An exploration of infographics and data visualization as a cultural phenomenon, from eighteenth-century print culture to today's data journalism.
Infographics and data visualization are ubiquitous in our everyday media diet, particularly in news--in print newspapers, on television news, and online. It has been argued that infographics are changing what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century--and even that they harmonize uniquely with human cognition. In this first serious exploration of the subject, Murray Dick traces the cultural evolution of the infographic, examining its use in news--and resistance to its use--from eighteenth-century print culture to today's data journalism. He identifies six historical phases of infographics in popular culture: the proto-infographic, the classical, the improving, the commercial, the ideological, and the professional.
Dick describes the emergence of infographic forms within a wider history of journalism, culture, and communications, focusing his analysis on the UK. He considers their use in the partisan British journalism of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century print media; their later deployment as a vehicle for reform and improvement; their mass-market debut in the twentieth century as a means of explanation (and sometimes propaganda); and their use for both ideological and professional purposes in the post-World War II marketized newspaper culture. Finally, he proposes best practices for news infographics and defends infographics and data visualization against a range of criticism. Dick offers not only a history of how the public has experienced and understood the infographic, but also an account of what data visualization can tell us about the past.
Author(s): Murray Dick
Series: History and Foundations of Information Science
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: x+232
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
The Rise of the Data Visualization Society
The Beginnings of This Book
Defining Infographics
Histories of the Infographic
The Mathematical-Statistical School of Infographics History
The Neurological-Psychological School of Infographic History
Cultural Histories of Data Visualization
A Cultural-Historical Approach to Communications, Journalism, and Data Visualization
Defining the News Infographic
Analyzing News Infographics
The Functionalist-Idealist Discourse: Infographics as Methodology
The Pragmatist-Realist Discourse: Infographics as Technology
The Didactic-Persuasive Discourse: Infographics as Ideology
The Expressionist-Aesthete: Infographics as Aesthetic
Methodological Approach: Archive Research
Methodological Approach: Interviews
Method of Analysis
Overview of Chapters
2. Confronting the “Chaos of Being”: The Politics of Visual Knowledge
Radical Pedagogy at the Dissenting Academy
Journalism and Journalists in the Eighteenth Century
Eighteenth-Century Print Culture
Eighteenth-Century Education
The Association of Ideas
Politics and the Public Sphere
The Scottish Enlightenment and Its Culture of Publishing
Eighteenth-Century Journalism, Publicity, and Propaganda
Late Eighteenth-Century Cultures of Literacy
Politics after The Terror
Sites of Resistance
Conclusion
3. “Arts for Attracting Public Attention”: The Improving Infographic
Survey Work, Journalism, and Publicity in the Improving Movement
The Rise of the Survey
Early Sociological Visualizations
Early Public Health Visualizations
The Rise of the Modern Journalist
Mid-Nineteenth-Century News Culture
Popular Mid-Nineteenth-Century Newspapers
The Radical Press
The Illustrated Weeklies
The Popular Sundays
Literacy
Print Culture in the Library Network
Nineteenth-Century Literacy and Education
Literacy and the Penny Press
The Whip of the Word
The Education and Habits of Nineteenth-Century Journalists
Conclusion
4. “Wider Still and Wider, Shall Thy Bounds Be Set”: Empire and Anxiety at the Fin de Siècle
The Rise of Nationalism
Pictograms in the Struggle for European Nationhood
New Commodities, New Technologies, New Journalists, New Journalism
The Weekly Periodical Press
The Illustrated Weeklies
The Daily Mail
The Daily Mirror
The Crisis of Classicism
The Serious Press
The Financial Press
The Evolution of Infographics in the Dundee Advertiser and the Dundee Courier & Argus
National Efficiency and Education
Popular Textbooks
A New Educational Philosophy
Conclusion
5. Propagandist, Professional, Processor: The Rise of the Visual Journalist
Isotype: An Iconic Revolution
Words Divide, Pictures Unite
Influences on Isotype
Influence of Isotype in the UK
Postwar Newspaper Infographics
The Daily Express
The Daily Mirror
The Observer
The Emergence of the Visual Journalist
The Sunday Times
Tabloidization in the Upmarket Press
Infographics during the Wapping Years
The Independent
Eyes on the News in the Networked Newsroom
Graphic News
The Converging Newsroom
Word People vs. Picture People in the Networked Newsroom
Conclusion
6. Conclusion
A Summary History of Infographics in British News
What Makes a Good News Infographic?
The History of the Search for Standards in Infographics
In Defense of Infographics: A Philosophical Critique
The Bourgeois Public Sphere and the Discursive Formation of Infographics
A Poetics of Infographics
The Panopticon/Synopticon Dualism
From Synoptic Gaze to Synopticon
The Epistemological Basis of the Synopticon
The Synopticon: Accountability, Transparency, Publicity
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
References
Index
