The politics of data visualisation and policy making

Abstract

Data visualisation has become ubiquitous in everyday life, from seeing images in news media to tracking individual health indicators. While the effects of data visualisation on society and people have been explored within a range of literature, there has been far less attention paid to the interconnectedness of data visualisation and policy making. In this special issue, we explore how data visualisation matters for policy priorities, processes and outcomes; how it reflects the demands and constraints posed by specific policy problems; and finally, what data visualisations reveal about broader political, social, and cultural shifts and the implications for policy.