Ethical and Effective Visualization of Knowledge Networks.

Knowledge mapping combines network analysis and data visualization to summarize research domains and illustrate their structure. In this paper, we present a framework for ethical and effective visualization of knowledge networks, which we developed while building a knowledge map of climate communication research. Using the climate communication knowledge map as an example, we highlight the practical and ethical challenges encountered in creating such visualizations and show how they can be navigated in ways that produce more trustworthy and more useful products. Our recommendations balance tensions between qualitative and quantitative and objective and subjective aspects of knowledge mapping. They demonstrate the importance of critical practices in the development of knowledge maps, illustrate the intertwined nature of analysis and results in such projects, and emphasize the constructedness of the resulting visualization. We argue that the only way to produce an effective knowledge map is to produce an ethical one, which requires attention to the ways trust and accountability can be produced at every step of analysis and production. This extends the literature on ethical visualization in digital humanities projects by offering a clear example of the utility of a critical approach for a traditional, science-oriented knowledge mapping project. A framework for critical practices of ethical and effective visualization networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]