The next speaker in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Elisabeth Schmidbauer, whose interest is especially in the role of visual communication in recruiting data donations. This was tested by using eye tracking and a post-exposure walkthrough of the eye-tracking data, in an experimental setting.
Key theoretical backgrounds here include social presence, tested by including a picture of the researcher in recruitment materials; the impact of AI-generated images in the communication of studies, where (poorly designed) AI content might put off potential participants; and the question of how much potential participants engage with data security information provided by studies, or react to their eye-tracking patterns.
Using eye tracking to examine how people engage with calls for participation that included images with and without a picture of the researcher, using real photos as well as AI-generated images (with a source disclaimer), the study found no clear impacts of those various manipulations: whether or not a researcher is pictured in person, and whether or not that picture is a photo or AI-generated, made no significant difference. Longer visual attention to the recruitment text itself showed greater recall of the data security information, however, which is as expected.
The presence of real persons in the recruitment information does generate higher trust in the study, though; and this in turn positively impacts on a willingness to donate data to a study. Notably, too, trust is also derived from the institution to whom the study is attributed; this was not systematically tested in this study, but could be explored in future work. Also, in addition to the images, an AI-sounding recruitment text also seems to affect participants’ willingness engage with the study.
