I had time to kill today so I used my amazing flash skills to make a short.
The reason I chose pie charts and graphs is due to the queue of thoughts that can be attached to these simple images, and these simples images can distort how we view a subject or idea simply by resizing the chart, negating some number(s), negating facts and so forth. Rose Perot ran his entire presidential campaign using charts to back his arguments.
You can take a look at this wonderful chart and get false impressions about your safety.
Here this will make you paranoid about your money.
The bottom right image maybe true when comparing the American dollar to the Euro or UK Pound,but we still have a good exchange rate in just about.....every other country on the face of the planet.
Hi --
ReplyDeleteI'm in your ENG742 class. I also think about things like the distortion of information/meaning that happens with pie charts and graphs and the like, so I guess we're at a good starting point together. Information design and the rhetoric of information design is a deep topic. I was looking at this clip a while ago and thinking about this stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
The complexity of the information that they display is intense and yet the complexity is not lost when brought into visual form. So, it seems an ethical way to present the information, without too much deception.
Deedee Rongstad
Your short is really fun and thought-provoking too! One question I have for you (or anyone else) is: do you think there is a sorites paradox (paradox of the heap) when we start talking about the ethical presentation of information?
ReplyDeleteTo explain: any rhetorical act is meant to be persuasive, and so information will be mediated (variously) to achieve particular ends. Since we can't present unmediated information, it follows that any information we present will be a end-directed representation (i.e., a representation of already-mediated information--mediated through my own subjectivity--that is aimed at achieving my own ends). So, to return to the sorities paradox: how distorted (or, better, "spun") does the information have to be via a particular mediation for it to be unethical?
Cheers,
Adam Pacton
Hi!
ReplyDeleteGood job on the short. It makes me think about what my mom, who teaches math, always says, that you can distort any statistical information in your favor. Politicians do it all the time, if not the actual numbers, then the visual display can really influence the way we perceive it, as you demonstrated.
I like Deedee's post. It seems like maintaining the complexity of information and data seems to be the most ethical way of presenting information. What do you think?
Hi Richard,
ReplyDeleteThere's an aphorism about there being three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. To Adam's and Avery's comments, it seems as though any presentation of information is going to be weighted in one way or another, simply by what information we present or omit.
How we choose to convey that information can influence how it is received, too. The "PowerPoint is Evil" debate is an example of the influence of the medium. (Briefly, some info design folks say PPT is a bad medium because it assumes a hierarchy of information, constrains how viewers interact with it and tends to lead viewers to a foregone conclusion -- selling the author's point of view. Others say don't blame the medium for inept users making bad presentations.)
I agree that the more information given, the more the designer allows the viewer/reader to decide independently, but I wonder is there a tipping point? Can information overload put off readers? Is offering too much a problem, too?