How Scary! An analysis of visual communication concerning genetically modified organisms in Italy
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Several studies evidence the role of media in influencing public perception towards
genetically modified organisms, while visual communication has been scarcely
investigated. This paper aims at evaluating the exposure of Italian population to scary
GMO-related images. A set of 517 images collected through Google are classified
considering fearful attributes and an index that accounts for the scary impact (SI) of
these images is built. Then through an ordered logistic regression we estimate the
relationship between the SIIndex and a set of variables that describes the context in
which images appear. Results reveal that the first (and most viewed) Google result
images contain the most frightful contents. In addition, agri-food sector in Italy is
strongly oriented in offering a negative representation of genetically modified
organisms. Exposure to scary images could be a factor that affects the negative
perception of GMOs in Italy.