Este estudio explora los modelos de comunicación científica desde los paradigmas del déficit y el diálogo y los resultados de su aplicación en investigación. El marco teórico de esta investigación, a su vez informa a la metodología mediante las sugerencias de varios autores orientadas a promover la participación de las audiencias. Por este motivo, este estudio aplicó la investigación-acción participativa, métodos cualitativos, epistemología decolonial, y un análisis que combina la teoría de los dos pasos, teoría del framing y teoría del médium. Esta metodología se aplicó en el co-diseño de estrategias comunicacionales en dos programas de salud, uno para niños (Estados Unidos) y otro para adolescentes (Ecuador), que promueven hábitos saludables.   El co-diseño de este proyecto: (a) facilitó el diálogo entre investigadores y sus audiencias; (b) permitió crear estrategias comunicacionales adaptadas a las audiencias; y (c) se propusieron guías de comunicación científica que evidencian la importancia del involucramiento de los investigadores como voceros del contenido científico, criterios de diseño de mensajes científicos para no-expertos, y criterios para la selección de canales comunicacionales.

Science communication research and practice currently promote strategies oriented towards creating audience engagement around scientific content. Consequently, science communication needs to continually explore new methodologies that enable audiences’ participation in order to meet their interests and needs. The present study combines qualitative and participatory action research (PAR) methods guided by decolonial epistemologies to develop a co-designed project with public health, nutrition and sports science researchers to recruit young audiences from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and from Cuenca, Ecuador. The main goal of this study was to create strategies to motivate young audiences’ engagement and interest in adopting healthy habits. This article focuses on the study’s research design in order to provide guidelines and procedural recommendations for facilitating a co-design approach for developing science communication initiatives targeting children and teenagers in Ecuador and the United States. As we demonstrate, the PAR approach for co-design leads to useful outcomes: (1) the incorporation of decolonial theory guidelines in participatory research; and (2) the development of science communication strategies that combine online and offline activities to put in dialogue scientists and their audiences, ultimately resulting in mutual learning, thus allowing scholars and practitioners to explore in practical terms how to co-design improved strategies.

This study employed critical analysis of multimodal texts to examine how NASA utilizes multiple modes like text, visuals, font, and sound to communicate space on a modern multimodal platform—Instagram. Four main themes emerged in the analysis of 34 NASA IGTV videos: space as a scientific aim, space as a scientific means, space as a U.S. territorialization effort, and space within the general public’s reach. Multimodal discursive practices enabled NASA to produce institutional discourses and disseminate meanings of space that enacted and reinforced gendered and racial exceptionalism, technological and economic space elitism, and hegemonic territorialization operationalized through space appropriation and commodification. While visuals, text, and auditory mode in many cases worked together to create meanings, the use of visuals communicated that space-related accomplishments are still achieved in white and male environments. Thus, the unpacking of multimodal discursive practices calls for more holistic approaches that address multimodal arrangements and an inclusive approach to the roles of individual modes in meaning-making.