Cargando…
Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook
Several calls to action urge scientists and science communicators to engage more with online communities. While these calls have been answered by a high percentage of scientists and science communicators online, it often remains unclear what are the best models for effective communication. Best prac...
Autor principal: | |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2019
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6486811/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31086737 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6795 |
_version_ | 1783414399972671488 |
---|---|
author | McClain, Craig R. |
author_facet | McClain, Craig R. |
author_sort | McClain, Craig R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Several calls to action urge scientists and science communicators to engage more with online communities. While these calls have been answered by a high percentage of scientists and science communicators online, it often remains unclear what are the best models for effective communication. Best practices and methods for online science communication can benefit from experimental and quantitative research addressing how and when users engage with online content. This study addresses with quantitative and predictive models a key question for the popular, but often-ignored in science communication, social media platform Facebook. Specifically, this study examines the impact of imagery through quantification of likes, comments, and shares on Facebook posts. Here, I show that a basic quantitative model can be useful in predicting response to marine organism imagery on Facebook. The results of this online experiment suggest image type, novelty, and aesthetics impact the number of likes, shares, and comments on a post. In addition, the likes, shares, and comments on images did not follow traditional definitions of “charismatic megafauna”, with cephalopods and bony fishes receiving more interactions than cartilaginous fishes and marine mammals. Length and quality of caption did not significantly impact likes, comments, or shares. This study provides one of the first quantitative analysis of virality of scientific images via social media. The results challenge previously held conceptions of social media scientific outreach including increasing emphasis on imagery selection and curation, notions of which taxa the public connect with, and role of captions for imagery. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6486811 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-64868112019-05-13 Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook McClain, Craig R. PeerJ Biodiversity Several calls to action urge scientists and science communicators to engage more with online communities. While these calls have been answered by a high percentage of scientists and science communicators online, it often remains unclear what are the best models for effective communication. Best practices and methods for online science communication can benefit from experimental and quantitative research addressing how and when users engage with online content. This study addresses with quantitative and predictive models a key question for the popular, but often-ignored in science communication, social media platform Facebook. Specifically, this study examines the impact of imagery through quantification of likes, comments, and shares on Facebook posts. Here, I show that a basic quantitative model can be useful in predicting response to marine organism imagery on Facebook. The results of this online experiment suggest image type, novelty, and aesthetics impact the number of likes, shares, and comments on a post. In addition, the likes, shares, and comments on images did not follow traditional definitions of “charismatic megafauna”, with cephalopods and bony fishes receiving more interactions than cartilaginous fishes and marine mammals. Length and quality of caption did not significantly impact likes, comments, or shares. This study provides one of the first quantitative analysis of virality of scientific images via social media. The results challenge previously held conceptions of social media scientific outreach including increasing emphasis on imagery selection and curation, notions of which taxa the public connect with, and role of captions for imagery. PeerJ Inc. 2019-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC6486811/ /pubmed/31086737 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6795 Text en ©2019 McClain http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Biodiversity McClain, Craig R. Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook |
title | Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook |
title_full | Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook |
title_fullStr | Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook |
title_full_unstemmed | Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook |
title_short | Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook |
title_sort | likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on facebook |
topic | Biodiversity |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6486811/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31086737 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6795 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT mcclaincraigr likescommentsandsharesofmarineorganismimageryonfacebook |