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March 22nd Blogpost

I wanted to reflect on our 3/22 seminar discussion and readings. My first reaction to Data Humanism, The Revolution will be Visualized. was surprise. I had never heard anyone say infographics should be complicated before. I did understand the author’s point that by simplifying information to make easy-to-understand infographics, important information and nuance could be lost. Additionally, oversimplified infographics can be even more confusing than detailed infographics due to missing context or details that aid a viewer’s understanding. The examples from the reading were really cool and interesting to analyze. However, in our class discussion, one of my classmates said that both types of infographics have a role to play. After that, I realized that we should be expanding on what infographics can be, and not just changing what they are.

That reading tied into the Isn’t it obvious? reading and the Confabulation in the humanities reading. Lincoln Mullen mentioned that visualizations should not be able to immediately be used to explain things we already know. After seeing what Matthew Lincoln did to “trick” the audience in his article, this is especially evident. Visualized data has its own complexity outside of existing data. After taking in these two reading and discussing them in class, I came to understand that we should not think of data visualizations as only a supporting tool for other research. It can, and according to these authors, should stand alone. I think that point helps argue how important data visualization and digital research in the humanities is since it adds its own points that can be separate from other, more traditionally humanistic data.