Co-hosted by the International Inequalities Institute, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
What kinds of data tends to be visualised to communicate about wealth inequality? What kinds of data need to be visualised to convert public concern about wealth inequality into commitment to act to change it? What is missing?
This workshop responds to a finding in a review of literature on wealth inequality frames that data visualisation can play a fundamental role in shifting opinion, but that a) it works very differently for different constituencies, and b) different kinds of information (narrative; statistics) perform different functions in preference formation.
How do people who use and/or produce data visualisations and data-storytelling related to inequality understand the idea of a frame? What’s the limit of stories that can be told with data visualisations? Can they take into account questions of causal attribution and responsibility? How do they deal with complexity and emotion? Are they equally effective at diagnostic framing (establishing what the problem is) as prognostic framing (establishing what should be done about it)?
This session will invite data producers and data storytellers to reveal their process, and to talk about what they are seeking to communicate in their work.
The workshop comprises two conversations and an activity. Conversation 1 asks what we visualise and why. Conversation 2 explores how data visualisation and data storytelling operate as a component of the wider visual and textual framing of economic, and specifically wealth, inequality. Activity 4 completes the Radical Imaginings Series collaborative development of our ‘key terms toolbox’, and ethical story-telling principles for wealth inequality, this time considering the role of data visualisation and data storytelling.
