Connections Beyond Data: Exploring Homophily With Visualizations

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sukumar, Poorna Talkad, Porfiri, Maurizio, Nov, Oded
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916946795036672
author Sukumar, Poorna Talkad
Porfiri, Maurizio
Nov, Oded
author_facet Sukumar, Poorna Talkad
Porfiri, Maurizio
Nov, Oded
contents Homophily refers to the tendency of individuals to associate with others who are similar to them in characteristics, such as, race, ethnicity, age, gender, or interests. In this paper, we investigate if individuals exhibit racial homophily when viewing visualizations, using mass shooting data in the United States as the example topic. We conducted a crowdsourced experiment (N=450) where each participant was shown a visualization displaying the counts of mass shooting victims, highlighting the counts for one of three racial groups (White, Black, or Hispanic). Participants were assigned to view visualizations highlighting their own race or a different race to assess the influence of racial concordance on changes in affect (emotion) and attitude towards gun control. While we did not find evidence of homophily, the results showed a significant negative shift in affect across all visualization conditions. Notably, political ideology significantly impacted changes in affect, with more liberal views correlating with a more negative affect change. Our findings underscore the complexity of reactions to mass shooting visualizations and suggest that future research should consider various methodological improvements to better assess homophily effects.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_03269
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Connections Beyond Data: Exploring Homophily With Visualizations
Sukumar, Poorna Talkad
Porfiri, Maurizio
Nov, Oded
Human-Computer Interaction
Homophily refers to the tendency of individuals to associate with others who are similar to them in characteristics, such as, race, ethnicity, age, gender, or interests. In this paper, we investigate if individuals exhibit racial homophily when viewing visualizations, using mass shooting data in the United States as the example topic. We conducted a crowdsourced experiment (N=450) where each participant was shown a visualization displaying the counts of mass shooting victims, highlighting the counts for one of three racial groups (White, Black, or Hispanic). Participants were assigned to view visualizations highlighting their own race or a different race to assess the influence of racial concordance on changes in affect (emotion) and attitude towards gun control. While we did not find evidence of homophily, the results showed a significant negative shift in affect across all visualization conditions. Notably, political ideology significantly impacted changes in affect, with more liberal views correlating with a more negative affect change. Our findings underscore the complexity of reactions to mass shooting visualizations and suggest that future research should consider various methodological improvements to better assess homophily effects.
title Connections Beyond Data: Exploring Homophily With Visualizations
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.03269