Evaluating the Effect of Enhanced Text-Visualization Integration on Combating Misinformation in Data Story

TL;DR

This paper investigates how combining text and visualization in data stories can introduce misinformation and explores design methods like annotations and interactive links to improve public awareness and reduce misinformation perception.

Contribution

It provides a literature survey on misinformation injection points and evaluates defensive design methods to enhance misinformation awareness in data storytelling.

Findings

Design methods significantly lower perceived credibility of data stories.

Most participants still struggle to identify misinformation.

Enhanced text-visualization integration can help combat infodemic effects.

Abstract

Misinformation has disruptive effects on our lives. Many researchers have looked into means to identify and combat misinformation in text or data visualization. However, there is still a lack of understanding of how misinformation can be introduced when text and visualization are combined to tell data stories, not to mention how to improve the lay public's awareness of possible misperceptions about facts in narrative visualization. In this paper, we first analyze where misinformation could possibly be injected into the production-consumption process of data stories through a literature survey. Then, as a first step towards combating misinformation in data stories, we explore possible defensive design methods to enhance the reader's awareness of information misalignment when data facts are scripted and visualized. More specifically, we conduct a between-subjects crowdsourcing study to investigate the impact of two design methods enhancing text-visualization integration, i.e., explanatory annotation and interactive linking, on users' awareness of misinformation in data stories. The study results show that although most participants still can not find misinformation, the two design methods can significantly lower the perceived credibility of the text or visualizations. Our work informs the possibility of fighting an infodemic through defensive design methods.