IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Mar 2022

Precarious Data: Crack, Opioids, and Enacting a Social Justice Ethic in Data Visualization Practice

Candice A. Welhausen Auburn University

Abstract

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</b> The linguistic framing strategies used in media reporting on illegal drugs have been extensively documented, but less attention has been directed toward visuals, particularly data visualizations. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Literature review:</b> Positioning illegal drug use as a criminal justice problem or a public health issue are types of frameworks that use specific rhetorical strategies. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Research questions:</b> 1. What are the rhetorical strategies used in data visualizations published during the crack and opioid drug epidemics, respectively? 2. Do these strategies advance dominant media narratives that crack addiction should be criminalized but opioid addiction should be treated like a public health issue? And if so, how is this accomplished? <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methodology:</b> Drawing from the media studies approach previously employed in a study in technical and professional communication (TPC) on information design trends, I apply the concept of “scripto-visual” rhetoric to select data visualizations published by mainstream news media during both drug epidemics. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results:</b> I argue these graphics escalated the perceived threat during both drug epidemics but different scripto-visual rhetorical strategies were used. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusions:</b> Attending to ethical considerations in the creation of data visualizations has long been important in TPC, while scholarship has integrated social justice as a core component of the discipline. In the last section of this article, I bring these themes together by arguing that a social justice ethic is needed in data design work. I then propose a critical heuristic constructed from Jones et al.’s positionality, privilege, and power framework that can be used analytically or as an inventional tool to tease out the ways particular scripto-visual rhetorical decisions may be promoting inequities.

Journal
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Published
2022-03-01
DOI
10.1109/tpc.2022.3144826
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical criticism technical communication professional writing multimodality race and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (5)

  1. Swarts (2025)
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  4. Madson (2024)
    Cannabis Risk Communication: A Scoping Review with a Research Agenda
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  5. Welhausen (2023)
    Visualizing a Drug Abuse Epidemic: Media Coverage, Opioids, and the Racialized …
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

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