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“It’s like a trailer for a movie”: How publics (mis)interpret preprint research in the news

By Alice Fleerackers and Chelsea Ratcliff. Photo credit: cclogg   New study finds that over 50% of readers misunderstand the term “preprint” when they see it mentioned in a news story. A news story describing a novel blood test for Alzheimer diagnosis. An analysis of how Donald Trump is redefining the word felon . A deep dive into a promising new approach to building AI models. These three seemingly different news stories have one thing in common. They report findings from preprints —research articles that are publicly available but haven’t yet been peer reviewed or published by a journal. If you’ve never heard of preprints before, you’re not alone. Our new study suggests that more than half of readers are confused when they see the word preprint mentioned in a news story. For most people in our study, this held true even when they read a news story that included an explanation of the term. In fact, we found that over three-quarters of people who were shown an explanation like thi
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Fiction references in extended reality news: The Matrix is a good thing?

 By Dr Emma Kaylee Graves-Sandriman. Photo credit: TheDigitalArtist Despite their dystopic narratives, science fiction references have been used in UK news about XR to present the technologies positively. Many science fiction narratives present cautionary tales of technology, particularly when it comes to extended reality (XR; including virtual, augmented and mixed reality). My recent research examined the use of fiction references in UK news about XR. As summarised here, I found that journalists typically use fiction references to present XR positively, despite the dystopic narratives found in fiction. Fiction references in UK news In UK news, fiction references are used to support readers’ understanding of XR products through the use of metaphors, comparisons and imagery. For example, a headline about virtual reality in the Sun began with “ Enter the Matrix ” and the MailOnline described a virtual reality “ Star Trek-like headset ”. Another used imagery of Tom Cruise in Minority Rep
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Podcasting as a community outreach tool in cancer

 By Sevtap Savas, PhD., Kayla Crichton, Janine Taylor-Cutting, and Jason Wiseman. Podcasting can be a valuable public communication tool to connect new dots, hear new perspectives, and disseminate useful knowledge on cancer. Newfoundland, Canada | Photo credit:  Sevtap Savas Podcasting can be a valuable tool for generating public knowledge and sharing content with the wider community.  In this blog post, we discuss our experience with podcasting as a public engagement tool. First, let’s introduce our partnership! Public Interest Group on Cancer Research is a group of three scientists and 10 community members located in Newfoundland and Labrador, a Canadian province with one the highest cancer incidence and mortality rates in Canada .  One of our projects in 2023-2024 was about creating digital stories and knowledge on cancer, including sharing lived experiences, providing information on cancer care and support programs, and advocacy. A part of this project was dedicated to podcasts.
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Can writing style predict audience engagement with science news?

By Ifat Zimmerman, Tali Tal, and Ayelet Baram-Tsabari. What makes science news engaging? Is it using less jargon? Employing a narrative style? Or ensuring relevance? Are these outcomes similar for different types of audiences?  Engagement with science texts potentially arises from a nuanced interaction between internal factors – such as personal characteristics, cultural values, and knowledge acquired throughout life – and external factors – including accessibility strategies, i.e., providing explanations and addressing socio-scientific themes. In our study, we tackled both aspects. Our study examined how accessibility strategies correlate with audience engagement , particularly reader comments, within text-based popular science news. This is studied across two distinct audience groups: one comprised of science enthusiasts – a science-minded audience – and the other representing a more general readership – a general audience .  Pixabay We employed deductive content analysis guided
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Young people are trusting and championing science

By Karin Gustafsson. By taking to the streets, youth across the globe have publicly and loudly shown a strong distrust toward our political representatives’ capacity and willingness to address the current climate crisis. However, besides their demand for politicians and the adult generation to “listen to the science”, we know very little about these environmentally active youths’ relation to and potential trust in science.  In my most recent study , we learned how science is highly trusted by these environmentally active young people in Sweden. Science is understood as the institution that can and should be responsible for telling the truth about tackling climate change. Thus, scientists are seen as capable of helping us all learn about the climate crisis and what to do about it.   Pixabay My study is based on Fridays for Future (FFF) in the movement’s origin country of Sweden. FFF Sweden has been studied together with Sweden’s oldest and still largest nongovernmental environmental you
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