1. Ways of Seeing Data
Towards a Critical Literacy for Data Visualisations
as Research Objects and Devices1
Jonathan Gray,2
Liliana Bounegru,3
Stefania Milan,4
Paolo Ciuccarelli.5
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1
Presentation at the University of Amsterdam on 14th January 2016 based on forthcoming paper.
2
University of Amsterdam. Corresponding author. Email: contact@jonathangray.org.
3
University of Amsterdam, University of Groningen, University of Ghent.
4
University of Amsterdam.
4
Density Design, Politecnico di Milano.

2. In this paper we draw inspiration from:
● John Berger’s 1972 Ways of Seeing
● Agre’s notion of “critical technical practice” (1997)
● Rieder and Röhle’s conception of “methodological
reflexivity” (2012)
We think it is vital to develop a critical literacy to read,
understand, create and work with data visualisations.
_______________
Berger, J. (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Classics.
Agre, P. E. (1997). “Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to
Reform AI”. In G. C. Bowker, et al. (eds). Social Science, Technical Systems, and
Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide (pp. 131-158). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Rieder, B. & Röhle, T. (2012). Digital Methods: Five Challenges. In D.M. Berry (Ed.),
Understanding Digital Humanities (pp. 67-84). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

3. Data visualisations engender not only particular ways of
seeing, but also ways of knowing and ways of organising
collective life.
They reflect and articulate their own particular modes of
rationality, epistemology, politics, culture and experience.
_______________
P. Steinweber and A. Koller,
“Similar Diversity”: http:
//similardiversity.net/

4. We propose a heuristic framework for what to take into
account when reading, working with and conducting
research about data visualisations.
This framework is organised around three forms of
mediation that can be studied in relation to data
visualisations:
(i) the mediation from world to data of the sources
of information that underpin visualisations;
(ii) the mediation from data to image of the
graphical representations of this information;
(iii) the mediation from image to eye in the
socially, culturally and historically specific “ways
of seeing” engendered in the data visualisation.
_______________
“Home and Factory Weaving in England,
1820-1880”, Otto and Marie Neurath
Isotype Collection, University of Reading.

5. To illustrate this heuristic
framework we have chosen to
work with a collection of data
visualisation projects about
public finances (Gray, 2015).
These include data visualisation
projects from media
organisations, journalists, civil
society organisations and public
institutions.
_______________
Gray, J. (2015) Examples of Fiscal Data Visualisations. figshare.
Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1548331

6. 1. From World to Data
Our first form of mediation looks at
how the information used in data
visualisations is generated –
including the rationales, methods
and technologies that are drawn
upon.
This might include studying data
infrastructures implicated in the
production of the datasets that are
used in the visualisations (Gray,
Gerlitz and Bounegru, forthcoming).
_______________
Data sources for “The Tax Gap” visualisation from the Guardian
Datablog and Information is Beautiful.
Gray, Gerlitz and Bounegru (forthcoming). Towards A Literacy for
Data Infrastructures. In preparation.

7. 1. From World to Data
Questions:
● What information or data is being represented in the
visualisation?
● What are the sources for this information? Where
does the data come from?
● How is the data generated? What are the rationales,
methods and standards inscribed in the data
infrastructures through which the data is generated?
● How is the data transformed or prepared?
● Which data sources are combined and how?
● How does the data selectively prioritise certain things
over others?
_______________
Min, S.Y. & Dener, C. (2013). Financial
Management Information Systems and
Open Budget Data. The World Bank.

8. 2. From Data to Image
The second form of mediation in
our heuristic framework is how
visualisations mediate the data
sources they draw on into graphical
form.
As well as looking at how different
visual forms articulate and organise
space, time, quantity and
categories in relation to the data,
this might include studying the
software or platforms used to create
the visualisations (Wright, 2008).
_______________
Bertin, J. (1983). Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps. (W. J.
Berg, Trans.). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Tufte, E. R. (2001). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (2nd edition
edition). Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
Wright, R. (2008). Data Visualization. In Fuller, M. (Ed.) Software Studies: A
Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 78-87.

9. 2. From Data to Image
Questions:
● How is the data mediated into graphical
form?
● What kinds of graphical techniques,
methods and technologies have been
used?
● What are their affordances? How do
they guide our attention towards
different aspects of the data?
● What design decisions have been
taken? What are their consequences?

10. 3. From Image to Eye
The final form of mediation is how
different graphical forms engender and
depend on socially, culturally and
historically contingent ways of seeing
data.
This might include considering data
visualisations in light of visual cultures
of objectivity (Daston and Galison,
2010), the emergence of contemporary
“visual epistemology” (Drucker, 2014) or
the development of ideals and practices
of visualisation (Halpern, 2015).
_______________
Image from Carl Julius Fritzsche’s Ueber den Pollen (1837) and Heinrich’s Bormann’s
“Visual Analysis of a Piece of Music, from a Colour-Theory Class” (1930).
Daston, L., & Galison, P. (2010). Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Drucker, J. (2014). Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Halpern, O. (2015). Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason Since 1945. Duke
University Press.

11. 3. From Image to Eye
Questions:
● What kinds of visual cultures and practices
are implicated or reflected in the data
visualisation? Where do these come from?
● What forms of usage are inscribed in the
visualisation?
● Who are the publics of the data visualisation?
How is it circulated, cited and shared?
_______________
Science spending in the UK (Scienceogram) and “Home and
Factory Weaving in England, 1820-1880”, Otto and Marie Neurath
Isotype Collection, University of Reading.

12. Conclusion
Just as Berger’s Ways of Seeing helped to advance
broader awareness of the critical study of images and
visual culture, so we hope that further research in this
area will advance literacy around ways of seeing data
and ways of seeing with and through data
visualisations.
As visualisation tools and practices become more and
more ubiquitous, this might include not only the
development of a critical hermeneutics, but also new
kinds of self-reflexive praxis for the creation and
reconfiguration of visualisations which are attentive to
the forms of mediation that we have outlined.
_______________
Image from Leonhard Zubler’s Novum
Instrumentum Geometricum (1607).