Environmental Visualizations: Connecting Images, Knowledge, and Politics I

Session Submission Type: Open Panel

Abstract

We welcome papers that explore the creation, design, use, and societal politics of visualizations in the environmental context. Visualizations are images or representations that communicate information in accessible formats to specific audiences. In 1990, Woolgar and Lynch published Representation in Scientific Practice, which examined the use of diagrams, drawings, and graphs to depict scientific data. This work has been updated (e.g. Pauwels 2005; Coopmans, Vertesi, Lynch, and Woolgar 2014) to include medical imaging, economics graphing, and other applications. However, relatively little work has concentrated on visualizations of environmental and social issues, their production and character, and their role in civil society discourses, government policy-making, and industry practices. Over the past 30 years, visualizations have become influential artifacts in reshaping both public knowledge and citizen agency. Increasingly, visualizations are designed to be interactive and to convey narratives. This panel will look critically at the nature and politics of visualizations as ways to know and learn about environmental matters. A key area of interest is to compare visualizations and interpretive conventions across diverse cultural and national settings, especially in the Asian region. Examples of potential topics include the rise in participatory mapping of air pollution in urban areas, the graphical representations of biomonitoring data, the use of GIS to track environmental hazards, and the real-time coverage of wildfires. Visualizations also play a central role in climate change science and politics—such as mapping droughts, sea level rise risks, and changing disease ranges. Visualizations can connect land use, health, ecosystems, and industry in novel ways.

Sub Unit

• Papers for Open Panels / Environmental Visualizations: Connecting Images, Knowledge, and Politics

Individual Presentations

• Corporate environmentalism and the making and visualization of environmental knowledge - Louise Karlskov Skyggebjerg, Technical University of Denmark: History of Technology Division DTU

• Public deliberation on water: The case of Uruguay - Marila Lázaro; Isabel Bortagaray, Universidad de la Republica

• Geospatial Data, Citizen Science and Social Participation - Sarita Albagli, IBICT Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology; Allan Iwama, Post-Graudate Program in Information Science/IBICT-UFRJ; Henrique Parra, Unifesp - Federal University of Sao Paulo; Hesley Py, Post-Graudate Program in Information Science/IBICT-UFRJ

• The Periphery on the Map? USA’s Air pollution Mapping and Analysis Program in South Korea - joohui kim, Seoul National University

Session Organizer

• Alastair Iles, UC Berkeley