The Pleasure and Pain of Visualizing Data in Times of Data Power

Abstract

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.

Refugees and Network Publics on Twitter: Networked Framing, Affect, and Capture

“…Finally, we are aware the specific measures taken to interrogate and visualize the data already contain certain assumptions which are then transferred to the analysis (cf. Kennedy & Hill, 2016). The specific procedures and measures applied alongside some of their limitations are examined below.…”

Feeling your data: Touch and making sense of personal digital data

“…They contend that data visualisation is a form of ideological knowledge production, in which certain elements are chosen to be manipulated in specific ways to create and emphasise relationships, while others are ignored or under-emphasised. Powerful interests and existing biases and discrimination are frequently reproduced as part of the decisions made in creating data visualisations (Adema and Hall, 2016; Gregg, 2015; Kennedy et al, 2016; Kennedy and Hill, 2016; McCosker and Wilken, 2014). These materialisations, indeed, can be considered data ‘performances’, not only conveying but also creating meaning (Adema and Hall, 2016).…”

Towards a critical understanding of data visualisation in democracy: a deliberative systems approach

“…Some data visualisation types, like the line graph, the bar chart and the sector (or cake) diagram are widely used in public contexts, for both information and persuasion (Cairo, 2019). Further, while data visualisation is commonly conceived of as a means of transmitting information, it also has the capacity to evoke emotions and appeal to identity (Kennedy & Hill, 2017). As Kennedy and Hill comment (Kennedy & Hill, 2017), feelings can be evoked by many triggers; the content of the visualisation, the aesthetics of it, or the experience of mastery or falling short in the process of reading.…”

“…One perspective emphasises how the production of data visualisations is mainly confined to elite-or expert actors (e.g., D 'Ignazio & Bhargava, 2020). Addressing the ideological nature of data visualisation, other scholars make evident how data visualisations are not mere objective accounts of reality; they also contain narratives of the social and political world (e.g., Kennedy & Hill, 2017). As pointed out by others, the increasing pervasiveness of data visualisations can in itself be seen as a manifestation of a datafication of society, augmenting an uncritical trust in numbers (e.g., Beer, 2016).…”