by Emily Howell
We have some exciting new research in Science Communication, highlighting the potential of stories and film for engagement with science. Using four of the Science Communication Lab short films, we asked a representative sample of American adults to watch one of the films (randomly assigned) and report how engaged they felt with the narrative and the characters. Respondents watched Finding Faith in Science, Mendel’s Famous Genetics Experiment, Corals: On the Brink, or A Walk in the Woods, four of our films that focus on issues related to genetics, broadly. Because we had a nationally representative sample, we were able to see if engagement differed depending on people’s demographic backgrounds, political ideology, level of religiosity, and prior science experiences — all factors that can matter for communicating science.
We found that Americans overwhelmingly found the SCL films and characters engaging! They reported being transported into the story and identifying with the characters, and this was true typically regardless of the viewers’ demographic, political, religious, or science backgrounds. More importantly from a research and practice perspective, we found that viewers’ narrative engagement related to a suite of potentially beneficial outcomes. Viewers reporting higher narrative engagement were more likely to correctly answer a set of factual knowledge recall questions — highlighting the potential for stories to support knowledge gain — and to report feeling more knowledgeable about the topic of the film overall. They were more likely to report being interested in the topic, including to the extent of thinking that they would seek out more information on it, and to report feeling more identification with science overall. These results as well mostly appeared regardless of viewers’ demographics, suggesting the stories can be broadly engaging for diverse audiences.
This study reflected some of the benefits of the research-practice partnerships we’ve been developing in the SCL to connect science communication research to film, especially for increasing the external validity of study results. In this case, the results represent one of the few research studies on storytelling in science contexts that uses a nationally representative sample, instead of student samples, and that uses real-world, professionally produced films, rather than videos created or edited by researchers. That means the results can give us a better sense of the power of science storytelling through film in less controlled settings, with a much greater diversity of viewers. The paper is open-access for those interested in a deeper dive into what we did and what we found: Storytelling in Science Film: Narrative Engagement Relates to Greater Knowledge, Interest, and Identification With Science, Howell, E.L., Behrman, S. L., Kirschner, E., & Goodwin, S. S., in Science Communication.
