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
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