What Makes People Attend to and Trust Science and Scientific Experts in Online Contexts?

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What Makes People Attend to and Trust Science and Scientific Experts in Online Contexts?

Author: Friederike Hendriks – University of Münster, Germany

Co-authors:

  • Danny Flemming – Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Germany
  • Asheley R. Landrum – Texas Tech University, United States
  • Anne Reif – TU Braunschweig, Germany
  • Aviv J. Sharon – Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
  • Sara K. Yeo – University of Utah, United States

In current controversial public debates (e.g., about climate change, vaccination), people discuss how the future of our societies and our relationship with technology should be shaped, and many of these debates proceed in online environments. While some people refer to scientific evidence and arguments, and also demand that science–as a system generating relevant knowledge for solving today’s problems–should be trusted, others neglect scientific arguments and evidence, or actively voice their distrust in science and technological developments. In this session, we raise the question of what makes people attend to and trust scientific information and scientific experts in online contexts.

The first three papers investigate important factors of how individuals seek online information and which experts they perceive as trustworthy. Landrum et al. investigate the influence of gender and science curiosity on accessing scientific content on YouTube; Sharon et al. focus on the influence of an information seeker’s personal stance toward a topic for trustworthiness ratings of experts during information seeking in forums; and Yeo finds that not only a humorous presentation, but also source expertise explains how much people perceive comedy a valid source of scientific information. The final two presentations more broadly investigate factors that might benefit individuals’ acceptance of scientific information and trust in science: Flemming et al. introduce refutation texts as a means to enhance the acceptance of uncertainty in scientific communication, while Taddicken et al. investigate with a representative survey how individuals’ trust, knowledge and online use contribute to their problem awareness of climate change.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Linked papers
Theme: Time

Communicating their own research: What do we need to know about the role of scientists and researchers in science communication?

Author: Friederike Hendriks – University of Münster, Germany

Co-authors:

  • Yael Barel-Ben David – Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
  • Carolin Enzigmüller – IPN Kiel, Germany
  • Hans Peter Peters – FZ Jülich & Free University Berlin, Germany

In this round table session, we take a cross-disciplinary look at scientists who engage in the communication of (their own) science and research. In the last years, scientists have been more actively involved in science communication, as scientific research itself is becoming more and more transparent, science communication does increasingly take place online, and outreach activities at universities are relying on scientists to communicate their science.

This increasing involvement of scientists in science communication raises interesting questions for science communication researchers. For example, the speakers in this round table session have investigated which motives researchers hold to engage in science communication, which different communication objectives may shape the science communication by scientists, how communication objectives are adapted to the event and an anticipated public, how science communication might interact with interdisciplinary communication within large collaborative research groups, and how research on the perspectives of scientists engaged in science communication can inform science communication training. To answer these questions, different theoretical approaches were used, e.g. the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), theories related to the field of expert-lay communication (e.g. Clark, 1996), or models of educational reconstruction (e.g. Duit et al., 2012).

This roundtable discussion aims to connect cross-disciplinary and international ideas and findings, discussing which research questions need to be addressed in order to investigate the perspectives of scientists as science communicators. We also want to connect overarching theoretical approaches to address these research questions, reflecting on how different disciplinary perspectives can be useful to this field of research, including social science and communication science (Peters), psychology (Hendriks), and science education (Barel-Ben David, Enzingmüller).

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Roundtable discussion
Theme: Transformation

Scientists’ views on their own engagement in science communication and outreach activities

Author: Friederike Hendriks – University of Münster, Germany

Co-authors:
Rainer Bromme – University of Münster, Germany
Dorothe Kienhues – University of Münster, Germany
Doris Niederhoff – University of Münster, Germany

We present an interview study that focused on views of researchers on outreach activities (OA), especially their perceptions on how taking part in OA had affected their motivations and their scientific work and their collaboration and communication with colleagues of other disciplines.

The study was conducted in the context of two large German interdisciplinary research groups in the field of biomedicine. In these groups, OA (for example exhibitions, school workshops, press releases) had been organized by science communication professionals, in close cooperation with researchers. We interviewed 75 researchers (PhD Students, PostDocs, and Professors) from several scientific fields (e.g. medicine, chemistry, mathematics, information sciences). 75% of them had actively taken part in OA at least once.

We questioned researchers on effects of OA a) on themselves and their scientific work and b) on communication and cooperation in their large research groups. In addition to open ended questions, researchers were asked to state their agreement to items on scales reaching from not at all (1) to very much (5).

We found that 45% of researchers agreed very much (5) that following OA they had “experienced joy and personal satisfaction”, but only 17% agreed (4 or 5) that they had been able to “generate new ideas”. Albeit OA being clearly directed at the general public, active engagement positively affected communication within the research groups: 35% of researchers agreed very much (5) that as a result from taking part in OA they could “better understand the work of researchers from other disciplines”.

We also inquired which effects of OA researchers assumed for the general public, and their attitudes toward communicating science.

We will discuss the importance of investigating attitudes and motivations that researchers have toward OA, and how positive attitudes toward communicating science and (their own) research might be fostered.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Science
Area of interest: Investigating science communication practices

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