Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Today’s understanding of the word populism is not limited to its current political incarnations. It affects our lives both as citizens and media consumers, recalls specific names of the current Western political scene, and eventually reflects in words and actions. Populist leaders seem keen to discredit scientific facts and statistical data. Authority is treated as part of the so-called elitist conspiracy against the people. Populist thinking builds on simplification and generalization to generate distrust amongst the public. This research attempts to trace correlations between the return of populist tendencies and the crisis of the representation of statistical data, querying if we still value expertise in the complex online media ecosystem of the Western world. Isotype, the visual system developed by philosopher and social economist Otto Neurath in the 1930s, serves as a framework to critically discuss idealistic and historical perspectives on the graphic representation of knowledge. The design project, Advocating Complexity, as a result of this research, investigates how such a language can be rejuvenated and applied within a contemporary context. Can it be implemented to demonstrate human doubts, questions, and uncertainties about what we perceive as ‘news’? Will it help readers not to fall into the trap of seeing every aspect of reality as either black or white? Ideally it might show that complexity is not something to shy away from, but rather a necessary starting point that eventually leads to knowledge.