Why Are Scientific Experts Perceived as Trustworthy? Emotional Assessment within TV and YouTube Videos

Abstract

Due to the rise of the Internet, the effects of different science communication formats in which experts appear cannot be neglected in communication research. Through their emotional and more comprehensible communication ‘sciencetubers’—who frequently differ from the stereotypical image of scientists as white, old men—may have a considerable effect on the public’s perceived trustworthiness of scientists as well as their trust in science. Thus, this study aims to extend trust and trustworthiness research to consider the role of emotion in science communication in the context of emerging online video content. Therefore, perceived trustworthiness was examined in an experimental online survey of 155 people aged 18–80. We considered different potential influencing variables for trustworthiness (expertise, integrity, benevolence) and used six different video stimuli about physics featuring scientific experts. The video stimuli varied according to format (TV interviews vs. YouTube videos), gender (male vs. female), and age of the experts depicted (old vs. young). The results suggest that: (1) Scientific experts appearing in TV interviews are perceived as more competent but not higher in integrity or benevolence than sciencetubers—while scientists interviewed on TV are regarded as typical scientists, sciencetubers stand out for their highly professional communication abilities (being entertaining and comprehensible); (2) these emotional assessments of scientists are important predictors of perceived trustworthiness; and (3) significantly mediate the effect of the stimulus (TV interview vs. YouTube video) on all dimensions of perceived trustworthiness of scientific experts.

Public online engagement with science information: on the road to a theoretical framework and a future research agenda

“…For example, blogs on science-related topics (e.g., HIV and potential protection measures) written from a personal perspective can be more influential than formal information sites [Neubaum and Krämer, 2015]. Similarly, YouTube influencers, such as scientists Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, Marius Angeschrien, or Doktor Whatson, can significantly impact people's beliefs about science -with resulting research questions only just beginning to be analyzed [Reif, Kneisel et al, 2020]. Moreover, less elaborate production such as commenting can also be influential and alter the attitudes that recipients might develop based on the original piece of information on a blog or in a written piece by a journalist [Gierth and Bromme, 2020;Winter, Brückner and Krämer, 2015;Winter and Krämer, 2016].…”

Constraints and Affordances of Online Engagement With Scientific Information—A Literature Review

“…For example, an expert's use of technical language in scientific information may lead to her being ascribed higher expertise (Thon and Jucks, 2017) as well as higher integrity and benevolence when her use of (technical) language is appropriate to the context, e.g., when she uses less technical language when addressing laypeople (vs. experts) in online health forums (Zimmermann and Jucks, 2018), or less aggressive language in an online video (König and Jucks, 2019). Furthermore, the perception of a communicator in an online video as being comprehensible and entertaining also led to higher ascriptions of trustworthiness (Reif et al, 2020). Individuals also take an expert's motives into account when evaluating trustworthiness; for example, readers were more inclined to trust a scientist when they believed the scientist intended to inform rather than persuade them , when the scientist provided a two-sided stance (instead of a one-sided stance) (Mayweg-Paus and Jucks, 2018) or mentioned the ethical aspects of a scientific issue (Hendriks et al, 2016).…”

French Science Communication on YouTube: A Survey of Individual and Institutional Communicators and Their Channel Characteristics

“…Nonetheless, science communication research on YouTube is still in its infancy (León and Bourk, 2018b;Allgaier, 2020). A few studies have looked at users' information seeking behavior (Rosenthal, 2018) and at the effects of science-related YouTube content on users (Reif et al, 2020). Most studies analyze video content on controversial, socioscientific issues, such as climate change (Shapiro and Park, 2015;Allgaier, 2019), fracking (Jaspal et al, 2014), and health (Keelan et al, 2007;Yang and Qian, 2011;Harris et al, 2014).…”