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
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (8)

  1. Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Communication Design Quarterly
  3. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  4. Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Technical Communication Quarterly
Show all 8 →
  1. Communication Design Quarterly
  2. Communication Design Quarterly
  3. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

References (15) · 1 in this index

  1. Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. How charts lie: Getting smarter about visual information
  3. Coronavirus Briefing. (2020, April 9). https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1248273348485771264
  4. Technical Communication
  5. Ducharme J., Wolfson E. (2020, March 9). The WHO estimated COVID-19 mortality at 3.4%. That doesn’t tell the …
Show all 15 →
  1. Healy M. (2020, April 10). Coronavirus infection may cause lasting damage throughout the body, doctors fear. …
  2. Reimagining charts and graphs: How hybrid interactive designs are transforming the visual…
  3. Laurencin C. T., McClinton A. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: A call to action to identify and address racial …
  4. 10.26818/9780814214336
  5. Obasanjo D. (2020, April 4). You can teach an entire semester of how to lie with statistics with the y-axis o…
  6. Shaw G. (2020). Neurologists on the front lines: The burden of COVID-19 on Native American communities. Neuro…
  7. Envisioning information
  8. Wolfson E. (2020). COVID-19 looks a lot closer to the seasonal flue than to previous coronavirus outbreaks [P…
  9. Yancy C. W. (2020). COVID-19 and African Americans. JAMA, 323(19), 1891–1892. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.20…
  10. Data points: Visualization that means something