An approach to the taxonomy of data visualization

Introduction: In the new visual media there is a tendency to use enormous data sets to build documents that are useful in various ways. To this end, graphic representations of data sets are created to highlight the most immediate, meaningful and educational contents and make the information more easy to understand for readers. Method: This article aims to bring some order to the plurisemia and synonymy of the terms that are often used in the production of graphic representations and to develop a prototypical analysis of various types of documents presented in the so-called data visualisations. Results and conclusions: The taxonomic classification is a contribution to visual communication studies and highlights the interest of the media on using data visualisations that are easy-to-interpret, rapid-to-produce and low-cost (when their technological programming is reused for other types of content).