Lecture at MIL on How to Communicate Effective Sustainability Campaigns by Prof. Lucy Atkinson

10 Jul 2017

On July 13, Lucy Atkinson, Prof. at UT Austin, will present a lecture, at U. Porto Media Innovation Labs, entitled "Picture This: Using Infographics, Visuals and Text to Communicate Effective Sustainability Campaigns". 

Speaker: Prof. Lucy Atkinson (UT Austin)
Date: July 13, 2017, 14h30
Venue: Anfiteatro 1, U. Porto Media Innovation Labs (MIL)
Praça Coronel Pacheco 15,
4050-453, Porto
Entrance: Participation is free but registration is needed. If you plan on attending the lecture, please visit https://mil.up.pt/palestras/lucy-atkinson/

MIL (U. Porto Media Innovation Labs) is the Center of Competences of the University of Porto for the media area, whose mission is to further develop the capacity of the university in the field of media, teaching, research and innovation, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration between existing university structures and articulation with external partners.

ABOUT THE LECTURE

Successfully communicating with audiences about issues of sustainability requires, in part, creating effective messages. As countless public opinion and consumer polls demonstrate, even those individuals who claim to hold environmental values and favor living more sustainably often fail to follow through on these attitudes. Bridging this attitude-behavior gap, or green gap, requires effective communication campaigns. Even the most inspiring advances in sustainable technology or engineering would be for naught without a compelling and effective pitch to the relevant audiences of interest. In this presentation, Atkinson will discuss some of her research that has examined mass media messages to understand which factors make for more effective messaging focusing in particular on research exploring the role of visual elements in pro-environmental messages.

ABOUT LUCY ATKINSON

Lucy Atkinson is an associate professor in the Stan Richards School of Advertising & PR in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research looks at the connections between mass media, civic engagement and consumer culture, with a focus on environmental and political communication’s role in fostering forms of sustainable citizenship. She focuses on the ways message components (like visual elements, argument frames, source factors) in environmental communication campaigns interact with other message components to influence environmental attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Atkinson’s work has appeared in top-ranked flagship outlets, like the Journal of Advertising and the International Journal of Communication, and in highly regarded specialty publications, like Environmental Communication and Science Communication. Before pursuing her doctorate, Atkinson worked for several years as a newspaper reporter in New York and as a public relations consultant in Madison, WI.