Critical InfoVis: exploring the politics of visualization

Proceeding of the seventh ACM conference on Creativity and cognition - C&C '09, 2009

Data visualization, commonly used to make large sets of numerical data more legible, also has enormous potential as a storytelling tool to elicit insights on long-standing social problems. It can help to synthesize diverse personal narratives about history, causes and impacts, and thereby give a voice to populations seeking to create change. In this work, we explore the potential for using data visualization as a vehicle for social change through creative engagement. Our intent is to design and deploy an interactive visualization of development in the Dominican Republic which brings empathy to the society's cultural psychology, helps frame limitations and challenges, and highlights opportunities for progress. Some of the major challenges in designing this work lie in layering both the "big picture" perspective-historical events and statistical trends-with personal narratives-vivid stories that illuminate the current state of the society. We discuss how this work can foster conversations and promote creative thought, motivating actions that can transform the current state of the country.

Papeles del CEIC, 2022

Documenting the invisible: how Data activism Fills visual gaps Documentar lo invisible: cómo el activismo de datos llena los vacíos visuales

New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice, 2018

In September 2007, The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof traveled with Bill Gates to Africa to look at the work the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was doing to fight AIDS. In an e-mail to a Times graphics editor, Kristof recalls: while setting the trip up, it emerged that his initial interest in giving pots of money to fight disease had arisen after he and melinda read a two-part series of articles i did on third world disease in January 1997. until then, their plan had been to give money mainly to get countries wired and full of computers. bill and melinda recently reread those pieces, and said that it was the second piece in the series, about bad water and diarrhea killing millions of kids a year, that really got them thinking of public health. Great! I was really proud of this impact that my worldwide reporting and 3,500-word article had had. But then bill confessed that actually it wasn't the article itself that had grabbed him so muchit was the graphic. It was just a two column, inside graphic, very simple, listing third world health problems and how many people they kill. but he remembered it after all those years and said that it was the single thing that got him redirected toward public health. No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in africa and asia. 1 Kristof's anecdote illustrates the sometimes unexpected power of data visualization: Expressing quantitative information with visuals can lend urgency to messages and make stories more memorable. Data visualization is the "visual representation of 'data,' defined as information which has been abstracted in some schematic form." 2 The use of data visualization

2022

Visualisations provide an accessible way to unveil new patterns or promote new perspectives on data. Data visualisations can also aid in highlighting the context and scope of social issues and is a compelling way to disseminate research findings to the general public. This paper presents an interactive exhibit displayed at the 2022 Accelerate Creativity and Innovation Festival, at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. The exhibit utilised participatory and interactive visualisations, prompting visitors to share their experiences regarding trust and respect in maternity care. This case study showcases the potential impact of utilising participatory visualisation activities by a design research team to inform and actively involve museum visitors in exploring sensitive topics surrounding maternity care and postnatal care inequities. The use of these activities allowed for an inclusive experience, encouraging visitors to actively participate, reflect, and contribute to the conversation. Additionally, it allowed the team to disseminate and validate their findings.

Jedem Ejournal of Edemocracy and Open Government, 2014

Information visualization offers multiple methods for making sense of complex data using graphic representations. These complement verbal representations and show rich potential for supporting cognition and communication in numerous areas of application, including the field of political communication and education. Yet-and despite a strong increase in options with regard to the accessibility of data, tools, and methods-no conceptual framework or discussion has as yet sought to organize these emerging visual vocabularies and their possible (re-)combinations. Against this background, we discuss the layout principles of existing visualization methods and look to align them within a coherent framework that allows a multimodal navigation of modern news and information spaces. In doing so, we also consider relevant ways and means of minimizing well-known barriers in the public and political communication realm.

Beyond Data, 2012

2020

This chapter points out data visualization's double role as explorative and communicative means in humanities research. We draw from science and technology studies looking at the mediation process at stake: the interaction between visualization tool and researcher. To emphasize this mediation process and expose the various decisions at its heart we introduce the term 'data interface'. We highlight how visualizations function as data interfaces and visualization practices allow for interfacing with data biographing a network graph's 'life'. Using the lens of the 'data interface' underscores that a particular (network) visualization provides just one perspective on the data. Moreover, we examine if and how the used data interfaces encourage scholars to critically position their investigative work, during research processes and communication.

Information, Communication & Society

Data and data visualisationsin the forms of graphs, charts and mapsare becoming an increasingly important feature of social, public and political life. Yet within existing scholarship, the democratic significance of data visualisations has thus far received minimal attention. This article offers a first systematic attempt to make sense of and scrutinise the role of data visualisation in democracy. We apply deliberative systems theory in the analysis of three original case studies to elucidate how data visualisation can integrate into the overall anatomy of democracy, and to normatively assess how data visualisation contributes towards key democratic ideals. Conclusively, we highlight how critical perspectives on power, ideology and epistemology problematise any simplistic account of how data visualisation matters for democracy.

Public Understanding of Science, 2018

Researchers increasingly use visualisation to make sense of their data and communicate findings more widely. But these are not necessarily straightforward processes. Theories of knowledge brokerage show how sociopolitical contexts and intermediary organisations that translate research for public audiences shape how users engage with evidence. Applying these ideas to data visualisation, I argue that several kinds of brokers (such as data collectors, designers and intermediaries) link researchers and audiences, contributing to the ways that people engage with visualisations. To do this, I draw on qualitative focus groups that elicited non-academic viewers' reactions to visualisations of data about UK migration. The results reveal two important features of engagement: perceptions of brokers' credibility and feelings of surprise arising from visualisations' content and design. I conclude by arguing that researchers, knowledge brokers and the public produce – as well as operate within – a complex visualisation space characterised by mutual, bi-directional connections.