The Infographic: A History of Data Graphics in News and Communications

Infographics & data visualization are ubiquitous in our everyday media diet, particularly in news--in print newspapers, on television news, & online. It has been argued that infographics are changing what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century--& even that they harmonize uniquely with human cognition. In this first serious exploration of the subject, Murray Dick traces the cultural evolution of the infographic, examining its use in news--& resistance to its use--from eighteenth-century print culture to today's data journalism. He identifies six historical phases of infographics in popular culture: the proto-infographic, the classical, the improving, the commercial, the ideological, & the professional.

Dick describes the emergence of infographic forms within a wider history of journalism, culture, & communications, focusing his analysis on the UK. He considers their use in the partisan British journalism of late eighteenth & early nineteenth-century print media; their later deployment as a vehicle for reform & improvement; their mass-market debut in the twentieth century as a means of explanation (and sometimes propaganda); & their use for both ideological & professional purposes in the post-World War II marketized newspaper culture. 

Finally, he proposes best practices for news infographics & defends infographics & data visualization against a range of criticism. Dick offers not only a history of how the public has experienced & understood the infographic, but also an account of what data visualization can tell us about the past.