While social media has been praised for youth engagement with science, evidence of its impacts remains fragmented. This scoping review reports on the impacts of social-media-based science communication on young audiences. A PRISMA-guided database search yielded 2,257 articles, which were screened to include only empirical articles studying social media’s behavioral, attitudinal, and cognitive impacts on audiences, including youth, in science or health contexts. Using Directed Qualitative Content Analysis, the impacts desired, measured, and observed were categorized in the 35 remaining articles. The most desired and measured impact was knowledge gain, while the most observed outcomes were interest and trust in science. Many studies desired specific impacts but failed to measure them. Impactful content was relevant, visually appealing, and emotionally engaging. However, studies recognized that unreliable actors may also manipulate these characteristics to spread misinformation. While many science communicators assume the importance of social-media-based science communication for young audiences, evidence of observed outcomes is limited and specific to platforms and topics. 

In their book Women Scientists in American Television Comedy, the three authors Karina Judd, Bridget Gaul, and Anna-Sophie Jürgens, present their study on how humor is used to portray women scientists in American television comedies such as The Big Bang Theory. The underlying theory and results are interesting to the wider science communication community, but this book might not be the best way to present them.

In an era of digital fragmentation and contested expertise, mediated public trust is under pressure. This study examines how journalists in Germany, Italy, and Lithuania perceive their role amid structural media shifts, politicized environments, and the rise of alternative sources. Drawing on 14 focus group discussions and 8 narrative interviews, we explore how national media systems and professional cultures shape journalistic strategies. Rather than a uniform erosion of trust, journalists report polarization shaped by ideology, platform dynamics, and shifting audience expectations. Many strive to act as trust brokers but face constraints from precarious working conditions, editorial pressures, and fragmented publics. We argue that trust in science journalism depends not only on journalistic practice but on broader systemic conditions, including institutional support, media infrastructures, and audience trust cultures (i.e., prevailing trust norms among different publics). This cross-national comparison advances a more differentiated understanding of how trust is negotiated in contemporary science communication.

This response addresses George Claassen's review of The Palgrave Handbook of Science and Health Journalism. The review raises several salient points; however, the biggest criticism of this work arises from a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Palgrave Handbook series. We wholeheartedly agree that there are lessons for the field of science communication. Engaging with more diverse perspectives and adopting a global lens for exploration of science and health journalism are priorities for the field. These are common themes in the Handbook, which we believe is still a useful resource to help facilitate these much-needed explorations.

 

Publisher's note: this letter refers to Book Review: Palgrave Handbook of Science and Health Journalism

This study explores how YouTube content creators integrate scientific evidence into their videos by analyzing citation patterns across disciplines. The role of other alternative metrics is also considered. We apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to compare the citation count of 12,005 research articles from Biotechnology, Psychology, Astrophysics, and Ecology published between 2014 and 2023, including citations sourced from YouTube videos. Our findings provide a characterization of two principal components in evidence citation employed by various science communication stakeholders. The first component enhances a paper's visibility by driving social attention, while the second focuses on its social influence and impact, determined by the paper's quality and scientific relevance.

Science podcasts have become an increasingly popular channel for science communication. Although podcasting has risen in popularity, little is known about why science podcasters choose to pursue this pathway for communication and how they set about achieving their goals for their podcast. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with 20 science podcasters in Australia, our results reveal that the podcasters are mainly driven by personal factors such as their interest in, enjoyment of, and curiosity about science and that while they employ various tactics to achieve their goals, they do not consciously consider these tactics to be a form of strategic science communication.

This research examines how public relations (PR) officers in Taiwanese scientific organizations view their science communication roles in a context with limited professional science journalism. Through a survey of 67 PR officers, we investigate their perceptions of public trust in their organization, their media relations and communication strategies. Results indicate that while PR officers recognize the importance of science communication, they perceive less media interest in scientific content compared to organizational news. Potentially, this leads to a self-reinforcing cycle where the perception of low media interests further reduces PR efforts in communicating research findings and potentially harms organizations’ perceived legitimacy at scientific research.

Stem cell research and therapies have been the topic of hype in the news media in Europe, America, Asia and the Pacific. Using a computational approach, we examine stem cell hype in the news media in the unique political, media and cultural context of Vietnam. The results indicate a pattern of the news media portraying this medical advancement as a source of national pride and achievement to tap into consumers' patriotism. The computational frame analysis method was shown to be efficient, helpful, and useful when researchers are confronted with urgent social, technological or public health matters. Findings from this study suggest that there is a need for national and international efforts to investigate news media content that misrepresents the current stage of stem cell treatment efficacy and risks.

Extending previous research on how science fiction viewing and science news use predict attitudes toward a range of emerging technologies, this study draws on theories of genre-specific cultivation and narrative transportation to analyze how media consumption predicts attitudes toward two speculative technologies: mind uploading and terraforming. Results from a survey of the U.S. public (N = 1,015) show that science fiction viewing was positively related to support for mind uploading, while science fiction transportation was positively related to support for terraforming, belief that people are likely to develop mind uploading, and belief that people are likely to develop terraforming. Transportation also mediated relationships between science fiction viewing and attitudes. In addition, science news use was positively related to support for each technology and belief that people are likely to develop each technology. These findings highlight the potential role of media factors in predicting attitudes about hypothetical technologies.