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.
We employed deductive content analysis guided by a predetermined criteria drawn from previous research to pinpoint accessibility strategies within about 300 science news articles. Additionally, we used content analysis to identify engagement expressions in almost 6,000 reader comments linked to each article, categorized across three dimensions: cognitive, affective, and behavioral.
What did we find?
We found that the reality of online engagement with science news is not trivial, suggesting that different accessibility strategies may serve distinct audiences differently. Our findings indicate that while relationship patterns were similar, general readers exhibited a greater quantity and intensity of connections between accessibility strategies and engagement expressions than science-minded readers.
For instance, we found that texts accompanied by explanations that aimed to enhance clarity correlated with reduced criticism within reader comments across both audiences. However, this correlation was particularly more pronounced among general readers.
Do controversial issues engage readers?
We also looked into accessibility strategies which have the potential to enhance relevance, including addressing controversial scientific topics like climate change and vaccines. We found that discussing contentious topics in science news articles leads to the readers' inclination to engage more thoughtfully with the news.
This depth of engagement was manifested through cognitive expressions of readers, such as asking pertinent questions, substantiating their comments, or supporting their viewpoints with credible scientific sources or personal experiences. This is consistent with previous research which show that science-related topics involving controversies interest high school students and promote higher-order thinking. Moreover, reader comments such as these are also valuable additions to public discourse, offering insights into public opinions and concerns that can be informative for science communicators.
Is it wise to provoke engagement if it is also inclined to elicit a negative tone?
Our findings show that addressing controversial issues also correlated with more negative emotions in readers' comments. On the one hand, negative emotions can lead to flaming and vulgarity, or degenerate into a toxic environment that negatively impacts both the cognitive and affective aspects of debates. Yet, on the other hand, negative emotions can also be interpreted as advantageous in particular educational contexts. Previous research has stressed the diverse roles of negative emotions in fostering academic advancement and socio-cognitive growth. Similarly, negative emotions conveyed by readers in their comments might enhance the cognitive aspect of public discourse.
Why do explanations lead to a decline in cognitive engagement?
Using explanations in science news articles were found to correlate with fewer cognitive engagement expressions in reader comments. This is quite unexpected, as one would anticipate cognitive expressions to increase rather than decrease when clarity is enhanced, and the message is more apparent.
These findings may be related to the intersection of jargon and explanation that we detected, i.e., the higher the jargon level, the more explanations are provided. A text overloaded with jargon may be clarified with explanations yet remain vague, making it difficult for non-experts to generate cognitive expressions. This is yet another red flag to keep in mind for authors when crafting scientific text.
Unexpectedly, the use of jargon also predicted positive emotions in readers’ comments. Why? One possible explanation may be that even though readers struggle with comprehension due to the abundance of technical terms, they still value the writers' efforts to provide explanations to clarify the text.
Narrative style is a predictor of positive emotions
Using narrative writing style in science news proved predictive of positive emotions in reader comments and led to a greater number of follow-up comments. This aligns with previous arguments for the benefits of storytelling in stimulating reader interest and sustaining their attention better than an expository text that mainly focuses on de-contextualized descriptions.
Clearly, the cognitive aspect of readers' comments holds significance. Nonetheless, we propose that the presence of positive emotions conveyed in these comments might be equally essential alongside readers' cognitive expressions. Positive emotions indicate positive reading experience, which in turn may facilitate and stimulate further engagement.
Our study marks the preliminary stages of identifying the facilitators and barriers to public engagement, highlighting potential correlations between accessibility strategies in popular science news and audience engagement through comments, albeit with differing advantages for various audiences. Subsequent research using experimental designs, which can evaluate evidence from controlled experiments and correlate it with theories, has the potential to provide more definitive insights into the relationships observed in this study.
Several other questions remain to be seen. For example, whether science-minded readers are indifferent to the use of specific strategies compared to general readers, or whether readers trade off positive emotions for cognitive expressions in their comments.
Read the original article: Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Engagement with Science News Predicted by the Use of Accessibility Strategies in Science-minded and General Audiences