Infographics and the Rhetoric of Numbers

Hello everyone!

For this week’s reading, we read an excerpt about infographics from White Space is Not Your Enemy, in addition to watching a presentation from Dr. Joanna Wolfe.

In White Space is Not Your Enemy, authors Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen argue that infographics are an effective medium of communicating information. They affirm that infographics can convey information in more accessible and digestible ways than text alone and that it is actually sometimes more practical to present information in this way. In Dr. Wolfe's presentation she illustrates how numbers are rhetorical choices with different emotional impacts depending on what they count, how they count, and how the number is represented with languages or visuals. She explains that the rhetorical choices made, seemingly small differences in the delivery of a statistic such as the word choice, emphasis on certain pieces, and the arrangement and order of data, can actually create large impacts on the type of argument that the information presents.

For this week’s blog assignment, I’m asking everyone to first find a recent infographic and identify what type of graphic it is. Argue whether or not you think the infographic you have chosen sufficiently or insufficiently displays the information presented and explain your position. What is it about the infographic that makes it efficient or inefficient at presenting its data? 

Some questions to consider: What rhetorical choices are being made? Is the graphic able to stand as a document of its own without additional research? Are the sources credible? You can also use some of our previous understanding of how color and typography can be used to communicate in images.

Use a quote from the reading from White Space is Not Your Enemy chapter and/or Dr. Wolfe’s presentation to support your claim about the effectiveness of your infographic and its numbers (if it has any).

Types of infographics outlined in WSINYE:

• Text boxes, Sequences, Maps, Diagrams, Charts and Graphs (162)
•  Multimedia (165)
• Graphics packages – use multiple types of graphics together (166)

Here is an example of the type of post I'm asking for:

This infographic created by Forbes and Statista displays information about countries most and least prepared for an epidemic. It is a graphics package, as it includes both a map and a horizontal bar chart to portray the information. It is ineffective at presenting which countries are best and worst prepared for an epidemic. Although the information from the graphic was explained as information found based on “factors critical to fighting disease outbreaks,” it does not explain what kind of factors were analyzed. As such, the numbers listed in the bar graphs, such as 83.5 for USA and 77.9 for UK, cannot be easily understood or interpreted by most readers. Additional research will be needed to properly understand what these numbers mean. Golombisky and Hagen explain that “infographics shouldn’t rely on information buried somewhere else,” so this infographic cannot stand on its own (172). This infographic and its numbers appear to be more of an image depicting to people who live in US and the UK that their countries were once considered to be strongly prepared for epidemics. To me, the rhetorical choices made in this infographic, like the longer bars displaying the top three countries, were to emphasize their lead over other countries. However, without explaining what exactly it was about their health factors that made these countries seem more prepared than others, I believe the purpose of graphic is more so to display the irony of how some of the countries that are currently facing difficulty with the COVID-19 pandemic were previously considered to be very prepared to tackle an outbreak.