Are Women a Missing Audience for Science on YouTube? An Exploratory Study

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2021

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Abstract

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.

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Copyright © 2021 Landrum. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Informal Science Learning, Public Media, Science Communication, Science Media, Women, YouTube

Citation

Landrum AR (2021) Are Women a Missing Audience for Science on YouTube? An Exploratory Study. Front. Commun. 6:610920. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.610920

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https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.610920
 https://hdl.handle.net/2346/87676

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