Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Conference

Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Conference (external link) 

About: The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) is an international, nonprofit association founded in 1975 that fosters interdisciplinary and engaged scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine (a field often referred to as STS). This association welcomed STS insights into technoscientific practice and knowledge, the nature of expertise, and whose knowledge claims count and how. Participants gathered in Honolulu to think and learn about how others care and connect in endangered times.

Gabby Resch, Ontario Tech University, presented a paper titled "Visualizing Migration in an Age of Dashboard Governance" in a session titled "Climate Change, Migration, and Inequality", organized by Filiz Garip (external link)  (Princeton University).

Abstract: Never before have dashboards been more crucial to shaping public policy. Throughout the first 'data-driven pandemic,' during which an ArcGIS dashboard developed by a Johns Hopkins team was showcased regularly at press conferences, the increasing ubiquity of this multifaceted instrument of knowledge heralded a new "age of dashboard governance" (Mattern, 2015). Despite this, no such thing as a universal dashboard presentation has crystalized. In the context of migration, a hodgepodge of visualization types are used to summarize the complex movement of people. Migration patterns are frequently visualized using flow diagrams, with arrows signifying direction and line weight representing volume; source and destination countries may turn up as choropleth maps; and net migration trends are often depicted with bar and line charts. While the dashboard metaphor is slowly being naturalized as the predominant interface for data-driven migration policy, storytelling techniques typically found in data journalism (e.g. scrollytelling, story maps) increasingly factor into the conversation. In this paper, we describe design considerations guiding our development of a dashboard-based exploratory visualization system for a research project studying drivers of migration (e.g. demographic, economic, environmental, socio-cultural, political) across three migration systems (South Asia, West Africa, the Americas). We also discuss future work that will synthesize results from this study to prepare human-centered and narrative-driven visual media. This discussion highlights old tensions between objective/quantitative vs subjective/qualitative approaches to data representation, new concerns about communicating with uncertainty, and considerations about when and how to shift from exploratory analysis to explanatory communication.

Gabby Resch, Ontario Tech University; Sarah Hoyos-Hoyos, Toronto Metropolitan University; Gavin Liu, Toronto Metropolitan University; Alex Bakogeorge, Toronto Metropolitan University; Emmanuel Kyeremeh, Toronto Metropolitan University; Daniela Ghio, Toronto Metropolitan University; Ali Mazalek, Toronto Metropolitan University; Robert McLeman, Wilfred Laurier University.