Visualization as infrastructure: China’s data visualization politics during COVID-19 and their implications for public health emergencies

In this article, we analyze the rise of data visualization in social and political contexts. Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, we consider a case in Shenzhen, China, and demonstrate the impact of visualization as intermediation for data on policies and society. We propose an epistemology of visualization as infrastructure. In China, visualization has been developed as a technological system to support information dissemination and collective action in public crises. Three characteristics are proposed to describe China’s data visualization politics during the pandemic, in particular, to summarize the power relationships between visual brokers, policymakers, and public users in data visualization. Further, based on the conceptualization of the links between visualization, infrastructure, and data politics, visualization serves as an important component of information infrastructure, and is an easily overlooked technical process. The creation and use of data may seem like normalized actions, but data visualization in fact supports the perception, participation, proposal, and critique of data politics issues. Via a focus group discussion with members of the Shenzhen public health sector and in-depth interviews with Shenzhen residents, we developed a qualitative effectiveness measurement framework highlighting the potential for the involvement of visualization in politics and activism.