Ethical Visualization

A method for ethically visualizing data

Contents

Ethical Visualization

Details

Version: 1.1
Date: May 2019

About

Development of a poster communicating the workflow steps to non-expert audiences. It includes slightly altered language and steps for a more general audience. While the students did an excellent job designing the poster, some of the language they used was not ethical. Therefore, this version is not shared publicly.

Related writing

Racism in the Machine: Visualization Ethics in Digital Humanities Projects by Katherine Hepworth and Christopher Church. Digital Humanities Quarterly. PDF

 

This version does not have an associated poster. The most recent poster is available here.

The poster was inspired by Dave Maas, from Electronic Frontier Foundation. In his duties as a visiting professor at the University of Nevada, Reno in May 2018, we talked about ethical visualization and he read an in-press copy of Racism in the Machine. He asked for the figure of the workflow from the paper ‘to stick on his wall’. I realised in that moment that the workflow itself did not follow ethical data visualization principles, was not in a format to be easily shared or understood, and might be of interest to other people who want to pin it on their walls.

In May 2018, the first version of the ethical visualization poster was produced by Aras Diler, Kacee Johnson, and Sarah Krutz, as a class project for JOUR648 Data Visualization for Social Engagement at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Credits

Artwork by Aras Diler, Kacee Johnson, and Sarah Krutz. Workflow adapted from Katherine Hepworth and Christopher Church. 2018. “Racism in the Machine: Visualization Ethics in Digital Humanities Projects.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 12:4.

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Acknowledgements

Contributors

The following people assisted with the work of developing this method. Their perspectives have led to the improvements outlined in the current version.

  • Christopher Church
    at University of Nevada, Reno
    Specific contribution: Co-conceived ethical visualization workflow while writing Racism in the Machine paper together. Co-supervised student group working on first version.
  • Dave Maas at Electronic Frontier Foundation
    Specific contribution: Request for ethical visualization workflow figure was inspiration for the poster.
  • Aras Diller at University of Nevada, Reno
    Specific contribution: Worked on the first version of the ethical visualization poster as a class project for JOUR648 Data Visualization for Social Engagement. While the student group did an excellent job designing the poster, some of the language they used was not ethical. Therefore, this version is not shared publicly.
  • Kacee Johnson at University of Nevada, Reno
    Specific contribution: Worked on the first version of the ethical visualization poster as a class project for JOUR648 Data Visualization for Social Engagement. While the student group did an excellent job designing the poster, some of the language they used was not ethical. Therefore, this version is not shared publicly.
  • Sarah Krutz at University of Nevada, Reno
    Specific contribution: Worked on the first version of the ethical visualization poster as a class project for JOUR648 Data Visualization for Social Engagement. While the student group did an excellent job designing the poster, some of the language they used was not ethical. Therefore, this version is not shared publicly.

Citation

Hepworth, Katherine. Ethical Visualization, Version 1.1. (2019). From paper Hepworth, K. & Church, C. 2018. 'Racism in the Machine: Visualization Ethics in Digital Humanities Projects.' Digital Humanities Quarterly. 12:4.

License

Creative Commons License
Ethical Visualization by Katherine Hepworth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://kathep.github.io/ethics.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from personal correspondence with the author.