Transformation of the media landscape: Infotainment versus expository narrations for communicating science in online videos

Abstract

Society is undergoing a transformation in the way people consume media: increasingly we are using online on-demand videos, with the fastest growing segment of online videos about science being user-generated content that uses an infotainment style of delivery, in contrast to the traditional expository narrations of professionally generated content. In this study, we produced two otherwise identical videos about climate change to test the effects of an infotainment or expository narration. A total of 870 survey participants (419 English; 451 Spanish) were randomly presented with either an infotainment or expository version of the video. The expository narration was liked and believed more, and this held irrespective of language, age, sex or online viewing habits. However, the infotainment version was liked more by viewers without a university education and, further, viewers were better able to recall information from it, suggesting that user-generated content with infotainment-style narrations may actually be good for increasing public understanding of science.