Polarizing Political Polls: How Visualization Design Choices Can Shape Public Opinion and Increase Political Polarization

Holder, Eli; Bearfield, Cindy Xiong

doi:10.1109/tvcg.2023.3326512

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 73 publications

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“…Uncertain displays of U.S. election forecasts. In addition to media news outlets' practices, various scholarly works have explored representations for communicating election forecasts and polls (e.g., [67,108]). Our work is inspired by the experiment conducted by Yang et al during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections [113].…”

Section: Us Election Forecasts Forecasts Of Presidential Winners Tracementioning

confidence: 99%

In Dice We Trust: Uncertainty Displays for Maintaining Trust in Election Forecasts Over Time

Yang,

Mortenson,

Nisbet

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Trust in high-profile election forecasts influences the public’s confidence in democratic processes and electoral integrity. Yet, maintaining trust after unexpected outcomes like the 2016 U.S. presidential election is a significant challenge. Our work confronts this challenge through three experiments that gauge trust in election forecasts. We generate simulated U.S. presidential election forecasts, vary win probabilities and outcomes, and present them to participants in a professional-looking website interface. In this website interface, we explore (1) four different uncertainty displays, (2) a technique for subjective probability correction, and (3) visual calibration that depicts an outcome with its forecast distribution. Our quantitative results suggest that text summaries and quantile dotplots engender the highest trust over time, with observable partisan differences. The probability correction and calibration show small-to-null effects on average. Complemented by our qualitative results, we provide design recommendations for conveying U.S. presidential election forecasts and discuss long-term trust in uncertainty communication. We provide preregistration, code, data, model files, and videos at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/923E7.

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Section: Us Election Forecasts Forecasts Of Presidential Winners Tracementioning

confidence: 99%

In Dice We Trust: Uncertainty Displays for Maintaining Trust in Election Forecasts Over Time

Yang,

Mortenson,

Nisbet

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“Being Simple on Complex Issues” – Accounts on Visual Data Communication About Climate Change

Schuster,

Gregory,

Möller

et al. 2024

IEEE Trans. Visual. Comput. Graphics

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Data visualizations play a critical role in both communicating scientific evidence about climate change and in stimulating engagement and action. To investigate how visualizations can be better utilized to communicate the complexities of climate change to different audiences, we conducted interviews with 17 experts in the fields of climate change, data visualization, and science communication, as well as with 12 laypersons. Besides questions about climate change communication and various aspects of data visualizations, we also asked participants to share what they think is the main takeaway message for two exemplary climate change data visualizations. Through a thematic analysis, we observe differences regarding the included contents, the length and abstraction of messages, and the sensemaking process between and among the participant groups. On average, experts formulated shorter and more abstract messages, often referring to higher-level conclusions rather than specific details. We use our findings to reflect on design decisions for creating more effective visualizations, particularly in news media sources geared toward lay audiences. We hereby discuss the adaption of contents according to the needs of the audience, the trade-off between simplification and accuracy, as well as techniques to make a visualization attractive.

show abstract

In Dice We Trust: Uncertainty Displays for Maintaining Trust in Election Forecasts Over Time

Yang,

Mortenson,

Nisbet

et al. 2024

Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Polarizing Political Polls: How Visualization Design Choices Can Shape Public Opinion and Increase Political Polarization

Cited by 3 publications

References 73 publications

In Dice We Trust: Uncertainty Displays for Maintaining Trust in Election Forecasts Over Time

In Dice We Trust: Uncertainty Displays for Maintaining Trust in Election Forecasts Over Time

“Being Simple on Complex Issues” – Accounts on Visual Data Communication About Climate Change

In Dice We Trust: Uncertainty Displays for Maintaining Trust in Election Forecasts Over Time

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