“w88 online casino betting change is one of the greatest threats facing us in this century,” Dr. Ran Duan said. “We know that although the media talk about w88 online casino betting change a lot, compared to many other countries, Americans' concern is still relatively low.”
Duan is a visiting assistant professor of environmental w88 online casino betting at the Reynolds School of Journalism. Her work focuses on the use of animation in environmental news, visual w88 online casino betting of natural disasters, risk perception and the implications of these areas for public policy and journalism practice. For Duan, climate change is one of the most pressing topics in journalism and one of her research concentrations.
“I wanted to understand how visuals can affect people to either encourage or discourage pro-w88 online casino betting behaviors,” she said. “Currently, we know that people consider w88 online casino betting change as a distant and abstract issue. So, I wanted to understand how we can use visuals to make it more real, local, urgent and relevant.”
Dr. Duan received her top faculty paper award during the May 2019 International w88 online casino betting Association conference.
In May 2019, Duan was awarded a top faculty paper in environmental w88 online casino betting at the International w88 online casino betting Association Conference (ICA). Her paper, which was co-authored by Bruno Takahashi and Adam Zwickle from Michigan State University, focused on how people differentially react to concrete and abstract images of climate change.
“Visuals are widely used in w88 online casino betting change journalism but are a relatively undeveloped field. I contributed to this field by quantifying visuals’ level of abstraction,” she said. “I think this subject is important because we want to understand how we can better communicate about w88 online casino betting change and engage the public.”
Duan began her research on visual w88 online casino betting and climate change during her Ph.D. at Michigan State University. In the first phase of the project, she identified more than 600 images of w88 online casino betting change, classifying them as either concrete or abstract.
According to Duan, abstract images are harder to understand and include data tables, black and white images, satellite images and infographics. Concrete images are the opposite.
“Concrete images, they are colorful and they have ordinary people and disasters…They are very vivid, straight forward and easy to understand,” she said.
Concrete images (like this one) include people and real disasters. "Flooding in Annapolis" by Matt Rath / Chesapeake Bay Program is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
The second phase of her research looked at how abstract and concrete visual representations of w88 online casino betting change affected the public’s perceived distance to w88 online casino betting change. The third phase, the subject of Duan’s ICA top faculty paper, addressed people’s attitudinal and behavioral reactions to concrete and abstract images of w88 online casino betting change.
“I found that the concrete and abstract images did not directly influence people, but they interacted with other factors to change people’s feelings [about w88 online casino betting change],” she said. “Concrete images can backlash for certain groups of people.”
Factors including political beliefs, level of self-efficacy (belief of one’s ability to mitigate w88 online casino betting change) and level of environmentally friendly values affected whether abstract or concrete images were more effective at changing people’s feelings about the subject. According to her research, people with liberal values, higher self-efficacy and higher environmentally friendly values responded better to concrete images and those with conservative values, lower self-efficacy and lower environmentally friendly values responded better to abstract images.
Duan said she plans to use these findings in the courses she teaches in visual w88 online casino betting and data journalism at the Reynolds School.
“I want to do some exercises in the classroom to see how students feel about these different forms of visuals and how the concrete and abstract features can be useful for journalism thinking,” she said. “I want to also encourage students to think about the big picture and how we move on with the tough issues like w88 online casino betting change, particularly, how to use different emerging visual forms in the coverage in the future.”
Visit Reynolds w88 mobile of Journalism and her w88 online casino betting webpage to learn more about her work.
