Decoding WhatsApp Misinformation:
A Visual Guide to Understanding and Battling Online Falsehoods
The project
We worked with academics at Loughborough University on their part of The Everyday Misinformation Project to produce a series of infographics outlining misinformation through WhatsApp messaging, in particular the forward feature. This infographic is a helpful resource in the ongoing battle against the spread of misinformation online, explaining what the tags in WhatsApp mean, the misconceptions around them, and how this an potentially lead to the spread of misinformation. For more information on the project, you can visit their website.
Project objectives:
Design a series of infographics to encourage engagement and communicate the findings of Loughborough Universities’ research.
Our approach
We broke down each concept that required explanation into categories:
Explaining the tags within the context of a message window.
Explaining the attitude towards the source of forwarded messages with a visual representation of them.
Using color and iconography to indicate the desired and undesired effects of the tags.
"Festoon did an excellent job of turning our findings into accessible, engaging and logical infographics. They worked well really well in our public report, press release and social media promotions."
Dr Brendan Lawson - PhD Media and Communication, University of Leeds
To outline the different interpretations that were collected in the research, we used the sliding color scale idea that the academics provided to illustrate the variety of interpretations.
Using the ticks and crosses in combination with the color scale, helped clear up that some interpretations were closer to being the desirable response than others, however only one was completely correct.
We used icons to symbolize each principle, coupled with a labeled central image of a phone user.
This quick visual cue grabs the reader's attention and instantly conveys the infographic's subject.
The challenge
Our challenge was to Break down technical systems and summarise them in a visually engaging way.
We received initial infographic drafts and a detailed report to support them. Before diving into design, we chatted with the academic team over the phone to fully grasp what they wanted to convey with each concept. This discussion helped us understand which ideas might be difficult for a general audience and could use additional context in the graphic. It also helped identify areas where visual aids & explanations could further clarify concepts.
Copywriting
We tweaked the headlines, reworded the text, and inserted contextual explanations. We aimed to establish a hierarchy that allows the graphic's context and subject to be quickly grasped through visuals and additional copy. The goal was to make sure any viewer could get the gist of the graphic’s subject before diving into its details, thereby increasing its impact, and making it more likely for people to pause and read it.
