“I Saw It On Youtube!". The Role of Science Communication in the Post Digital Era

Facing the changes occurring in our world, such as climate change or medical-health emergencies, which require new skills to deal with daily issues (EU, 2015). For this reason, it is necessary to promote a more active and responsible citizenship through Science Literacy (SL), an essential part of this process. SL is the ability to make conscious and well-informed scientific decisions through a critical and reflective analysis process (Akerson, 2018; Reincke et al., 2020; Akcay, 2018; cordis.europa.eu). A solid way to increase SL is Science Education (SE) but, in order to improve its effectiveness, it needs the support of learning and teaching innovation. A fertile ground for such innovation lies in the connection between SE and Science Communication (SC). Indeed, SC employs entertainment to send messages, creating an edutainment process (EC, 2020) able to foster motivation and engagement for SL. This type of communication frequently takes place through social media, where interactions occur between multiple channels, and interactive, engaging and shareable activities are created (Sandu & Christensen, 2011; Pinto & Riesch, 2017; López-Goñi & Sánchez-Angulo, 2018). SC promotes both SL and Media Literacy (ML), which nowadays are strongly present in our lives (Potter, 2013; Livingstone, 2003; EC, 2007). Hence, the connection between SC and SE can increase the growth of SL and ML, both essential for XXI-century citizens. It is starting from these premises that our study investigates how SL and ML can be linked to create educational models in a framework of active citizenship.