In this article, the author theorizes the process that a World Health Organization work group used to update yellow fever risk maps published in the Yellow Book, a handbook created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for international travelers, from a “wicked problems” perspective. She argues that using this model highlights the complexity of nonexperts’ risk assessment practices in this context and that the work group's decision to create vaccination maps demonstrates an increased awareness of the embodied decision-making practices that nonexperts perform, aligning with and contributing to the growing emphasis on creating user-centered risk information that can be seen in some risk communication.

In technical and professional communication, the social justice turn calls on us to interrogate sites of positionality, privilege, and power to help foreground strategies that can empower marginalized groups. I propose that mainstream media coverage of the opioid epidemic represents such a site because addiction to these drugs, which initially primarily affected White people, has been positioned as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice problem. I explore the strategies that were used to create this positioning by investigating themes in the visual rhetoric as conveyed through data visualizations and in the text of the articles in which these graphics were published. My results align with two previous studies that confirmed this public health framing. I also observed an emphasis on mortality, which contributes to our understanding of rhetorical strategies that can be used to engender support rather than condemnation for those suffering from drug addiction.

This article proposes a heuristic that teachers and students can use together to create a vocabulary for discussing the aesthetic aspects of color and typography in document design work. By using this framework, teachers and students can generate a collection of shared visual topoi or commonplaces for describing the aesthetic value of color and typography that they can then draw from to inform visual analysis and production work.

Medical cartography became an important data visualization tool in the 19th century. In this article, the author argues that early yellow fever maps invoked power and authority over diseased space through their visual conventions and scientific authority as statistical graphics as well as by visually reinforcing underlying Western ideologies about disease, illness, and health. Further, the creation of these maps established a visual precedent for invoking this authority that continues today. As public health continues to move toward a global health perspective in the 21st century, understanding how mapping constructs and shapes knowledge about disease, illness, and health will become increasingly important.