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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Murray DickORCiD
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Data visualization is an increasingly present medium in modern, networked life. Its popularization owes debts to the rise of big data, to our increasingly visual culture; and to the confluence of these two phenomena. But how can the potential in this form best be harnessed; towards addressing the participation gap in post-industrial societies; as well as towards equipping citizens with a means of judging reliability and credibility? Ways of knowing in this field are caught between two opposing positions; one universalistic and explanatory, the other relativistic, and interpretive. ‘Best practice’ often says too little about subtle cultural cues that may be encoded within data visualizations, not least concerning audience affect and emotion. On the other hand, interpretive critiques often assume too much; the potential in multimodal analysis, for example, is constrained by a number of organising assumptions; not least that all modes of communication contribute equally to meaning. Instead, the author proposes a pragmatist-realist, discursive approach to data visualization as a communicative form. Signs operate on different levels, comprising a multilevel discourse. Unlike logico-positivist perspectives it is not assumed that codes necessarily organize signs (and hence all meanings) in data visualization. This approach is best understood as ‘source-criticism’; a very different (and in some respects antithetical) approach to the hermeneutics of suspicion that often shape critical interpretive approaches. Methodological influence from three interpretive fields; visual discourse analysis, conceptual metaphor theory, news environment; and a fourth explanatory one, best practice in infographic design; are brought together by means of a pragmatic epistemology defined as paradigm interplay. The author presents a heuristic tool that may help in the interpretation of data visualization. Where a conflict arises it is proposed that this may best be resolved with reference to classic pragmatic falliblism; the value of ideas being contingent upon their utility, rather than in any notion of absolute truth.
Author(s): Dick M
Editor(s): Dumas, P; Bonfils, P; Stassin, B; Vovou, I; Rémond, E; Massou, L
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: Actes / Proceedings TICEMED 12
Year of Conference: 2021
Pages: 52-61
Print publication date: 01/04/2021
Acceptance date: 15/05/2020
Date deposited: 04/08/2020
Publisher: Association Internationale Ticemed
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9782492969003
