• Home
  • Research
    • Identities in Action
    • Doing Good
    • Publications
  • People
  • Resources
    • For Change Agents
    • For Students
    • COVID19
    • PEPSS
    • Leapfrog
    • Forward
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Videos
  • Privacy Policy
  Social Change Lab
  • Home
  • Research
    • Identities in Action
    • Doing Good
    • Publications
  • People
  • Resources
    • For Change Agents
    • For Students
    • COVID19
    • PEPSS
    • Leapfrog
    • Forward
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Videos
  • Privacy Policy

Not all pictures are worth 1,000 words: 3 tips for choosing an engaging image

27/3/2017

2 Comments

 
When was the last time you changed your mind about something? What brought an important issue to your attention? Chances are it was something you saw, rather than something you read.
 
The right image can be a powerful way capture and engage people with an important issue.

​
For many of us, the haunting and graphic images of toddler Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish shore focused our attention on the Syrian refugee crisis.
Syrian refugee child drowns
Photographs of 3-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi made global headlines in 2015 after he drowned trying to reach safety in Europe / Image: Plenz

​Yet not all images are created equal. Some are better than others. Some may even hurt your cause.

For example, although they grab our attention, familiar and iconic images used in communications about climate change (i.e., smokestacks, polar bears) fail to make us feel like we can do anything about climate change.

So which images are best? 
 
What properties of images increase the likelihood that the reader will engage with your overall message? My research on images used in communications about sustainable urban stormwater management found that images are more likely to engage when they:

1.  Evoke an emotional connection    

Images are highly emotive and emotions help shape attitudes. Given that images are the first thing people see on a webpage or news article, they can create a connection with your message before a single word has even been read.

Critically, 
different emotions can give rise to different motivations. For example, to approach or to avoid. For this reason it is important to select images that evoke emotions what psychologists call an ‘approach motivation’. That is, emotions that encourage the reader to pay attention to your message. Positive emotions, like happiness and pride, are known to have an approach motivation. Some negative emotions, like sadness and anger, can also motivate people to engage with your message. However, you should try to avoid images that elicit emotions with strong avoidance motivations, like disgust and fear. Such emotions may encourage the reader to simply switch off and not pay attention to your message.
​
Picture
Turtle
Images of animals elicit positive emotions. People are more likely to engage / Image: Wikimedia Commons
Picture
Rubbish
Images of rubbish and pollution elicit disgust. People may switch off / Image: Wikimedia Commons

​2.  Relevant to the topic 
 

When presenters use images in presentations that are congruent with what they saying, people are more likely to remember the message. This is because images that are not immediately understood as relevant to the topic reduce the ease with which the viewer can process your message. That is, irrelevant images increase the mental effort needed to process the overall message and can become a distraction.
 
To avoid using irrelevant images, don’t make assumptions about what your target audience does and doesn’t understand about the issue you are communicating. For example, a cleaner ocean is a major goal of improved urban stormwater management initiatives, so images of ocean environments are often used in communications new stormwater initiatives. Unfortunately, our recent image study found that most people did not think that pictures of oceanic environments were relevant to the topic of stormwater management.

3.  Personally relevant
 
 
If the viewer sees something in an image that is personally relevant to them, they are more likely to engage with the message content. 
​
Picture
Floods
Climate change impacts from extreme weather events, like flooding, are personally relevant to Australians / Image: Wikimedia Commons
Picture
Melting Ice Caps
Climate change impacts on melting ice caps, are not as personally relevant to Australians / Image: Wikimedia Commons

To increase the personal relevance of your message, choose images of locations that are highly familiar to your viewer (the more local, the better) or choose photographs of people that your target audience are more likely to identify with. For example, using images of melting ice caps to communicate about climate change suggests that the impacts are happening somewhere else to someone else. Conversely, images of extreme weather events (for example, in Australia, flooding is a major concern), highlight a more localised, and personally relevant, impact of climate change.
​

​- Tracy Schultz
2 Comments
Michelle Hill
29/3/2017 02:33:16 pm

Very interesting and insightful. So true that images that evoke a connection and relevance to the person viewing them will have a much more lasting impact on their way of being than if they see it as a turn off or irrelevant. Great article Tracy.

Reply
Shanelle
1/4/2017 05:39:56 pm

Great article. I found the information really useful. As I work with children I related to the information about using imagery that is local as when kids are taught about the environment I think a lot of the imagery used is of ecosystems often from far away i.e about deforestation of Rainforests to Adelaide kids and they think the issues are all really far away and there are no problems here....

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed


    Authors

    All researchers in the Social Change Lab contribute to the "Do Good" blog. Click the author's name at the bottom of any post to learn more about their research or get in touch.

    Categories

    All
    Activism
    Communication
    Community Action
    Discrimination
    Education
    Environment
    Gender
    Helping
    Identities
    Legend
    Norms
    Politics
    Race
    Relationships
    Research
    Romance
    Trajectories Of Radicalisation And De Radicalisation
    Trajectories Of Radicalisation And De-radicalisation

    Archive

    December 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017

Location

Social Change Lab
School of Psychology
McElwain Building
​The University of Queensland
St Lucia, QLD 4072
Australia

    Join our mailing list

Subscribe

Picture
Follow us on Twitter!
Check out our Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2017
  • Home
  • Research
    • Identities in Action
    • Doing Good
    • Publications
  • People
  • Resources
    • For Change Agents
    • For Students
    • COVID19
    • PEPSS
    • Leapfrog
    • Forward
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Videos
  • Privacy Policy