Degree
BS (Social Sciences & Liberal Arts)
Faculty / School
School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS)
Department
Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts
Date of Award
Spring 2023
Date of Submission
2023-06-30
Advisor
Soha Macktoom, Associate Director, Karachi Urban Lab
Project Type
SSLA Culminating Experience
Access Type
Restricted Access
Keywords
Visual communication, Climate change, Psychological impacts, Human-centric images, Social media
Abstract
Climate change is a long-lasting global threat that has embarked on to put stress on almost every sector world-wide. However, due to their geographic location and proximity to the equator, South Asian countries are at the highest risk (Iqbal et al., 2022). Pakistan, in particular, is currently ranked 5th in terms of vulnerability to climate change, even though it is one of the least contributing nations to emissions of global greenhouse gases (Habib et al., 2022). The destruction of crop fields, extreme heatwaves and increased flooding are all signals of Pakistan’s high vulnerability to the climate crisis. Despite this, there is a lack of focus on effectively communicating climate change to the masses. Keeping this in mind, this research is a psychological analysis of how visually communicating the impacts of climate change is more effective than textual and scientific communication. This research will further explore this connection using the Construal Level Theory (CLT) of psychological distance, the Color Theory and the Gestalt Theory. By gathering data through a mixed methodology approach, the three main areas of focus are (1) how visually communicating the impacts of climate change through pictorial depictions is a more effective way of making the issue more visible, (2) how visually communicating the impacts of climate change through human-centric depictions on social media platforms is more effective in raising awareness as compared to standard forms of climate communication, and (3) how pictorial depictions circulated on social media platforms have a psychological effect on users.
Pages
V, 99
Recommended Citation
Afzal, A. (2023). Visualizing Climate Change in Pakistan: A psychological analysis of how visual communication is more effective than textual communication (Unpublished undergraduate project). Institute of Business Administration, Pakistan. Retrieved from https://ir.iba.edu.pk/sslace/181
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