WEBINAR - Imagery Trumps Text: Why Effective Risk Communication Must Include Imagery

This event is now passed and available on-demand. Please register and you will receive a dedicated link to watch the webinar

Getting your message out to a sceptical or ill-informed public can be difficult and to do this to maximum effect, you need high quality, relevant imagery.

Think it before you frame it is the theme of this presentation. Drawing on recent research, it explains what well-designed imagery looks like and the different forms it can take. Imagery can exist in simple, complex and integrated formats, and include maps, diagrams, graphics, pie charts, tables, graphs and photos. Well-designed imagery always has the end-user in mind and avoids anything that can amplify a message and change its meaning.

Examples of what images to select and what to avoid will be offered, as well as a case study about the power of maps to either enhance or degrade your communication. This case study illustrates how a well-intended message about risks to groundwater quality was adapted by a media outlet and transformed into another message around risk to property, with serious social consequences.

By attending this seminar, you can learn how to avoid some of the classic pitfalls of risk communication as practiced in Australia today.

Our Speaker

Dr Kate Hughes,
Director,
Ecology Data Bank Services

Dr Kate Hughes is specialist in risk communication and social engagement. She has over thirty-five years’ experience as an environmental advocate and researcher with an interest in public health and environmental protection, and the remediation of contaminated environments. Kate worked on two iconic remediation projects, in NSW: the Sydney Olympic site and the Rhodes Peninsula, where she worked as the Independent Advisor to the community during the 6-year consultation process around dioxin remediation. Kate is experienced in developing credible website content around key risk issues. Her strongest suite is translating technical information into a format that that the public can readily understand. Kate’s approach to social engagement is outcome focussed and relies on demonstrating the competence of experts as a way to build confidence in them and in what they do.

She holds a PhD in Politics (1977) and in 2020 completed her second doctoral dissertation about risk communication as practiced by remediation experts.