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.
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