The Fourth Wave of Data Visualization
The Fourth Wave: Democratization
Data visualization has transformed from a niche, specialized tool into a fundamental part of how we understand politics, public health, and culture.
This paper traces how dashboards, charts, and diagrams went from guiding expert decision-making in specialized settings to shaping everyday life—evident during COVID-19 and even influencing U.S. presidential campaigns.
Moving through the historical “waves” of data visualization, we see how clarity, systemic approaches, and convergence led us to our current moment: a fourth wave defined by the widespread ability to make and share visualizations.
At the same time, the emergence of generative AI raises pressing questions about who creates charts and how readers assess trustworthiness. We examine how new tools can both simplify routine visuals and expand creative, non-traditional forms of expression, including hand-drawn and physical installations.
Yet as data visualization becomes more accessible, it also becomes more susceptible to misuse. We underscore the importance of literacy: both for those crafting these visuals and for readers who must interpret them.
Throughout, the call to action is clear: we need to foster a culture that balances technical innovation with ethical responsibility, focusing on the people behind the charts—creators and audiences alike. By embracing complexity, engendering trust, and strengthening our collective fluency, we can ensure that data visualization truly benefits our communities in this new era.
About the authors
Amanda Makulec, MPH is a data visualization leader who has worked with clients across the federal, nonprofit, and private sectors for 15 years. She designs meaningful health visualizations, teaches data visualization design, and coaches teams on how to build cross-functional data teams to support the analytical and dashboarding needs of a variety of different organizations. Her work centers on visualizing data responsibly, particularly when communicating health information that can be so personally impactful and when designing analytical tools that inform decisions about access, delivery, and quality of health care services. You can follow more of her musings on data visualization on Viz Responsibly, Chart Chat, and in the forthcoming book Dashboards that Deliver.
Elijah Meeks has spent over a decade doing data visualization in academia and industry. His work has included digital humanities scholarship such as ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Map of the Roman Empire as well as internal analytical applications for Netflix and Apple. In addition, he wrote D3.js in Action and created Semiotic, a React-based charting library that allows you to create not only traditional charts but also hierarchical and network diagrams, and was the co-founder of Noteable, where he focused on the integration of BI tools, AI and computational notebooks. Elijah is currently a principal engineer at Confluent where he works on data visualization for real-time streaming data.
Both Elijah and Amanda served as the Executive Director of the Data Visualization Society from 2019-2020 and 2021-2024, respectively. Elijah is also a co-founder of DVS and currently serves as the Publications Director.