The important art of visual health communication
During the ongoing public health crisis that is COVID-19, the importance of visual communication has shown itself in the overabundance of visuals circulating on the internet and in the scarce places we visit. Stores have X’s on the ground to indicate where we should stand to social distance. Memes (particularly about Donald Trump) and political comics have continued to depict the bitter perspectives surrounding our collective experiences with the virus. The visual continues to be political, visible through a Republican constituency reticent to embrace mask-wearing before Trump made it “cool” (and, after seeing his first recovery from the novel coronavirus, deeming the virus NBD and mask wearing moot).
Some of these visuals directly address health protocols. The UN called for informative art posters at the beginning of the pandemic. Workplaces that are still in-person have signs on basic hygiene practices.
Visual health communication is a budding field. The CDC — pre-pandemic — recognized the importance of visual communication resources in addressing public health issues; professional healthcare magazines ran stories on visual communication and colleges offered professionalizing programs in it. As the US begins to center life around the continued presence of COVID-19, the informational images we see will take on new meaning and honestly have to make doing preventative care in our personal lives continuously meaningful to us.
This is a good time to recognize that not all visual messages are effective or are made with meaningful choices in mind. In this article, introductions to visual rhetoric and graphic medicine provide the framework that grounds a short showcase of visual health communication efforts during the pandemic so far and what we may want to look for in the future.
Seeing is Persuading: What is Visual Rhetoric?
In the same way we can explore the calls to authority, structures, and emotional appeals of speeches and writing, we can also explore the visuals that surround us, from television shows and video games to print ads and paintings. Visual rhetoric refers to the strategies used to make visuals persuasive. Strategies that make visuals persuasive include the use of color, artistic style, physical arrangement, and visual references.
Particularly because of references, visual rhetorical analysis involves sifting through visual euphemisms and coded meanings. In addition, because of the ubiquitous presence of visuals in our world (especially on the internet), recognizing that no image is neutral or meaningless is important for building awareness of just how much information we are bombarded with, especially now during this crisis. The persistent euphemisms surrounding disability and COVID-19 (“only the elderly and the disabled have to take this coronavirus seriously,” remember?) are played into by anti-masker efforts like face mask exemption passes. The mask is meaningful at this point, displaying access to resources and a declaration of solidarity with one’s local and the medical communities as well as trust in the popular imagination.
The major persuasive device during COVID-19 is the body. While we have been spared images of death in the popular imagination, we are watching popular discourse in the making. From memes that refer to shows and social movements we are watching while inside our affinity spaces to the various masks and unmaskings we see when we have to go outside (potentially risking exposure either way), politics and popular culture are playing out in front of our eyes and visibly on our bodies. Particularly as we are told to stay distant, our ability to connect emotionally is imperative to transferring public health consciousness.
That’s Sick: Medical Rhetoric and Graphic Medicine
Medical rhetoric regards the creation and delivery of health messages. Medical rhetoric can range from analyzing patient-provider interactions to assessing public health communication and advocacy, including ads and health campaigns.
One genre that employs — and problematizes — medical rhetoric is graphic medicine. Ian Williams, the founder of the Graphic Medicine blog and resource site claims he chose the phrase to make space for writing about “the role that comics can play in the study and delivery of healthcare.”
Unlike traditional patient-provider communication, graphic medicine is far more related to the humanities than the social sciences. Williams recognizes that
[s]tories of illness that are written down or drawn by skilled, articulate authors, published by a commercial company and bought by enough people to warrant reprinting, are a highly selected marginal subgroup of the total that are “out there,” passed on by word of mouth, unwritten. Many of these “other” stories will be incoherent, too painful to relate, too distressing to hear, and so utterly bleak, miserable or banal that no commercial press is ever likely to publish them.
As medical rhetoric, graphic medicine represents the health messages patients can’t structure and deliver for their providers; as visual rhetoric, graphic medicine is the persuasive presentation of pain, current — or forthcoming.
As a culture, the US is already adapting to life with COVID-19. Work and school have resumed to almost the same capacity as before, even as jobs disappear and the will to keep doing the same old dwindles. This virus will absolutely change what “healthy” and “unhealthy” means for those who contract it; it will also take an inexhaustible toll on everyone. It will impact our mental health, our relationship with our bodies, particularly our fears. It will wear us out. That pain is evident so far, but it will not stop here (not without mass intervention and at least another quarantine). The way we make meaning out of a disease conscious, if not a medically conscious, world and the pain it brings is important in adapting visual health communication as we head to an uncertain future.
The Art of COVID-19 Health Communication
The visual health messages during this pandemic have come in many forms. I have chosen to focus on static images — panels separated from their comics, posters, and informationals — although focusing on informative images in the physical world or moving images like TikToks would be just as valid as objects of inquiry.
These static images incorporate many of the coded images that now pervade visual culture. Take this panel from Toby Morris’ “The Side Eye: Viruses vs Everyone” from late March 2020:
The various visuals of this image engage in the medical rhetoric of Morris’ overall webcomic. The spiky balls of COVID-19’s virus form, the model of transmission, the virus-splotched hands, and the haggard appearance of the character (unshaven, wide eyes, under-eye bags) represent not only what we see on the daily but in one panel amplify how exhausting these constant images has become. Watchdogging the virus is a proven need in society, and it is exhausting us.
We are also seeing an increase in callouts to social duty through public health messaging. Alongside Trump declaring a “war” against COVID-19, visual health communication efforts have adopted using visual references to wartime America, appealing to national pride and epic heroism with the visual markers of this new “war.”
Some of the most persuasive visuals of the crisis lean less into the artistry of comics but instead appeal to the fundamentals of slogans and the vivid imagination. Some of the terms that have come out of the crisis, such as “social distancing,” are conceptual and don’t provide as specific a guideline as “stay at home” and “shop once a week,” which are both visual examples.
This example is also meta, using a clear red-negative and green-positive graphic to provide a clear message. The imagined body has direction.
Looking For Relief
As the crisis continues, the ways chosen to present messages will be imperative to effective health communication. Visual rhetoric has strategies that can amplify medical rhetoric that need to be kept in mind as long as visuals are the main way COVID-19 information is being presented to the public.
The visibility and evocative presentation of anti-maskers, however, challenges the choices made in visual health communication efforts to appear neutral and national. The idea of national duty and public safety do not concern those who position themselves against the public ethos. At what point does our pain compel them? At what point does their performance of free bodies break us?
These counter-intuitive counter-visuals are why visual health communication is important. Visual health communicators are working among two rhetorics that emphasize perspective and dialogue between parties that struggle with articulation and reluctance. The need to encourage a reluctant party to see beyond themselves and trust in narratives of pain if not narratives of health makes this art quite important to our survival through this pandemic, in the hopes that one day we can move towards a future beyond the void of fear.
This article was originally published on Rhetoric Write Now on April 10, 2020. Substantial revisions have been made.
