Encountering Friction, Understanding Crises: How Do Digital Natives Make Sense of Crisis Maps?

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Koesten, Laura, Saske, Antonia, Starchenko, Sandra, Gregory, Kathleen
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Koesten, Laura
Saske, Antonia
Starchenko, Sandra
Gregory, Kathleen
author_facet Koesten, Laura
Saske, Antonia
Starchenko, Sandra
Gregory, Kathleen
contents Crisis maps are regarded as crucial tools in crisis communication, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change crises. However, there is limited understanding of how public audiences engage with these maps and extract essential information. Our study investigates the sensemaking of young, digitally native viewers as they interact with crisis maps. We integrate frameworks from the learning sciences and human-data interaction to explore sensemaking through two empirical studies: a thematic analysis of online comments from a New York Times series on graph comprehension, and interviews with 18 participants from German-speaking regions. Our analysis categorizes sensemaking activities into established clusters: inspecting, engaging with content, and placing, and introduces responding personally to capture the affective dimension. We identify friction points connected to these clusters, including struggles with color concepts, responses to missing context, lack of personal connection, and distrust, offering insights for improving crisis communication to public audiences.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_02637
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Encountering Friction, Understanding Crises: How Do Digital Natives Make Sense of Crisis Maps?
Koesten, Laura
Saske, Antonia
Starchenko, Sandra
Gregory, Kathleen
Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
Social and Information Networks
Crisis maps are regarded as crucial tools in crisis communication, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change crises. However, there is limited understanding of how public audiences engage with these maps and extract essential information. Our study investigates the sensemaking of young, digitally native viewers as they interact with crisis maps. We integrate frameworks from the learning sciences and human-data interaction to explore sensemaking through two empirical studies: a thematic analysis of online comments from a New York Times series on graph comprehension, and interviews with 18 participants from German-speaking regions. Our analysis categorizes sensemaking activities into established clusters: inspecting, engaging with content, and placing, and introduces responding personally to capture the affective dimension. We identify friction points connected to these clusters, including struggles with color concepts, responses to missing context, lack of personal connection, and distrust, offering insights for improving crisis communication to public audiences.
title Encountering Friction, Understanding Crises: How Do Digital Natives Make Sense of Crisis Maps?
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.02637