Infographics in Social Media

With the advent of social media, using visual methods of communication has become increasingly important. Learn how to develop these visual tools will enhance the ability to share stablished knowledge to learners, patients and the general public.

Visuals helps us interpret complex information more quickly than text alone and decrease the cognitive load, or “mental energy,” required to interpret information. Images allow our brains to store information differently, as a visual image but also as a word in our language center, thus making it easier to remember and retrieve information in the future. However, it is important to include only relevant information to avoid extraneous load, and carefully organizing the visual materials to facilitates comprehension, thus optimizing germane load.

Medical educators can use infographics to provide a succinct overview of a topic, make easy to learners to retain the information.

Clinicians use of infographics to patient education has been shown to improve health knowledge and outcomes.

Researchers can increase the impact of their studies, as an alternative metric, how widely an article is disseminated over social media have been recognized as a method to measure visibility. Mos studies focus on X (previous Twitter), and the use of images to post increase the alternative metrics as number of people who view, interact by “liking”, or share the post “retweet”. This increases the number of people who click on the article link, especially if post it on an account with large number of followers, although this not always translate to increase the full article view.

Tips to make an infographic

Outline the content

The first step is defining the primary goal, the main message, and the target audience.

·         The primary goal refers to why create the infographic. Is a summary, an explanation of an abstract, a comparation and contrasting of 2 entities, an outlining of a process, a description of changes over time, a contextualization of a statistic?

·         Summarize the key message in a single sentence. What is the one “take home” point someone should understand after looking at it?

·         Consider the target audience will change the type and the deep of the content. For those without scientific background CDC provide helpful guidelines, with a 24 questionnaire which determinates if infographic need to be revised to enhance understanding.

Sketch the layout

Organized layout is key. The structure should match the main goal and the primary content should be separated by unfilled consistent space “white space” to avoid clutter. Finally,  viewers tend to scan content as how they read narrative prose, and is important to establish visual hierarchy, that could be guided by elements as arrows, numbers, or lines. Should use at least 3 colors one dark, 1 light, and 1 emphasis color.

After sketching the layout consider how to present the content visually, prioritize images over  words, but every image should have a propose, not just decorative. Charts if are used should be more simples than in the article, finally check the copyright license before using an image.(1)

 

Reference

1.           Spicer JO, Coleman CG. Creating Effective Infographics and Visual Abstracts to Disseminate Research and Facilitate Medical Education on Social Media. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 2022 May 15;74:E14–22.