We investigate how livestreaming science events may stimulate audience interest in science. We conducted an online experiment (N = 356) and found that watching video footage from the live broadcast of a spectacular rocket launch was associated with increased science information-seeking intention, indicating initial science interest development. We distinguish parallel mechanisms of interest evocation, that is, meta-emotional media gratification via the emotion of awe and eudaimonic media appreciation sequentially mediated by awe and awareness of knowledge gap. Moreover, perceived science self-efficacy moderated meta-emotional gratification. Findings suggest that awe-inspiring science media events may facilitate interest development by motivating information-seeking about science topics.
AinleyM.AinleyJ. (2011). A cultural perspective on the structure of student interest in science. International Journal of Science Education, 33(1), 51–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2010.518640
2.
ArendtF. (2013). News stereotypes, time, and fading priming effects. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(2), 347–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699013482907
3.
BaiY.MaruskinL. A.ChenS.GordonA. M.StellarJ. E.McNeilG. D.PengK.KeltnerD. (2017). Awe, the diminished self, and collective engagement: Universals and cultural variations in the small self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2), 185–209. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000087
BanduraA. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice Hall.
6.
BartschA.MaresM.-L. (2014). Making sense of violence: Perceived meaningfulness as a predictor of audience interest in violent media content. Journal of Communication, 64(5), 956–976. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12112
7.
BartschA.SchneiderF. M. (2014). Entertainment and politics revisited: How non-escapist forms of entertainment can stimulate political interest and information seeking. Journal of Communication, 64(3), 369–396. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12095
8.
BartschA.VordererP.MangoldR.ViehoffR. (2008). Appraisal of emotions in media use: Toward a process model of meta-emotion and emotion regulation. Media Psychology, 11(1), 7–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213260701813447
CarverA.GarnerJ. K.KaplanA.PughK. J. (2021). Visitors’ attendance motivation and meaning making at a public science event. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 11(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2021.1874620
ChanM.HuP. K. F.MakM. (2022). Mediation analysis and warranted inferences in media and communication research: Examining research design in communication journals from 1996 to 2017. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 99(2), 463–486. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020961519
ChiricoA.CipressoP.YadenD. B.BiassoniF.RivaG.GaggioliA. (2017). Effectiveness of immersive videos in inducing awe: An experimental study. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01242-0
15.
ChiricoA.FerriseF.CordellaL.GaggioliA. (2018). Designing awe in virtual reality: An experimental study. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Article 2351. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02351
16.
CohenJ. (2013). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Routledge.
17.
CuiX.RuiJ.SuF. (2016). From immediate community to imagined community: Social identity and the co-viewing of media event. Global Media and China, 1(4), 481–496. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059436416681177
18.
CuiX.XuQ. (2020). The roles of identity and emotion in media events’ social integration mechanism: A case study of the 2017 US presidential inauguration. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 28(2), 138–152. https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2019.1613406
19.
CuiX.XuQ. (2021). Television vs social media: Examining the effects of media platforms on audience’s emotion and sense of social solidarity during a media event. Western Journal of Communication, 85(5), 632–653. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2021.1970216
FritzM. S.MacKinnonD. P. (2007). Required sample size to detect the mediated effect. Psychological Science, 18(3), 233–239.
25.
GallagherS.JanzB.ReinermanL.TremplerJ.BockelmanP. (2015). A neurophenomenology of awe and wonder: Towards a non-reductionist cognitive science. Palgrave Macmillan.
26.
GreenP.MacLeodC. J. (2016). simr: An R package for power analysis of generalised linear mixed models by simulation. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 7(4), 493–498. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12504
27.
GriskeviciusV.ShiotaM. N.NeufeldS. L. (2010). Influence of different positive emotions on persuasion processing: A functional evolutionary approach. Emotion, 10(2), 190. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018421
28.
HaimsonO. L.TangJ. C. (2017). What makes live events engaging on Facebook Live, Periscope, and Snapchat. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 48–60). Association for Computing Machinery.
29.
HatfieldE.CacioppoJ. T.RapsonR. L. (1992). Primitive emotional contagion. In ClarkM. S. (Ed.), Emotion and social behavior (pp. 151–177). Sage.
30.
HayesA. F. (2022). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach (3rd ed.). The Guilford Press.
31.
HidiS.BerndorffD.AinleyM. (2002). Children’s argument writing, interest and self-efficacy: An intervention study. Learning and Instruction, 12(4), 429–446.
HuL. T.BentlerP. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
34.
HuJ.HuhmannB. A.HymanM. R. (2007). The Relationship between task complexity and information search: The role of self-efficacy. Psychology & Marketing, 24(3), 253–270.
35.
IBM Corp. (2020). IBM SPSS statistics for windows (Version 27.0).
36.
IyengarS. S.LepperM. R. (1999). Rethinking the value of choice: A cultural perspective on intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 349–366. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.349
37.
JöreskogK. G.SörbomD. (1993). Structural equation modeling with the SIMPLIS command language. Scientific Software.
38.
KeltnerD.HaidtJ. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930302297
39.
KempS. (2023). YouTube users, stats, data & trends. Datareportal.
40.
KrappA.PrenzelM. (2011). Research on interest in science: Theories, methods, and findings. International Journal of Science Education, 33(1), 27–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2010.518645
LuoM.HsuT. W.ParkJ. S.HancockJ. T. (2020). Emotional amplification during live-streaming: Evidence from comments during and after news events. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-computer Interaction, 4(CSCW1), 1–19.
43.
McClellandG. H.JuddC. M. (1993). Statistical difficulties of detecting interactions and moderator effects. Psychological Bulletin, 114(2), 376–390.
44.
McPhetresJ. (2019). Oh, the things you don’t know: Awe promotes awareness of knowledge gaps and science interest. Cognition and Emotion, 33(8), 1599–1615. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1585331
45.
MetagJ. (2020). What drives science media use? Predictors of media use for information about science and research in digital information environments. Public Understanding of Science, 29(6), 561–578. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520935062
NuutilaK.TapolaA.TuominenH.KupiainenS.PásztorA.NiemivirtaM. (2020). Reciprocal predictions between interest, self-efficacy, and performance during a task. Frontiers in Education, 5(36), https://doi.org/doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00036
OliverM. B.BartschA. (2010). Appreciation as audience response: Exploring entertainment gratifications beyond hedonism. Human Communication Research, 36(1), 53–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01368.x
50.
OliverM. B.BartschA. (2011). Appreciation of entertainment: The importance of meaningfulness via virtue and wisdom. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 23(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000029
51.
OliverM. B.RaneyA. A. (2011). Entertainment as pleasurable and meaningful: Identifying hedonic and eudaimonic motivations for entertainment consumption. Journal of Communication, 61(5), 984–1004. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01585.x
52.
OliverM. B.RaneyA. A. (2019). Positive media psychology: Emerging scholarship and a roadmap for emerging technologies. In AntonioJ.VelázquezM.PulidoC. M. (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of positive communication (pp. 111–119). Routledge. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315207759
53.
OliverM. B.RaneyA. A.BartschA.Janicke-BowlesS.AppelM.DaleK. (2021). Model of inspiring media. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 33(4), 191. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000305
54.
PiffP. K.DietzeP.FeinbergM.StancatoD. M.KeltnerD. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(6), 883–899. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000018
55.
PotvinP.HasniA. (2014). Interest, motivation and attitude towards science and technology at K-12 levels: A systematic review of 12 years of educational research. Studies in Science Education, 50(1), 85–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2014.881626
56.
R Core Team. (2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/
57.
ReisS. M.ParkS. (2001). Gender differences in high-achieving students in math and science. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 25(1), 52–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/016235320102500104
58.
RenningerK. A. (2000). Individual interest and its implications for understanding intrinsic motivation. In SansoneC.HarackiewiczJ. M. (Eds.), Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (pp. 373–404). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012619070-0/50035-0
59.
RenningerK. A.HidiS. (2002). Individual interest and its implications for understanding intrinsic motivation. In SansoneC.HarackiewiczJ. M. (Eds.), Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (pp. 373–404). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012619070-0/50035-0
60.
RosenthalS. (2018). Motivations to seek science videos on YouTube: Free-choice learning in a connected society. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 8(1), 22–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2017.1371357
61.
RosseelY. (2012). lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(i02), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02
62.
RyanR. M.DeciE. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68.
63.
SeligmanM. E.CsikszentmihalyiM. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction (Vol. 55). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.5
64.
ShiT. (2022). Live streaming funerals: Constructing togetherness and belonging in the mediatization era. Continuum, 36(4), 495–507.
65.
ShiotaM. N.KeltnerD.MossmanA. (2007). The nature of awe: Elicitors, appraisals, and effects on self-concept. Cognition and Emotion, 21(5), 944–963. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930600923668
66.
SkovsgaardM.ShehataA.StrömbäckJ. (2016). Opportunity structures for selective exposure: Investigating selective exposure and learning in Swedish election campaigns using panel survey data. The International Journal of Press/politics, 21(4), 527–546. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161216658157
67.
StocklmayerS. M.RennieL. J.GilbertJ. K. (2010). The roles of the formal and informal sectors in the provision of effective science education. Studies in Science Education, 46(1), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057260903562284
TichenorP. J.DonohueG. A.OlienC. N. (1970). Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34(2), 159–170. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1086/267786
ValdesoloP.ShtulmanA.BaronA. S. (2017). Science is awe-some: The emotional antecedents of science learning. Emotion Review, 9(3), 215–221. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073916673212
ZimmermanB. J. (2000). Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 82–91. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1016
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
