While a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz, Poland, graphic designer Paul Marcinkowski created a striking infographic that explained several ideas about tattoos with the information seemingly inked on a young man’s neck, chest, and arms (“Tattoo infographic,” n.d.). Detailed on the upper chest and within an outline of a map of the U.S. is the fact that 45 million Americans have tattoos. Down the right arm are percentages that represent the number of tattoos a typical person displays. For example, 18 percent have three or more (I only have one). Near the stomach in a blackletter typeface within four strands of ribbons are three reasons why many regret getting a tattoo after the fact – the personal name, the way it looks, and thinking that the concept was juvenile. A fourth reason should have been added – misspellings – in at least two occasions Marcinkowski left out the second “o” in tattooing for the realistic simulation. Oops.

A more famous graphic designer, Stefan Sagmeister (2017) famously did one better when he produced a poster for his lecture – a type of infographic – by having one of his interns carve the details of his presentation into his skin with an X-ACTO knife. In the painful-to-look-at-photograph of this effort, Sagmeister holds a carton of adhesive bandages. As my five-year-old boys say, “Owwie.”

Infographics is a portmanteau, a combination of the words information and graphics that describes an ancient form of communication that some say goes all the way back to cave drawings from about 30,000 years ago. Some animal drawings were found to have gouges chipped near vital organs. Perhaps the images of bison, deer, and horses not only beautified the walls or gave power to the hunters, but also acted as diagrams and used for target practice (Stromberg, 2012).

Infographics (often called data visualization) either convert numbers into pictures, as with charts and maps, or use words and concepts to create readable alignments or fact-based utilitarian-based pictures. In combination with sophisticated data mining and interactive techniques, advanced drawing tools, and satellite data downloads, infographics are considered to be one of the most informative and ubiquitous forms for sharing statistical and non-statistical information. Not surprisingly, we are all exposed to thousands of infographics a day shown through print and screen media for news, educational, and persuasive purposes.

Cartoons are another prehistoric presentation in which advocates track its roots to cave walls. They come in two main flavors – single- and multi-frame. Their historic reach spans from exaggerated caricatures of persons and animals on rocks to the latest computer-generated, performance-capture animated motion pictures. Cartoons also include such diverse forms as humorous and editorial efforts, comic strips and books, and sophisticated fictional and nonfictional books.

If you’re not convinced that serious subjects can be conveyed through the cartoon medium, you should take a look at Eisner Award winners in the reality-based category. Will Eisner (2017) was a groundbreaking American cartoonist who contributed early to the comic book industry, advocated the term “graphic novel” to describe a medium for long-form stories, and provided educational impetus for the study of cartoons as a serious academic field. Previous Eisner winners include the funny and poignant personal memoir Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2017) that was adapted into a Broadway musical, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story, a gritty and often scary account of a serial murderer’s background and rampage by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case (2011), and the 2016 winner March: Book 2, part of a trilogy written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin (2016) with drawings by Nate Powell hint at the variety of the medium. In the March books, U.S. Congressman Lewis details his journey from his humble upbringing to become a leader in the civil rights movement.

Despite such successes, many in the media harbor biases against cartoons as conveyors of serious subject matter. One often-lamented example is the decline of editorial cartoons in newspapers by staff artists. However, in combination with infographics, cartoons are gaining respect as those involved with declining print interests (e.g. newspapers) switch to online presentations and search for ways to improve viewership.

The innovative Korean video artist, Nam June Paik once exclaimed, “Paper is dead, except for toilet paper.” Whew. As a pioneer and advocate of video art and who was one of the first to use the term, the “electronic superhighway” in 1974, Paik had a unique and perhaps biased perspective on the future of paper (Reed, n.d.). Other futurists, media critics, and technological advocates also predict the downfall of paper as a substrate for news because of increased costs, lower advertising revenues, and indifference among potential subscribers (AKA Millennials, but not you, right?). For example, after graduating from college with a journalism degree, I was hired as a photojournalist for the Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans. I was 24 years old, single, and living in the French Quarter, but that’s a subject for an altogether different ethics book. Named after a French coin worth about a nickel, The Picayune began in 1837. In 1914 it merged with the Times-Democrat. After I had left to attend graduate school, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster (“Timeline,” 2017). The staff’s editorial success, however, couldn’t stave off the inevitable economic catastrophe common with many print newspapers that resulted in severe cutbacks on personnel, resources, and circulation, switched to online-exclusive reports, or quit production completely. In 2015, the owner of the Times-Picayune announced that the paper would only be printed for home delivery on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday with smaller sections printed on the other days. In an unusual move, but perhaps prescient in terms of the reality of the situation, it was decided that news stories would be first made available on the online version to web, smartphone, and tablet users and then published in print for everyone else.

The newspaper industry around the world has suffered a similar fate. Major chains and individual papers have gone bankrupt, long-time established news operations have quit production, and many others have decided upon a golden mean compromise and converted to either online hybrids as with The Times-Picayune or have become web-only publications. New owners with promised deep pockets haven’t been able to help that much. A deal with Mexican business person Carlos Slim couldn’t aid The New York Times that much, News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch delayed plans to expand the newsroom of the Wall Street Journal after buying it, and the founder of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos bought the struggling Washington Post. Nevertheless, the investigative reporting of the Trump Administration by these newspaper reporters speaks to the vital need for unbiased journalism. Still, the owners of these publications would like to have more readers. However, circulation is increasing for newspapers in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East where the tradition of receiving news via print is stronger. Concurrently, traditional television viewing and radio listening are on the decline, as online access becomes more of a staple in a person’s media life.

An apocalyptic blog aptly named “Newspaper Death Watch” (2016) maintained by Paul Gillin keeps a running total on failed papers along with other uplifting stories. Analysts with the Future Exploration Network (2017) predict that “newspapers in the U.S. will become insignificant by 2017 and the rest of the world by 2040” while academics at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in the Center of the Digital Future predict that most U.S. newspapers will be gone in five years (“Is America at a digital,” 2011). Yikes, but a bit premature, don’t you think?

But I disagree. I’m putting my money on Nam June Paik. NewsPAPER may be dead along with Paik since 2006, but newspapers will survive through online technologies that include modern versions of infographics and cartoon. There might even be a new word for the combination – infotoons.

And even if you are or not particularly interested in journalism as a career, you should be aware of ways to recruit and keep engaged users regardless of the medium, the type of message (hopefully ethical), and your professional field. The use of infographics, cartoons, and infotoons (that word is growing on me) as described in this chapter are only one tool of the many described in this book.

Ethics and Infographics

As with any form of visual communication, ethical behavior can sometimes be a challenge when hedonism trumps all other philosophies. If an infographic designer intentionally produces a misleading piece because of some personal, political, or economic motivation, that creator has committed the worse violation in mass communications – an ethically prohibited action that produces harm that cannot be justified. However, many times, errors are introduced due to a lack of experience, ignorance, or of not receiving proper training. For example, it is a rare employee who has taken a statistics or data mining class. Consequently, few individuals are knowledgeable enough about all the components required of a complex infographic to know when it is inaccurate or misleading. One of the reasons several team members – reporter, statistician, coder, illustrator, and editor – are used to create a multifaceted infographic is to avoid criticisms. But if working solo because of budget cutbacks, the support staff might be nonexistent. As such, these mistakes should not necessarily be considered unethical, but can be classified simply as errors in poor judgment. If such problems are quickly admitted and corrected, there is little harm. If the error is unnoticed or ignored, we’re back to thinking of the designer as unethical. Always admit mistakes and fix them as soon as possible – one of those kindergarten lessons we all have violated and should have learned.

Edward Tufte (2017) advocates education and gives workshops around the world to help infographic producers. He has been a consultant for the visual display of empirical data for such corporations as CBS, NBC, Newsweek, The New York Times, the Census Bureau, and IBM. His self-published books The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, and Beautiful Evidence were instant classics because of the combination of useful information and pleasing graphic design presentations.

For Tufte, a high-quality infographic should have an important message to communicate, convey information in a clear, precise, and efficient manner, never insult the intelligence of readers or viewers, and always tell the truth. Tufte argues for a conservative approach in which the presentation is never more important than the story. “Ideally,” he admits, “the design should disappear in favor of the information.”

Charts should accurately reflect the numbers they portray. For example, dollar amounts over many years should be adjusted for inflation and monetary values of different currencies should be translated into one currency value. Because images generally have a greater emotional impact than words, the potential to mislead with visual messages is higher. Inappropriate symbols used to illustrate an infographic can be confusing. A serious subject, for example, demands serious visual representation and not cartoon characters. Such graphic devices may attract attention, but the risk is that the audience will be offended – an example of poor etiquette.

Although computers have greatly aided the production of infographics, the technology also makes easy the inclusion of decorative devices that distract the reader from the chart’s message. Three-dimensional drop shadows, colored backgrounds, icons, illustrations, gratuitous interactivity, and unnecessary audio cues may catch the reader’s eye and ear but not engage the brain. Tufte notes the trend in television and computer presentations in which the numbers get lost in animated, colorful effects. Weather maps for television and newspapers sometimes are so crowded with cute illustrations that their informational content is lost. Designers should avoid the temptation to base designs solely on aesthetic or entertainment criteria, a hedonistic approach. They miss an opportunity to educate a viewer, a utilitarian philosophical approach, whenever they rely on decorative tricks. At best, such gimmicks distract from the message, and at worst they give wrong information. Tufte said it best: “Consumers of graphics are often more intelligent about the information at hand than those who fabricate the data decoration. And, no matter what, the operating moral premise of information design should be that our readers are alert and caring; they may be busy, eager to get on with it, but they are not stupid. Disrespect for the audience will leak through, damaging communication.” Treat your audience with empathy and respect, as John Rawls advocates in his veil of ignorance philosophy, and your work will elevate others.

As reported by Renee Shur (2011), graphic designers, Juan Antonio Giner of England and Alberto Cairo of Brazil were so upset about misleading infographics that they came up with a statement of principles. They concluded that infographics should be based on reliable and factual information, give credit to sources, avoid gratuitous design bling, and should be considered on the same level as any journalism piece. Educator and designer Cairo on his blog, “The Functional Art” is in agreement with Edward Tufte when he elaborates that a designer of visualizations (another term for infographics) should “create graphics that are intended to bring attention to relevant matters [and] are built in ways that enable comprehension.” Creating utilitarian and thoughtful designs requires a seriousness of purpose that should match the import of the content.

Author and designer Drew Skau (2017) reminds us to be careful about design choices such as the use of colors that have close to the same degree of brightness and thus are difficult to decipher for those with color deficiencies. Although considered more of a question of etiquette than ethics, “chartjunk,” a Tufte term for over-the-top design frills employed to catch a viewer’s attention without offering substantial and sustaining data, has been called data porn by infographics innovator Jonathan Harris. Along with Sep Kamvar, Harris is the author of We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion (2009), a fascinating collection “that contains photographs from more than 1,000 individual bloggers, thousands of statistical computations, hundreds of infographics, dozens of back stories and in-depth profiles, and countless insights into the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.” Harris writes,

The problem with data porn and infographics is that if the underlying data is not beautiful and interesting, any kind of aesthetic fanciness you apply to that data will not help. It’s like taking a really, really boring person and having her wear designer clothing and lots of makeup. They’re still a really, really boring person. A similar thing is true with data and a huge percentage of the data art now in infographics is boring.

His critique reminds me of a maxim I say to my beginning photojournalism students, “If a scene looks boring through your camera’s viewfinder, it will look boring printed out or projected on the big screen in the classroom.”

One of the most influential infographics innovators Nigel Holmes would agree more with Harris than Tufte when he states,

I have tried to make reading and understanding graphics a pleasurable experience instead of homework. If I can raise a smile, I’ll be halfway to helping readers see what I’m trying to explain. Many academics and data visualizers hate this approach. They insist on ‘just the facts.’ Any deviation from or addition to the facts is wrong, wrong, just plain wrong! They even invent pseudo-scientific theories that sound important: ‘optimal data-ink-ratio,’ and ‘chartjunk’

(Grimwade, 2016)

Holmes is known for creating aesthetically pleasing designs that attract the eye and the mind – a combination of the golden rule and utilitarian philosophies.

Writing in the Journal of Business Communication, Donna Kienzler (1997) notes that perhaps a solution to inappropriate and sensational visual designs is to emphasize personal accountability. She asks of designers, “What are possible consequences of their communication? How would they like to be the recipient of the communication? What would the world be like if everyone used the techniques in their communication?” Once again, Rawls’ veil of ignorance philosophy that stresses personal empathy is evoked. However, she also reminds us of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative philosophy with its emphasis on universality and treating others with respect and not simply as a means toward a desired outcome. “When applied to visuals,” she writes, “this theory asks what [infographics] would be like if everyone constructed visuals in a particular way, and if a particular visual uses people as a means to someone else’s end.” With Rawls, Kant, and Mill and Taylor’s utilitarianism emphasis on the greater good, Kienzler asks, “Does the visual actually do what it seems to promise to do? Is it truthful, or better – does it avoid implying lies? Does it avoid exploiting or cheating its audience? Does it avoid causing pain or suffering to members of its audience? Is it helpful? Where appropriate, does it clarify text? Does it avoid depriving others of a full understanding?” Apart from a graphic critique of an infographic, or any form of visual communication, Kienzler emphasizes an analysis based on philosophical justifications. Nice.

Ethics and Cartoons

On the surface, infographics and cartoons seem to be distinct forms of visual communication most often discussed in separate articles and textbook chapters. But conceptually, they should solve the same challenge in storytelling – how to transform passive, casual viewers into thoughtful, engaged users (which should be a goal of all media producers). As such, the best examples both use words and pictures within carefully considered contexts to explain, illuminate, and inspire. The worst instances, however, too often are based on the hedonistic philosophy and are criticized for their marketing techniques, stereotyping of individuals, and presenting purposeful inappropriate sexual, violent, and political themes.

Product tie-ins probably began with Richard Outcault’s popular newspaper cartoon character, “The Yellow Kid,” introduced in 1895 (Lester, 2017, p. 288). The Kid showed up in advertisements and on promotional pieces such as buttons, metal cracker boxes, and hand fans. Walt Disney gave up illustrating his motion pictures himself to organize and manage the lucrative product lines inspired by his company’s characters. Matt Groening’s The Simpsons (2017) is one of the most successful modern-day examples of marketing with stuffed dolls, DVDs, and a theme park ride. With a popular movie, every animation studio makes an enormous profit on international ticket sales, video rentals, sound track albums, and product licensing agreements. At the same time, Saturday morning television programs and motion picture characters frequently appear in advertisements promoting everything from dolls to bicycles. Animated cartoons are often the most colorful forms of entertainment, with their characters attracting the eyes of young and old. Brightly colored characters sitting on toy store shelves that look exactly like their animated equivalents also elicit pleading requests to a parent or guardian. Children are particularly vulnerable to such persuasive commercial techniques, but adults also are easily manipulated.

As with most other types of visual messages, too often cartoonists resort to stereotypes. For example, African Americans had to endure extremely offensive racist stereotypes in Bugs Bunny cartoons in the 1940s from Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, distributed by Warner Bros. After media mogul Ted Turner, the founder of CNN purchased the Warner Bros. collection, he vowed to never show the 11 most racist cartoons on television, although they can be found on YouTube (Slotnik, 2008).

Confusing the issue are overtly sexual, violent, and political messages conveyed through the cartoon medium that are designed to create controversy. Perhaps the leader in the most offended category is South Park created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, now in its sixteenth season on Comedy Central (Maglio, 2015). Its homemade, paper cut-out look perhaps buffers it against critics whom nevertheless cringe when the actress Sarah Jessica Parker is called a “transvestite donkey witch” or when the word feces is used 162 times in a fifth-season episode.

Meanwhile, technological and aesthetic innovations have brought a level of realism to violent animated video games to the point that media critics have taken notice (Painter, 2017). When the object of a cartoon-based game is to “kill” as many other characters as possible, children and others learn that conflicts are easily resolved, not through compromise in a golden mean tradition, but through direct, violent action – a hedonistic approach. After two young men killed 13 people and themselves at a Littleton, Colorado high school in 1999, it was discovered they obsessively played two “first-person shooter” video games, Doom and Quake. Consequently, Disney banished all violent video games from its theme parks and hotels.

Political cartoons filled with emotionally symbolic visual messages can spark great controversy in the name of freedom of the press, but at the cost of communicating religious intolerance and sarcasm. In September 2005 after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed 12 cartoons with most depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in satirical or silly ways, many in the Muslim world organized protests, with some that turned violent (McGraw and Warner, 2012). In 2011 the office of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo was bombed after it published a satirical issue with Muhammad as the guest editor (Taibi, 2015). Fortunately, no one was injured. Hebdo became well known for its cover cartoons depicting religious leaders in sexually compromising and controversial situations. After one too many Muhammad depictions, considered a blasphemy by many, in 2015 two armed men burst into the editorial office of the newspaper and opened fire killing 12 and wounding 11 others.

For an editorial cartoon, one of the most despised forms of visual messages by politicians, most critics agree with author Allison Anderson that there are two essential components that should be conveyed to justify the work as ethical (Rubens, 1987). First, the piece should have at its core a truthful fact about the person and/or situation under review. Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Trudeau in his “Doonesbury” comic strip, often considered an editorial cartoon, once linked the entertainer Frank Sinatra with several organized crime figures who included Tommy ‘Fatso’ Marson, Don Carlo Gambino, Richard ‘Nerves’ Fusco, Jimmy ‘The Weasel’ Fratianno, Joseph Gambino, and Greg De Palma. Some newspaper editors decided to run the strips as Trudeau intended, others slightly edited the content, some added an article that explained the historical references in the cartoon, while a few decided not to run the series (Randolph, 1985). In 2016 Trudeau released a collection that covered 30 years of cartoons that featured Donald Trump titled, Yuge 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump.

The second essential element acknowledges that a cartoon can show an exaggerated and unflattering caricature of its subject, express sarcasm, irony, parody, and disgust, and be offensive in its display and message. However, all of these elements should be clearly articulated and justified. After Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt printed a cartoon of the religious leader, and later disgraced, Jerry Falwell having sex for the first time with his mother in an outhouse, a court awarded him $100,000 (“The infamous Jerry Falwell,” 2004). The ethics mantra is evoked: Do your job and don’t cause unjustified harm. The job of many cartoonists is to make the powerful and hypocritical uncomfortable, but if a drawing is outlandish and untrue, the harm it causes cannot be justified and is considered unethical, regardless of First Amendment privileges.

There is a concern that with realistic presentations from designers inspired by advances in video game and virtual reality technology, infographics and cartoons used for actual news events may be too close to actually being at a scene and be upsetting for many. ABC News produce computer-generated mannequin-like infofilms called “Virtual Views.” These quickly produced displays can be made viewer-ready in a matter of hours for television and web news shows. Companies such as Z-Axis Corporation in Denver and Decisionquest in Torrance, California, produce courtroom graphics in still and animated platforms. In 2009 Next Media Animation, a Taiwanese creative house created an animated report of the golfer Tiger Woods crashing his car and having problems with his marriage with a video game aesthetic that was more amusing than disturbing (Hu, 2014). During the first OJ Simpson trial in 1995, Failure Analysis, Inc., created a realistic animated diagram based on an interpretation of evidence collected after the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman for the software distribution and technical information company CNet (“OJ Simpson trial video,” 2011). Although the jury never saw the video, it was shown on national television on the tabloid journalism show “Hard Copy.” Its viewing has been described as gruesome, controversial, and misleading by those who have seen it.

After the horrific carnage in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, infographics designers for the Tampa Bay Times created an interactive reenactment of the timeline of the tragedy with accurate architectural renderings. As a user clicks on areas of the diagram, stories from victims are presented. Interestingly, there are no cartoon representations of those killed or injured – only a few head-and-shoulder portraits, short descriptions, and quotations that accompany the overhead views of the inside of the club. There were 17 staff writers, information from CNN reports, three researchers, and one computer-assistant reporting specialist used in the piece. A link at the end takes viewers to a complete overview of the news story (see Chapter 11 for more details).

The virtual reality storyteller and leader in the field, Nonny de la Peña, created one of the first news experiments that attracted attention in the industry. Funded by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and its MxR interaction lab, it was based on actual video footage, but with animated, cartoon avatars. “Hunger in Los Angeles” gave users with a virtual reality headset the opportunity to experience waiting in a church-sponsored food line and reacting to a man going into a diabetic seizure (Newman, 2012). Author Bryan Bishop described the experience. “As I took the headset off I was quiet; shaken,” Bishop wrote. “I asked de la Peña about the diabetic man’s fate, and she assured me that he had survived the attack. I was frankly surprised at how much I actually cared” (see Chapter 9 for more details).

The future for infographics and cartoons for use in storytelling may be the infotoon. The books by David Macaulay (2017), Cathedral and The Way Things Work detail the mechanisms of simple tools to complex machines in a clear, diagrammatic style that is both entertaining and educational. In 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style Matt Madden (2005) brilliantly demonstrates how a simple account can be told with cartoons in almost any style imaginable. The work includes a political cartoon and an infographic chart. Steven Heller summed up the work with, “Its very subject is the language, style and rhetoric of comics and visual storytelling.” There seems to be nothing that cannot be communicated through creative collaborations and technological advances that connect users with stories in never before fundamental ways. However, creators need to be mindful that their presentations primarily come from motivations that illuminate, educate, and inspire rather than from profit that seeks to sensationalize, stereotype, and commodify.

Simply put, avoid works that are needlessly and unjustifiably insensitive and vacuous. Remember the mantra: Do your job and don’t cause unjustified harm. In other words, be ethical and etiquettable (another new word).

Case Studies

Case Study One

South Park, the Comedy Central cartoon series, made its name dragooning and satirizing everyone and everything. In 2010, during its fourteenth season and for its 200th episode, series’ creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker made an especially controversial episode when they parodied the Muslim Prophet Muhammad – and earned, in return, a threatening message from an Islamic group based in New York City, and censoring from its home network.

In the episode, Muhammad was confined first to a U-Haul trailer and then to a bear suit, as Stone and Parker tried to be mindful that the Muslim faith prohibits depictions of the high prophet. Even so, many thought the cartoon went too far. The next week, when Stone and Parker seemed to again be depicting Muhammad (although this time it turned out to be Santa Claus in the bear suit), he was hidden under a CENSORED graphic and his lines were all bleeped out. However, Comedy Central thought this was not enough – or was still a kind of “making fun” – and so they added other bleeps to the program.

Itzkoff, D. (April 23, 2010). “‘South Park’ episode altered after Muslim group’s warning.” The New York Times, p. 3.

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Case Study Two

You probably know from your college classes how boring it gets to listen to lectures and slides shows all the time. Imagine what would happen if your professors stopped lecturing, flipped the conversation around, and got all the ideas from you – the students. That’s what one chief marketing officer did at one of the world’s largest branding firms, much to his employees’ delight.

James Thompson said he counted every single presentation slide he was shown during his first two months working for the guitar accessory company, Diageo and the number astounded him: nearly 12,000. He said something had to give, because with all those slides, only one person was ever talking. So, while he didn’t ban presentations all together, he did make them far more infrequent. He wanted meetings to be conversations, not presentations; ideas, not sales pitches. He said the approach worked. Where before Diageo had struggled to attract top talent, now people are excited to work there. And sales are growing, where before they had been in decline.

Schultz, E.J. (November 16, 2016). “A ban on PowerPoint? How Diageo changed its culture.” Advertising Age. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/powerpoint-ban-diageo-changed-culture/306739/.

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Case Study Three

One thing that toy makers have to think about is the many different kinds of children who will want to use their games, including those with different kinds of abilities. One of the most popular toys for children of all ages are Lego blocks. But building Lego sets requires being able to follow – and so read and see – directions. This means that blind children might feel excluded from playing with the blocks. Two especially enterprising kids took up this challenge – one with eyesight and one without – and created instructions for individuals who are either blind or seeing impaired. The two developed 23 (and counting!) sets of directions for Legos that used sequential, written instruction instead of pictures and blueprints, including Hogwarts Castle, a Ferris Wheel, and an Arctic Snowmobile. The text instructions are available via download, and work with a screen reader.

Cushman, C. (June 19, 2016). “Building with Legos using accessible instructions.” Perkins School for the Blind. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://www.perkinselearning.org/accessible-science/activities/building-legos-using-accessible-instructions.

See Appendix B for the 10-Step Systematic Ethical Analysis Form.

Annotated Sources

Murtha, J. (May 6, 2016). “Why the controversy over an Iowa cartoonist is no laughing matter.” Columbia Journalism Review. Accessed June 29, 2017 from https://www.cjr.org/analysis/cartoonist.php.

After publishing an unflattering, but truthful, cartoon making fun of corporate farming CEOs, an Iowa based cartoonist lost his job of 22 years. This article explores why it matters that the cartoonist Rick Friday was fired when advertisers who supported his small publication companies pulled their money from his former employer’s small newspaper, and why even small incidents like this shrink everyone’s right to a free and robust press.

Robison, W., Boisjoly, R., Hoeker, D., and Young, S. (2002). “Representation and misrepresentation: Tufte and the Morton Thiokol Engineers on the Challenger.” Science and Engineering Ethics, 8, 59–81.

When the engineers at Morton Thiokol recommended that NASA not launch Challenger because the temperatures were outside the range that they had had successes in in testing, there were questions raised if they should have done more and pushed harder, or if they had, in fact, met their ethical duty to raise a red flag. The problem here was that after an initial rejection of approval to launch the shuttle, Morton Thiokol changed their decision and instructed NASA to go ahead with the launch. The authors argue that because the engineers did not have all the data they needed to make a decision, they should not be held morally accountable.

Rubens, P. (1987). “The cartoon and ethics: Their role in technical information.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 30(3), pp. 196–201.

Rubens writes on the ethical implications of using cartoons in technical writing. He suggests that artists should use cartoons to promote audience identification, remember to consider the cultural implication and to support a specific task. He argues that cartoons, if used improperly, can manipulate the audience in ethically unacceptable manners.

Tufte, E. (n.d.). “The cognitive style of PowerPoint: Pitching out corrupts within.” 2nd edition. Accessed June 29, 2017 from https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp.

This is a long form outline of what to do and what to avoid when creating and delivering a PowerPoint presentation. It touches on wide ranging issues from the “physically thick and intellectually thin” printed presentations to the destruction of conversation thanks to PowerPoint’s presenter-oriented design.

References

“Alison Bechdel.” (2017). Dykes To Watch Out For. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/.

Cairo, A. (2017). “The Functional Art.” Accessed September 19, 2017 from http://www.thefunctionalart.com/.

“The Emily Post Institute.” (2017). Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://emilypost.com/.

“Future Exploration Network.” (2017). Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://futureexploration.net/.

Grimwade, J. (October 3, 2016). “Nigel Holmes on humor.” Infographics for the People. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://www.johngrimwade.com/blog/2016/10/03/nigel-holmes-on-humor/.

Harris, J. and Kamvar, S. (2009). We feel fine: An almanac of human emotion. New York: Scribner.

Hu, E. (January 27, 2014). “For Taiwanese news animators, funny videos are serious work.” All Tech Considered. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/01/27/267018900/for-taiwanese-news-animators-funny-videos-are-serious-work.

“The infamous Jerry Falwell/Hustler magazine ad.” (September 23, 2004). College Humor. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://www.collegehumor.com/post/51885/this-is-so-funny.

“Is America at a digital turning point?” (December 14, 2011). USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://annenberg.usc.edu/news/faculty-research/america-digital-turning-point.

Jensen, J. and Case, J. (2011). Green River killer: A true detective story. New York: Dark Horse.

Kienzler, D.S. (April 1997). “Visual ethics.” The Journal of Business Communication, 34(2).

Lester, P.M. (2017). Visual communication images with messages, 7th edition. Dallas, TX: WritingForTextbooks.

Lewis, J. and Aydin, A. (2016). March (Trilogy slipcase set). New York: Top Shelf Productions.

Macaulay, D. (2017). “The way things work now.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://hmhbooks.com/davidmacaulay/.

Madden, M. (2005). 99 ways to tell a story: Exercises in style. New York: Chamberlain Bros.

Maglio, T. (July 8, 2015). “‘South Park’ renewed for 3 more seasons.” The Wrap. Accessed June 29, 2017 from http://www.thewrap.com/south-park-scores-3-season-renewal-set-to-top-300-episodes/.

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