Graph Commons

Graph Commons is a collaborative web-based platform for mapping, analyzing, publishing data networks, social networks. The platform empowers people and organizations to transform their data into interactive maps and untangle complex relations that impact them and their communities. Graph Commons is used for a variety purposes including investigative journalism, data science, organizational analysis, advocacy, digital humanities, policy analysis, data activism, archival exploration, design research, and art curating.
The platform was initiated in 2011 by Burak Arikan formerly of the Physical Language Workshop at the MIT Media Lab.
Graph Commons workshops have been hosted by civil society organizations, academic and cultural institutions around the world. The participants of the workshops learn how to map and analyze networks starting from hand-drawn sketches on paper and building more complex graphs on the digital interface.
Graph Commons and a network mapping project made using the platform were featured in the last chapter of Albert-László Barabási's seminal textbook "Network Science" published from Cambridge University Press in 2016.
Features
Graph Commons platform has an easy to use visual interface for making network maps manually. It is useful for sketching ideas, modelling data, and build data maps. For larger projects, the platform has data import options from Google Spreadsheet, CSV, and JSON files.
The interface organizes the network diagram by running a physics simulation known as force-directed layout algorithm, where the nodes naturally find their positions on the canvas through connecting forces. The resulting layout reveals central and peripheral actors, indirect links, organic clusters, bridges between clusters that are otherwise hidden.
Users create custom data visualization and data taxonomies, customize color and icons of actors and relations in the data to develop an effective visual language. The work then can be presented full screen on any device. The published graphs can be embedded into other websites. All public graphs are licensed to their editors with Creative Commons International 4.0.
The interface has a type-ahead search to quickly locate where the nodes are in a complex diagram. When a node is clicked on the canvas, an information card is displayed for details including an image, properties, and relations. These node cards also enable navigation following the relations from one node to another in parallel to the graph view.
The graph interface has a filter feature to hide and show portions of the map based on node and relation properties. Since it is common to have many options for filters, every graph editor customizes these filters based on their data properties, so the general audience can easily interact with them.
The Analysis feature on Graph Commons enables users to apply network analysis such as clustering and network centrality calculation to their graphs.
The platform also provides a simple REST API to programmatically create network maps (graphs) and integrate network intelligence into custom applications.

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