Abstract

This article introduces an innovative method to describe data with sounds in political science. The method, known in ecology, physics, and musicology as “sonification,” operates by linking sound signals to quantifiable observations. We us it to compose a choir of legitimacy crises in global governance from 1994 to 2014, and to negotiate a familiar divide in research on how legitimacy should be measured. Scholars predominantly prefer one of two approaches to measure legitimacy quantitatively, either looking at political trust or public contestation of political institutions. We illustrate the usefulness of sonification to subsume both positions in this divide. More generally, we argue that sonification can enhance public communication of scientific results and extract meanings from observations that go unnoticed in visual and verbal representations, in particular with relevance to describing time series data on anything from the spread of pandemics to violent conflicts and economic inequalities.

Published in

New Political Science
2020, Volume: 42, number: 3, pages: 272-288

SLU Authors

• Angeler, David

  • Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels


UKÄ Subject classification

Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2020.1809760

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/107385