Visual Risk Communication: Attention, Understanding, and Decision Making in Response to a Changing Tornado Scenario

Forecast and warning messages are routinely shared with members of the public via channels that support both textual and visual content on social media platforms like Twitter. While imagery can be used as evidence to support textual information, little is known about how individuals attend to, understand, and make decisions in response to this visual content. Visual communication scholars have found a connection between attention, measured by time, and order of attention, measuring feature salience, and have suggested its relationship to information processing. However, little research has investigated the dynamic nature of information processing of visual risk communication, particularly communication about fast-moving weather threats such as a tornado.

In this study, we draw upon the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model, which allows scholars to investigate how individuals process information about a perceived risk, taking into account their pre-event experience and information uncertainty. We recruit undergraduate students to participate in a laboratory experiment to examine their risk information processing in response to a tornado threat. Participants are asked to imagine they are experiencing changing weather conditions; they are then introduced to a series of social media messages that depict increasing threat levels over time. Messages include text only as well as text plus visuals (maps, symbols, legends).

Pilot study research using think-aloud interviews in response to the messages viewed in this scenario showed that individual attention is initially drawn to features that are eye-catching (colors, icons, and irregular fonts) and unusual (such as the use of purple color to indicate severity), suggesting that early processing is informed by visually salient objects. However, more systematic message processing, indicated by a more thorough evaluation of message content, showed participant’s understanding was affected by knowledge of the threat and local geography. Importantly, lack of familiarity with tornado threat and absence of landmarks represented in the message led research participants to express uncertainty, anxiety, and a desire to search for additional information.

In this presentation, we build on our pilot study findings and include eye-tracking methods and post-stimulus survey research to assess the relationship between visual attention, participant’s prior tornado experience, image type, and tornado threat. Drawing upon the RISP model, we identify how individuals process risk information; systematically (i.e., attempts to thoroughly understand or evaluate through careful thinking and intensive reasoning) or heuristically (i.e., the activation of well-learned judgments through cues such as source credibility and visual salience) by examining the allocation of visual attention to visual imagery including maps, symbols, legends, and other visual variables such as message placement and content.

Theoretically, attention allocation plays a role in information processing. Individuals only have a limited amount of mental resources that may be allocated to a visual or message. If a person processes information quickly or superficially, the understanding of the contents and the information is more likely to be trivial in comparison to those who systematically process or critically assess the information (i.e., Kahlor, Dunwoody, Griffin, Neuwirth, & Giese, 2003). Specific features of the visual’s structure may impact attention allocation; however, an individual’s prior experience has also been found to impact cognitive processing (i.e., Griffin, Dunwoody, & Neuwirth, 1999). To evaluate prior hazard experience, this study applies Demuth’s (2018) tornado experience scale to assess the effect of hazard experience on visual risk information processing. Prior experience with a weather event has been theoretically connected to how a person perceives, assesses, and responds to a risk. More specifically, the person’s prior experience relates to the judgment of the event and the probability of processing the information about the risk and disaster more critically. By connecting prior experience to visual attention allocation, we will begin to understand how past hazard experience influences heuristic and systematic processing in the amount of time a participant fixates on areas within a visual hazard message.

By examining variation in visual risk imagery, over time, with differing audience types, this project will provide empirical evidence to develop a preliminary model of Visual-Risk Information Seeking and Processing. This study will also give practitioners evidence as to what types and components of messages elicit the most attention, thus supporting the goals of the weather enterprise to more consistently communicate visual information to individuals at risk. Furthermore, by assessing the risk information processing activities relative to varied formats for visualized forecast and warning information, we will begin to develop a baseline of empirical findings for the effective communication of visual risk information.

References

Demuth, J. L. (2018). Explicating experience: Development of a valid scale of past hazard experience for tornadoes. Risk Analysis. doi: 10.1111/risa.12983

Griffin, R. J., Dunwoody, S., & Neuwirth, K. (1999). Proposed model of the relationship of risk information seeking and processing to the development of preventive behaviors. Environmental research, 80(2), S230-S245. doi:10.1006/enrs.1998.3940.

Kahlor, L., Dunwoody, S., Griffin, R. J., Neuwirth, K., & Giese, J. (2003). Studying heuristic-systematic processing of risk information. Risk Analysis, 23(2), 355-368. doi: 10.1111/1539-6924.00314