Open AccessDeath in images: a study about how data visualizations foster death awareness during the COVID-19 pandemic
Author(s) -
Larissa Ugaya Mazza,
Luciane Maria Fadel
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
e-revista logo
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2238-2542
DOI - 10.26771/e-revista.logo/2021.2.02
Subject(s) - pandemic , visualization , covid-19 , representation (politics) , schematic , reading (process) , computer science , reflection (computer programming) , psychology , cognitive psychology , data science , artificial intelligence , linguistics , medicine , political science , engineering , philosophy , disease , pathology , electronic engineering , politics , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law , programming language
Data visualizations are being used to represent death for the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite facilitating understanding, they also foster death awareness through visual language. Considering their delicate content, it is important to understand how different design choices might foster death awareness to modulate reader response. This paper aims to analyze a popular data visualization depicting contagion to map how visual language impacts the reader’s mortality awareness. The method was guided by Close Reading, and the results showed that the use of size, shape, spatial positioning, and color fosters fear, while the schematic way of representation incites reflection.