This Broad Implementation media project (building upon prior NSF award 0639001) will address science literacy among Latinos via mass media, increasing the amount of Spanish-language science content available in the U.S., increasing the representation of Latino scientists in mainstream media, and expanding the knowledge base about Latino's interest and engagement in science. The STEM content will be based on the research conducted by the Hispanic scientists being interviewed and therefore includes a wide range of topics including astronomy, biology, physics, earth sciences, and engineering. The criteria for selecting the Hispanic researchers and the content is based on the importance of the research, how it is immediately relevant to a Latino audience, and how it draws on the indigenous knowledge system or ethnic pride for U.S. Latinos.
Project deliverables include 150 audio-video interviews with Hispanic scientists distributed on both commercial Hispanic radio and TV stations, as well as public broadcasting and online. In addition to the broadcasts, social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter will be used to reach out and engage Hispanics. It is estimated that 300 Spanish-language radio stations will air the programs, resulting in 3 million radio impressions for each daily 60-second broadcast. Television broadcasts are estimated to result in another 2 million impressions per program. Project partners include the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS); V-Me, a national Hispanic educational channel; KLRN, the San Antonio, Texas public television station that will provide the national PBS distribution; and DaGama Web Studio that will develop and implement the social media marketing plan to attract and engage Latinos online.
Comprehensive evaluations of project deliverables and impact will be conducted by Informal Learning Solutions (video-audio formative evaluations), and Knight-Williams Research (summative evaluation of project impact). The Summative Evaluation Plan will focus on the programs' overall appeal, clarity, and effectiveness in meeting the two key audience objectives in the proposal: (1) increasing familiarity with and understanding of science concepts among U.S. Latinos, and (2) demonstrating engagement activities such as talking with friends/family about the presented topics, and/or seeking out additional information. It will furthermore assess the extent to which listeners and viewers find the Hispanic researchers featured in the programs to be effective communicators and the importance they assign to hearing from Hispanic researchers themselves. It will look at whether and how the programs are effective selecting topics with immediate relevance to listeners'/viewers' everyday lives. Finally, the evaluation will gather information about listeners'/viewers' demographic and background characteristics, including their country of origin, degree of fluency in Spanish, reasons for preferring Spanish media, number of generations in the U.S., reasons for tuning into the programming, efforts to recommend the programs to others, and the likelihood of continuing to listen to or view the programs in the future.
The EarthSky en Español project consisted of media components in the Spanish language, including radio programs about science distributed to a national audience via an independent network of Hispanic radio stations, short-format videos in Spanish broadcast via Univision, a Spanish-language science website, and a strong presence on Spanish-language social media, in particular Facebook. EarthSky set out initially to: - Help inform the field of informal science education by creating social media sites across several platforms, populating them with quality science content in Spanish, and gauging the result. EarthSky had seen no other science outreach company populating a breadth of social media platforms with science content in Spanish, with the goal of analyzing impact. - Bring short-format science audio and video programs to millions of U.S. Latinos - via traditional and new media – who might not otherwise be exposed to science. Our goal was to increase the amount of Spanish-language science content available in mainstream and new media and increase the representation of Latino scientists in U.S. media. We wanted to increase familiarity with and understanding of science concepts among U.S. Latinos, while resulting in engagement activities such as talking with friends/family about the presented topics and/or seeking out additional information. We successfully accomplished all of these goals. Knight Williams Inc submitted a summative evaluation of the EarthSky en Espanol project in November 2014. The evaluation focused in two areas of the project: the videos, which had been broadcast on a Spanish-language television program (Detras del Saber) via the popular television outlet Univision, and the project’s Facebook page. Findings relating to the impact of the videos: - From the vantage point of the evaluation participants, the project team effectively met the challenge of presenting engaging information in the short format videos. Viewers consistently enjoyed the EarthSky en Español videos, and praised them for being direct, coherent, and personally relevant, and for providing new information and interesting content. - Viewers of the evaluated videos also generally indicated that they were extremely interested in learning more about the featured topics and that they were mostly likely to seek out additional information within a week’s time. - Overall, Viewers indicated they greatly appreciated the presence of Hispanic scientists in the videos. Viewers of all three videos strongly agreed that the scientists were effective communicators and that they enjoyed watching the featured scientists talk about their work. - The majority of Viewers also considered it essential that future videos feature Hispanic scientists, explaining that they rarely have an opportunity to see Hispanic scientists in this role, and that they found it engaging, a source of pride, and/or that it added credibility and/or personal relevance to the science content presented in the videos. - Viewers consistently reflected that they learned a considerable amount from the videos and that the information presented was generally of interest, indicating that, as a group, they were aware of the videos’ informal educational value. Findings relating to the role of Facebook: The EarthSky en Español Facebook Page had 34,326 friends on August 15, 2014, when the project ended. Evaluation participants familiar the page perceived it to be a valuable informal science education resource. In particular: - The overwhelming majority of those who had visited the page (97%) thought it was a good source for learning about science, and consistently described the page as credible and trustworthy and the content to be interesting, relevant, and varied. - About half (51%) indicated that they followed up on information presented on the EarthSky Facebook Page regularly or occasionally. - Evaluation participants who were asked questions about their use of the EarthSky en Español Facebook Page indicated that the most appealing aspects were the photos and content/topics, followed by the videos or articles. There is much more information available in the final evaluation report titled "An evaluation of the EarthSky en Español Facebook Page and short format videos," prepared by Knight Williams Inc. and submitted to EarthSky and NSF in November 2014. The EarthSky team refers interested readers to this valuable report.
