Thread by @tobi_vierzwo

We’re excited to present our paper “The public life of data: Investigating Reactions to Visualizations on Reddit” at #CHI2021 with @nrchtct @arranarranarran @benjbach: arxiv.org/abs/2103.08525

Data visualizations are often framed as one-way roads: They communicate data to an audience, with limited support for people’s reactions. To better understand how people respond to visualizations we analysed comments on reddit’s /r/dataisbeautiful

Among already known responses (e.g. observations, hypotheses), we gained a better understanding of a broad range of reaction types. These include contestations of data; critique and improvement suggestions; and personal opinions or even anecdotal testimonies.

A follow-up survey revealed people’s motivation to express their reactions and identified nine drivers for engagement. While these drivers are rooted in personal perspectives and experiences, people are fully aware that their reactions are part of a public discourse around data.

For future work, we imagine dialogical and participatory visualizations that bring representation of data and reactions closer together: This includes type-specific annotations, personal storytelling and a representation of often-discussed areas in a visualizations.

We thank the @sigchi reviewers and our shepherd for the great feedback. Also, we want to thank @EvanMPeck, @JessicaHullman, @hmtk, @jeffrey_heer, and (oh so) many more for their work that was a great inspiration for our paper.