IWM research featured on science communication blog

An article has been written for SciCommBites about the research paper by Eva Rudholzer and Prof. Dr. Sonja Utz from the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM). In their paper ‘Who Said What? Confusing Scientists and Laypeople on Social Media’, the IWM researchers investigated whether people on social media can recognise who is a scientist and who is not.

Science communication for science communication

The US blog SciCommBites is dedicated to summarising the latest research findings on science communication for students, researchers and practitioners. The aim is to bridge the gap between research and practice in science communication. The author, Anika Zaman, chose the article by the IWM researchers from the Everyday Media lab because it deals not only with disinformation itself, but also with how people perceive expertise.

More than just sharing content: showcasing expertise

To this end, Eva Rudholzer and Sonja Utz conducted two experiments to test whether participants could distinguish between experts and laypeople: the first study involved a recall test, whilst the second examined how profile information - whether immediately visible or accessible via a click - affects this distinction.

The results show that having more information about the senders can help people distinguish between experts and laypeople a little more effectively. According to the author of the SciCommBites article, an important conclusion can be drawn for science communication in an age of flooded social media feeds: it is no longer just the communication of content that matters, but also that it is clear who is speaking as an expert.