Humanizing data through ‘data comics’ : An introduction to graphic medicine and graphic social science

Abstract

In recent years data visualization scholars and practitioners have drawn attention to the need for data to be humanized. In addition to making complex information more coherent, visualizations can work to incorporate empathy and help audiences connect to information. Addressing this call for humanizing data visualization, this chapter considers the emergent area of ‘data comics’, looking at how the new fields of graphic medicine and graphic social science deal with numeric data. We examine recent data comics from graphic medicine and graphic social science that exemplify the complexities and potential of presenting data in humanizing ways. Our discussion is framed around what we call the EMA framework, considering the Epistemic (knowledge and perspective), Methodological (ways of working), and Aesthetic (practices of representation).

Can Anthropographics Promote Prosociality?A Review and Large-Sample Study

“…In academic research, Boy et al [10] established the area of anthropographics by coining the term and conducting experiments (summarized in section 3). Follow-up work discussed novel types of designs, such as immersive charts [30] and data comics [1], but without empirical validation. A few studies have suggested that prosociality can be influenced by whether or not data is shown, and by the choice of data [21,32,46].…”

“…Designing visualizations 1 with the intent to make readers relate to the persons behind the data has become a common practice among data journalists and visualization designers. Examples include infographics of gun victims, the plight of refugees, or covid-19 deaths.…”

‘Exhaustion --- Apparent on My Face’1: Fictionalization, Graphic Historiography and Data Visualization of Women’s Exclusion in Vidyun Sabhaney and Shohei Emura’s ‘Hard Times’

“…Engaging with data comics to visualize information can humanize personal narratives behind the numbers. (Alamalhodaei et al (2020), p. 362) Thus, for Emura and Sabhaney, the graphic medium presents immense opportunities since in comics 'We see images as part of a story, in which tools of and Shohei Emura's 'Hard Times ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts 269 sequence, composition and texture also do the heavy lifting towards articulating experience' (Sabhaney (2018), p. 8). Thus, for the authors the primary aim is not to merely mediate and analyze historical and statistical data concerning women's exclusions or even humanize data but to also stimulate in the audience a critical selfidentification with the crisis which can be perhaps best produced by an amalgamation of the literary, historical, and statistical arenas narrated in comicbook graphic language.…”

What Do You Meme? Students Communicating their Experiences, Intuitions, and Biases Surrounding Data Through Memes

“…Through the construction of data memes, students moved from aggregated data points to narratives that sought to express a point of view or argument. In line with efforts to move data literacy towards a more humanistic stance, the kinds of data reasoning students engaged in through their creation of data memes, are the kinds that "humanize the personal narratives behind the numbers" [1]. Through surfacing instances of the data, considering contexts in which data lives, and reflecting on the implications that data may have, students engaged in a form of data reasoning that connects data to their lives, relationships, and beliefs.…”