The COVID-19 crisis is not only a pandemic, but also an infodemic. In the editorial for this Special Issue about health campaigns and COVID-19, we offer an overview of the context as well as of the three articles in the issue. This opening editorial focuses on the wider context within which the various campaigns took place. While the essays focus on the use of graphics and visual advertisements, we explore meme culture with special emphasis on character assassination, where memes are used to target accountability claims and engender distrust towards powerholders. Hence this presents a backdrop to the cultural and visual environment into which these responses to the global spread of COVID-19 entered.
{"title":"Health campaigns in an infodemic","authors":"Bengt Johansson","doi":"10.1386/jvpc_00014_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00014_2","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 crisis is not only a pandemic, but also an infodemic. In the editorial for this Special Issue about health campaigns and COVID-19, we offer an overview of the context as well as of the three articles in the issue. This opening editorial focuses on the wider context within which the various campaigns took place. While the essays focus on the use of graphics and visual advertisements, we explore meme culture with special emphasis on character assassination, where memes are used to target accountability claims and engender distrust towards powerholders. Hence this presents a backdrop to the cultural and visual environment into which these responses to the global spread of COVID-19 entered.","PeriodicalId":93592,"journal":{"name":"Journal of visual political communication","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76792561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The COVID-19 pandemic has called for effective health communication strategies to better protect the public’s well-being, particularly over social media. Among various strategies, health-related comics, referred to as ‘graphic medicine’, were circulated on social media to communicate public health information and to share individuals’ struggles with mental health. Despite a growing body of research in the field of graphic medicine, studies on public responses to graphic medicine are rare, leaving a gap in understanding the feasibility of these comics for effective health communication over social media. To address this gap, this study focused on Instagram audience responses to graphic medicine posts related to the COVID-19 pandemic that were circulated on the platform. It used qualitative content analysis to study 334 comments on eleven comics related to mental health and 159 comments on ten comics related to vaccination. Findings evidence the feasibility of graphic medicine as a tool for health communication relating to showing empathy, contributing personal experiences and knowledge and understanding and elaborating on health-related knowledge, what we refer to as ‘health literacy’. Empirical implications of health communication through graphic medicine are discussed alongside the similarities and differences found in the comments relating to these two distinct COVID-19 issues.
{"title":"Feasibility of comics in health communication: Public responses to graphic medicine on Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Xin Zhao, A. Feigenbaum, Shannon McDavitt","doi":"10.1386/jvpc_00015_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00015_1","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic has called for effective health communication strategies to better protect the public’s well-being, particularly over social media. Among various strategies, health-related comics, referred to as ‘graphic medicine’, were circulated on social media to communicate public health information and to share individuals’ struggles with mental health. Despite a growing body of research in the field of graphic medicine, studies on public responses to graphic medicine are rare, leaving a gap in understanding the feasibility of these comics for effective health communication over social media. To address this gap, this study focused on Instagram audience responses to graphic medicine posts related to the COVID-19 pandemic that were circulated on the platform. It used qualitative content analysis to study 334 comments on eleven comics related to mental health and 159 comments on ten comics related to vaccination. Findings evidence the feasibility of graphic medicine as a tool for health communication relating to showing empathy, contributing personal experiences and knowledge and understanding and elaborating on health-related knowledge, what we refer to as ‘health literacy’. Empirical implications of health communication through graphic medicine are discussed alongside the similarities and differences found in the comments relating to these two distinct COVID-19 issues.","PeriodicalId":93592,"journal":{"name":"Journal of visual political communication","volume":"350 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75122037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
At the core of the various messages that have been sent out about the Coronavirus is how to deal with an invisible threat. Revealing the invisible is however an ancient issue, one that goes back thousands of years and reoccurs throughout human history. This article is an exploration of the complex interrelationship between several long-standing visual tropes that over historical time have emerged from various cultures in response to a need to communicate invisible forces. Beginning with reflections on the poster for the International Hygiene Exhibition of 1911 held in Dresden, linking in images of an Egyptian sun god, via extramission theory and thoughts about the first drawings done through a handheld, lens-focused microscope by Robert Hooke, a series of links and interconnections are made that explore how the invisible has been represented and how the invisible virus can be read as a type of ‘dark star’ or anti-sun. Christian traditions of the use of unnatural colour to signify both invisible power and demonic possession and the way the Coronavirus has itself been depicted are compared to historical visual tropes such as the aureola and the mandorla as used in the Greek Orthodox Church to depict sacred moments that transcend time and space. From Buddhist and Christian uses of halos via images of sea-mines, a complex series of interconnections are revealed that are now being tapped into by Government-sanctioned information leaflets relating to the Coronavirus outbreak.
{"title":"Revealing the invisible: The virus is looking at you","authors":"Garry Barker","doi":"10.1386/jvpc_00009_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00009_1","url":null,"abstract":"At the core of the various messages that have been sent out about the Coronavirus is how to deal with an invisible threat. Revealing the invisible is however an ancient issue, one that goes back thousands of years and reoccurs throughout human history. This article is an exploration\u0000 of the complex interrelationship between several long-standing visual tropes that over historical time have emerged from various cultures in response to a need to communicate invisible forces. Beginning with reflections on the poster for the International Hygiene Exhibition of 1911\u0000 held in Dresden, linking in images of an Egyptian sun god, via extramission theory and thoughts about the first drawings done through a handheld, lens-focused microscope by Robert Hooke, a series of links and interconnections are made that explore how the invisible has been represented and\u0000 how the invisible virus can be read as a type of ‘dark star’ or anti-sun. Christian traditions of the use of unnatural colour to signify both invisible power and demonic possession and the way the Coronavirus has itself been depicted are compared to historical visual tropes such\u0000 as the aureola and the mandorla as used in the Greek Orthodox Church to depict sacred moments that transcend time and space. From Buddhist and Christian uses of halos via images of sea-mines, a complex series of interconnections are revealed that are now being tapped into by Government-sanctioned\u0000 information leaflets relating to the Coronavirus outbreak.","PeriodicalId":93592,"journal":{"name":"Journal of visual political communication","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75730504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Paper. Pen. Pandemic: Viral Cartoons from around the Globe, Benevento Publishing (ed.) (2020)\u0000Metaphors of Coronavirus: Invisible Enemy or Zombie Apocalypse?, Jonathan Charteris-Black (2021)","authors":"O. Vigsø","doi":"10.1386/jvpc_00019_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00019_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Paper. Pen. Pandemic: Viral Cartoons from around the Globe, Benevento Publishing (ed.) (2020)\u0000 Elsbethen: Benevento Publishing, 298 pp.,\u0000 ISBN 978-3-89955-012-2, h/bk, €28\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 Metaphors of Coronavirus: Invisible Enemy or Zombie Apocalypse?, Jonathan Charteris-Black (2021)\u0000 Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 301 pp.,\u0000 ISBN 978-3-03085-105-7, p/bk, €21.39","PeriodicalId":93592,"journal":{"name":"Journal of visual political communication","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76977801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}