Companies are under growing pressure to prioritise sustainability, with corporate operations being shaped by developments in regulatory reporting, supply chain focus and greenwashing claims. As a result, many are growing sceptical of corporate data. How can data visualisation combat this?

As misinformation swirls across social platforms and scepticism plagues the climate commitments of big corporations, data is not only the most important commodity, but one of the least trusted. For issues such as climate change, existing scepticism towards those considered corporate and media ‘elites’, compounded by disinformation, is one of the reasons why trust in government, business and news institutions to act on climate is dangerously low.

A recent study from global satellite operator Inmarsat found that 76 per cent of business leaders had doubts about their peers’ ESG reporting. An even larger number felt their competitors were focusing on perception above tangible sustainability practices. And yet, companies are producing more datapoints than ever, tracking progress on commitments towards issues such as sustainability, ESG and diversity.

The Financial Reporting Council’s latest Annual Review of Corporate Reporting, including 263 FTSE 350 companies,  found that ‘impairment and judgements and estimates’ continue to be significant areas of concern, with 25 companies being required to reinstate their results. This year, a recent study showed that 15 per cent of Americans don’t believe that climate change is real.

Against this backdrop, Canva’s dataweek conference, part of London’s broader Data Week event in July, illustrated how the industry of data visualisation is expanding. “Data without content has no meaning,” session panellist Hazal Muhtar, director of global product analysis at Wise, commented.

David Crowther is founder of Chartr, a website grounding news in data analysis. He believes that audiences increasingly demand "the evidence behind your opinion or the news you're reporting on". Speaking to Communicate, he said: "A company boasting that they were net zero last year is a fact that might be hard to believe in isolation. But, if there’s a real methodology, and a ten year track record plotted on a chart that shows a gradual improvement and lots of years when they weren’t net zero, that statistic suddenly carries so much more weight.

"That one chart immediately implies context — that the company has been trying to get to net zero and that there’s been some kind of constant measurement of the goal."