For means of communication, persuasion is a natural and critical part of conveying a message. Data visualizations, being means of communication themselves, are used as rhetorical instruments, but how they persuade has yet to be fully understood. Based on George Campbell’s rhetorical theory, this paper presents the results of an empirical study testing the effectiveness of appeals to emotion through proximity techniques— the contextual framing of a visualization. The findings indicate that people feel greater interest towards a topic when the visualized data are more relevant to them, and that data representing events closer in time are more affecting.

中文翻译：

---

感觉数字

对于沟通方式，说服是传达信息的一个自然而关键的部分。数据可视化本身就是沟通手段，被用作修辞工具，但它们如何说服尚未完全理解。本文基于 George Campbell 的修辞理论，展示了一项实证研究的结果，该研究测试了通过邻近技术（可视化的上下文框架）诉诸情感的有效性。研究结果表明，当可视化数据与他们更相关时，人们会对某个主题产生更大的兴趣，并且代表事件时间越近的数据越具有影响力。