Communication designers in activist settings make thousands of context-specific design decisions to advocate their causes. While they can fall back on previous successful campaigns for guidance, there is no handbook on designing for social change. Should there be a special category for designing for activism, or is activism simply one of thousands of contingent uses to which design can be put?

M own inventory of design used for activism suggests that arguments for social change typically make their case from facts. While acquiring facts may not be sufficient to move people to change, they seem to be a first necessary step. Accordingly, I have focused my thesis essay on empirical findings about the principles by which people best acquire facts from multimedia artifacts. I survey these findings and apply them to an online visualization tool designed for activism. My case study serves two purposes. First, it allows me to evaluate the principles of fact-based learning offered in the literature. Second, it allows me to understand the gap between acquiring facts and aligning with causes suggested by those facts.