I was honored to be invited to give a keynote at the 2023 Information is Beautiful Awards - Day of Inspiration, hosted by the Data Visualization Society. In the talk, called “Questioning Our Data Cultures” I decided to introduce some ideas from the book I’m working on, specifically about how our traditional approaches to data visualization and engagement need to evolve as data use spreads beyond its historical domains (science, statistics, and business) into new settings (newspapers, museums, civic engagment, CSOs, libraries).
The dominant cultures of data - surveillance, formalism, authority, and capitalism - don’t align well with what I call “pro-social settings” where the goals are participation, engagement, and empowerment. This misalignment creates barriers when we try to bring people together around data in community, civic, and advocacy contexts.
We need to address this gap, because it is creating disengagement, disempowerment, and active harms. I presented three alternative approaches I’ve been co-designing with community groups that better serve these new contexts: data scultpures, data murals, and data theatre.
These methods, and the underlying theories, form what I call “popular data” - a framework that emphasizes accessibility, participation, and meeting people where they are. This work will be detailed in my upcoming book from Oxford University Press, “Community Data,” as we continue to expand our toolbox for bringing people together around data in pro-social settings.
