Frames and Slants in Titles of Visualizations on Controversial Topics

Abstract

Slanted framing in news article titles induce bias and influence recall. While recent studies found that viewers focus extensively on titles when reading visualizations, the impact of titles in visualization remains underexplored. We study frames in visualization titles, and how the slanted framing of titles and the viewer's pre-existing attitude impact recall, perception of bias, and change of attitude. When asked to compose visualization titles, people used five existing news frames, an open-ended frame, and a statistics frame. We found that the slant of the title influenced the perceived main message of a visualization, with viewers deriving opposing messages from the same visualization. The results did not show any significant effect on attitude change. We highlight the danger of subtle statistics frames and viewers' unwarranted conviction of the neutrality of visualizations. Finally, we present a design implication for the generation of visualization titles and one for the viewing of titles.