TY - JOUR
T1 - Are Women a Missing Audience for Science on YouTube? An Exploratory Study
AU - Landrum, Asheley
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported in part by a collaborative National Science Foundation grant awarded to AL (DRL 1810990) and her public media collaborators S. E. McCann and S. Eris (DRL 1811019). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© Landrum.
PY - 2021/4
Y1 - 2021/4
N2 - Educational science programming on digital video platforms such as YouTube wrestle with sometimes significant gender disparities in viewership. When men engage with science and technology content on digital platforms more than women, gender gaps in the understanding of, engagement with, and interest in STEM may intensify. Therefore, there is a critical need for research aiming to aid in our understanding of these gender differences. This study provides evidence that the gender gaps may exist not in the use of YouTube itself, but in the engagement with science and technology content on the platform. Furthermore, there are gender differences in the reasons for engaging with such content, with women, perhaps, more motivated by instrumental purposes than to satisfy their science curiosity.
AB - Educational science programming on digital video platforms such as YouTube wrestle with sometimes significant gender disparities in viewership. When men engage with science and technology content on digital platforms more than women, gender gaps in the understanding of, engagement with, and interest in STEM may intensify. Therefore, there is a critical need for research aiming to aid in our understanding of these gender differences. This study provides evidence that the gender gaps may exist not in the use of YouTube itself, but in the engagement with science and technology content on the platform. Furthermore, there are gender differences in the reasons for engaging with such content, with women, perhaps, more motivated by instrumental purposes than to satisfy their science curiosity.
KW - informal science learning
KW - public media
KW - science communication
KW - science media
KW - women
KW - YouTube
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85118183786&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fcomm.2021.610920
DO - 10.3389/fcomm.2021.610920
M3 - Article
VL - 6
JO - Frontiers in Communication
JF - Frontiers in Communication
M1 - 610920
ER -