Critique of the Longline Fishing Infographic


  Date: 2024-07-27
  Author: Nathan Pieplow
  License: CC BY-NC-SA
  Domain: Persuading with Data
  Subdomain: Visualizing Data
  Type of Resource: Lesson Plan

This lesson plan offers instructions for a 20-30 minute activity in which students are challenged to rhetorically analyze a Greenpeace infographic about longline fishing. The ultimate goal of the activity is to give students practice aligning visuals with rhetorical purposes.

Keywords:  Visual Rhetoric    Rhetoric of Data Visualization    Infographics  

MLA Citation: Pieplow, Nathan. ‘Critique of the Longline Fishing Infographic’’ (lesson plan). Data Advocacy 4 All, University of Colorado. 27 July 2024


Instructor Note: This lesson plan offers instructions for a 20-30 minute activity in which students are challenged to rhetorically analyze a Greenpeace infographic about longline fishing. The activity assigns a different part of the infographic to each small group, so that they can analyze its visual rhetoric and report back to the whole class. The goal of the activity is to provide students with practice in matching visuals to their rhetorical purposes. This activity is designed to follow the slide deck titled “To Visualize or Not?”

Lesson Plan

In groups, students will examine this infographic from Greenpeace (used here for educational purposes as permitted by Greenpeace’s copyright and permissions policy.) This activity is designed to follow the slide deck titled “To Visualize or Not?”

First, ask students: what is the rhetorical situation? Who is the author? The audience(s)? What is the author’s exigence?

Then ask: what is it trying to convince people of? What is it trying to teach (beyond the facts listed)? Groups should discuss for 2-3 minutes, followed by a full-class follow-up to make sure everybody agrees on the image’s main rhetorical purposes (i.e., to teach viewers what longline fishing is and get them to reject it).

Then, assign each group one section of the image, A through K. (The slideshow above contains a view of the original image, then a split-up view showing parts A through K, then zoomed images of each individual piece.)

Have each group of students answer the following questions with regard to their own assigned piece of the infographic, and be ready to explain and defend their answers in a full-class discussion, as follows:

  • What would you call this piece of the infographic? A data visualization? A schematic or explanatory image? An attempt at pathos? Or a decoration?
  • What’s this piece of the image for, and how important is it to the whole? Is it too visually prominent for its importance? Not visually prominent enough? Or just about right?
  • Brainstorm at least two other ways to convey the same idea (visually or not).
  • Make a recommendation to the infographic’s designers. What changes, if any, should be made to this piece? Should it be resized, changed into a different type of image, moved, reworded, or deleted altogether?

In a full-class follow-up, groups present their findings on the first three questions and explain and defend their design recommendations.