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Introduction : The relationships between graphs, charts, maps and meanings, feelings, engagements
Abstract
Today we are witnessing an increased use of data visualization in society. Across domains such as work, education and the news, various forms of graphs, charts and maps are used to explain, convince and tell stories. In an era in which more and more data are produced and circulated digitally, and digital tools make visualization production increasingly accessible, it is important to study the conditions under which such visual texts are generated, disseminated and thought to be of societal benefit. This book is a contribution to the multi-disciplined and multi-faceted conversation concerning the forms, uses and roles of data visualization in society. Do data visualizations do 'good' or 'bad'? Do they promote understanding and engagement, or do they do ideological work, privileging certain views of the world over others? The contributions in the book engage with these core questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
... At the same time, there is an increasing body of literature describing various data visualizations, involving a diverse array of graphs, charts and maps informing, persuading and engaging the viewer (Kennedy and Engebretsen 2020). 'Data dashboards' are manifestations of such visualisations and part of broader data infrastructures, and can be understood in multiple ways. ...
... Such dashboards also do epistemic work about how we feel in relation to data; they stimulate emotional responses (Kennedy and Engebretsen 2020;Kennedy and Hill 2018). Governance processes are not orchestrated by various bureaucratic plans setting in train a relatively static surveillance system but are active and emotive processes -feeling like 'a pitched battle, fought in real time' (Gorur and Arnold 2021, 167). ...
... They were going to get a negative [result], they were going to get a bashing, so it's better not to do it. (Bill, Seconded school administrator) Such understandings reveal a form of data politics in everyday digital acts (Ruppert, Isin, and Bigo 2017) at this systemic level and the emotional responses that attend such data (Kennedy and Engebretsen 2020;Kennedy and Hill 2018). Even with valuing of data collected systemically, decisions were also being actively made not to collect data. ...
... At the same time, there is an increasing body of literature describing various data visualizations, involving a diverse array of graphs, charts and maps informing, persuading and engaging the viewer (Kennedy and Engebretsen 2020). 'Data dashboards' are manifestations of such visualisations and part of broader data infrastructures, and can be understood in multiple ways. ...
... Such dashboards also do epistemic work about how we feel in relation to data; they stimulate emotional responses (Kennedy and Engebretsen 2020;Kennedy and Hill 2018). Governance processes are not orchestrated by various bureaucratic plans setting in train a relatively static surveillance system but are active and emotive processes -feeling like 'a pitched battle, fought in real time' (Gorur and Arnold 2021, 167). ...
... They were going to get a negative [result], they were going to get a bashing, so it's better not to do it. (Bill, Seconded school administrator) Such understandings reveal a form of data politics in everyday digital acts (Ruppert, Isin, and Bigo 2017) at this systemic level and the emotional responses that attend such data (Kennedy and Engebretsen 2020;Kennedy and Hill 2018). Even with valuing of data collected systemically, decisions were also being actively made not to collect data. ...
... past, current, and future education trends or realities (Mikhaylova & Pettersson, 2024). Data visualisations, in the format of colourised graphs, charts, and diagrams that mainly depict numerical information, have long been used to create actionable insights and tackle practical problems regarding targeted populations and processes (Friendly, 2008;H. Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020). ...
... As digital technologies are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, graphs, diagrams, and other data visualisations increasingly pervade education and convey information to their users about specific aspects of educational realities (H. Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020). Turning such realities into data (datafication) and visuals (visualisation) is gaining importance in several sectors, including but not limited to compulsory education, higher education and online education (Hartong, 2020;Jarke & Breiter, 2019;Williamson, 2016). ...
... Second, and connected to datafication, was the visualisation of education or the process of transforming data about someone or something in education settings into visual representations which, in turn, allow analysts, students and educators to derive practical insights about specific populations and trends (H. Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020;H. F. Ratner, 2024). ...
This dissertation critically investigates the platformisation of open education practices, disentangling its compositions and consequences for education stakeholders. Open education, broadly defined as a collection of practices aiming to increase and widen access to education and knowledge resources, frequently relies on dedicated universities and digital platforms. As more and more digital platforms organise this sort of practice, their ambivalences have also become apparent: platforms are not only opening education but equally closing it in various ways. Drawing on four case studies and theoretical as well as methodological insights from science and technology studies (STS), this dissertation seeks to take open education platforms seriously by scrutinising their operations, meanings, and values in everyday life.
Part 1, The platformisation of massive open online courses, investigates how two digital platforms shape different modes of accessing education practices from the user’s perspective. Both platforms have close connections to the Open University of the United Kingdom. The first case study, which zooms in on a well-known commercial platform named FutureLearn, addresses how ‘access’ appears in recent literature, and how it is made possible and impossible in practice. The second case study, focussing on a free, not-for-profit platform called OpenLearn, analyses the phenomenon of flexible learning pathways and shows several ways these pathways also entail inflexibilities.
Part 2, The platformisation of an open and distance university, scrutinises the sociotechnical conditions in which digital platforms are situated to organise (access to) higher education. The platforms are tied to a university in the Netherlands that will be referred to with a pseudonym, ‘Learniversity’. The third case delves into Learniversity’s learning management system and infrastructure, elucidating several modes of operating in open and distance education: the visible and invisible ways humans and non-humans cooperate to exchange data, information, and content for educational purposes. It also sheds light on what it means for data and data-driven technologies to become invisible or self-evident aspects of education. The fourth case scrutinises the production and employment of data visualisations at Learniversity, specifically in the format of dashboards, and shows different modes of learning from the perspectives of designers and users.
The dissertation concludes that besides considering platformised education as ‘open’ or ‘closed’, it is worthwhile to consider how it depends on the appearing and disappearing of certain actors simultaneously – dis/appearing. In the first mode of dis/appearing, and in a literal sense, digital platforms make some knowledge resources present in education practices, predominantly course materials such as texts and videos, and other resources absent. Specific groups of humans (e.g., family members), animals (e.g., pets) and technologies (e.g., source code) are supposed to stay out of sight and out of the education practice. In the second mode of dis/appearing, and in a figurative sense, digital platforms look like visible surfaces that the user can traverse to access knowledge resources but soon turn seemingly invisible when the user’s attention shifts to the course materials. Although it may sometimes look like open education platforms and their auxiliary actors are becoming irrelevant, they can still foster and foreground their own educational resources, theories, organisations, and technologies. Open education platforms, with their different modes of dis/appearing, have real consequences for how education and knowledge resources can or cannot be accessed and, therefore, require the attention of researchers and practitioners alike.
... Mapping and using visual aids to explore, demonstrate, highlight, interpret and explain links and relationships between ideas, concepts and theories is important because it is an effective shortcut to an elaborate rationale and reasoning (Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020). Beyond these, it is possible to follow this principle and indeed use data-based graphs that make evident the use of key terms, and the frequency and correlation of use of such terms in texts (Duarte et al., 2021). ...
... Political economy is the disciplinary area that offers the greater chances of exploring a positive, constructive and inspiring venue for an effective development of the touristic industry (Bramwell & Lane, 2014). Tourism may be interpreted according to varied complementary perspectives: the global-South model, which addresses the social sciences' critique to contemporary societies' options related to tourism and to its over-exploitation (Collier, 2015); the regenerative degrowth economics rationale, which bluntly argues for the ecological wakeup call that is able to denounce denial, alienation and apathic policy-making (Crowley et al., 2021); and the crucial role and interface of symbolic mapping and visual aids, which are already opening up new negotiating arenas in business and regulatory bodies alike (Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020). The emergence of alternative business models, based on cooperative and collaborative knowledge production and sharing, involving all stakeholders and leaving no one behind, is already the result of critical scientific work that theoretically grounds applied and innovative work methods. ...
... Visual aids are introduced as a promising research area because of their self-explanatory power. Visual aids have the capacity to capture the essence of theoretical relationships between concepts present in models and theoretical frameworks (Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020). The choice of a critical phenomenology methodology (Hood, 2016) serves the purpose of introducing epistemic considerations that help to shape how tourism challenges and opportunities are being shaped and defined (Bramwell & Lane, 2014). ...
From a critical phenomenology perspective, it is possible to interpret tourism as an open arena where different players interact, thus illustrating the rationale behind their epistemic positioning. Tourism, as an economic sector, is both a product and a producer of what is happening at global level. This to-and-from mutual determinations may be exemplified by visual aids that help to map the conceptual models that shape scientific debate. The research objective of the present study is to critically explore the theoretical potential of the global-South paradigm in order to bring a better understanding of tourism, illuminating the creative tensions that are shaping this dynamic, complex, multifactorial and structuring sector. The global-South paradigm involves degrowth theories and other non-orthodox economic perspectives that determine how cities, communities and territories manage their symbolic and intangible heritage that, in turn, determine decision-making, political debate and, ultimately, the living conditions of their population. The contribution of the present research is to draw together a plethora of academic schools of thought that may help to critically identify the active forces in the tourism sector. The goal is not to offer detailed scientific evidence of the social, economic and political strains in tourism but to indicate and to highlight the potential that is already there to be explored in open reflection and in theoretical incursions, contributing to expand the horizons of thought and action of contemporary societies.
... School education can contribute towards achieving this goal and the adoption of ICT during the teaching process could help significantly [27]. It has been observed that the employment of ICT develops a dynamic environment in which data can reveal the meaning they convey in an efficient way, as well as show the correlations that exist between these and the real world [57,51]. Thus, as students work with real life data with the aid of digital tools, they develop the knowledge and skillset necessary to evaluate, code and visualize these data in order to interpret and understand the derived information, developing their both their critical thinking and digital literacy in the process. ...
... Visual literacy has grown into a social phenomenon as it can potentially influence decision making; above all else, an individual can have an active involvement in the process and take up commitments which they would normally hesitate to undertake. Ideas and meanings are inferred, correlations are made clear and forms and applications are grasped more firmly, as nearly everything can now be converted in sets of images [57]. Visual literacy is hence defined as the skill to not only read, interpret and assimilate optical shapes that pertain to visual communication [62], but also to critically valuate, create visual concepts and produce visual messages [19]. ...
... In a typical educational system, students are being taught numerous methods of visualization (e.g. line charts, column charts, pie charts, spreadsheets, maps), yet they still face some difficulties when it comes to grasping their intended use and interpretation [66,19,57,71,72]. It has been discovered that the ability to interpret the connection between chart and graph demands mathematical reasoning [65]. ...
Statistical literacy is gaining recognition as something that people should have in order to function fully in 21st century’s society. On a daily basis an enormous volume of data are available through the Web; making the best of it demands possession of a high level of statistical training. In this paper we present a new technology-augmented teaching scenario, implemented in a way that it may be fully utilized by both teachers and students. Using the features of the web-based platform statistics4school – a free online educational tool for statistical analysis in the Greek language – it paths a teaching method that can be readily facilitated in the classroom. The presented worksheet allows students to have an interdisciplinary approach and be actively involved in the learning process through the exploratory teaching method. In this manner we maintain they will be able to correctly comprehend the goals of the teaching scenario, as they progressively develop their statistical, optical, and digital literacy.
... School education can contribute towards achieving this goal and the adoption of ICT during the teaching process could help significantly [27]. It has been observed that the employment of ICT develops a dynamic environment in which data can reveal the meaning they convey in an efficient way, as well as show the correlations that exist between these and the real world [57,51]. Thus, as students work with real life data with the aid of digital tools, they develop the knowledge and skillset necessary to evaluate, code and visualize these data in order to interpret and understand the derived information, developing their both their critical thinking and digital literacy in the process. ...
... Visual literacy has grown into a social phenomenon as it can potentially influence decision making; above all else, an individual can have an active involvement in the process and take up commitments which they would normally hesitate to undertake. Ideas and meanings are inferred, correlations are made clear and forms and applications are grasped more firmly, as nearly everything can now be converted in sets of images [57]. Visual literacy is hence defined as the skill to not only read, interpret and assimilate optical shapes that pertain to visual communication [62], but also to critically valuate, create visual concepts and produce visual messages [19]. ...
... In a typical educational system, students are being taught numerous methods of visualization (e.g. line charts, column charts, pie charts, spreadsheets, maps), yet they still face some difficulties when it comes to grasping their intended use and interpretation [66,19,57,71,72]. It has been discovered that the ability to interpret the connection between chart and graph demands mathematical reasoning [65]. ...
Statistical literacy is gaining recognition as something that people should have in order to function fully in 21st century's society. On a daily basis an enormous volume of data are available through the Web; making the best of it demands possession of a high level of statistical training. In this paper we present a new technology-augmented teaching scenario, implemented in a way that it may be fully utilized by both teachers and students. Using the features of the web-based platform statistics4school-a free online educational tool for statistical analysis in the Greek language-it paths a teaching method that can be readily facilitated in the classroom. The presented worksheet allows students to have an interdisciplinary approach and be actively involved in the learning process through the exploratory teaching method. In this manner we maintain they will be able to correctly comprehend the goals of the teaching scenario, as they progressively develop their statistical, optical, and digital literacy.
... In the image-saturated realm of social media, visualizations ranging from data graphs to complex infographics are ubiquitous (Engebretsen and Kennedy, 2020;Naerland and Engebretsen, 2021). Often, they are the objects of political rhetoric, designed to convey information, underline positions in data, or delineate contingent futures (Amit-Danhi, 2022a; Allen et al., 2023). ...
... The notion of 'visualizations' denotes a spectrum of formats sharing a common purpose: to utilize attributes of visual communication in order to convey information to an audience. This spectrum encompasses data visualizations, which tend to visualize primarily numeric data and align with graphical simplicity (Engebretsen and Kennedy, 2020;Tufte, 2001), up to complex and emotive infographics (Amit-Danhi, 2022a). So far, research tends to see visualizations as an accessible shell for numerical data catered to a lay audience (Allen et al., 2023;Cairo, 2019;Kennedy et al., 2016). ...
In digital culture, visualizations are a prevalent and ubiquitous form of communication. A veteran journalistic tool, and an increasingly popular one in digital politics, visualizations offer informative value, attract readership, and increase engagement. Visualizations’ multimodality enables them to convey rhetoric through informative, narrative and visual strategies, making them particularly well-suited for future-oriented discourse. Despite the rise of visualization-focused scholarly work over the past decade, several analytical lacunas remain, due to visualizations’ multimodal nature and their rich array of actors, contexts and usages in the digital world. Specifically, no scholarly approach examines forward-looking visualizations comprehensively, addressing the ways in which their rhetorical layers coalesce to broker knowledge in multimodal predictive discourse. To fill this gap, our paper proposes a holistic framework for their analysis, addressing knowledge-brokering functions, predictive components, and rhetorical strategies. Thus, we ask, ‘How are predictive visualizations rhetorically constructed to mediate the future?’ and answer through conceptualization complemented by qualitative analysis of predictive pandemic visualizations from journalistic and social media. We begin by creating a theoretically informed framework, based on existing perspectives from data-journalism studies, projection studies, and visualization scholarship, which we then refine through analytical workshops and empirical application. Our final analytical framework encapsulates each visualization’s rhetorical strategies, its knowledge-brokering functions, predictive structure, and their interrelations, highlighting the division of rhetorical and predictive labor across each visualization’s components. We conclude with an analytical epilogue in which we demonstrate the usefulness of this framework in holistically analyzing predictive multimodal rhetoric by revisiting the elusive concept of rhetorical complexity in predictive visualizations.
... Diverse themes will be explored that include cosmogonies mapping, political economy visual aids and disruptive reasoning, characterised as active elements that frame the emergence of Renaissance phenomena (Duarte et al, 2021;Wahl, 2022;Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020). Different perspectives will be explored, including renaissance, regeneration and renewal, and cities, empires and scientific production. ...
... Political economy visual resources that are available in scientific production, which are then disseminated in the old and the new media and influence and help to determine public opinion and policy-making, witness the baroque nature of present times and of the performativity of images (Duarte, et al, 2021;Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020). Mannerism and baroque exploit, until reaching exhaustion and saturation, sensorial stimuli and images and vision are but a metaphorical exemplification of the overflow exploration of the lived experience that they convey. ...
In times of severe crisis there are emergence phenomena, which are characterized by disruptive rethinking of previous, taken for granted assumptions. The aims of the present text are to explore the role played by the field of political economy scientific production as a relevant contribution to foster the debate about contemporary societies’ Renaissance phenomena, at the level of the prevailing cosmogonies that condition political action and thought. The institutional economics school of thought addresses social relations and intersubjectivity as structuring instances that condition what is and what is not possible to be thought, conceived, acknowledged and acted upon. Open inquiry research methodologies help to address the profusion of meanings that emerge from present turbulent contexts. Death and decay are part of living systems natural cycles, giving rise to new forms of growth and to new modes of existence. Modernity and Ancient thought, in Western cultures, created a separation between cosmogonies and Cosmo visions that reject or else that accept determinism and fatalism. Kairos, understood as the quality and existential experience of the passage of time, as opposed to Chronos, the quantitative and sequential idea of time, are critical to contrast deterministic influences. The crucial issue is that both Kairos and Chronos, both Modernity and Antiquity, and also both deterministic and non-deterministic influences help to explain how crises, individual and collective, institutional and civilizational, and local and global, give rise to novelty, to emergence and to renewal. Such renaissance effect is present in current times.
... This phenomenon is an example of the contested nature of data within the languages of COVID-19. As Kennedy and Engebretsen (2020) note, while data visualizations have a growing importance in society, their novel forms and uses mean that our understanding of how they work as semiotic and aesthetic phenomena and how they support or hinder personal and social agency is also in flux. ...
... Moreover, while they function on the surface as precise, disembodied summations of information, data visualisations also generate feelings, or "emotional responses that are connected to human encounters with data visualizations. Meanings and feelings are inseparable in our situated interactions with texts", and for this reason, "Emotions are vital components for understanding the social world, including data visualizations" (Kennedy and Engebretsen 2020). ...
... As digital technologies are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, graphs, diagrams, and other data visualisations increasingly pervade education and convey information to their users about specific aspects of educational realities (Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020; see especially Ratner, 2024). Turning such realities into data (datafication) and visuals (visualisation) is gaining importance in several sectors, including but not limited to compulsory education, higher education and online education (Hartong, 2020;Jarke & Breiter, 2019;van de Oudeweetering & Decuypere, 2022;Williamson, 2016). ...
... (Hehman, 2020) discussed the various visualization method and importance of visualization in the study. (Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020) shows relationship between graphs, charts, maps and impact on thinking of human in a study. (Aiello, 2020) presented a critical overview on social semiotics as a productive framework for research on data visualization. ...
This study revolved around the awareness and uses of the data virtualization tools
and techniques by Professionals and Students of the Library and Information
Science. Total 469 participants provided their responses through Google form. It is
found that most of professionals were aware with visualization tools and techniques.
Most of respondents used MS Excel as a virtualization tool in their research,
presentations and lectures. They also admitted that it helps the presenter to
summarize their concepts and provides better understanding to learners. It is also
notable that in the coming future it can take different place in the field of Library
and Information Science. So some training session should also be arranged at this
topic to increase the awareness about data virtualization in LIS.
... On the utilitarian side, data visualization is seen as means of extending the human cognitive ability to make sense of, find patterns and anomalies, and characterise data [21]. On the side of human engagement, it has the power to transform data without context into interactive visual representations that can stimulate thought, inspire ideas, and call for action [22,23]. Data visualization has in recent years gained immense popularity in its application to diverse domains, with tools to author visualizations ranging from interactive, easy-to-use systems to high-performing libraries requiring substantial software engineering knowledge [24]. ...
In today’s world, the advantages of data-enabled design are undeniable, increasing the performance of organisations drastically by informing and inspiring the design process. While organisations seem to be more experienced with quantitative data for evaluative purposes, they do struggle to use data as creative material to inspire the design process. Choosing the right type of data representation is critical for using data for creative purposes. Data visualization has proven to be highly effective in increasing understanding of data, as it is fast, accurate and flexible. Data physicalization, on the other hand, remains unexplored in comparison, especially its effect on creativity. This paper presents the results of two studies (one preliminary and one follow-up study), which explored the use of data physicalization in creative settings. The preliminary study enabled to collect initial requirements for the development of a physicalization toolkit, while the follow-up study investigated its impact on the design process, in comparison to data visualization. From the studies, we developed Concreate, a collaborative data physicalization toolkit designed to lead to creative insights from quantitative data. Our results show that Concreate can potentially stimulate creative thinking, by encouraging intense, tangible interaction with data leading to increased reflection-in-action and a deeper understanding of data. The two studies and toolkit development were carried out at a multinational automotive company, interested in innovating by incorporating data as creative material. Besides the immediate practical implications, we conclude this paper with a discussion on future recommendations for using data physicalization in the design process.
... Data visualizations (further abbreviated as DVs) are used in many different contexts, such as journalism and public information, as well as in workplaces and education (Kennedy & Engebretsen, 2020). Being able to read and create DVs requires visual literacy skills (Ke R dra, 2018), which includes knowledge about visual conventionsthe meanings that, by social agreement, are associated with specific configurations of the components of visual language. ...
For creating and reading data visualizations, visual literacy is crucial. This article advances the knowledge about graphical variations and conventions related to the basic graphical element of the graphical line used as a connector in data visualizations. Some visual characteristics of connecting lines can be used to show directionality and thus signal a narrative claim. Arrowheads may be one way to do so. However, particularly in a digital environment , other techniques may be used as well. This article presents a corpus study investigating the ways in which narrativ-ity is signalled by connecting lines in current, publicly available digital data visualizations. The central connecting lines of 163 award-winning data visualizations are analysed with focus on their visual forms and how they represent actions and situations. The repeated occurrence of some visual techniques points to conventions formed both by a long tradition of analogue visualization and the advent of digital production techniques and output devices. The presented results are relevant to researchers, educators and practitioners in the data visualization field, as they provide novel empirical data on the use of an omnipresent graph-ical element.
... Social media and data visualisations are not neutral windows, privileging particular views and 'problematisations', and often coining new terms or phrases (Kennedy and Engebretsen 2020). Thus, the official narrative rapidly changed Australia's everyday bushfire lexicon to be framed around terms like leave zones, alert levels (advice, watch and act, emergency warning), out-of-control, contained, catastrophic, and surge capacity. ...
The intensity and duration of the 2019–2020 Australian bushfires were unprecedented, as were the global impacts. The area burnt was greater than the size of South Korea or Scotland and Wales combined. These bushfires took 7 months to contain or extinguish. The smoke plume, which spread around the world, was the equivalent size of the 11 largest states of the US. Carbon dioxide emissions approached Australia’s annual total emissions. Over 90% of the adult population was impacted in some way. Thirty-three people died, and nearly 450 people died from smoke affects. More than a billion animals perished. This article contends that the story of these bushfires is much more complex than one of climate change, as posited by some. It is argued that the scale and catastrophic impact of these bushfires were caused—and exacerbated—by a conjunction of cumulative events, (in)actions, and institutions. This story is a potent mix of the problematisation of bushfires and governing, a federation of nation and local states fractured by constitutional responsibilities, the impact of neoliberal austerity policies on land management, discordant local-state policies, a long-term disregard of indigenous fire practices, the role of community (volunteerism), the transmission of (mis)information by social and traditional media, record temperatures, national rainfall the lowest for over a century, at least a third of the continent experiencing a severe 3-year drought, and more.
This chapter explores the challenges experienced by second-year journalism students in developing academic argument in a data visualisation course. The course focused on representing arguments that drew on aspects of educational inequality in Cape Town. Data is increasingly produced and circulated visually; and the means to generate data visualisations are becoming increasingly accessible. It is thus important to develop critical tools to engage with these kinds of texts. The chapter describes the principles for learning design that were employed to improve the blended-learning course into one that better supported students’ development as critical designers and engaged citizens. Some of the principles included delimiting the scope of the task, encouraging the use of readily accessible design tools, introducing a process approach, developing meta-languages of critique, and acknowledging different audiences. The chapter ends by analysing the work of two students in light of these learning design principles. We discuss some of the gains and losses of moving from one digital format to another (PowerPoint to poster), the ways in which students adapt texts to different audiences and platforms, and the emergence of a meta-level critique of the data sources.
This article brings debates about data visualization in digital humanities in conversation with critical security studies and international relations. Building on feminist approaches in digital humanities, we explore the potential and limitations of data visualization as a critical method for research on (in)security. We unpack three aspects of making data visualizations by specifying “making” in this context as working, orienting, and critiquing. Making data visualizations as a methodological device is oriented by questions about the contestation of security and orients research by provoking new questions about practices of critique. Empirically, we situate data visualizations within British parliamentary debates about the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK's signals intelligence agency, which has garnered much public attention in the wake of the Snowden disclosures of transnational mass surveillance. We argue that data visualization in the parliamentary archive can destabilize dominant understandings of security, problematize narratives of security actors and oversight, and attend to the uneven presence of critique and contestation within and beyond parliamentary debates.
This study surveyed 183 college and senior high school students’ graph-interpretation competence in scientific and daily contexts. Specifically, whether students’ graph interpretation in scientific and daily contexts differed across educational levels was investigated. Furthermore, the questions of whether students’ graph interpretation competence in scientific contexts might predict their graph interpretation in daily contexts were explored. Other factors including age and gender were also considered and examined to discern significant factor(s) predicting graph interpretation competence in daily contexts. Results indicated that there were statistically significant differences across educational levels in terms of graph interpretation competence in both scientific and daily contexts. Furthermore, the students’ graph interpretation competence was related between scientific and daily contexts. The important factors predicting students’ graph interpretation in daily contexts include age and graph-interpretation in scientific literacy. Implications are discussed.
Die zunehmende Nutzung von Daten im Journalismus steht einerseits im Zusammenhang mit der Datafizierung der Gesellschaft und andererseits mit der digitalen Transformation des Journalismus generell. Dieser Trend hat sich durch die COVID-19-Pandemie noch verstärkt und zum vermehrten Einsatz von Datenstorys geführt. Dennoch ist eine einheitliche Definition von Datenjournalismus nicht vorhanden, daher beginnen wir diesen Beitrag mit einem Vergleich verschiedener Datenjournalismus-Definitionen und beschreiben Arbeitsabläufe im Datenjournalismus. Es ergibt sich ein breites Spektrum an Methoden wie z. B. Visual Analytics, ein integraler Ansatz, in dem Daten visuell analysiert werden, um Themen zu identifizieren. Diese Methoden erfordern auf der Produzent*innen- wie auf der Rezipient*innenseite ein gewisses Maß an Visualization & Data Literacydata literacy. Weiters wird dargestellt, wie sich diese Entwicklung auf die journalistische Praxis, die Qualifikationsanforderungen an Journalist*innen und damit auf die Aus- und Weiterbildung auswirkt. Ebenso identifizieren wir kritische Faktoren der Datenjournalismus-Praxis und umreißen künftige Herausforderungen der Datenjournalismusforschung.
As video game production is becoming increasingly data-driven, player surveillance shapes the everyday realities of users and developers. Remote online tracking and the resulting optimization and governance of in-game activity subscribe to the Big Data methodology as a way of accounting for entire player populations. By design, player surveillance serves the interests of developers and publishers, who have exclusive access to this proprietary data. Yet, discursively, these parties attempt to present surveillance as a mutually beneficial endeavor aimed at improving video games. A part of this strategy is the video game industry’s selective information disclosure, which I explore empirically on the example of telemetry infographics. Based on a thematic analysis of 200 infographics from 127 games, I show how publicly disseminated infographics contribute to the normalization of player surveillance by presenting it as a source of harmless trivia to be collected and shared by fans and the specialized press.
Dieses Buch analysiert die digitale Transformation von Medien. Damit soll der Wandel von Medien, Medienindustrien, Medienorganisationen und Mediennutzungen aus heterogenen Perspektiven verstehbar und die digitale Transformation der Medien gestaltbar gemacht werden. Die Beitragsautoren stellen theoriebildende und praxisfördernde Überlegungen zur Medienfinanzierung und Erlösmodellierung von klassischen, aber auch neuen Medien sowie die Rolle des Journalismus unter veränderten Rahmenbedingungen des Medienwandels vor.
Die erheblichen Fortschritte in emergenten Technologien haben den Markt für neue Teilnehmer und disruptive Geschäftsmodelle geöffnet. Die neuen Mitspieler destabilisieren die bestehende Medienlandschaft und ziehen die Aufmerksamkeit des Publikums auf sich. Mit dem Konzept der digitalen Transformation rücken somit unweigerlich die Zusammenhänge und wechselseitigen Durchdringungen von digitalen Medientechnologien, den Veränderungsimperativen von Medienorganisationen, Medienwandel und Wandel von Journalismus und Öffentlichkeit ins Zentrum der Diskussionen. Daher müssen sich traditionelle Medienunternehmen veränderungswillig zeigen, um weiterhin marktfähig zu bleiben und zu überleben.
Traditionally the concept of “literacy” was restricted to the ability to read, write and use arithmetic. In a multicultural world with fast technological advances people in all societies need abilities and skills to manage many kinds of systems for communication and information provide in imag-es, symbols, and texts. We all have to learn to interpret visual messages accurately and to create such messages. Interpretation and creation in visual literacy can be said to parallel read-ing and writing in print literacy.
"Il y a eu une telle fertilisation réciproque des idées de la sémiotique de Saussure, centrée sur le code et le langage, et de la sémiotique inspirée par Peirce, qui est pragmatique et interprétative, qu'il est difficile de trouver aujourd'hui un sémioticien qui ne croit pas à la nécessité de développer une socio-sémiotique, interprétative et pragmatique ».
S'il fallait donner l'illustration de cette conception ouverte des avancées en sémiotique, l'ouvrage de Gunther Kress et Théo van Leeuwen : Reading Images - The Grammar of Visual Design, en serait
la meilleure preuve.
Critical discourse analysis In recent decades critical discourse analysis (CDA) has become a well-established field in the social sciences. However, in contrast with some branches of linguistics, CDA is not a discrete academic discipline with a relatively fixed set of research methods. Instead, we might best see CDA as a problem-oriented interdisciplinary research movement, subsuming a variety of approaches, each with different theoretical models, research methods and agenda. What unites them is a shared interest in the semiotic dimensions of power, injustice, abuse, and political-economic or cultural change in society. CDA is distinctive in a) its view of the relationship between language and society, and b) its critical approach to methodology. Let us take these in turn by first exploring the notions of ‘discourse’ and ‘critical’. The term ‘discourse’ is used in various ways across the social sciences and within the field of CDA. In the most abstract sense, ‘discourse’ ...
This state of the art report focuses on glyph-based visualization, a common form of visual design where a data set is depicted by a collection of visual objects referred to as glyphs. Its major strength is that patterns of multivariate data involving more than two attribute dimensions can often be more readily perceived in the context of a spatial relationship, whereas many techniques for spatial data such as direct volume rendering find difficult to depict with multivariate or multi-field data, and many techniques for non-spatial data such as parallel coordinates are less able to convey spatial relationships encoded in the data. This report fills several major gaps in the literature, drawing the link between the fundamental concepts in semiotics and the broad spectrum of glyph-based visualization, reviewing existing design guidelines and implementation techniques, and surveying the use of glyph-based visualization in many applications.
It is common to think of statistical graphics and data visualization as relatively modern developments in statistics. In fact,
the graphic representation of quantitative information has deep roots. These roots reach into the histories of the earliestmap
making and visual depiction, and later into thematic cartography, statistics and statistical graphics, medicine and other
fields. Along the way, developments in technologies (printing, reproduction), mathematical theory and practice, and empirical
observation and recording enabled the wider use of graphics and new advances in form and content.
This chapter highlights the story of how artists participated in the practices of observation that Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison compellingly define as collective empiricism. It shows the history of scientific objectivity has constantly crossed paths with the history of artistic visualization, from which it has received some powerful challenges. Historicizing the category of representation also has the advantage of reinforcing its vital connection with visualizational connection that is rarely addressed in current philosophical discussions. Distinctive of twentieth-century image- making, trained judgment was a reaction to the constraints imposed by mechanical reproducibility. In the age of computerization, visualization challenges the boundaries between the artifactual and the natural: The new scientific images fulfill the purpose of manipulating the realand they do so in an aesthetically pleasing way. Callanan's artwork is a physical visualization of real-time raw scientific data.
In this paper, ANT comes into fruitful exchange with visual culture studies. What were the reasons for the rapid success of science in the modern era? Some may argue that the main transformation occurred in the economic structure, with the rise of bourgeois capitalism. Others refer to the birth of organized skepticism and development of the scientiqc method, to the emergence of humanism and individualistic ideology. However, according to the author, these are not the actual causes. be new forms of inscription and knowledge transmission are conditions for the progress of modern science. be linear perspective discovery allowed for the portrayal of objects with optical consistency: Regardless of the viewpoint and distance to the object, it can be always depicted from any other angle and without any loss of external qualities. be distant point method revolutionized Dutch painting: Now a few simple "camera obscura" tricks transform massive ED constructions into BD images on a flat surface. Finally, the printing press invention led to the global distribution of copies, almost identical to the original text, map, or etching. banks to these innovations, scientists of 16th and 17th centuries acquired immense power-they learned to act at a distance. bese historical arguments are supported by the theory of immutable mobiles. Mobile objects can be transported across long distances. And if there is no risk of damaging them, they remain readable throughout the journey, then one can call them immutable. Drawing on the ideas of François Dagognet, Michel Foucault, Martin J. S. Rudwick, François Fourquet, Johannes Fabian, and many others, the author outlines the nine features of immutable mobiles. Using such terms as "cascade of inscriptions" and "formalism," he proposes a new approach to scientiqc abstraction. Money turned out to be just one of the many possible forms of inscription, therefore capitalism can hardly serve as the basic concept for understanding the history of science and technology. According to the author, the breakthrough in modern science is directly linked to changes in European visual culture.
As data become more and more ubiquitous, so too do data visualizations, which increasingly circulate online and are an important means through which non-experts get access to data. This paper addresses the factors that affect how people engage with data visualizations, a relatively under-researched focus in visualization research to date. Drawing on qualitative, empirical research with users, we identify six factors that affect engagement: subject matter; source/media location; beliefs and opinions; time; emotions; and confidence and skills. In drawing attention to these factors, we bring HCI concerns together with approaches to media audience research, to identify new themes for visualization research. In particular, we argue that our findings have implications for how effectiveness is conceived and defined in relation to data visualizations and how this varies depending on how, by whom, where and for what purpose visualizations are encountered. Our paper aims to extend the horizons of visualization research, in its focus on factors that affect engagement and how these suggest new definitions of effectiveness.
This paper highlights the role that emotions play in engagements with data and their visualisation. To date, the relationship between data and emotions has rarely been noted, in part because data studies have not attended to everyday engagements with data. We draw on an empirical study to show a wide range of emotional engagements with diverse aspects of data and their visualisation, and so demonstrate the importance of emotions as vital components of making sense of data. We nuance the argument that regimes of datafication, in which numbers, metrics and statistics dominate, are characterised by a renewed faith in objectivity and rationality, arguing that in datafied times, it is not only numbers but also the feeling of numbers that is important. We build on the sociology of a) emotions and b) the everyday to do this, and in so doing, we contribute to the development of a sociology of data.
This paper argues that visualisation conventions work to make the data represented within visualisations seem objective, that is, transparent and factual. Interrogating the work that visualisation conventions do helps us to make sense of the apparent contradiction between criticisms of visualisations as doing persuasive work and visualisation designers’ belief that through visualisation, it is possible to ‘do good with data’ [Periscopic. 2014. Home page. Retrieved from http://www.periscopic.com/]. We focus on four conventions which imbue visualisations with a sense of objectivity, transparency and facticity. These include: (a) two-dimensional viewpoints; (b) clean layouts; (c) geometric shapes and lines; (d) the inclusion of data sources. We argue that thinking about visualisations from a social semiotic standpoint, as we do in this paper by bringing together what visualisation designers say about their intentions with a semiotic analysis of the visualisations they produce, advances understanding of the ways that data visualisations come into being, how they are imbued with particular qualities and how power operates in and through them. Thus, this paper contributes nuanced understanding of data visualisations and their production, by uncovering the ways in which power is at work within them. In turn, it advances debate about data in society and the emerging field of data studies.
This chapter describes feeling and meaning as two aspects of the same material processes in a dynamical system that is always larger than an individual human organism. Both semiosis and emotion occur across multiple timescales and levels of organization in complex open dynamical systems and are spatially distributed, situated, context dependent, active, and culture specific. Consideration is given to feeling and meaning along paths of lived experience, to their evaluative functions, their likely coeval biological origins, and how a unitary account of them informs new perspectives on each.
This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory.
Data visualisation: A handbook for data driven design
- A Kirk
Seeing the newspaper
- K G Barnhurst
The functional art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization
- A Cairo
Data visualisation as an emerging tool for online research
- H Kennedy
- W Allen