Graphs and Charts in the Post-Truth Era
Graphs and charts have been skewed and manipulated to deceive or manipulate users in the post-truth era. The misleading graphs have been used to insert wrong ideas into a narrative to influence decision or perceptions of users. Most of the data in the charts may be could the issue is the manipulation of these data to present entirely different idea. An example of a deceptive graph is that which shows the unemployment rate under President Obama in 2011 as shown in the following link https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2011/12/12/today-in-dishonest-fox-news-charts/185162
Distorted Scale and Cherry-Picked Data in a Deceptive Graph
The graph in this link has a distorted scale that does not start from zero. The impact of the omission of zero as the starting point could be seen in the inconsistent representation of the data in the chart. The unemployment rate of 8.6% in November was much higher than 8.8% recorded in March and almost the same level as 9% on October 9. The data in the graph seems to have been selected under cherry-picking because the December unemployment rate is omitted. The title of the graph which states the unemployment rate under President Obama is also misleading. The title could imply that President Obama is the cause of high unemployment. The chart did not take into account the subprime mortgage that caused a recession between 2007 and 2009.
Potential Corrections for the Deceptive Graph
The graph could be corrected by adjusting the vertical scale to start from zero. Such adjustment would eliminate the inconsistent appearance of unemployment figures in the chart. The chart should include data for the whole year, including December. Besides, the data would make more sense if the analysis covered previous years such as 2009 and 2010. The title should be changed to "unemployment rate after the subprime mortgage of 2007 to 2009". The graph could have been designed to depict the Obama administration as bad toward the American economy. The chart could have been intended to deceive Americans that the high level of unemployment was due to Obama's policies.
