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Network Analysis

Character Speeches and Interactions

Overview:

Networks are used to show interactions and relationships present within data. They are made up of two basic components: Nodes and Edges. A Node refers to a specific point of data, usually displayed as a certain shape in the graph, that connects to other points of data. An Edge is the connection between nodes. Our networks are directed, meaning the connections between nodes show a one-way relationship.

Reading our Graphs:

The following networks show interactions between the Titans. Each circular node represents a Titan, and the color of the node shows how often each one spoke. If a node is a warmer color, that means the Titan spoke more than the others. By contrast, a cooler-colored node represents a Titan who spoke less than the others.

Edges represent the number of times that a Titan was mentioned within a speech by another Titan. For example, if an edge is pointing from Starfire to Robin, that represents the count of times that Starfire spoke about and/or mentioned Robin. The thickness of the edge represents the number of mentions, with a thicker line meaning one Titan mentioned the other Titan more times than others.


Choose a Season:

network graph showing character interactions in season 1

This graph shows the character interactions from Season 1 of the television series. As can be seen, Cyborg had the most speaking parts out of any character. This was a bit of a surprise to the Teen Titans team! Robin is the leader of the Titans, so we had expected him to have more speaking roles due to leading the team in battles. However, in this season at least, Robin actually spoke less than Cyborg and Beast Boy. This occurrence could be due to several reasons. In creating our network graphs, we didn't take into account the length of each character's speeches. So, it could very well be that Robin and other Titans had longer speeches and thus were not required to have as many speeches. However, it is certain that Cyborg had the greatest number of separate speeches, regardless of the length.

The arrows on this network show that Starfire mentions Robin visibly more than she mentions any other Titans (and, really, more than any character mentions another!). This occurrence is more easily explainable. In the show, Robin and Starfire are love interests. Across the seasons, Starfire is seen gravitating toward Robin, so it is understandable why she would speak the most about him. Even still, we were shocked to see that she spoke far more about Robin than was seen in any other character interaction. For the most part, the other character interactions never went above 10-15 mentions. In this interaction, however, Starfire mentions Robin in some way 48 times.

On the other hand, the graph shows that Raven speaks less than the rest of the Titans. This, too, was expected. Raven in the television series is well-known for being more quiet and mysterious than the rest of the Titans. Even in episodes of the show dedicated to Raven, she isn't known for being talkative. Because of this, she also mentions other Titans far less than anyone else.

To see the code that went into creating this network, check out our XQuery script!