Spatial social networks for the humanities: A visualization and analytical model

Abstract

In this article, we propose a model to identify and visualize family structures across a database of over 70,000 Jewish individuals living in Budapest in 1945 in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. Once family structures are identified, their distribution can be mapped in a historical GIS, a type of GIS expressly designed to study past geographies. Our work contributes to nascent research in spatial social networks in several ways, most importantly with its emphasis on uncertainty, the focus on edges as well as nodes, and the development of a visualization that allows for the prompt and immediate comparison of family structures regardless of their number. We also see our research contributing to the discourse on platial GIS, or the GIS of place.