Today we are witnessing an increased use of data visualization in society. Across domains such as work, education and the news, various forms of graphs, charts and maps are used to explain, convince and tell stories. In an era in which more and more data are produced and circulated digitally, and digital tools make visualization production increasingly accessible, it is important to study the conditions under which such visual texts are generated, disseminated and thought to be of societal benefit. This book is a contribution to the multi-disciplined and multi-faceted conversation concerning the forms, uses and roles of data visualization in society. Do data visualizations do 'good' or 'bad'? Do they promote understanding and engagement, or do they do ideological work, privileging certain views of the world over others? The contributions in the book engage with these core questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives.

Martin Engebretsen is Professor of Language and Communication in the Department of Nordic and Media Studies at University of Agder and director of the INDVIL project (indvil.org), which also provides the inspiration for this book. His research areas include text and discourse studies, multimodality, hypertext and multimedia, computer mediated communication, journalism, and photography and visual communication.Helen Kennedy is Professor of Digital Society at the University of Sheffield. Her research traverses digital lanscapes, and is currently focused on the datafication of everyday life. Her Seeing Data (seeingdata.org) research into how non-experts relate to data visualizations provides the inspiration for many contributions to the Data Visualization in Society volume she edited with Martin Engebretsen.

List of tablesList of figuresAcknowledgementsForeword1 Introduction: The relationships between graphs, charts, maps and meanings, feelings, engagements Helen Kennedy and Martin Engebretsen Section I: Framing data visualization2 Ways of knowing with data visualizationsJill Walker Rettberg3 Inventorizing, situating, transforming: Social semiotics and data visualizationGiorgia Aiello4 The political significance of data visualization: Four key perspectivesTorgeir Uberg NærlandSection II: Living and working with data visualization 5 Rain on your radar: Engaging with weather data visualizations as part of everyday routinesEef Masson and Karin van Es6 Between automation and interpretation: Using data visualization in social media analytics companiesSalla-Maaria Laaksonen and Juho Pääkkönen7 Accessibility of data visualizations: An overview of European statistics institutesMikael Snaprud and Andrea Velazquez8 Evaluating data visualization: Broadening the measurements of successArran L. Ridley and Christopher Birchall9 Approaching data visualizations as interfaces: An empirical demonstration of how data are imag(in)edDaniela van Geenen and Maranke Wieringa10 Visualizing data: A lived experienceJill Simpson11 Data visualization and transparency in the newsHelen Kennedy, Wibke Weber and Martin EngebretsenSection III: Data visualization, learning and literacy12 What is visual-numeric literacy, and how does it work?Elise Seip Tønnessen13 Data visualization literacy: A feminist starting pointCatherine D'Ignazio and Rahul Bhargava14 Is literacy what we need in an unequal data society?Lulu Pinney15 Multimodal academic argument in data visualizationArlene Archer and Travis NoakesSection IV: Data visualization semiotics and aesthetics16 What we talk about when we talk about beautiful data visualizationsSara Brinch17 A multimodal perspective on data visualizationTuomo Hiippala 18 Exploring narrativity in data visualization in journalismWibke Weber19 The data epic: Visualization practices for narrating life and death at a distanceJonathan Gray20 What a line can say: Investigating the semiotic potential of the connecting line in data visualizationsVerena Elisabeth Lechner21 Humanizing data through 'data comics': An introduction to graphic medicine and graphic social scienceAria Alamalhodaei, Alexandra Alberda & Anna FeigenbaumSection V: Data visualization and inequalities22 Visualizing diversity: Data deficiencies and semiotic strategiesJohn P. Wihbey, Sarah J. Jackson, Pedro M. Cruz, Brooke Foucault Welles23 What is at stake in data visualization? A feminist critique of the rhetorical power of data visualizations in the mediaRosemary Lucy Hill24 The power of visualization choices: Different images of patterns in spaceBritta Ricker, Menno-Jan Kraak & Yuri Engelhardt25 Making visible politically masked risks: Inspecting unconventional data visualization of the Southeast Asian hazeAnna Berti Suman26 How interactive maps mobilize people in geoactivismMiren GutiérrezIndex