Despite their attractive and effective nature, journalistic interactive visualizations (JIVs) are highly susceptible to bias and manipulation. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 600 JIVs from six leading general and financial news sites (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Economist, Haaretz and Calcalist), this study traces the emergence of four visual biases in JIVs – visual ambiguity, exaggeration/understatement, missing visual information and visual misrepresentation – exploring their correlation with organizational factors and with the strategies associated with their production. Findings indicate that visual biases emerge in over 60 percent of the studied cases, correlating especially with news site characteristics. The article merges theories of knowledge quality from information studies, journalism and visual communications, and concludes with four principles that demarcate justified from unjustified use of visual biases in JIVs.
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