Connections Beyond Data: Exploring Homophily With Visualizations

TL;DR

This study investigates racial homophily in visualization viewing behavior using mass shooting data, finding no evidence of homophily but revealing significant affective responses influenced by political ideology.

Contribution

The paper introduces an experimental approach to examine racial homophily in visualization engagement and highlights the impact of political ideology on emotional reactions.

Findings

No evidence of racial homophily in visualization viewing.

Significant negative affect change across all visualization conditions.

Political ideology influences emotional responses to visualizations.

Abstract

Homophily refers to the tendency of individuals to associate with others who are similar to them in characteristics, such as, race, ethnicity, age, gender, or interests. In this paper, we investigate if individuals exhibit racial homophily when viewing visualizations, using mass shooting data in the United States as the example topic. We conducted a crowdsourced experiment (N=450) where each participant was shown a visualization displaying the counts of mass shooting victims, highlighting the counts for one of three racial groups (White, Black, or Hispanic). Participants were assigned to view visualizations highlighting their own race or a different race to assess the influence of racial concordance on changes in affect (emotion) and attitude towards gun control. While we did not find evidence of homophily, the results showed a significant negative shift in affect across all visualization conditions. Notably, political ideology significantly impacted changes in affect, with more liberal views correlating with a more negative affect change. Our findings underscore the complexity of reactions to mass shooting visualizations and suggest that future research should consider various methodological improvements to better assess homophily effects.