AHRC-funded Project

Our pandemic lives are deeply entwined with visual, web-based public health messages, from instructional hand-washing pictograms to infographics about physical activity during lockdowns. Alongside these official public health communications, people are creating thousands of web-based comics conveying public health messages. Our team is working to collect and code a sample of these comics in order to evaluate the impacts and potentials of producing and circulating time-sensitive public health messages via the comics medium across social media platforms. This research will yield insight into how public health messages are shared and interpreted on social media, as well as how behavioural change is championed and resisted.