How to Tell Stories with Networks: Exploring the Narrative Affordances of Graphs with the Iliad

No doubt, networks have become indispensable mathematical tools in many aspects oflife in the twenty first century. They allow us to calculate all kinds of relational metricsand to quantify the properties of their nodes, clusters and global structures. Thesemodes of calculation are becoming increasingly prevalent in an age of digital data. Butnetworks are more than formal analytical tools. They are also powerful metaphors ofour collective life, with all of its complexity and its many dependencies. This is why,among the various strategies of data visualization, networks seem to have assumed aparadigmatic position, spreading to the most different disciplines and colonizingsometimes as mere decoration a growing number of digital and non-digital objects.Contemplating the visual representation of a network, we don’t (always) need tocompute its mathematical properties to appreciate its heuristic value – as anyone whohas ever used a transportation plan knows well. Networks are extraordinary calculatingdevices, but they are also maps, instruments of navigation and representation. Not onlydo they guide our steps through the territories that they represent, but they also inviteour imagination to see and explore the world in different ways. [First paragraph