Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jan 2021

Misrepresenting COVID-19: Lying With Charts During the Second Golden Age of Data Design

Sara Doan Kennesaw State University

Abstract

In this second golden age of data design, digital affordances enable the news media to share occasionally misleading charts about COVID-19. Examining data visualizations about COVID-19 highlights three ways that charts can mislead viewers: (a) by displaying inadequate data, (b) by manipulating scales and visual distance, and (c) by omitting contextual labels needed to fully understand a chart’s message. This article provides takeaways for technical communicators about including and displaying adequate data, representing numbers consistently, and humanizing COVID-19’s effects.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
2021-01-01
DOI
10.1177/1050651920958392
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

  1. Gray (2026)
    The Utility of Inclusivity: How Emoji Proposal Writers Navigate Oppositional In…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Baniya (2025)
    Intersectional Disaster Response in the Globalized World Via Equitable Crisis C…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Hartzog (2025)
    ‘Flatten the curve’: rhetorical data visualizations of a global pandemic
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  4. Young (2025)
    Pandemic Communications Beyond Risk and Crisis: A Change of Course for Law Enfo…
    Technical Communication Quarterly

Cites in this index (1)

  1. Brasseur (2005)
    Florence Nightingale's Visual Rhetoric in the Rose Diagrams
    Technical Communication Quarterly
Also cites 4 works outside this index ↓
  1. Laurencin C. T., McClinton A. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: A call to action to identify and address racial …
     ↗
  2. 10.26818/9780814214336
     ↗
  3. Shaw G. (2020). Neurologists on the front lines: The burden of COVID-19 on Native American communities. Neuro…
     ↗
  4. Yancy C. W. (2020). COVID-19 and African Americans. JAMA, 323(19), 1891–1892. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.20…
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 30 View in citation network →

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