I'm posting this as a separate discussion thread but in follow up to the previous post about the Gun Crimes chart and the issue of confusion vs. deception. Taking a helicopter/big picture view of this discussion, Tom MacInnes has raised an excellent observation:
@visualisingdata @Jon_Peltier interesting how many people did see the intent as deceptive. Speaks of a low level of trust.
— Tom MacInnes (@tommacinnes) April 15, 2014
So many people have reacted so badly to that chart, I'm actually quite shocked.
Even with the designer's own explanation (clearly showing the motive for the choice as being inspired by a design metaphor) there are still very angry and accusatory views out there, illustrated by this exchange:
What is it that causes such an evident lack of trust? Is it the subject matter of gun crimes that is inherently so emotive that anything that remotely creates confusion or leads to misreading is playing with fire? Is it the lack of trust about work emanating from the media? I would have thought that the provenance of this graphic coming from Reuters, with its international scope and (in my view) non-political leaning would be something that would remove some of the ire, but clearly not.
At the end of the day, clearly it is a good thing that there is a large (and growing?) audience out there capable of calling out graphics for potential shortcomings. Just maybe not necessarily with the quantity of pitch forks we've seen today and maybe directed less towards accusation of corrupt intent and more towards appreciation that a design choice maybe hasn't quite worked out.
I have to say I feel a great amount of sympathy Christine having to read the volume of flak her work has led to. She has responded to the criticism positively (below) and I truly hope this doesn't deter her or other designers from having the courage to occasionally pursue non-standard charting approaches.
@kfury Thanks for raising this, I appreciate the feedback. Agree that the inverted y can be confusing & perhaps too misleading in this case.
— Christine Chan (@ChristineHHChan) April 15, 2014
I think the reason there’s such a lack of trust and people perceive deceptive intent when maybe there is none, is possibly due to the fact that people are lied to so often. In today’s world where everyone has an agenda or an ax to grind, truth gets twisted to suit whomever’s telling the story (lie). Slanted news orgs (conservative and liberal) spin stories (lie) to further their political/ideological leanings, presidents and government leaders tell people what they want to hear (lie) to get elected or pass legislation. Companies lie to their employees, kids lie to their parents (and vice versa), the list goes on and on, and it seems to me the lies are only becoming more brazen and more frequent.
I think Mr. MacInnes observation is very perceptive, and speaks to a larger issue within society.
I didn’t mistrust the visualization at all or the intentions of the designer. I just thought that it was flawed, design-wise. We’ve all made mistakes like this and it is good that they are discussed openly. It’s educational. I am glad to see that Christine has taken the criticism that way.
I didn’t think for a moment that the intent was to deceive.
To me it was pretty clear that the designer simply did a very bad job trying to imitate a much more advanced graphic.
[…] One of those first bloggers to comment on the inclusion of the Gun deaths in Florida chart in Ravi Parikh’s list was Andy Kirk. In his perspective, the graphic is not a ‘lie’ or intended to deceive the reader, it only uses a visual metaphor that was not clear – apparently for many people. Andy also wrote a follow-up post on this subject asking what’s happened to the trust? […]