Abstract
In light of the increased time spent by people on watching the news via social media, what might be the communication impacts if science education could help in producing science news media for the public? The present study compared the audience levels of awareness, enjoyment, interest, opinion formation, and understanding (AEIOU) toward science experimentally between two groups: the general science communication (GSC) group (i.e., participants with general daily science news digestion) and the science edu-communication (SEC) group (i.e., participants who watched science news videos produced jointly by science educators, scientists, and news media production teams). As a result, those in the SEC group showed significantly higher levels of “interest”, formed more scientific “opinions”, and had better “understanding” than the GSC participants. In terms of creating an “additional opportunity” to develop science news media sustainably for the public, the present study confirms more salient outcomes when science educators are involved in the production of science news media.
Highlights
Humans are spending increasing amounts of time consuming media on the Internet
A two-way ANOVA was conducted on the influence of the two independent variables (SEC, Scientific Literacy in Media (SLiM)) on the participants’ AEIU toward science
The science edu-communication (SEC) effect showed a significant difference in scientific understanding between the SEC (M = 1.88, SD = 1.13) and general science communication (GSC) groups (M = 1.18, SD = 1.07), F(1117) = 13.580, p < 0.001
Summary
Humans are spending increasing amounts of time consuming media on the Internet. The Nielsen Total Audience Report showed that audiences in 2019 spent more time every day (one hour and 24 min) than in 2018 using streaming services, TV-connected devices, smartphones, TV, etc., to watch media across their “screens” [1]. Some science educators have suggested that these are valuable moments for teaching since science learning can take place more than ever on multiple public media sources (such as YouTube, Facebook media, broadcast TV, or Internet-based TV) [2,3,4,5]. These potential teachable moments are less likely to be arranged for educational purposes (and without assistance from science educators) most of the time. While more catastrophic diseases and natural disasters are expected to arise continually on this planet, what the news media producers can do to provide sound and solid science information to the public on how sustainable life and development can be achieved by science and technology has been investigated [9]
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