pondelok 5. decembra 2011

Emotions - provocation and manipulation

Data visualization is becoming more and more important. This fact is caused by their amount and variety. Every day millions of information are produced and stored in electronic devices. When we are not able to analyze them and make conclusion, these data are not useful. One of aims of data visualization is to make data analyzes more simple and clearly convey most important facts, connection and relations between fact. 

But there are also other import aspects in data visualization. Martin M. Wattenberg says that visualization should also attract people and stimulate them. Stimulation can be enabled also using side-technics like data sharing. This can stimulate conversation and bring deeper understanding. But putting data in facebook is not enough. When these data are not attractive, poeple will not notice them. New TV Shows showed that people are interested in emotions and impressive and expressive. Yes, i tis good way, how to attract people. Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg say that it is not necessarilly bed to put emotions in data visualisation. On the one hand they are right, because i tis good to provoke people and bring them into discussion about data, but on the other hand this visualisation can bring fallacy to people who are notu sed to discuss and impress their opinion. There is risk, that this group of people could be manipulated because they just absorb these data without realising that they absorbed somebody‘s subjective view.

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4 komentáre:

  1. I would like to argue with the statement:
    "When these data are not attractive, people will not notice them."

    Attractiveness of visualized data is crucial in the quantity of people who would see and could use the depicted data. Of course, assuming that that the data is valuable and we want it to be spreaded and used by target audience.

    I would suggest that the attractiveness and the speed of spreading interesting visualized data could be used as indicator of its value, since we have tons of useless data available, or on the other hand, incorrectly depicted, so called Infographics such as example of this nice try to enlighten the Dept of Europe ( http://i.imgur.com/5Kuv3.png ), where the author made a mistake of representing numerical values using the radius of a circle instead of the area of a circle. As a result, the gray 100% circle looks about 100 times larger than the 10% circle. Basically, the entire infographic is distorting reality by an order of magnitude.

    Not everything on the Internet/Media is correct. Better undertake the discussion, than spread false information.

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  2. I will focus on the fact of stimulating people through data visualization. In my opinion, it is necessary, but only when it does not fall in the manipulation of information or the subjective presentation of data. So I think that the best way to attract people and be able to memorize and act on data offered is to be original when presenting them.

    We are not in an overly developed phase of data visualization, but the repetition of shapes and design when presenting data is becoming sometimes a bit repetitive. An example of this can be the matrix box and the bubble chart. In addition, they tend to use simplistic and colorful graphics to no scientific issues and other graphics more elaborated and serious for scientists. That is why by looking at what part of the data visualization you can know the seriousness of the issue.

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    1. Hi Sara,
      yes you are right, there is always big risk when information are injected with sibjectivnes and personal emotions, because some people can just absorb it without making their personal judgement. But i think this risk is limited, when there is sufficient discussion provoked by data. Then, many points of view, ideas and opinions can be prestented and they create more impartial view.

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  3. I am wondering that; Can visualization help people to think collectively? When got they provoked by someone or somedata. I think data visulization is trying to make a common idea in it's data although there are a lot of differences idea about it.

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