*Culture and politics of data visualisation: a one-day conference,
11th October 2016, University of Sheffield*
*
*As data become more and more abundant, the main way that most people
get access to them is through their visualisation. To date, much
academic research about data visualisation has focused on
individualistic and micro-level factors like memorability and speed of
comprehension and has not attended to the social, cultural, political
work that visualisations do, the contexts in which they circulate, and
the mutually constitutive relationships between visualisations and
their contexts. More recently, critical perspectives have begun to
emerge, which point to the ways in which visualisations can privilege
certain viewpoints, perpetuate existing power relations or create new
ones, and play a role in the generation and modification of knowledge,
cognition, perceptions of objectivity and opaque forms of governance
and control. These critiques exist alongside the apparently
contradictory belief that data visualisations are a way of ‘doing good
with data’, making data transparent and accessible and so enabling
greater inclusion in data-driven conversations and societies.
This one-day conference addresses the culture and politics of data
visualisation, brings critical thought into dialogue with the practice
and potential of visualising data and considers how they might inform
each other. In this way, it is neither a ‘show & tell’ nor a critique
of datavis as ideologically implicated, but a space for productive
exchange between critical thinking and datavis practice. We invite you
to join us to consider these questions:
* How do data visualisations get made, used, circulated and
consumed, and what are the implications of these processes for
society, culture and politics?
* What problems and opportunities does the spread of data
visualisation bring with it?
* To what extent do data visualisations get used in the interests of
power or to act against power?
* How can the belief that visualisation makes data transparent and
accessible be brought together productively with critiques of
visualisation-as-control?
* How should we account for the affective dimensions of data
visualisation?
* How can visualisation be used in socially useful ways?
* What does critically-informed, reflective data visusalisation look
like?
We invite participants to submit their own visualisations for
presentation in an exhibition at the conference. Participants who wish
to do so should indicate this on their paper proposals; organisers
will then select visualisations from those proposed to exhibit.
Confirmed keynote/plenary speakers include:
* Catherine D’Ignazio, MIT Center for Civic Media/Emerson Engagement
Lab, USA
* Cath Sleeman, Quantitative Research Fellow, NESTA.
*
Important information*
* Conference
website:https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/socstudies/events/culturedatavis
* Submit 200 word paper proposals by 22nd June 2016
athttp://datapower.group.shef.ac.uk/submission/index.php
* Decisions will be communicated by 30^th June 2016.
* The conference fee is £40 waged, £25 unwaged/student. Register at:
http://onlineshop.shef.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=9&catid=23&prodid=561&searchresults=1
* The conference is sponsored by the University of Sheffield’s
Digital Society Network (DSN). Find out more about the DSN
here:http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/faculty/social-sciences/digital-society-network.
* For more information, please (contactscs-events /at/ sheffield.ac.uk)
<mailto:(scs-events /at/ sheffield.ac.uk)>.
* The conference organisers are: Professor Helen Kennedy, Dr
Annamaria Carusi and Dr Mark Taylor at the University of Sheffield.
