Paper Title: When Science Journalism is Awesome: Measuring Audiences’ Experiences of awe from Reading Science Stories

Author(s) and Year: Asheley R. Landrum, Kristina Janét, Kelsi Opat, Heather Akin (2024)

Journal: Journalism Practice (Open Access)

TL;DR: This paper investigates the extent to which people experience awe when reading science stories. The authors found that readers who have experienced awe reported the feelings of connectedness and vastness. However, being science curious was reported to be the most important predictor for whether someone experienced awe from science journalism.

Why I chose this paper: As science communicators, awe is the feeling we often want to induce in our audiences to inspire change and action. However, understanding what exactly makes science outreach awe-some is not easy. Furthermore, measuring the (emotional) impact of outreach is often overlooked in scicomm studies — the authors addressing these two issues was what made me interested in this paper.

The Background

Awe in Science Communication

Science communicators and science media are perpetually trying to reach their audiences more effectively and encourage them to engage with science. One emotion that could spur this type of engagement is awe. Awe is associated with  feelings of vastness that can cause motivation to seek information and revise established belief systems. In science media, invoking this feeling is achieved using awe-inducing text, visuals, and narratives. One classic example is Earthrise, a photo of Earth taken from lunar orbit. Some astronauts have said that images like these have inspired a new appreciation and connectedness to Earth.

Effectively exploiting awe to increase engagement in science and society requires science communicators to understand this feeling in the first place. To address that, previous research on the science of awe focused on how to measure and characterize feelings of awe. Particularly, Yaden et al. (2019) developed the Awe-Experience Scale (AWE-S) framework, which describes awe as a feeling that’s made up of the following facets: 

1. Vastness: seeing or thinking about something very large or long-lasting;
2. Need for accommodation: needing to make changes in own understanding to accommodate new information;
3. Time perception: experiencing time more slowly;
4. Self-diminishment: reducing the feeling of self, e.g. by feeling small;
5. Connectedness: feeling better connected to people of things around; and
6. Physical sensation: experiencing physical changes, e.g. by having goosebumps.

Earthrise (NASA/William Anders, 1968). Viewing Earth from space is described by some astronauts as an awe-inducing experience, leading to a cognitive shift towards greater appreciation of our planet.

In this study, the authors explored the extent to which science journalism can be awe-inspiring by measuring how readers’ feelings of awe changed when they read pieces purposely meant to invoke awe, versus stories written in a more traditional news format (“business as usual” story). The researchers also investigated whether science curiosity can make people more likely to experience awe when reading science stories.

The Research Question

Awe or Nah?

The study aimed to answer the following questions:

1. Did the participants experience awe from reading popular science pieces?
2. Does science curiosity impact the readers’ experience of awe?
3. Can the AWE-S be used to measure awe in response to reading science journalism? 
4. Is the “wow” reaction on Facebook a good indicator of awe?

The Methods

Measuring Awe

The authors asked 2,088 respondents to read one of eight randomly-chosen articles. Professional science journalists chose seven awe-inducing articles to test and one “business as usual” story to use as a control. The readers then answered questions that probed their feelings on the AWE-S scale. Respondents also answered a question about whether or not they experienced awe from reading their story. Finally, they also chose a Facebook reaction in response to reading the paper. 

The Results

Chasing the Awe

Unlike previous studies using the AWE-S framework, the authors focused on five out of six facets of awe, omitting the physical sensation dimension. All five remaining facets were positively correlated with the readers’ self-reported feeling of awe, with connectedness (r=0.68) and vastness (r=0.72) being the most correlated. The “wow” reaction was chosen most often, however, its selection decreased as respondents reported a greater experience of a dimension of awe, except for the need for accommodation. This finding suggests that the “wow” social media reaction is ill-suited to tell us if the audience is awe-struck.

Awe responses varied by story. When analyzed together, the awe-inducing stories were shown to induce awe more than the “business as usual” story. Readers of individual awe-some stories reported a greater experience of the need for accommodation (needing to make changes in their own understanding as a result of the new information) than readers of the “business as usual” story, but this was not statistically significant. The feeling of vastness was the only facet of awe that was consistently higher and statistically significant for awe-inducing pieces than the control. 

Science curiosity was reported to be positively correlated with each of the five studied dimensions of awe. In fact, it was found that being science curious played a more important role in experiencing awe than whether the paper was awe-inducing or not.

The Impact 

The Knowledge Emotion of Awe

Effectively using awe to engage audiences requires understanding this emotion and whether science communication can cause it at all. Knowing that connectedness and vastness facets are most-correlated with experiencing awe can inform science communication efforts, such as by using images emphasizing how we are part of a connected world for astronomy or climate science outreach. In turn, knowing that the “wow” reaction on Facebook is not a good indicator that a reader has experienced awe is useful in evaluating the impact of science communication through social media metrics to plan future outreach campaigns.

The authors note that the relationship between science curiosity and the experience of awe warrants future research. This would help understand whether science curiosity influences awe or if science curious readers are more susceptible to awe because they seek out science media for enjoyment. Other future research could look at the sixth facet of awe (physical sensation), the impact of awe on desired behaviour, and in different groups. Finally, it would be interesting to look at the differences in the experience of awe from reading science stories written in different emotional tones, such as sad and happy narratives.

Emotional responses are key to motivating the audience to reflect and act on issues that are being communicated, making them a cornerstone to greater engagement with science — which is the ultimate goal of science communication. If we want our outreach not just to inform but also to be awesome, understanding how awe is measured and evoked becomes truly essential.

My key takeaway: Science communicators can strategically target different facets of awe when crafting call-to-action messages, guiding the narration, or using various visualization techniques. Moreover, knowing whether your audience is science curious or not can help tailor science messages for greater impact by making them more awe-inspiring.

Written by Mykyta ‘Nik’ Kliapets

Edited by Krystal Vasquez and Sarah Ferguson

Featured image credit: Suzy Hazelwood at Pexels (CC0 license from Creative Commons)