Accelerating Engagement in Fundamental Science Through CERN Videos: What Matters?

Science communication through videos remains a fertile area of research for scientific organisations looking to engage existing and new audiences, particularly on social media. Towards this goal, this study examined two years of video dataset (n=184) on CERN’s Facebook page followed by 747,056 people as of August 2021. CERN published 77 videos in 2019 and 107 videos in 2020, witnessing an increase in video posts by 38.96%. Findings reveal a significant reward in viewership on online videos during the coronavirus pandemic, with the increase in interactions on CERN videos up to 191% from 2019 to 2020. Videos, namely, “Voyage into the world of atoms” and “Future Circular Collider,” became the most viewed and the most engaging videos of 2019 and 2020. Videos sharing applications of CERN’s technology and know-how were the most in-demand after Accelerators and Physics themes, however, Knowledge Sharing videos were the least produced out of all the themes outlined by CERN’s editorial strategy. These findings offer practical examples for communicators seeking to produce videos that are effective to grow viewership and look beyond engagement as a one-way, organisation-to-public activity and engage audiences with fundamental science.