First, a few words on Gephi. I was disappointed that it was so difficult to use, specifically that it didn’t allow “undo” and that it was so difficult to save drafts.
I was interested in exploring various things with the relationships of Mad Men. Had I been more deft with the program, I could have better visualized the answer to the question, “In how many cases did an ad executive sleep with his secretary, who then became his girlfriend, who then became his wife?” (The answer is two – Roger with Jane and then Don with Megan.) Also, “In how many cases did an executive sleep with a fellow employee resulting in a baby?” (Again, the answer is two, but in neither case the wives – Roger and Joan had Kevin, and Pete and Peggy had Peggy’s baby, who was never seen.) However, I wasn’t able to get to the point where I could sift and select the attributes, so that a secretary could also be a girlfriend, and then a wife. Perhaps this is not possible in Gephi. The line from Roger to Jane, for example, would be red, fuschia, and blue. I would have liked to have grouped the secretaries, and the employee relationships that went beyond the professional, into wives and babies.
I would also have liked to provide a legend describing what the colors of the “edges” signify. They are:
Red = agency relationship (they work together at the agency)
Fuschia = family (spouse or offspring)
Blue = girlfriend
Tan = wife of an agency employee other than Don or Roger (that is, has no role but to appear as an agency employee’s wife sporadically)
Purple = client
Bright light green = friend
I was surprised at the amount of light green. The characters of Man Men are not noted for their warmth or kindness toward one another, but when you look at the visualization, it becomes clear that the “family” is where the cluster of the nucleus is, that even secretaries with minor roles are more important to the center than are wives.
This particular chart is marred by the glitch in the original data that put number values on nodes below the characters’ names – they surround the nucleus like outlying stars, but don’t signify anything. If I were to continue with Gephi, I would like to adjust the size of the font so that characters’ names didn’t overlap (Pete Campbell and Peggy Olson crash into one another, which is amusing in light of their relationship on the show).