Feminist Data Visualization (original) (raw)

13. Data visualization literacy: A feminist starting point

Data Visualization in Society

We assert that visual-numeric literacy, indeed all data literacy, must take as its starting point that the human relations and impacts currently produced and reproduced through data are unequal. Likewise, white men remain overrepresented in data-related fields, even as other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineeering and Medicine) fields have managed to narrow their gender gap. To address these inequalities, we introduce teaching methods that are grounded in feminist theory, process, and design. Through three case studies, we examine what feminism may have to offer visualization literacy, with the goals of cultivating self-efficacy for women and underrepresented groups to work with data, and creating learning spaces where, as Philip et al. (2016) state, 'groups influence, resist, and transform everyday and formal processes of power that impact their lives'.

Data visualization from a feminist perspective - Interview with Catherine D´Ignazio

Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2017

Catherine D’Ignazio is a scholar, artist/designer and software developer who focuses on data literacy, feminist technology and civic art. She has run breastpump hackathons, created award-winning water quality sculptures that talk and tweet, and led walking data visualizations to envision the future of sea level rise. Her research at the intersection of gender, technology and the humanities has been published in the Journal of Peer Production, the Journal of Community Informatics, and the proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM SIGCHI). D’Ignazio is an Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization at Emerson College, a faculty director of the Engagement Lab and a research affiliate at the MIT Center for Civic Media.

Data visualization literacy: A feminist starting point

2020

We assert that visual-numeric literacy, indeed all data literacy, must take as its starting point that the human relations and impacts currently produced and reproduced through data are unequal. Likewise, white men remain overrepresented in data-related f ields, even as other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineeering and Medicine) f ields have managed to narrow their gender gap. To address these inequalities, we introduce teaching methods that are grounded in feminist theory, process, and design. Through three case studies, we examine what feminism may have to offer visualization literacy, with the goals of cultivating self-eff icacy for women and underrepresented groups to work with data, and creating learning spaces where, as Philip et al. (2016) state, ‘groups influence, resist, and transform everyday and formal processes of power that impact their lives’.

Feminist visualization: Re-envisioning GIS as a method in feminist geographic research

Despite considerable progress in recent GIS research (especially on public participation GIS), the critical discourse on GIS in the 1990s did not seem to have impacted upon GIS practices in geographic research in significant ways. Development in critical GIS practice has been quite limited to date, and GIS and critical geographies remain two separate, if not overtly antagonistic, worlds. This suggests that critical engagement that seeks to conceive and materialize the critical potential of GIS for geographic research is still sorely needed. In this paper, I explore the possibilities for this kind of critical engagement through revisiting some of the central arguments in the critical discourse from feminist perspectives. I examine whether GIS methods are inherently incompatible with feminist epistemologies through interrogating their connection with positivist scientific practices and visualization technologies. Bearing in mind the limitations of current GIS, I explore several ways in which GIS methods may be used to enrich feminist geographic research. I propose to re-imagine GIS as a method in feminist geography and describe feminist visualization as a possible critical practice in feminist research. I argue that GIS can be re-envisioned and used in feminist geography in ways that are congenial to feminist epistemologies and politics. These alternative practices represent a new kind of critical engagement with GIS that is grounded on the critical agency of the GIS user/researcher.

A feminist perspective on data science: The Feminist Search Tool

2021

Proofreading by Simon Browne This essay is a reflection on the development of a feminist search tool and my involvement in its technical and conceptual aspects. It refers to the notion of feminist critical computing in public infrastructures and specifically digital libraries. It brings to light the frictions between the technical aspects of a digital infrastructure and the societal issues it comes to address. This essay studies one 1 of the prototypes of the Feminist Search Tool (FST), a collective artistic project that explores ways of engaging with items of digital library catalogues and systems of categorization 2. The specific FST I worked on is a digital visualization tool that engages with the collection of the International Homo/Lesbian Information center and Archive (IHLIA) using terms from their Homosaurus, a standalone international LGBTQ linked data vocabulary that is used to describe their collection 3. This essay highlights the tensions between technical restrictions and research questions within the working group of the FST. One such question initiated the FST group's collective research: "Why are the authors of the books I read so white, so male, so Eurocentric?", implying an absence of diversity due to missing data in libraries. A search tool is a way to bring awareness to these gaps and inclusion and exclusion mechanisms in Western knowledge collection and distribution systems. The project challenges categorization protocols in libraries and the question of who holds the power and responsibility for determining the search and retrieval process: the readers, the users or the librarians? The algorithms, or the libraries? And in the end, "what do we change, delete and keep, the users or the researchers and the library or the algorithm? Can we become aware of the search engine's short comings and make them experiential?" (Read-in, 2017). Institutional cataloguing systems have a desire to unify and universalise the collection, which often omits authors from different backgrounds, passes biases and ignores non-Western systems of knowledge. It is often impossible to intervene in the categories from the position of an outsider to the institution. A feminist perspective on data science is critical regarding the missing datasets in such systems. Who is collecting, and what, are both questions that feminist researchers are asking. The field descriptors in the dataset of the books of IHLIA's collection came from the Dutch Homosaurus. This field, that was filled in with the objective choice of the librarians, would mostly refer to the content of the books. The interface of the FST, with five categories to search within ('Race',

Feminism and Geographic Information Systems: From a Missing Object to a Mapping Subject

Geography Compass, 2007

Although feminism and the field of geographic information systems and science (GIS) have only recently begun speaking to each other, the feminist mapping subject is emerging across a variety of sites -academic, professional, and lay. However, it is most articulated in the work of critical GIS scholars. Both male and female, they are committed to nonpositivist practices of knowledge production and are sensitive to gender and other power hierarchies that produce social, economic, and cultural difference. These scholars have been creating 'feminist cartographies', practicing 'feminist visualization', and developing new mapping alternatives to mainstream cartographic and GIS representations. We begin by briefly re-reading the history of women in cartography and GIS as a first step toward reclaiming mapping as a critical practice. We then review feminist theorizations of visual representation and geography that move beyond critique and posit a feminist deployment of such technologies. Finally, we reflect on explicitly feminist engagements with cartography and GIS and their implication for the discipline of geography and contemporary mapping practices in general. Throughout, we trace the evolution of a feminist mapping subject and her or his potential to disrupt the traditions of mapping and reclaim the power of maps and GIS-based spatial analysis for critical intervention.