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Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualisation course
Abstract
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.
A blind spot exists in scholarship regarding the use of non-consensual persuasion techniques for promoting experimental treatments. Drawing upon a conceptual framework that distinguishes between consensual and non-consensual organisation persuasive communication (OPC) this paper shows how deceptive messaging, incentivization and coercion meant that consent to take the COVID-19 vaccine was not fully informed nor freely given. Specifically, in South Africa, people were incentivized through financial inducements, coerced by employment policies involving mandatory testing and, in the case of pregnant women, misled by inaccurate claims regarding mRNA vaccine safety. In addition, key definitional changes to what was meant by a 'vaccine' and a 'pandemic' enabled the rapid roll out and promotion of genetic vaccines, including Pfizer's BioNTech Comirnaty®. The case study findings highlight how health campaigns can involve persuasion strategies that are non-consensual. It is particularly concerning that strategies involving incentivization ran alongside misleading claims regarding vaccine safety for pregnant women. The wider question raised by the study relates to whether non-consensual strategies emerged due to overzealous drives to protect the wider public good or are more accurately understood to have been influenced by political and economic interests. More research is needed into this important question.
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.
The visualization of numeric data is becoming an important element in journalism. In this article, we present an interview study investigating data visualization practices in Scandinavian newsrooms. Editorial leaders, data journalists, developers and graphic designers in 10 major news organizations in Norway, Sweden and Denmark provide information for the study on a range of issues concerning visualization practices and experiences. The emergence of multi-skilled specialist groups as well as innovation in technology and the ‘mobile first mantra’ are identified as important factors in the fast-developing practices of journalistic data visualization. Elements of tension and negotiation are revealed for issues concerning the role and effect of complex exploratory data visualizations and concerning the role of ordinary journalists in the production of charts and graphs.
This book examines the historical FeesMustFall (FMF) university student protests that took place in South Africa and shows how the enduring historical construction, representation and conceptualisation of South African youth (as typically radical and political) contributed to the (mis)interpretation of FMF protests, and led to a discourse on an African National Congress-toppling revolution. Arguing that the student protests were not the revolutionary movement they have been represented as, Ndlovu demonstrates that ideological divisions amongst the protestors and reduced youth participation in the political public sphere cannot lead to a new revolution in South African politics. However, the state of the economy (if not changed) and solidarity among social classes (as it happened during #FMF) can be very strong motivating factors. This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in South African politics, higher education, democracy and protest movements.
Research on students’ academic literacies practices has tended to focus on the written mode in order to understand the academic conventions necessary to access Higher Education. However, the representation of quantitative information can be a challenge to many students. Quantitative information can be represented through a range of modes (such as writing, visuals and numbers) and different information graphics (such as tables, charts, graphs). This paper focuses on the semiotic aspects of graphic representation in academic work, using student and published data from the Health Science, and an information graphic from the social domain as a counterpoint to explore aspects about agency and choice in academic voice in multimodal texts. It explores voice in terms of three aspects which work across modes, namely authorial engagement, citation and modality. The work of different modes and their inter-relations in quantitative texts is established, as is the use of sources in citation. We also look at the ways in which credibility and validity are established through modality. This exploration reveals that there is a complex interplay of modes in the construction of academic voice, which are largely tacit. This has implications for the way we think about and teach writing and text-making in quantitative disciplines in Higher Education.
A large body of research argues that self-presentation strategies vary based on audience. But what happens when the technical features of Web sites enable—or even require—users to make personal disclosures to multiple audiences at once, as is often the case on social network sites (SNSs)? Do users apply a lowest common denominator approach, only making disclosures that are appropriate for all audience members? Do they employ technological tools to disaggregate audiences? When considering the resources that can be harnessed from SNS interactions, researchers suggest users need to engage with their network in order to reap benefits. The present study presents a model including network composition, disclosures, privacy-based strategies, and social capital. Results indicate that (1) audience size and diversity impacts disclosures and use of advanced privacy settings, (2) privacy concerns and privacy settings impact disclosures in varying ways; and (3) audience and disclosure characteristics predict bridging social capital.
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.
Despite the growing importance of digital portfolios for justifying creative work and study opportunities, little is known about arts students’ creative appropriation of online portfolios in secondary school. In particular, there is a research gap concerning the challenges that young black women face when curating portfolios as visual arts students. This paper describes the key challenges that three such government school students negotiated when taught to creatively appropriate an online portfolio software for curating showcase visual arts e-portfolios: In formal contexts, art students’ e-portfolios are strongly shaped by assimilatory norms. Visual arts students who want to develop portfolios that follow local or global crafts and fandoms must negotiate their low status in, or complete exclusion from, the national syllabus. Students in under-resourced school and home settings may already be using other online portfolio solutions that suit their purposes better than the particular software prescribed in arts lessons. Online portfolios are public by default and young women negotiated this risk by using pseudonymous self-presentations. Each student's classroom practices were also constrained by a technology selected for its minimalist exhibition aesthetic. Students curated showcase exhibitions, but the prescribed service did not facilitate a wider exploration of contemporary digital practices.
This paper reflects on the growing urge amongst researchers to visualise large-scale digital data. It argues that the desire to visualise unfolds in the context of a complex entanglement of a) the pragmatics of data visualisation, b) the problematic ideological work that visualisations do, c) the politics of data power and neoliberalism, and d) visualisation pleasures. The paper begins by outlining the considerations that constitute data visualisation design, highlighting the complexity of the process. It then provides an overview of critical debates about the way that visualisations work which are relevant to reflective visualisation practice. Then it turns to the context (of datafication and the neoliberalisation of the university) in which academic researchers contemplate visualisation futures and which simultaneously constrains the realisation of these futures. Finally, the paper acknowledges the cracks in these structures, the pleasure of visualising data, for example in using visualisation for advocacy and social justice.
This paper explores the possible role of university textbooks in students acquisition ofa specialised disciplinary literacy, focusing on the use of metadiscourse as a manifestation of thewriters linguistic and rhetorical presence in a text. Because metadiscourse can be analysedindependently of propositional matter, it provides useful information about how writers supporttheir arguments and build a relationship with readers in different rhetorical contexts. The papercompares features in extracts from 21 textbooks in microbiology, marketing and appliedlinguistics with a similar corpus of research articles and shows that the ways textbook authorsrepresent themselves, organise their arguments, and signal their attitudes to both their statementsand their readers differ markedly in the two corpora. It is suggested that these differences meanthat textbooks provide limited rhetorical guidance to students seeking information from researchsources or learning appropriate forms of written argument. Finally, by investigatingmetadiscourse in particular disciplines and genres, the study helps to restore the intrinsic linkbetween metadiscourse and its associated rhetorical contexts and rectify a popular view whichimplicitly characterises it as an independent stylistic device.
What is data journalism
- P Bradshaw
Bradshaw, P. (2012). What is data journalism? In J. Gray, L. Bounegru, & L. Chambers (Eds.), The data journalism
handbook (1 ed.). O'Reilly Media, Inc. http://datajournalismhandbook.org
Providing independent interpretations of official information
- I Matsunami
Matsunami, I. (2012). Providing independent interpretations of official information. In J. Gray, L. Bounegru, & L.
Chambers (Eds.), The data journalism handbook (1 ed.). O'Reilly Media, Inc. http://datajournalismhandbook.org
Filtering the flow of data
- P Meyer
Meyer, P. (2012). Filtering the flow of data. In J. Gray, L. Bounegru & L. Chambers (Eds.), The data journalism
handbook (1 ed). O'Reilly Media, Inc. http://datajournalismhandbook.org
Designing infographics on educational inequalities in Cape Town's wards-a new #UCT media studies project
- T Noakes
Noakes, T. (2017, November 17). Designing infographics on educational inequalities in Cape Town's wards-a new #UCT
media studies project. Travis Noakes. https://www.travisnoakes.co.za/2017/11/designing-infographics-oneducational.html