1950, the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado had a long and complicated history as a key piece of the Cold War nuclear deterrence strategy of the United States. Activities and accidents at the plant spurred environmental, peace, and safety activists to take action against it and operations eventually ceased in 1992.

The Maria Rogers Oral History Program (MROHP) at the Carnegie Library for Local History in Colorado has been gathering and archiving oral histories since 1976, including a special collection of 130-plus oral histories related to Rocky Flats. An additional 25 interviews were conducted between 1990 and 2002 and donated to MROHP. This important group of histories includes workers, whistle blowers, scientists and engineers, activists, and labor organizers and offers a fuller range of perspectives on the events that transpired.

This simple network visualization maps the relations between the individuals interviewed and discussed in the subset collection of 25 histories.

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The nodes represent the 354 individuals mentioned in the collection of interviews and there are 489 connections, or edges, between them. In this version, direct mentions are mapped with the edge color representing the source of the connection. You may search by individual or filter by the group affiliations I defined: Green = activist; Orange = worker/union; Gray = corporate/management; Blue = government/politicians; Red = scientists; Yellow = media; and Purple = artists.

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