Data visualizations have become central instruments for communicating climate change, shaping public understanding, policy debates, and collective action. Yet their apparent neutrality—grounded in numbers, scales, and scientific aesthetics—also makes them powerful vectors of disinformation.
This talk argues that climate visualizations are not transparent representations of reality but cultural constructions that encode interpretive choices, reflect power relations, and operate through visual rhetoric.
Building on a new framework, the presentation integrates insights from visual culture studies, the epistemological critique of data as capta, Barthesian semiotics, and cognitive research on perception. It proposes a five-level analytical model—political, epistemological, semiotic, perceptual, and typological—to explain a central paradox: the more a visualization conforms to conventions of scientific credibility, the more effectively it can be weaponized in disinformation contexts.
The argument is illustrated through climate-related case studies, including axis manipulation in climate denial charts and the rhetorical framing of temperature trends. These examples show that misleading visualizations rarely rely on technical errors; instead, they exploit structurally “well-designed” charts whose authority masks interpretive bias. Empirical evidence from the MonitorIA project, which tracks disinformation in Telegram ecosystems, further demonstrates how such “vulnerable visualizations” circulate and gain traction in contemporary media environments.
The talk concludes by outlining an ethics of critical visualization and proposing a shift from conventional visualization literacy toward a broader notion of data citizenship. Understanding climate visualizations as cultural artifacts is essential not only for detecting disinformation, but for designing more responsible and reflexive forms of visual communication in the climate domain.