PITFALLS IN THE DATA

An analysis of coronavirus-related information sharing on Twitter found that most people commonly made one of five errors when trying to visually convey the scope of the pandemic, or its effects on society. Published in the open-access journal Informatics, the study by Indiana University focuses on the sharing of data visualisations on Twitter by health experts and average citizens alike. “The reality is that people depend upon these visualisations to make major decisions about their lives: whether or not it’s safe to send their kids back to school, whether or not it’s safe to take a vacation, and where to go,” says Francesco Cafaro, an assistant professor in the School of Informatics and Computing, who led the study. Broadly, Cafaro says the study identified various pitfalls common to the data visualisations analysed, such as mistrust, with more than 25 per cent of the posts failing to clearly identify the source of their data; misunderstanding about the virus and biases related to race, country and immigration.