Abstract
In Taiwan, the production of science news would benefit by cooperation between communication (e.g., the news production team) and science education (e.g., instructional designers and scientists involved). The news production team is skilled in exposing stories vividly to motivate audiences, whereas the science education team carefully curates the scientific and instructional content. Therefore, we started the Different Science News project, which strives to align the above features of science news production. Through using concurrent, local, and concise materials that occur in daily lives, we hope to promote the public understanding of science.
The Different Science News TV Science News Project
The public is habitually supplied with incomplete news or even erroneous information from the media. Thus, in Taiwan, we proposed the Different Science News (DSN) project with the aim of combining the TV news media and science education. The production of Taiwanese TV science news lacks cooperation between the news media (e.g., news production) and science education (e.g., instructional designer and scientist). TV news production’s purpose is to expose stories vividly in order to motivate audiences to watch. Science education’s aim is to carefully curate scientific and instructional content for public understanding. As a joint solution, the DSN project was put forward by the Science Education Center, National Taiwan Normal University, and Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS), the largest satellite telecommunication provider in Taiwan. DSN was funded by the Taiwanese Ministry of Science and Technology, with the goal of producing a 1-year TV science news program. A total of 156 episodes, each 90 seconds in length, were produced. Starting in the summer of 2014, the DSN series was regularly broadcasted 3 days a week, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. The show aired at the prime time of 10:30 p.m., with the purpose of reaching audiences after working hours. The target viewers were the major working population (i.e., the target audience age was 30-54 years).
The Design of the DSN
Short: 90 Seconds of Challenging, Condensed, Scientific Content
We can easily lose audience focus due to the limited attention span of humans. This idea is supported by the cognitive load theory, which describes the limited capacity of human working memory (Sweller, 1994). Basically, the human mind has a limited capacity and can process only a certain amount of information at one time. When one perceives and continues to receive information (e.g., to read, listen, or watch), these little pieces require “mental effort” to become “retainable.” These pieces are then temporarily stored in the working memory, waiting to be further “compiled.” If these pieces become meaningful, they may enter the long-term memory (Sweller, Chandler, Tierney, & Cooper, 1990). Thus, if too much or overly extraneous information, is placed in the short 90-second video, it would compete with the actual desired content of the scientific subject (i.e., it would compete for limited capacity of human working memory). TV science news cannot be overly complicated in its narrative style. Thus, we structured these components into each video: (1) the main ideas to be addressed (e.g., scientific misconceptions in daily lives, current scientific developments or inventions, social scientific issues, etc.); (2) scientists, to explain the topics and facts, or to demonstrate the research with scenes of performing actual experiments; (3) animations, to convey procedure or to enhance the understanding of more complex scientific concepts; (4) connections from the story to our daily lives. The shorter the news is, the harder the news production can be (see Figure 1).
Screen captures of actual broadcasting of Different Science News.
Domestic: Taiwanese Science Development and Local and Cultural Perspectives
Public understanding of science is well-known to be closely related to a group’s long-held social, religious, and cultural beliefs, which might directly affect the community’s understanding of science and its development. For example, the research directions developed in controversial areas such as stem cells may be varied due to diverse cultural and religious beliefs among different countries. Thus, promoting the public understanding of local science development could become increasingly difficult. One goal, within the promotion of public understanding, of science is the hope that citizens can learn about the differences among various cultures and societies.
As we observed from Taiwanese news media production, it often costs less to transfer science news pieces shown on foreign news than to produce original news pieces about domestic scientific achievements. Due to limited time frames and the high pressure in preparing daily news to be broadcasted on the TV, in comparing the time spent running local interviews and compiling stories from local science news pieces, transferring some stories from well-organized foreign science news eases the pressure on resources. However, this comes at the expense of coverage on developments within Taiwan or of special interest to Taiwanese people.
“Story” Behind “the Stories”—A Tug-of-War With the Scientists and the News Media Producers
Science educators, just as scientists, will certainly strive to help people understand what science is and so will the news media professionals. However, professionals hold various perspectives in evaluating the depth and relevancy of producing science news. For example, once we realize what a small amount of time (e.g., 90 seconds) we can use for illustrating a complex scientific rationale, we have to make the material concise, while communicating it clearly to the viewers and fitting this information into the very limited time frame. Condensing the materials requires talking to the interviewees (e.g., content experts, researchers, scientists, etc.) repeatedly, in order to condense the amount of information from what they would usually present in their laboratories or in the classrooms (i.e., a much longer and detailed presentation) while ensuring the correctness of the science being demonstrated.
Being in the role of leading and coordinating this project, we first broadly discussed potential science topics surveyed from a variety of research institutions in Taiwan, common myths about science, and recently popular scientific topics. Once the topics were determined, we started our discussions with TV news crew and the potential interviewees to obtain their views about production needs, such as whether there was enough video scenery for science experiments and applications (e.g., conducting earthquake experiments to demonstrate seismologic phenomenon and theories), how the topic may be made relevant (making the connections to daily experience), and how the interview questions should be addressed to concisely demonstrate the core scientific theories and facts. A storyboard for the news piece and the computer graphics animation demonstration was readied at this stage. Next, while we coordinated the dates and times for the actual interview and videotaping, the computer graphics production was in process. Last, after the postproduction, the semifinal pieces were reviewed extensively by us and by the interviewees for correctness before the material was scheduled to be broadcasted. Each 90-second DSN piece usually took approximately 1 full month to actually be ready for broadcasting.
A great gap exists, in terms of the definition of the understanding of science, between scientists and news media professionals; this causes a tug-of-war when working on DSN. It is difficult to keep every member of the news production team on the same page when the scientific concept gets just a little bit deeper (e.g., from “what” the science is to “how” the science is made). The dialogue is even harder when the topic involves multiple scientific concepts or social values (e.g., explaining how capturing and storing carbon dioxide to reduce air pollution can be done, and ultimately how this potentially relates to the climate change). In addition, the news media crew revealed that the scientific concepts were too hard to understand; they expressed that the content was very difficult to present in a news format.
The collaboration with the broadcast journalism is a tug-of-war; however, a significant pattern from the DSN production emerged gradually throughout the path of collaboration. On one side, the news media is learning a new perspective on how delivering “how science is made” is relevant and newsworthy in itself. At the same time, science educators and the scientists are learning how the local public may be better motivated, educated, and engaged through broadcast TV news.
The Impact of DSN Series Thus Far
According to the Nielsen ratings of Taiwanese TV channels, every night each piece of the DSN series has, on average, reached 300,000 audience members with an average age range of 30 to 54 years (see Figure 2). The DSN series is currently broadcast on the most popular Taiwanese news channel (i.e., TVBS News) at prime time (i.e., 10:30p.m. to 10:45 p.m.). This has continued for 1 year (i.e., 156 news videos delivered during 2014-2015). According to the rating system, on a daily basis, the DSN is normally second to only one Taiwanese TV series episode, or another TVBS news channel with major news stories. It is worthwhile to point out that a Taiwanese regularly broadcasted TV science news program (DSN) has never been rated this high by the Nielsen.
The Nielsen ratings of Different Science News (2014/06/18-2014/09/26).
The Next Step
While the second round of the DSN series is in preparation, we will work more closely to cultivate the environment for Taiwanese science communication. An extra value of the DSN series is that the news videos are flexible enough to be integrated into science instruction because they are concise and current. Therefore, we are creating instructional packages integrated with various themed DSN series for educational purposes. As the current instructional trend has turned its preference to utilize multimedia for learning, teachers become more aware of the flexibility to flip teaching strategies for individual needs by adopting science videos during or before the classes. The content of science news has an attractive nature in comparison to traditional materials as the news itself contains the essence of creativity, topicality, and humanity. It is beneficial for engaging students and creating discussion topics regarding the content knowledge and its relevance and applications in daily lives, and this ultimately leads to consideration of related social scientific perspectives. In addition, short videos with concise content are flexible enough to be adopted for class teaching. With proper utilizations of the short science news video, it may be easier for the teachers to engage the students and better plan the instructional flow aligned with the course content to be taught.
The current science news project may foreshadow real needs and realities in the local developments of science communication and science education and may ultimately add a new learning dimension for science education of the next generation. However, it may also better reflect how much we as a part of the science communication link could respond to the authentic world of audiences. Through this new initiative, we really hope to make DSN visible to the general public in Taiwan.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project is supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. (previously named National Science Foundation of Taiwan) under the Grant number NSC102-2515-S-103-001-H and “Aim for the Top University Project” sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, R.O.C.; “International Research-Intensive Center of Excellence Program” of NTNU; and Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. under Grant no. MOST 104-2911-I-003-301.