The Truth Behind Deceptive Data Visuals

We consume data visualizations in many forms such as ads, news, social media, academic papers, reports and dashboards. Once a while, we come across visuals that spread misinformation. Lying in statistics has existed for a while, but lately, visuals are more common on media. And some visuals lie. We’ll look into how visuals lie but before that I’d like to ask: do data visuals really lie? They don’t. Charts, graphs, maps, and diagrams do not lie. People who design graphics do. If we follow the definition of the word “lie” in the literature about ethics: “An intentionally deceptive message in the form of a statement” (Bok 1999). The visual is that statement, not the agent who creates it and delivers it.

A visual can be misleading, though. Misleading is not the same as lying because a graphic can lead readers astray without the conscious intervention of its designer. This distinction is not a technicality. According to professional ethics codes in journalism and graphic design, knowing the truth and hiding it, or conveying it in a way that distorts it is simply unacceptable.

When creating a data visual, don’t think just about yourself. It is essential to think about who is going to decode your graph.

When we see a chart or diagram, we generally interpret its appearance as a sincere desire on the part of the author to inform. In the face of this sincerity, the misuse of graphical material is a perversion of communication, equivalent to putting up a detour sign that leads to an abyss (Wainer 2000).

Notice that Wainer does not imply that the author is trying to actively deceive you. The “misuse of graphical material” could have been completely unintentional, the same way that putting the detour sign on the wrong side of the road could be the product of sloppiness or ignorance.

If we agree that infographics must represent a reality—data, information—with accuracy, we must not just obsess over the conscious actions of communicators. We should also point out the responsibility we have to educate ourselves to overcome our own biases, shortcomings, and knowledge gaps. We must work hard to eliminate or, at least, to minimize ambiguity, confusion, and potential errors of interpretation in our graphics.

Graphic lies are based on three strategies:

Hiding relevant data to highlight what benefits us

Displaying too much data to obscure reality

Using graphic forms in inappropriate ways (distorting the data)

Let’s take an example:

As of 2022, Bharat Janata Party or BJP, is the current ruling political party in India. It is one of the two major political parties in India, along with the Indian National Congress. In September 2018, during a nation-wide lockdown for a protest against increase in fuel prices, the ruling party of India posted this tweet along with another similar one for Diesel prices in an attempt to convince the public that the perceived hike in fuel prices was a false notion.

This bar graph contains time frames in the x-axis and the cost of petrol in the y-axis. There are arrows along with percentage numbers indicating the increase in the relative price of petrol compared to its previous time frame.

Some misleading components of the visual consists:

Height of the last bar does not represent its value

Misdirected arrow indicates decline of price

Uneven timeframe of the first bar relative to the other bars

Let’s go into more detail about each of them.

The height of the rightmost bar is supposed to be higher than its corresponding bar because the value of price in the y-axis is relatively higher. However, the bar has been displayed inappropriately lower than the previous one. Thus, this misrepresentation has used the mechanism of using graphic forms in inappropriate ways.

The arrow accomplishes in satisfying two ways of displaying misleading graphics. First, the arrow is an unnecessary addition to the graph, since a bar graph is effective enough on its own to communicate relative quantities. Second, the arrow points downward, indicating a decline in the value of price. Just like the bar, the arrow uses the mechanism of using graphic forms in inappropriate ways.

While the last two time frames between the second bar and last bar is 4 years each, the time frame between the first bar and the second bar is 5 years instead. This is an unevenly matched representation which is not communicated by the graph. This misleading property also utilizes the mechanism of using graphic forms in inappropriate ways to communicate distorted information.

The misrepresented height and arrow symbol misleads the public to believe that the price of petroleum has fallen during the last 4 years instead of having increased. While the BJP did manage to fulfill their promise of stabilizing the price growth of petroleum by reducing the growth rate to 13%, they failed to communicate this information with scientific accuracy. The misrepresentation of time frames exaggerates the values represented in the graph. This favors the purpose of the graph in an unethical way.

The attempt to mislead the public with inappropriate visuals backfired and the opposing party soon replied their own version of the graph with better representation of data.