Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

20 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

An emerging form of public engagement with science: Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions on Reddit r/science.

ABSTRACT: Originally, online public engagement with science tended to be one directional-from experts to the general population via news media. Such an arrangement allowed for little to no direct interaction between the public and scientists. However, the emergence of social media has opened the door to meaningful engagement between scientists and the general public. The current study examines scientists' perspectives on the interactions between laypeople and scientists by asking questions and sharing information on social media platforms, specifically, through Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions on Reddit's "Science" subreddit (r/science). By analyzing the content of six different r/science AMAs and surveying scientists who participated as r/science AMA hosts, our research attempts to gain a richer understanding of direct communication between scientists and lay audiences online. We had three main questions: (1) who are the participant scientists hosting r/science AMAs, (2) what are their experiences like as hosts, and (3) what type of discussions do they have on this platform? Survey results suggested that these scientists recognize the promising interactive nature of Reddit and are interested in continuing to use this platform as a tool for public engagement. Survey respondents generally had positive experiences as AMA hosts, but further research is needed to examine negative experiences. Overall, this study has significant implications for how scientists can engage public audiences online and more effectively communicate scientific findings to the general populace.

SUBMITTER: Hara N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6519800 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Similar Datasets

Addressing immediate public coronavirus (COVID-19) concerns through social media: Utilizing Reddit's AMA as a framework for Public Engagement with Science.

Project description:COVID-19 has highlighted an opportunity for medical professionals to engage in online Public Engagement with Science (PES). Currently a popular platform for PES is Reddit. Reddit provides an Ask Me Anything (AMA) format for subject matter experts to answer questions asked by the public. On March 11, 2020, from 2:00 to 4:00pm EST, two Emergency Department physicians from Massachusetts General Hospital hosted an AMA session on coronavirus. We retroactively conducted an analysis of the questions and answers from this AMA session in order to better understand the public's concerns around coronavirus and identify future opportunities for medical experts to leverage the Reddit AMA format in communicating with the general public. Results suggested that participants sought not only to obtain information, but to engage in discussion, and did so with each other in the absence of expert responses. The majority of bi-directional discussion occurred between participants. Due to the volume of questions and ratio of experts to participants, not all questions were answered. More posts provided facts or opinions, than posts that providing resources or requesting resources.

| S-EPMC7537883 | biostudies-literature

Evidence of Online Performance Deterioration in User Sessions on Reddit.

Project description:This article presents evidence of performance deterioration in online user sessions quantified by studying a massive dataset containing over 55 million comments posted on Reddit in April 2015. After segmenting the sessions (i.e., periods of activity without a prolonged break) depending on their intensity (i.e., how many posts users produced during sessions), we observe a general decrease in the quality of comments produced by users over the course of sessions. We propose mixed-effects models that capture the impact of session intensity on comments, including their length, quality, and the responses they generate from the community. Our findings suggest performance deterioration: Sessions of increasing intensity are associated with the production of shorter, progressively less complex comments, which receive declining quality scores (as rated by other users), and are less and less engaging (i.e., they attract fewer responses). Our contribution evokes a connection between cognitive and attention dynamics and the usage of online social peer production platforms, specifically the effects of deterioration of user performance.

| S-EPMC4999233 | biostudies-literature

Investigating mediated public engagement with science on the "science" subreddit: From the participants' perspective.

Project description:While public engagement with science activities traditionally inhabits physical environments (i.e., museum exhibits), as the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, new types of public engagement with science mediated through information technologies have emerged. Instead of having scientific findings filtered through traditional mediators, scientists have begun to take advantage of social media in order to communicate directly with the general public. This paper focuses on technology mediated public engagement with science in an online environment, specifically the sub-Reddit called "r/science", on a popular platform, Reddit, in which we investigated the factors contributing to user engagement and perceived effects of science communication from the users' perspectives. The survey instrument including user engagement scales, perceived effects of science communication, and demographics were distributed among 2000 participants in the r/science Ask Me Anything (AMA) series. We analyzed 146 survey responses using descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression. The findings indicated that the participants were generally engaged compared to ones in other studies that used the same user engagement scales and perceived positive effects on science communication, except when it came to building trust. Furthermore, we found that time spent on this particular platform appeared to be the most important factor when it came to positive perceived effects of r/science AMAs. This type of mediated public engagement has been insufficiently investigated, most particularly in terms of the examination of participants' perspectives. This void is addressed in this study. The findings from the study will also be informative to similar platforms that support mediated public engagement with science.

| S-EPMC8081246 | biostudies-literature

Public engagement with science-Origins, motives and impact in academic literature and science policy.

Project description:'Public engagement with science' has become a 'buzzword' reflecting a concern about the widening gap between science and society and efforts to bridge this gap. This study is a comprehensive analysis of the development of the 'engagement' rhetoric in the pertinent academic literature on science communication and in science policy documents. By way of a content analysis of articles published in three leading science communication journals and a selection of science policy documents from the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), the European Union (EU), and South Africa (SA), the variety of motives underlying this rhetoric, as well as the impact it has on science policies, are analyzed. The analysis of the science communication journals reveals an increasingly vague and inclusive definition of 'engagement' as well as of the 'public' being addressed, and a diverse range of motives driving the rhetoric. Similar observations can be made about the science policy documents. This study corroborates an earlier diagnosis that rhetoric is running ahead of practice and suggests that communication and engagement with clearly defined stakeholder groups about specific problems and the pertinent scientific knowledge will be a more successful manner of 'engagement'.

| S-EPMC8263305 | biostudies-literature

Coastal heritage, global climate change, public engagement, and citizen science.

Project description:Climate change is threatening an uncalculated number of archaeological sites globally, totaling perhaps hundreds of thousands of culturally and paleoenvironmentally significant resources. As with all archaeological sites, they provide evidence of humanity's past and help us understand our place in the present world. Coastal sites, clustered at the water's edge, are already experiencing some of the most dramatic damage due to anthropogenic climate change, and the situation is predicted to worsen in the future. In the face of catastrophic loss, organizations around the world are developing new ways of working with this threatened coastal resource. This paper uses three examples from Scotland, Florida, and Maine to highlight how new partnerships and citizen science approaches are building communities of practice to better manage threatened coastal heritage. It compares methods on either side of the Atlantic and highlights challenges and solutions. The approaches are applicable to the increasing number of heritage sites everywhere at risk from climate change; the study of coastal sites thus helps society prepare for climate change impacts to heritage worldwide.

| S-EPMC7165427 | biostudies-literature

Engagement with fact-checked posts on Reddit.

Project description:Contested factual claims shared online are of increasing interest to scholars and the public. Characterizing temporal patterns of sharing and engagement with such information, as well as the effect of sharing associated fact-checks, can help us understand the online political news environment more fully. Here, we investigate differential engagement with fact-checked posts shared online via Reddit from 2016 to 2018. The data comprise ∼29,000 conversations, ∼849,000 users, and ∼9.8 million comments. We classified the veracity of the posts being discussed as true, mixed, or false using three fact-checking organizations. Regardless of veracity, fact-checked posts had larger and longer lasting conversations than claims that were not fact-checked. Among those that were fact-checked, posts rated as false were discussed less and for shorter periods of time than claims that were rated as true. We also observe that fact-checks of posts rated as false tend to happen more quickly than fact-checks of posts rated as true. Finally, we observe that thread deletion and removal are systematically related to the presence of a fact-check and the veracity of the fact-check, but when deletion and removal are combined the differences are minimal. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

| S-EPMC10011804 | biostudies-literature

Can scientists fill the science journalism void? Online public engagement with science stories authored by scientists.

Project description:In many countries the public's main source of information about science and technology is the mass media. Unfortunately, in recent years traditional journalism has experienced a collapse, and science journalism has been a major casualty. One potential remedy is to encourage scientists to write for news media about science. On these general news platforms, scientists' stories would have to compete for attention with other news stories on hard (e.g. politics) and entertaining (e.g. celebrity news) topics written by professional writers. Do they stand a chance? This study aimed to quantitatively characterize audience interactions as an indicator of interest in science news stories authored by early career scientists (henceforth 'scientists') trained to function as science reporters, as compared to news items written by reporters and published in the same news outlets. To measure users' behavior, we collected data on the number of clicks, likes, comments and average time spent on page. The sample was composed of 150 science items written by 50 scientists trained to contribute popular science stories in the Davidson Institute of Science Education reporters' program and published on two major Israeli news websites-Mako and Ynet between July 2015 to January 2018. Each science item was paired with another item written by the website's organic reporter, and published on the same channel as the science story (e.g., tourism, health) and the same close time. Overall significant differences were not found in the public's engagement with the different items. Although, on one website there was a significant difference on two out of four engagement types, the second website did not have any difference, e.g., people did not click, like or comment more on items written by organic reporters than on the stories written by scientists. This creates an optimistic starting point for filling the science news void by scientists as science reporters.

| S-EPMC6948730 | biostudies-literature

Ferment Nanopore Public Engagement

Project description:Ferment: An outreach project using Nanopore 16S amplicon sequencing to investigate fermented foods

| PRJEB29723 | ENA

Evaluation of public engagement activities to promote science in a zoo environment.

Project description:Scientists are increasing their efforts to promote public engagement with their science, but the efficacy of the methods used is often not scientifically evaluated. Here, we designed, installed and evaluated the educational impact of interactive games on touchscreens at two primate research centres based in zoo environments. The games were designed to promote interest in and understanding of primates and comparative psychology, as a scaffold towards interest in science more generally and with the intention of targeting younger individuals (under 16's). We used systematic observational techniques and questionnaires to assess the impact of the games on zoo visitors. The games facilitated increased interest in psychology and science in zoo visitors, and changed the knowledge of visitors, through demonstration of learning about specific scientific findings nested within the games. The impact of such devices was greatest on younger individuals (under 16's) as they were significantly more likely to engage with the games. On the whole, therefore, this study demonstrates that interactive devices can be successful educational tools, and adds to the growing body of evidence that conducting research on public view in zoos can have a tangible impact on public engagement with science.

| S-EPMC4240600 | biostudies-literature

Ask Me Anything": Lessons learned in implementing a COVID-19 vaccine information initiative in Massachusetts jails.

Project description:As a group of medical professionals, faith-community leaders, and jail staff, we launched a COVID-19 vaccine Q&A initiative across Massachusetts county jails to increase COVID-19 vaccine confidence and uptake among detained individuals. Here we describe the lessons learned in developing and implementing this initiative.

| S-EPMC8989684 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data