Using interpersonal communication strategies to encourage science conversations on social media

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 15; no. 11; p. e0241972
• Main Authors: Martin, Curtis, MacDonald, Bertrum H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 10.11.2020; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Amnesties; Audiences; Biology and Life Sciences; Business communications; Child; Child, Preschool; Climate change; Communication; Computer and Information Sciences; Digital media; Female; Humans; Internet access; Interpersonal communication; Literacy; Male; Methods; Middle Aged; NGOs; Nongovernmental organizations; Nonprofit organizations; Organizations - statistics & numerical data; People and Places; Personal communication; Qualitative Research; Research and Analysis Methods; Researchers; Science Policy; Scientific communication; Scientists; Social media; Social Media - statistics & numerical data; Social networks; Social research; Social Sciences; Social Skills; Verbal communication; Young Adult; Canada; Nova Scotia Canada
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241972

Today, many science communicators are using social media to share scientific information with citizens, but, as research has shown, fostering conversational exchanges remains a challenge. This largely qualitative study investigated the communication strategies applied by individual scientists and environmental non-governmental organizations on Twitter and Instagram to determine whether particular social media practices encourage two-way conversations between science communicators and citizens. Data from Twitter and Instagram posts, interviews with the communicators, and a survey of audience members were triangulated to identify emergent communication strategies and the resulting engagement; provide insight into why particular practices are employed by communicators; and explain why audiences choose to participate in social media conversations with communicators. The results demonstrate that the application of interpersonal communication strategies encourage conversational engagement, in terms of the number of comments and unique individuals involved in conversations. In particular, using selfies (images and videos), non-scientific content, first person pronoun-rich captions, and responding to comments result in the formation of communicator-audience relationships, encouraging two-way conversations on social media. Furthermore, the results indicate that Instagram more readily supports the implementation of interpersonal communication strategies than Twitter, making Instagram the preferred platform for promoting conversational exchanges. These findings can be applicable to diverse communicators, subjects, audiences, and environments (online and offline) in initiatives to promote awareness and understanding of science.