This week, I learned about how science is represented on social media and advertised to the general public. I studied two readings and collected various insights into how science is conveyed on social networking platforms and some of the trends that describe the preferences of a general audience consuming scientific publications.
For the first reading, I discovered that there are two main distinguishing characteristics of science-distributing pages: that they can interact with the public across multiple social networking platforms, and that some are specific to Facebook. Provided statistics in the reading suggested that most Facebook-specific science publishers net a higher audience engagement than shown on other platforms. Novel scientific innovations or discoveries and practical science posts were shown to characterize the most popularly consumed media. Facebook appears to be the most effective platform for reaching the most adult social media participants. Though some pages distribute both on Facebook and other platforms, these pages sometimes demonstrate a lack of uniformity in the activity they assume on these platforms – for instance, while a scientific figure may be represented both on Facebook and on Twitter, they may be more active and post more frequently on one platform than on the other.
In the second reading, I learned that 66% of adult Americans maintain an account on some social media platform. In 2014, 67% of public audience appealed to the Internet to find information on scientific news. However, social media’s naturally individualizing algorithms change the nature of information distribution and narrow the public eye. I learned that, though information can reach a broader audience by being distributed on multiple social networking platforms, these platforms have different advantages or disadvantages that enable one to choose a platform specially suited to their goals and audiences. Social media is better suited for reaching younger audiences. Yet, websites are considered to be more credible and formal, and a blog can be employed for a more conversational or interactive approach.
For this assignment, I followed Bill Nye, a well-known scientific figure to the public, who is represented to the public on Facebook as Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Presently, Bill Nye has 4,631,974 followers on Facebook. The page was created December 4, 2008. The posts on these page are largely promotional – most seem to advertise merchandise and information, though some purport to be in scientific charity. However, some of the most heavily audience-engaged posts involve scientific issues.
This account is interesting or innovative in that in combines discourse on scientific issues with humor and while marketing a scientific celebrity. Bill Nye has achieved the status of an icon, and the Facebook account advertises his literature and merchandise.
This page might be more engaging if it integrated useful, applicable elements of “science you can use” articles, and decrease the number of advertising posts.
I noticed that, though Bill Nye the Science Guy is a verified Facebook page, no information was readily available on who maintains the account. The website linked from this profile was not up to date and failed to provide any insight into this. It is possible that, being an individual celebrity and not an organization, Bill Nye publishes his posts personally, however it is also likely that this is the responsibility of a social media team that has not been credited. Therefore, this detail is unknown, though it would likely be more appealing to the audience that the celebrity interacts personally through this account.
The Science of Blogging 