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Ego Network Visualization with ggraph

Source: R/modern_plotting.R
plot_ego_ggraph.Rd

Creates focused visualizations of mobility patterns from a single focal node (ego). This function shows all incoming and outgoing mobility flows for a specific category, making it ideal for understanding individual position dynamics.

Usage

plot_ego_ggraph(
  segments,
  mobility_matrix,
  ego_id,
  min_weight = 0,
  layout = "stress",
  highlight_color = "#D55E00",
  flow_color = "viridis",
  node_size_range = c(2, 8),
  edge_width_range = c(0.2, 3),
  title = NULL,
  segment_naming = "auto",
  ...
)

Arguments

segments

A moneca object returned by moneca.

mobility_matrix

The original mobility matrix used in the moneca analysis. Should include row and column totals.

ego_id

Integer or character specifying the focal node. Can be:

  • Integer: Row/column index in the mobility matrix

  • Character: Row/column name from the mobility matrix

min_weight

Numeric threshold for minimum edge weight to include nodes. Only nodes connected to the ego with edge weights >= min_weight will be shown. Default is 0 (show all connected nodes). Use higher values to focus on stronger mobility flows.

layout

Character string specifying the layout algorithm. Default is "stress" which often works well for ego networks. Other options include "fr", "kk", "dh".

highlight_color

Color for the ego (focal) node. Default is "#D55E00" (CVD-safe vermillion from the Okabe-Ito palette).

flow_color

Character string specifying the color scheme for mobility flows. Default is "viridis". Can be any viridis variant ("viridis", "plasma", "inferno", etc.).

node_size_range

Numeric vector of length 2 specifying the range for node sizes. Default is c(3, 12).

edge_width_range

Numeric vector of length 2 specifying the range for edge widths. Default is c(0.5, 3).

title

Character string for plot title. Default is NULL.

segment_naming

Specifies how to name segments in the visualization. Can be:

  • Character string: "auto" (default), "concat", "pattern", or "custom" - these are passed to segment.membership.enhanced for automatic naming

  • data.frame: Custom segment labels with columns "name" (node names from the mobility matrix) and "segment_label" (desired custom labels). This allows complete control over segment naming

  • NULL: Uses default "auto" strategy

When a data.frame is provided, custom labels override automatically generated names. The data.frame approach is useful for meaningful business names or multilingual applications.

...

Additional arguments passed to the ggraph layout function.

Value

A ggplot2 object showing the ego network visualization.

Details

Ego networks are particularly useful for understanding the mobility patterns of specific social positions. The visualization highlights:

  • The focal position (ego) in a distinct color

  • Incoming mobility flows (edges pointing to ego)

  • Outgoing mobility flows (edges from ego)

  • The relative strength of different flows through edge width and color

Only non-zero mobility flows are displayed to reduce visual clutter. Edge colors and widths are scaled to represent the volume of mobility flows.

See also

plot_moneca_ggraph for full network visualization, plot_stair_ggraph for multi-level visualization, moneca for the main analysis function

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Generate synthetic data and run MONECA
mobility_data <- generate_mobility_data(n_classes = 6, seed = 123)
seg <- moneca(mobility_data, segment.levels = 3)

# Ego network for the middle category (index 3)
plot_ego_ggraph(seg, mobility_data, ego_id = 3,
                title = "Mobility from Middle Class")
} # }