Social Media Interaction as Informal Science Learning: a Comparison of Message Design in Two Niches

Abstract

Social media provides science learners opportunities to interact with content-specific messages. However, most science-specific social media content is designed to disseminate information instead of encouraging dialogue. In this novel, ex post facto exploratory study of a science social media community, we sought to understand the relationships among community member interaction, design elements of messages, and post type on two digital niches (i.e. Facebook and Twitter). Framed by the theory of symbolic interactionism, we conducted a content analysis of 1,370 messages that were systematically created by an informal science learning project and found that usage frequency of messaging elements varied by niche; interaction within each niche differed, varying by messaging element; and differential interaction was found to be associated with post types within Facebook only. This study suggests a pathway for developing and examining social media as an educational component of informal science learning.

Follow the Fossils

“…Next, team members created engaging post captions with relevant hashtags. These hashtags were derived from a previous study of FOSSIL Twitter and Facebook social media content (Lundgren et al, 2020). Both captions and graphics were presented to the team for review, and adjustments were made.…”

“…Most often, such informal learning environments traditionally include museums, science centers, or aquaria (Gerber et al, 2001;Marsick and Watkins, 2001;Falk and Dierking, 2016). However, informal learning about scientific topics has also expanded to online environments, such as social media (Lam et al, 2019;Lundgren et al, 2020).…”

“…Engagement on social media is the common measure of "success" or the popularity of posts. On Twitter, measures of a successful post are related to engagements, impressions, and engagement rate, three metrics that are provided by Twitter Analytics (Bex et al, 2019;Lundgren et al, 2020). Engagement is defined by Twitter as "the total number of times a user has interacted with a tweet," 3 or the total number of likes, retweets, follows, replies, and clicks on the tweet itself.…”

#artoninstagram: Engaging with art in the era of the selfie

“…Among the digital content created by visitors, anything considered strategically more valid can be selected and made visible on a museum's website. Digital infrastructures also allow for monitoring the conversion rate associated with each content created online by brand ambassadors, whose margins have proven in recent years to be far greater than a traditional marketing advertising campaign (Lundgren et al, 2020). By turning visitors into real micro-influencers, art institutions allow them to express their opinions about new exhibitions or to give feedback on the design of the environment and ask them to share posts (photos and videos), stories, and live reports with their followers about their activity (Jensen, 2013;Oliveira & Fernandes, 2020).…”

“…By turning visitors into real micro-influencers, art institutions allow them to express their opinions about new exhibitions or to give feedback on the design of the environment and ask them to share posts (photos and videos), stories, and live reports with their followers about their activity (Jensen, 2013;Oliveira & Fernandes, 2020). Based on this logic, social media for arts and cultural organizations work not only as continuous learning platforms but also as facilitators of new visitor experiences (Lundgren et al, 2020).…”