The Power of Art in Politics: How Easily Infographics Can Influence a Person’s Political Point of View
In the Venn diagram of politics and graphic design, information graphics fall neatly into the cross-section. The term infographic first appeared in 1960, though the increase in their use did not explode until the 2000s via the Internet.
The main objective of almost all infographic images is to inform, but they can also carry an agenda. Though useful, data being visually represented can easily be skewed, especially when used for political purposes.
In an increasingly complicated world, graphic designers “hold the power to significantly impact the way people understand policy positions and advocate for them,” according to Lauren Nelson of Crowdspring. With the current state of American politics, this power should not be taken lightly. Infographics have surpassed all other types of graphics on social media; Nelson points out that they are being shared three times as often by social media users.
When complex information from a political candidate, scientist, or government department needs to become more digestible to the viewer, infographics offer a neatly presented visual solution. With text alone, people only retain about 70% of that information; add a visual element to accompany that, and retention rates increase to about 95% says Macie jFita of Brandignity.
Infographics rely heavily on graphic design such as iconography and signifiers to convey their information in a clean and concise way.
“Color visuals increase comprehension, learning, and retention by over 73%,” — Anna, DailyInfographic
It’s not uncommon to see infographics employed as marketing tactics, sometimes becoming borderline propaganda pieces. With a large proportion of the population being visual learners, infographics can be a powerfully persuasive tool for anyone involved in politics.
With the average attention span of a human shortened to about that of a goldfish (6 seconds), graphic designers who are challenged with presenting complex information have mere seconds to be accepted by the viewer’s attention-worthiness filter. The effectiveness of the infographic design determines viewer comprehension, which can make or break their understanding and opinion of a political candidate or cultural, social, or economic issue.
There are many different ways to skew the interpretation of infographics, and most stem from manipulation of the visual representation itself. Since the quick adoption of social media, “fake news” is something it’s difficult to go a day without hearing about, or seeing firsthand.
Design decisions and purposeful misrepresentations can heavily influence a viewer’s ability to understand what the graphic is trying to communicate. Ryan McCready of Venngage lists tactics such as omitting the baseline, manipulating graph axes, cherry-picking data points, using the wrong type of data visualization, and going against conventions are the most prevalent. Visual communication designers hold almost total control over what their viewers see in their infographics.
This issue is much bigger than good design vs. bad design; when infographic design is bad, viewers are put in a dangerous position of misinterpreting information and possibly accepting misinformation as the truth.
The left bar graph above, depicting the percents of political parties in agreements with the Court, utilizes two of the common infographic manipulation tactics.
As mentioned earlier, color choice plays an important role in increased comprehension. Though some infographics are limited when being produced for black and white publications, the fact that each bar is the same shade of gray offers no distinction between data points to the viewer. Some variation in grays or the addition of color could fix this issue, as seen in the bar graph on the right.
The real cause for concern behind this graphic though is its blatant skewing of the data baseline. When the baseline is zero, there is very little visual difference between the three parties. When the baseline is raised to 50, the story is completely different as, at first glance, the democrat bar now appears to tower above the other two. The purposeful cropping of this data set shows bias and can easily be misinterpreted by the average social media scroller.
Though this data visualization above is not technically incorrect, it is presented in a misleading way. This example has been skewed via the cherry-picking tactic: when only select parts of a data set are visually represented.
Usually, when cherry-picking is employed in political graphics, only data points that reflect the creator’s agenda positively or an opponent negatively are used. At first glance, the current President’s approval rating appears to be 88%, which is a positive reflection of the first half of his term. Upon closer inspection, the original graphic does include in very small print below the graph title that these data points are among those affiliated with the Republican party, not the collective United States.
When compared to the full data set, even though only the data from Republicans surveyed is represented, that information has still been skewed for the infographic. By combining “Strongly Approve” and “Somewhat Approve” into one overarching “Approve” bar and doing the same with “Strongly Disapprove” and “Somewhat Disapprove”, a 64% strong approval rating became an 88% general approval rating.
Returning back to the full data set, McCready calculated that the current President’s approval rating was actually only about 35% when considering all parties surveyed, which is arguably a failing mark.
Misinformation like this is troubling because the designer’s purposeful omission of data paints an entirely different picture that skews reality. In the average person’s six-second attention filter, the majority that views this infographic will only retain that almost 90% of an unspecified group of people approve of the current President. While this isn’t entirely false, it is blatantly misleading.
John Boehner, the publisher of this “organizational chart” of the House Democrats’ Health Plan, has earned a reputation for distributing purposefully confusing infographics. Though Boehner is not believed to be the graphic designer behind this graphic, whichever staff member of his that designed it not only broke nearly every basic design principle but also purposefully compromised the information being communicated.
Ezra Klein of The Washington Post analyzed this oversaturated chart working backward from “Consumers” and came to a simple conclusion: “Those who don’t read it won’t be able to understand it. And those who do read it won’t be scared by it.”
A nationwide health plan reformation is not information that can be made easily digestible to the average person, but this infographic is arguably on the right track. Had a clearer flow chart been developed and the designer worked using fewer colors, fonts, and shapes, this infographic could have better-communicated complex information. Clear communication was not the intent behind this infographic though, which shows that putting an agenda first can be detrimental to the main goal of a proper infographic: to unbiasedly inform the viewer.
The world, in terms of mass communication, has changed drastically since the first development of infographics. Designers are the gatekeepers, responsible for doing all that they can to keep visual representations honest and leave as little room for misinterpretation as possible.