The Arts of the Possible. Information Visualization in the Field of Politics.

Abstract

Information visualization offers multiple methods to make sense of complex data by graphic representations. Complementing verbal representations, they show rich potential to support cognition and communication in numerous areas of application, including the field of political communication and education. Yet – despite a strong increase in options with regard to accessibility of data, tools, and methods – no conceptual framework or discussion is organizing these emerging visual vocabularies and their possible recombinations up to now. Against this background, we want to discuss the layout principles of existing visualization methods and align them within a coherent framework to allow for a multimodal navigation of modern news and information spaces. On that basis, accompanying ways and means to minimize well-known barriers in the public and political communication realm are taken into consideration.