23. What is at stake in data visualization? A feminist critique of the rhetorical power of data visualizations in the media

Abstract

What is data visualization for? Data visualizations in the media are not just about giving people easy or pretty access to information. They are about telling stories and they therefore work within the narrative frames of their designers and disseminators. When influential data visualizers write that data visualization can ‘change the world’ (Kosara, Cohen, Cukier, & Wattenberg, 2009), implicitly for the better, we therefore need to ask questions of what they mean. If data visualization can change the world, then there is much at stake in the form. The assumption is that access to more data can enable us to