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Data Storytelling in a Diverse World
We all share a responsibility to ensure the language, symbols, and point of view we use in our data stories reflect one, fundamental principle: to Do No Harm.
The Do No Harm Guide from the Urban Institute is grounded in the belief that we can work together to build a more equitable and inclusive world by using data with sensitivity and care.
Data Storytelling in a Diverse World
We all share a responsibility to ensure the language, symbols, and point of view we use in our data stories reflect one, fundamental principle: to Do No Harm.
The Do No Harm Guide from the Urban Institute is grounded in the belief that we can work together to build a more equitable and inclusive world by using data with sensitivity and care.
VIDEO SUMMARY
Picture This: Doing Good Data Means Doing No Harm
This video provides a quick overview of the 10 recommendations from the Guide to help you understand how to present data through a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive lens.
Meet the authors: Tableau’s Renee MacLeod interviews Jonathan Schwabish and Alice Feng
Interview with Jonathan Schwabish and Alice Feng
Season 2 | Episode 6
If Data Could Talk
Do No Harm: Data, Viz, Equity and Inclusion
Jon Schwabish, Alice Feng, and Channing Nesbitt join Andy to discuss their combined efforts in developing, publishing, and promoting the Do No Harm Guide: a toolkit that focuses on how data practitioners can approach their work through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
View Guide Resources
This is a sampling of books, organizations, and other resources that may help you and your organization build an equitable approach to data and data visualization.
Selected Bibliography
- Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020).
- Sasha Costanza-Chock, “Design Justice: Towards an Intersectional Feminist Framework for Design Theory and Practice,” in Proceedings of the Design Research Society, ed. Cristiano Storni, Keelin Leahy, Muireann McMahon, Peter Lloyd, and Erik Bohemia (London: Design Research Society, 2018), 529–40.
- Sarah Williams, Data Action: Using Data for Public Good (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020).
- G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
- Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: NYU Press, 2018).
- Ruha Benjamin, “Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code” Social Forces 98, no. 4 (2019): 1–3.
- Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018).
- Witney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert, eds., WEB Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (Hudson, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018).
- Tactical Technology Collective, Visualizing Information for Advocacy (Berlin: Tactical Technology Collective, 2013).
Organizations
- Allied Media Projects
- Design Justice Network
- Detroit Digital Justice Coalition
- The A11Y Project
- We All Count
- Civic Data Lab (MIT)
- The Communications Network
- Black Futures Lab
- Data for Black Lives
- The Marshall Project
- Teachers 4 Social Justice
- Chartability
Other Resources
- Child Trends' How to Embed a Racial and Ethnic Equity Perspective in Research: Practical Guidance for the Research Process
- AISP's A Toolkit for Centering Racial Equity Throughout Data Integration
- Chicago Beyond's Why Am I Always Being Researched
- Black Design in America
- Scratching the Surface podcast
- Urban Institute's Taking an Equity Lens to our Data Practice
- Urban Institute's Principles for Advancing Equitable Data Practices
- Urban Institute's Equitable Data Practice