Abstract
Data visualization gives us a clear view of information in the form of maps and graphs by placing data in a visual context. This makes the data more natural to comprehend for the human mind, making it easier to spot trends, patterns, and outliers in large data sets. The design of visualization is vital for ethically conveying accurate data. I consider how visibility, privacy, and challenge structures of power in an organization are fundamental ethical challenges in visualization. This paper addresses three ethical challenges of visualization work related to visibility, privacy, and power [1]. Visualization operates at the intersection of science, engineers, and communication. So, it is required that we follow specific ethical standards as engineers, which ACM's Code of Ethics [2] lays out. Visibility is addressed by properly acknowledging data sources and crediting the labor that went into data collection, curation, archiving, etc. The ethical privacy challenge can be addressed by conducting a privacy study on the data that focuses on data collection, user consent, processing, storing, and sharing data. Privacy can also be addressed by obfuscating data by setting an upper limit for the accuracy or by design. Challenge structures of power can be addressed by calling out possible manipulation which can happen in their design before publishing it, which will guide all the possible interpretation on how data could be mispresented to the common audience. Therefore, this project is about overcoming ethical visualization challenges and how analysts and users can make a harmonious conclusion of our data. I plan to use a Covid-19 dataset to create visualizations that overcome ethical factors such as visibility, privacy, and structures of power in an organization.