Teachable Moments in News Media—An Analysis of Audience Awareness, Enjoyment, Interest, Opinion Formation, and Understanding (AEIOU) toward Science

Abstract

In light of the increased time spent by people on watching the news via social media, what might be the communication impacts if science education could help in producing science news media for the public? The present study compared the audience levels of awareness, enjoyment, interest, opinion formation, and understanding (AEIOU) toward science experimentally between two groups: the general science communication (GSC) group (i.e., participants with general daily science news digestion) and the science edu-communication (SEC) group (i.e., participants who watched science news videos produced jointly by science educators, scientists, and news media production teams). As a result, those in the SEC group showed significantly higher levels of “interest”, formed more scientific “opinions”, and had better “understanding” than the GSC participants. In terms of creating an “additional opportunity” to develop science news media sustainably for the public, the present study confirms more salient outcomes when science educators are involved in the production of science news media.

Mismatching ideas among the experts–Producing science edu-communication media for the citizen

“…The field of science communication has gradually shifted towards the topic of "public understanding of science," and the combination of science education research and these two fields has become increasingly important (Wu et al, 2020). Based on this interdisciplinary perspective, this study uses the wideadopted AEIOU framework proposed by Burns et al (2003) as the viewpoint, interpretation, or anticipated outcomes of science news producers on science news.…”