Welcome back, in this post I will be investigating a co-citation network diagram and investigating what the graph can offer. To do this I used “A Co-Citation Network of Philosophy” and interacted with the dynamic network that is linked in the article.
From this graph I can pull out the most cited items in articles published in the philosophy journals that were entered into the program and pick out debates that have been popular in recent years. This web considers the ways that philosophers are in conversation with one another to have debates, to do this the network is structured in a way that shows how one publication becomes a jumping off point for others to comment on. For smaller groups with less than 10 co-citers means that there are less contributors to a particular debate, making the network more contained.
Within the groups the information given is the author’s name, the name of the article, year of the article, and the number of citations. From this information we can only assume and come up with conclusions based on the limited information in the network concerning demographics of the authors mentioned. Gender demographics can be inferred from the names listed however this can lead to issues as assuming this can lead to misinformation. Race cannot be determined besides a level of assuming ethnicity based on the origin of the names provided, but again, this is highly flawed, and it would be ineffective to assume these aspects of identity. Seniority in the field can be shown in the years of publication and the frequency of an author’s name in the network. A more experienced philosopher would have more published works, and the dates of publication would be later than most of the other articles.
For a newcomer to this field the information provided can serve as a jumping off point to further explore various philosophical debates and use the network to locate related debates without needing a lot of background knowledge. As for an expert in the field, they can use this data to deepen their understanding of a topic by having access to a web of related information. Experts can see what has already been discussed and add to these debates.
This type of network diagram is very useful when discussing topics in conversation with one another. It is useful in the humanities but especially within history as this could create a useful visual resource for a historiography. Within specific topics, historians would be able to visualize how a topic in history has been taught or understood over a period of time by using co-citations.
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