Validating visuals: a socio-semiotic instrument for an informed production and use of visual representations

• Published in: Social semiotics Vol. 33; no. 2; pp. 426 - 445
• Main Author: Pauwels, Luc
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 15.03.2023; Taylor & Francis LLC
• Subjects: Consumers; Decision making; Dissemination; dual variance; Information dissemination; scientific visualization; Semiotics; socio-semiotic; Usefulness; visual practices; Visual representation; Visual representations; visual technologies; Visualization
• ISSN: 1035-0330; 1470-1219
• DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2021.1874241

Visual representations serve a multitude of crucial functions in the creation and dissemination of knowledge and information. They may take many different forms and refer to different phenomena or processes. Making valid decisions how particular visuals should look like presupposes a thorough insight in the nature of the referent or subject of the visual representation, the complex intermediate processes and technologies that are used to produce it, the final form and context of the visual, and the purposes it needs to serve. While often oblivious to its producers and their users or consumers, these insights and practices are firmly grounded in cultural processes of meaning-making, and therefore benefit from a socio-semiotic approach. The proposed socio-semiotic instrument builds upon my earlier taxonomic work in visualization practices. It incorporates many aspects and observations into a practical model that can be used to guide the production of new materials, or as a tool to interrogate the usefulness of existing visual representations for distinct purposes.