About the project
Communicating complex health information to the public has a variety of challenges due to the range of needs and abilities within the population. Health communication must engage the target audience to promote positive health outcomes through interacting with the material. Comics are an engaging, accessible medium in which complex health information can be communicated to all ages and literacy levels through words, images, and storytelling.
This interdisciplinary project explored the understanding of, engagement with, and attitudes towards health messages in comics across three main themes.
Theme 1
The first theme was comic design - how readers engage with public health comics and how comic design choices shape engagement, knowledge transfer and attitude change.
Theme 2
The second theme of the project was the target audience - how varying the comic design impacts readers of different backgrounds.
Theme 3
The third theme covered the layout and medium of delivery - how engagement, knowledge transfer and attitude change depend on how the information is presented (comic vs. information leaflet). The findings of this project will help advance comic theory and contribute to multi-modal perception and memory.
Collaborators and sponsors
University of Aberdeen
University of Dundee
Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic
MS Trust
Chip Collective
Scottish Graduate School of Social Science
UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council
UKRI Economic and Social Research Council
