Following science on social media: The effects of humor and source likability

Abstract

Science communicators have been encouraged to use humor in their online engagement efforts. Yet, humor’s effectiveness for engaging people with science remains an open question. We report the results of an experiment designed to elicit varied levels of mirth in respondents, which was positively associated with perceived likability of the communicator and motivation to follow more science on social media. Furthermore, mirth and perceived likability serially mediated the effect of the experimental manipulation on motivation and factual science knowledge served as a moderator. This indicates that, while humor might be an effective means of reaching audiences, downstream effects are likely to vary depending on individuals’ knowledge.

Attitudes toward Fashion Influencers as a Mediator of Purchase Intention

“…Likeability can be understood as a psychological factor that influences how consumers react to a brand, product, or service, particularly as a result of how it is presented in terms of physical attractiveness, likeability, flattery, and association [40][41][42]. In this sense, creating content that appeals to likeability in branded communities on Facebook can lead to increased online engagement, which in turn can result in loyalty, word-of-mouth, and purchase intention [43].…”

Generating Science Buzz: An Examination of Multidimensional Engagement With Humorous Scientific Messages on Twitter and Instagram

“…We identified six types of humor in our data including wordplay, anthropomorphism, satire (including sarcasm), parody, clownish humor, and slapstick. We decided to focus on the first three as (a) they were the most popular across both of our focal social media platforms and (b) from a theoretical standpoint, wordplay and anthropomorphism are relatively benign types of messages, considered easy to create and deploy, and used often in public communication (Yeo et al, 2021). Satire, however, is commonly used to communicate about scientific issues such as climate change that are the subject of intense public contestation (e.g., Skurka et al, 2019).…”

“…Indeed, it has long been recognized that different communicative goals may be achieved through the use of varied types of humor (Speck, 1987;Weinberger & Gulas, 1992). Nevertheless, studies that have sought to demonstrate the attitudinal effects of exposure to varied types of humor have mostly focused on political humor (e.g., Becker, 2012;Holbert et al, 2011;Polk et al, 2009) or humor in advertising (e.g., Hoffmann et al, 2014;Ivanov et al, 2019), with few emerging from science communication (Yeo et al, 2020(Yeo et al, , 2021. Therefore, a finer-grained look at humor's use in science communication on social media, including the association between specific humor types and user engagement, is overdue.…”

CLADISTICS ruined my life: intersections of fandom, internet memes, and public engagement with science

“…When scientific institutions seek to engage the public through humor on social media and Internet memes, there are obvious risks associated with using a "dead" meme or misunderstanding the connotations of a given meme [Wiggins, 2019]. There are also the risks specific to science communication: the joke or meme always requires some background knowledge to be understood, audiences may feel alienated if they do not have the requisite knowledge to "get" the joke -either the scientific knowledge or the reference or context of the meme itself [Riesch, 2015;Wiggins, 2019;Yeo et al, 2021].…”

“…The Tyrell Museum's timely entry, shown in Figure 8, to the trend playfully pokes fun at those museum-goers who would label any large theropod dinosaur a T. rex. There is a potential risk here as well: when science institutions or professionals highlight the apparent ignorance of lay people in an attempt at humor, they may actually end up alienating audiences and reinforcing negative stereotypes about scientists as aloof and superior [Riesch, 2015;Yeo et al, 2021]. On the other hand, as a natural history museum and research facility dedicated to the study of paleontology, the Royal Tyrrell Museum may feel confident in assuming that those who follow the museum on social media are themselves professional scientists, students of science, or lay people with a devoted interest in science and paleontology.…”