Science stories over time: The longitudinal effects of consuming science narratives via social media (2019)

People like stories. More than we even realize, we organize our societies and daily lives around narratives. We feel more comfortable when we know the background plot before being presented with a new crucial bit of information. Stories tend to stick with us longer, too, whereas bullet point lists of facts can easily slip our mind. Science communication scholars have caught on to the notion that stories are powerful ways to communicate and have been increasingly interested in studying the effects of narratives on audiences. Science communication practitioners have also been applying narrative techniques to craft more engaging messages for their audiences. The goal of this research project is to better understand how social media stories about science shape our emotional attachments to this topic. It is possible that emotional associations strengthen overtime or that social media users become desensitized to seeing similar science stories over and over again.