geom_nodelabel_repel() position for circular ggraph plot

Question

I have a network diagram that looks like this:

I made it using ggraph and added the labels using geom_nodelabel_repel() from ggnetwork:

( ggraph_plot <- ggraph(layout) +
  geom_edge_fan(aes(color = as.factor(responses), edge_width = as.factor(responses))) +
  geom_node_point(aes(color = as.factor(group)), size = 10) +
  geom_nodelabel_repel(aes(label = name, x=x, y=y),  segment.size = 1, segment.color = "black", size = 5) +
  scale_color_manual("Group", values = c("#2b83ba", "#d7191c", "#fdae61")) +
  scale_edge_color_manual("Frequency of Communication", values = c("Once a week or more" = "#444444","Monthly" = "#777777", 
                                   "Once every 3 months" = "#888888", "Once a year" = "#999999"),
                          limits = c("Once a week or more", "Monthly", "Once every 3 months", "Once a year")) +
  scale_edge_width_manual("Frequency of Communication", values = c("Once a week or more" = 3,"Monthly" = 2, 
                                   "Once every 3 months" = 1, "Once a year" = 0.25),
                          limits = c("Once a week or more", "Monthly", "Once every 3 months", "Once a year")) +

  theme_void() +
  theme(legend.text = element_text(size=16, face="bold"),
        legend.title = element_text(size=16, face="bold")) )

I want to have the labels on the left side of the plot be off to the left, and the labels on the right side of the plot to be off to the right. I want to do this because the actual labels are quite long (organization names) and they get in the way of the lines in the actual plot.

How can I do this using geom_nodelabel_repel()? i've tried different combinations of box_padding and point_padding, as well as h_just and v_just but these apply to all labels and it doesn't seem like there is a way to subset or position specific points.

Apologies for not providing a reproducible example but I wasn't sure how to do this without compromising the identities of respondents from my survey.

Answer 1

Well, there is always the manually-intensive, yet effective method of separately adding the geom_node_label_repel function for the nodes on the "left" vs. the "right" of the plot. It's not at all elegant and probably bad coding practice, but I've done similar things myself when I can't figure out an elegant solution. It works really well when you don't have a very large dataset to begin with and if you are not planning to make the same plot over and over again. Basically, it would entail:

1. Identifying if there exists a property in your dataset that places points on the "left" vs. the "right". In this case, it doesn't look like it, so you would just have to create a list manually of those entries on the "left" vs. "right" of your plot.

2. Using separate calls to geom_node_label_repel with different nudge_x values. Use any reasonable method to subset the "left" and "right datapoints. You can create a new column in the dataset, or use formatting in-line like data = subset(your.data.frame, property %in% left.list)

For example, if you created a column called subset.side, being either "left" or "right" in your data.frame (here: your.data.frame), your calls to geom_node_label_repel might look something like:

geom_node_label_repel(
    data=subset(your.data.frame, subset.side=='left'),
    aes(label=name, x=x, y=y), segment.size=1, segment.color='black', size=5,
    nudge_x=-10
) +
geom_node_label_repel(
    data=subset(your.data.frame, subset.side=='right'),
    aes(label=name, x=x, y=y), segment.size=1, segment.color='black', size=5,
    nudge_x=10
) +

Alternatively, you can create a list based on the label name itself--let's say you called those lists names.left and names.right, where you can subset accordingly by swapping in as represented in the pseudo code below:

geom_node_label_repel(
   data=subset(your.data.frame, name %in% names.left),...
    nudge_x = -10, ...
) +
geom_node_label_repel(
   data=subset(your.data.frame, name %in% names.right),...
    nudge_x = 10, ...
)

To be fair, I have not worked with the node geoms before, so I am assuming here that the positioning of the labels will not affect the mapping (as it would not with other geoms).