A new study at Ohio State University (OSU) has shown the importance of using matching imagery to reinforce social media safety messages. After viewing safety messages on social media posts, parents of young children were better able to recall important points such as how to put a baby safely to sleep when the posts’ images aligned with the message being delivered, the researchers found.
An example would be pictures of children wearing safety helmets in messages advising parents to ensure their children wear safety helmets when they ride bicycles. Liz Klein, associate professor of public health at OSU, said: “Many times, scientists and safety experts aren’t involved in decisions about social media for health agencies and other organizations, and we end up seeing images that have nothing to do with the safety message or, worse, images that contradict the guidance.”
“In this study, we were trying to understand how much those mismatches matter — do people understand the message even if the picture isn’t right? Does the picture really matter?” Klein said.
The researchers sought these answers by using eye-tracking technology to assess how 150 parents reacted to three posts with aligned messages and three with messages that were not aligned with the images. Their eyes lingered longer on the aligned posts – (5.3 seconds) than they did on the misaligned posts (3.3 seconds). Klein said that she understood that those managing social media accounts might be tempted to use attention-grabbing imagery over message-aligned imagery, but the research showed that alignment was more important. Additionally, after adjusting for health literacy and social media use, health safety knowledge recall was improved by 2.8% for each additional second spent in viewing the social media post.Klein said that there implications beyond safety messaging for children aimed at adults, to wider health and safety communication. “We need to pay more attention to how we communicate with the people we’re trying to influence with health and safety guidance. All of us can do a better job of thinking about how we use our social media accounts to contribute to better public health,” she said.
Source: Ohio State University
