(History and Foundations of Information Science)
by Murray Dick (Author)
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.
