Amsterdam University Press

Chapter Title: Humanizing data through ‘data comics’: An introduction to graphic

medicine and graphic social science
Chapter Author(s): Aria Alamalhodaei, Alexandra P. Alberda and Anna Feigenbaum

Book Title: Data Visualization in Society

Book Editor(s): Martin Engebretsen and Helen Kennedy
Published by: Amsterdam University Press

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21. Humanizing data through ‘data
comics’: An introduction to graphic
medicine and graphic social science
Aria Alamalhodaei, Alexandra P. Alberda, and Anna
Feigenbaum

Abstract
In recent years data visualization scholars and practitioners have drawn
attention to the need for data to be humanized. In addition to making
complex information more coherent, visualizations can work to incor-
porate empathy and help audiences connect to information. Addressing
this call for humanizing data visualization, this chapter considers the
emergent area of ‘data comics’, looking at how the new fields of graphic
medicine and graphic social science deal with numeric data. We examine
recent data comics from graphic medicine and graphic social science that
exemplify the complexities and potential of presenting data in humanizing
ways. Our discussion is framed around what we call the EMA framework,
considering the Epistemic (knowledge and perspective), Methodological
(ways of working), and Aesthetic (practices of representation).

Keywords: Humanizing data; Data comics; Graphic medicine; Graphic

social science

The call for humanizing data visualization

In recent years data visualization scholars and practitioners have drawn

attention to the need for data to be humanized (D’Ignazio & Klein, 2016;
Gray, Bounegru, Milan, & Ciuccarelli, 2016; Kennedy, Hill, Aiello, & Al-
len, 2016; Lupton, 2017). Looking at possibilities for haptic and visceral
data manifestations, Lupton (2017, p. 15) has called for the ‘generation of

Engebretsen, M. and H. Kennedy (eds.), Data Visualization in Society. Amsterdam: Amsterdam

University Press, 2020
doi 10.5117/9789463722902_ch21

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348 Aria Al amalhodaei, Alex andr a P. Alberda, and Anna Feigenbaum

alternative or counter perspectives and greater opportunities for people to

“feel” their data in ways which make sense in the context of their own lives’.
In a piece that circulated around social media, data visualizer Giorgia Lupi
provocatively asked, ‘Can a data visualization evoke empathy and activate
us also at an emotional level, and not only at a cognitive one? Can looking
at a data visualization make you feel part of a story of a human’s life?’ (2017).
Resonating across these calls for humanizing data is an acknowledgement
that while data visualizations often do a good job of clearly presenting
information visually, more emphasis can be placed on creating empathy
and connecting data to audiences.
In this chapter we introduce ‘data comics’, looking at the emergent fields of
graphic medicine and graphic social science in relation to humanizing data
visualization. Recent work by Bach, Wang, Farinella, Murray-Rust, & Riche
(2018) on data comics explains the potential of the medium in communicating
data-driven stories and provides practical information and theoretical research
on how this potential might be achieved. Graphic medicine is an umbrella
term used to bring together a growing number of comics that engage with
illness, disability, and the healthcare system (Green & Myers, 2010). Graphic
social science refers to the use and potential uses of comics in public com-
munication about social science (Carrigan, 2017). By looking at examples from
graphic medicine and graphic social science that explicitly engage emotive
and empathetic narratives, we explore what Bach et al. (2018) describe as the
potential for comics to humanize data. We do so by considering the Epistemic
(knowledge and perspective), Methodological (ways of working), and Aesthetic
(practices of representation) dimensions of these exemplary data comics.
Both graphic medicine and graphic social science mobilize the graphic
medium of comics to engage with data communication in ways that aim to
be approachable, accessible, and relatable (McCloud, 1993; Green & Myers,
2010; Williams, 2014; Czerwiec et al., 2015; McNicol, 2016). By approachable
we mean that the comics medium is familiar to people (McCloud, 1993).
They are accessible because the information is presented to the readers using
iconography that is familiar to targeted cultural audiences (Williams, 2014;
Czerwiec et al., 2015; Bach et al., 2018). Finally, data comics rely on elements
of storytelling and visual narrative in order to make information relatable,
using personal experiences as a basis for the interpretation process (Bates,
2012; Bowman, 2017; McNicol, 2016).
In addition, research into graphic visualization has shown that the
effective use of text and image can enhance understanding of complex
information, especially in low literacy and vulnerable audiences (Green
& Myer, 2010; Ahmed-Husain & Dunsmuir, 2014; Al-Jawad & Frost, 2014;

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Humanizing data through ‘data comics’ 349

Kassai et al., 2016). For example, beyond patient-doctor understanding,

which was the original target relationship of graphic medicine (Czerwiec
et al., 2015), comics have been examined as an effective communication
medium to enhance social behaviours in young people with autism spectrum
disorder (Ahmed-Husain & Dunsmuir, 2014), and pre-surgery education for
paediatric patients in order to improve post-surgery recovery (Kassai et al.,
2016; current study by Thomas & Schirrmeister, 2018).

Introduction to the EMA framework

To understand how graphic medicine and graphic social science can

humanize data visualization through their use of data comics, we created
a framework which we call ‘EMA’ that is structured around three pillars.
These pillars are intended to guide data visualization evaluation and the
future production of data comics. The pillars are: Epistemic (knowledge and
perspective), Methodological (ways of working), and Aesthetic (practices of
representation). These three pillars capture the varied formal conventions
and underlying theoretical premises of graphic medicine and graphic social
science. The EMA framework is a preliminary attempt to attend to the
potential benefits for humanizing data that graphic medicine and graphic
social science offer through their use of data comics.
The Epistemology pillar of our framework draws on trajectories of feminist
knowledge production, specifically the work of Standpoint theorists Patricia
Hill Collins (1990) and Sandra Harding (1986), in order to critically interrogate
what counts as a data point, a dataset, or a data visualization. Is it only the
scatter plot or pie chart that can effectively frame data? Or can comics,
graphic novels, textiles, and other media also count as data visualization?
Further, our framework acknowledges the partiality of knowledge. As
Caroline Ramazanoğlu and Janet Holland point out, ‘knowledge is partial
both in the sense of being “not-total” and in the sense of being “not impartial”‘
(2002, p. 66). This does not mean that one’s knowledge of the world is always
insufficient to make claims about it; rather, it acknowledges that truth claims
are always already tied up in the political reality from which they are formed.
The second pillar of our EMA framework, Methodology, attends to the
material reality out of which graphic social science and graphic medicine
arise, that is, the conditions of production from the point of data collection
to the ethics of distribution and remediation. Although some practitioners
in graphic medicine and graphic social science join the research project after
the data have been collected, many artists are also involved in constructing

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350 Aria Al amalhodaei, Alex andr a P. Alberda, and Anna Feigenbaum

the research model and collecting data. In these instances, we feel that
the following questions are vital: how are the data collected, scraped, and
analysed? How are the research ‘subjects’ included in the design framework,
if at all? In what format are the graphics made available to the public?
The EMA framework also rejects the binary between numbers and stories
in social science research. While categories such as ‘qualitative’ and ‘quan-
titative’ are useful for broadly categorizing types of research, this binary
can also function as ‘an obstacle to communication and methodological
advancement as it reifies false distinctions; for example, between words
and numbers, constructivist and positivist inquiry, and subjectivity and
objectivity’ (Sandelowski et al., 2013). Rather, we echo other recent scholars,
artists, and practitioners, who employ a mixed-methods approach to provide
a rich and complex examination of their subject, such as Kate Mclean’s (2017)
sensory maps and the Data for Black Lives group (Data for Black Lives, n.d.).
The final pillar of our EMA framework considers aesthetics as ‘forms that
inform’. Aesthetic decisions relating to colour, iconography, and graphic choice
can powerfully shape audience perception. Further, they are an integral part
of data communication and accurately conveying the empirical results of
data. With the introduction of computerized modelling and user-friendly
software such as Tableau, there is already a rapidly solidifying ‘aesthetic’ of
data visualization, identified primarily by symmetry, clean lines, and preset
colour palettes. These aesthetic principles can be a powerful and elegant way
to clearly translate data. But as the aesthetics of data visualizations becomes
more established, this limits what we think of as a data visualization. Alterna-
tively, comics and graphic novels operate in very different aesthetic registers.
For example, the majority of comics are still hand-drawn, which leaves a
palpable ‘imprint’ of the artist’s hand that isn’t present in a digitally-produced
image. We consider how these factors can shape the way we understand data
and, critically, how these factors can work to humanize data.
The remainder of this chapter uses the EMA framework to consider how
data comics deal with numeric data, offering a humanizing approach to the
visual communication of information. Before turning to specific examples
drawn from graphic medicine and graphic social science, we offer a brief
history of these two emergent fields in turn.

History of graphic medicine

In 2007, the term ‘graphic medicine’ was coined by Dr Williams, a physician,

writer, and comics artist (Green & Myers, 2010). As a broad, growing field,

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Humanizing data through ‘data comics’ 351

graphic medicine addresses healthcare, illness, disability, patient educa-

tion, treatment and experiences, and practitioner experiences. The phrase
provides an umbrella term to bring together a growing number of comics
that engage with these issues. Today, ‘graphic medicine’ is also a critically
acclaimed organization of the same name (see www.graphicmedicine.
org). Works classified as graphic medicine cross a variety of comics genres,
including webcomics, graphic pathographies (health and illness memoirs),
informational comics, comics strips, single panels, and video/audio installa-
tions. In 2015, graphic medicine scholars, artists, and practitioners published
the seminal text Graphic Medicine Manifesto, an interdisciplinary collection
of comics and essays that laid out how the comic, as a medium, serves as a
way of communicating knowledge and experience to medical practitioners
and students. The manifesto looks at the shifting iconography of illness
and the power of self-representation. Advocates of graphic medicine see
the potential of enhancing effective communication through the direct,
collaborative involvement of patients, practitioners, and artists.
Including quantitative data in graphic medicine is a way of juxtaposing
such data with a patient’s lived encounter of an illness or disability. Graphic
medicine works often reclaim the human side of health experiences from
the clinical lexicon upheld by healthcare systems (Charon, 2006; Farthing
& Priego, 2016a and b; Priego, 2016; Czerwiec et al., 2015). In particular,
graphic pathographies—first person-centred illness narratives in the comics
medium—bring out the humanizing aspects involved in the process of
making them. As graphic pathographies involve acts of personal storytell-
ing, they are well suited to the task of humanizing data around the lived
experiences of illness or disability, offering ill people an opportunity to
recover their voice, as people beyond medicalized patients (Frank, 2013;
Green & Myers, 2010).
Christina Maria Koch (2016, p. 29) argues that ‘the visual-verbal medium
of comics is particularly apt in showing how intricately mental states are
bound up with lived bodily experience and an embodied sense of self’. In
the comics medium, the somatic and psychological experience of one’s
changing health identity is found in hypervisualized graphic embodiment
that allows for a humanizing representation that shows how a person experi-
ences part of the medical process—for example, a diagnosis or proposal
for treatment—allowing access to some of the inner world of emotion
that is difficult to represent in other visual forms. This can be as simple
as a thought bubble or split panel that adds layers to the narrative of an
interpersonal interaction or event. In this way the comics medium allows
for more complex human experiences to be made visible to readers. For the

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352 Aria Al amalhodaei, Alex andr a P. Alberda, and Anna Feigenbaum

purpose of understanding how we might humanize data visualizations,

the next section examines an example of graphic medicine through our
EMA Framework.

Graphic medicine and data visualization in Taking Turns

Taking Turns (2017) is an account of nurse and comics artist M. K. Czerwiec’s

experience working in an HIV/AIDS care unit during the AIDS epidemic
from 1994-1999. Czerwiec’s hand-drawn line graph, which spans from 1981-
2000, uses data produced by amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research;
Figure 21.1; see https://amfar.org/). The artist includes small drawings
alongside the graphical line to mark important historical moments in the
AIDS crisis. By doing so, Czerwiec creates an emotional narrative out of
the data visualization’s timeline (x-axis) and the known deaths of AIDS
victims in the US (y-axis). Czerwiec adds three illustrations and caption
boxes to further contextualize the HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, it is in
the images that Czerwiec links numerical data to emotive narratives for
an emotional impact.
Epistemological. The hand-drawn style of this data visualization, discussed
in greater detail in Jill Simpson’s chapter (this volume) in this collection,
serves as a reminder of the human who produced it. Czerwiec’s epistemo-
logical decision to use data in conversation with her own life experience
enhanced the emotive narrative behind the numerical information presented
in the visualization through her aesthetic choices. She used existing data
collected and refined by amfAR. By embedding these data into a personal
narrative, readers get to know the larger dataset in a smaller scale. the place-
ment of Czerwiec’s hand-drawn graph at the end of her emotive narrative
shows readers the larger context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Simultaneously,
embedding the national statistics within her story contextualizes the
numerical data through a small number of people’s life stories.
Methodological. The rise and fall of the deaths on the graph are similar
to the structure of a basic narrative. The three images included are that of
(1) the introduced antagonist, (2) a nurse MK’s conflicts, and (3) the hope
embedded in a dénouement. The inclusion of comics elements offers a shift
in the existing ways amfAR data are produced and distributed. Readers can
interact with the graph and larger illness narrative physically by turning
back to the moments in the story to which the data refer. This does not occur
in traditional interactions or encounters with data visualizations and is a
methodological affordance of the comics medium.

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Humanizing data through ‘data comics’ 353

Figure 21.1. Hand-drawn amfAR line graph. Reprinted from Taking Turns (n.p.), by M. K. Czerwiec,
2017, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Copyright 2017 by M. K. Czerwiec.
Reprinted with permission.

According to Bach et al. (2018, p. 2), a key principle of ‘space-oriented’ genres

of narrative visualization, which they list as infographics, charts, and posters,
is that a reader can relatively quickly and effortlessly interpret the information.
In this encounter, the communicability of the data visualization will have an
impact on how long the reader will engage with the information, unlike ‘time-
oriented’ genres, like videos or animations, where the time is predetermined
(p. 2). Bach et al. (2018, p. 2) classify the data comics genre as being both spatially
and temporally oriented, which allows readers to choose their own pace and
also has a narrative structure that research has shown ‘is intrinsically easier to
remember and facilitate readers[‘] engagement and persuasion’. The time spent
with the emotive narrative adds depth to the line graph even with the inclusion
of three images discussed next for their aesthetic contribution to the amfAR
data. Temporal and spatial scales create affordances in the comics medium that,
combined with the hand-drawn characteristic of Czerwiec’s line graph, can
create experiences with a data visualization that are akin to the principles of
data storytelling. It creates longer and more intimate interactions with emotive
narratives than traditional interactions with graphs sometimes provide.

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354 Aria Al amalhodaei, Alex andr a P. Alberda, and Anna Feigenbaum

Figure 21.2. HIV virus cell. Reprinted from Taking Turns (p. 6), by M. K. Czerwiec, 2017, University
Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Copyright 2017 by M. K. Czerwiec. Reprinted with
permission.

Aesthetics. The line graph is included at the end of Czerwiec’s text, so we

can assume that readers are encountering it after they have read the longer
emotive narrative and are able to link the images back to their seminal
place in the story. Readers are assumed to recognize the HIV virus cell (the
green-yellow and blue abstract image) from the beginning of the story when
Czerwiec describes and illustrates HIV and AIDS for her readers (Figure 21.2).
This image appears when the virus is referred to in the story. The comics
medium allows the creator to visualize the virus, thus transforming it
into the antagonist of the story, rather than a sick body for one individual.
During the HIV/AIDS epidemic, victims of this disease were stereotyped
and HIV/AIDS became synonymous with the gay male body. By separating
the virus from its carrier, Czerwiec challenges the way that social stigma
affects marginalized populations.
The second image in the line graph is an image of AZT pills. This is a
reminder of when MK accidently stabbed herself with a needle after treating
a patient in her unit (Figure 21.3). AZT is prescribed to her in order to attempt
to fight any transmission that may have occurred. The inclusion of the pill in

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Humanizing data through ‘data comics’ 355

Figure 21.3. ATZ pills prescription. Reprinted from Taking Turns (p. 83), by M. K. Czerwiec, 2017,
University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Copyright 2017 by M. K. Czerwiec.
Reprinted with permission.

the graph reminds readers of the fear, anxiety, and unknowns surrounding
the HIV/AIDS epidemic as seen through nurse MK’s personal experience.
The experience of reading this section of the narrative could have mirrored
to some degree these emotions: does nurse MK now carry the virus?
The third image that Czerwiec includes in the graph is of medication
bottles and pills. This image, as its accompanying caption states, is the
HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy) medications that became
available in 1996. The bottles and pills come from a single full-page panel
with the caption, ‘And then hope arrived’ (Figure 21.4). Returning to the
line graph, we see that the ATZ pills are placed above the highest reported
deaths in 1995-1996, thereby aligning fear and death; whereas the location
of the HAART medications, with the decreasing reported deaths, provides
a feeling of hope to the visualization.
Using our EMA framework we are able to examine how Czerwiec’s use of
data visualizations and the comics medium in a graphic pathography not
only brings clinical evidence to these stories, but also contextualizes data
by embedding it in an emotive narrative.

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356 Aria Al amalhodaei, Alex andr a P. Alberda, and Anna Feigenbaum

Figure 21.4. HAART medication introduction. Reprinted from Taking Turns (p. 146), by M. K.
Czerwiec, 2017, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Copyright 2017 by M. K.
Czerwiec. Reprinted with permission.

Graphic social sciences

Just as graphic medicine has offered a new way of thinking about and relating to
medical research, the burgeoning field of graphic social science seeks to estab-
lish itself within the social sciences (Alamahodaei, Alberda, Feigenbaum, 2017).
In June 2017, the Graphic Social Science Research Network was established
to provide a forum for scholars, artists, and publishers to formally consider
the practical and theoretical implications for the integration of graphics into
social science. While some efforts have been made to adapt research articles
and theses into the comics medium (Priego, 2016), many affiliated with the
network are interested in embedding data visualizations to communicate
research findings to stakeholders impactfully, through graphic, emotive
narratives. Just as graphic medicine highlights the socially embedded and
psychologically contextualized nature of illness, the work explored in this
section uses personal experience to extrapolate larger claims about social and
political realities, and the ways that these realities in turn shape everyday life.

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Humanizing data through ‘data comics’ 357

Funny Weather and graphic social science

British comics artist, graphic novelist, and zinester Kate Evans produces
work that significantly parallels graphic medicine and offers a social sciences
example of data comics. Like Czerwiec’s, Evans’s comics stretch the comics
medium to include biographies (Red Rosa, 2015), comics journalism (Threads:
From the Refugee Experience, 2017), and educational guides on breastfeeding.
Although Evans is not an academically trained social scientist, her works
can be classified as ‘graphic social science’ for the ways that they draw on
social science research to graphically represent complex numerical data
in the comics form.
Epistemological. Funny Weather We’re Having at the Moment: Everything
you Didn’t Want to Know About Climate Change but Probably Should Find
Out (2006), or simply Funny Weather, is Evans’s take on the topic of climate
change. The comic covers an impressive amount of data, visualizing complex
meteorological processes that account for rising sea levels and average global
temperatures. She constructs three characters that lead the viewer through
the narrative. One of the characters is a young boy, and he reflects the viewer:
we learn alongside him about the realities of the carbon supermarket, and his
youthfulness is used to represent naivety or youthful idealism and the will
to change society for the better. The second character is a nameless man in a
suit, a cigar poking out of his paunchy mouth—a ‘fat cat’ who represents elites
who contribute to the manufacturing of dangerous emissions. Throughout
the comic, the suited man is constantly pushing back against the young boy’s
questions. He dismisses the boy’s suggestions that countries develop alterna-
tive energy sources, rationalizes the phenomenon of rising temperatures,
and offers straw man objections to climate data. In one panel, he’s depicted
towering over the young boy, his face contoured in rage (Figure 21.5). The
text beside his image reads, ‘Who says climate change is even happening
anyway? I’m not convinced! We need more proof!’ In this sense, he represents
broadly antagonistic social attitudes towards human-driven climate change.
While these characters may seem over-the-top, they are hyperbolic
manifestations of two opposing subject positions vis-a-vis the larger issue
of human-driven climate change. We have the banker, who has a financial
interest in ‘business as usual’; and the boy, who represents the inheritors of
today’s political decisions. It is the standpoint of the characters, rather than
objectivity, that most concerns Evans. In an interview, she states:

In your so-called objectivity you’re missing out a layer of political informa-

tion that people need to make sense of the world. I don’t attempt to be

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358 Aria Al amalhodaei, Alex andr a P. Alberda, and Anna Feigenbaum

Figure 21.5. Explanation of methane gas. Reprinted from Funny Weather We’re Having at the
Moment: Everything you Didn’t Want to Know About Climate Change but Probably Should Find Out
(n.p.), by K. Evans, 2006, Oxford: Myriad Editions. Copyright 2006 by Kate Evans. Reprinted with
permission.

objective in the representations I make. What I do is I make a representa-

tion of events that’s consistent with the facts, but I make it as emotionally
engaging as possible to the reader. (K. Evans, personal communication,
January 26, 2018)

Note how ‘facts’ are not opposed to subjectivity; rather, Evans’s comments
acknowledge the ways in which epistemic knowledge is always situated
and made legible by one’s embeddedness in social and political systems.
Methodological. Evans’s methodology reflects her interest in creating
empowering educational tools to guide social change. In preparing a new
comic, she spends substantial time reviewing the source data in order to
translate them into an easy-to-understand format for the lay reader. From
the perspective of an activist and comics artist, it is the scientific report or

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Humanizing data through ‘data comics’ 359

Figure 21.6. Explanation of the Gulf Stream. Reprinted from Funny Weather We’re Having at the Mo-
ment: Everything you Didn’t Want to Know About Climate Change but Probably Should Find Out (n.p.), by
K. Evans, 2006, Oxford: Myriad Editions. Copyright 2006 by Kate Evans. Reprinted with permission.

the data table that obscures, rather than highlights, the truth. The reality
of climate change that Funny Weather addresses, as reflected in meteoro-
logical and geological information, is made illegible by ‘science-speak’. The
comic becomes a vehicle to both demystify and translate these complex
data, ultimately with the goal of spurring her reader to pressing action. For
example, in Figure 21.6 she includes an illustration of the Gulf Stream in
order to debunk the idea that climate change will only affect people living
in hot climates. The illustration is accompanied by a narrative explanation
of the phenomenon, which allows the reader to more easily understand how
the Gulf Stream will be affected by rising global temperatures.

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360 Aria Al amalhodaei, Alex andr a P. Alberda, and Anna Feigenbaum

Aesthetics. Like other works from graphic medicine, Funny Weather

employs a hand-drawn, unsophisticated aesthetic. This simple style recalls
the feminist and queer zine subcultures of the 1980s and 1990s, in which
Evans produced many of her earlier works. Common to many zines from this
period is an emphasis on DIY production methods: writing and drawing all
content by hand, cutting and pasting images to form collages, and stapling
or sewing the zine’s binding. It was also common for zines to be Xeroxed
for distribution, giving many of them their signature black-and-white,
shadowed, and irregular appearance. These visual components were highly
aligned with an ethical political framework (that is, anti-capitalist, feminist,
or DIY). Zines were proto-blogs, allowing makers and particularly young
women an opportunity to create, share stories, and engage in political and
social issues (Deibert, 2014; Piepmeier, 2009). But recalling these aesthetic
elements is not simply an homage; it is directly invoking the same principles
that were common to zine culture. Here we see how aesthetic elements
intersect with methodology that encourages grassroots involvement in
social and political issues.
We encounter the graphs alongside the characters, looking with and
through them. Encountering the data in this way collectivizes the process
of understanding, as the characters dialogue with each other to clarify
graphical meaning. As a social activist, Evans has always been interested
in questions of accessibility. In an interview with Scientific America, when
asked why comics are a good teaching tool for diff icult science, Evans
relates the power of humour to demystify complex statistics. ‘People are
having fun’, she says. ‘When you create that, it’s very easy to get the mes-
sage across’. In Figure 21.7, for example, the figure of the scientist is seen
dancing in a grass skirt and flip-flops next to a graph depicting rising Earth
surface temperatures. Despite the seriousness of the graph’s content, by
using laughter, silliness, and absurdity, Evans is able to tackle the topic of
climate change in a disarming format.

Lessons from data comics

Comics and related graphic forms allow for inclusion of the affective and
personalized (Czerwiec et al., 2015; Williams, 2014). In each of the case
studies we explored, practices of graphic storytelling are used to expand
the realms of possibility for the visual depiction of numerical data. These
artists’ works humanize data by incorporating visual elements of the comics
medium to engage with some of the broader issues that these data both

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Humanizing data through ‘data comics’ 361

Figure 21.7. Graph of the Earth’s surface temperature from year 1000-2100. Reprinted from Funny
Weather We’re Having at the Moment: Everything you Didn’t Want to Know About Climate Change but
Probably Should Find Out (n.p.), by K. Evans, 2006, Oxford: Myriad Editions. Copyright 2006 by Kate
Evans. Reprinted with permission.

represent and produce in society. By applying our EMA Framework, we can

see how data comics represent an approachable, accessible and relatable
aesthetic form that can allow for new ways of knowing and understanding
data, strengthening the connections between lived experience and numeric
information.
Reading data comics from the emergent fields of graphic medicine and
graphic social science in relation to data visualization enables us to see how
comic forms can be engaged to visualize human reactions and encounters
with data, how data come to be known or experienced, and what data do in
terms of shaping our lives and the lives of others. We argue that by using the

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362 Aria Al amalhodaei, Alex andr a P. Alberda, and Anna Feigenbaum

EMA framework, we can explore the epistemic, methodological, and aesthetic

possibilities for expanding what data visualization can do. Graphic medicine
and graphic social science could have an impactful role to play in humanizing
data visualization. These graphic works allow us to expand representations
of personhood beyond traditional statistical ways of symbolizing people in
data visualizations. Engaging with data comics to visualize information can
humanize the personal narratives behind the numbers.

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About the authors

Aria Alamalhodaei is an independent writer and researcher. She received

her MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She is co-author
of The Data Storytelling Workbook (Routledge, forthcoming 2020) with Dr.
Anna Feigenbaum, creative studio Minute Works and comics illustrator
Alexandra Alberda.

Alexandra P. Alberda is a PhD researcher in the Department of Journalism,

English, and Communication at Bournemouth University, where she is
researching public engagement with comics in medical humanities. Her
research interests are curatorial practices, public engagement with graphic
medicine, comics studies, medical humanities, and the politics and ethics
of representation.

Anna Feigenbaum is a Principal Academic in Digital Storytelling at Bourne-

mouth University. Her research and practice focus on communication and
social justice. She is co-author of The Data Storytelling Workbook (Routledge,
forthcoming 2020) with Aria Alamalhodaei, creative studio Minute Works
and comics illustrator Alexandra Alberda.

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