New Tools to Assess the Impact of Science Communication

The Department of New Media Technology has had a busy 2013 thus far, presenting research results and analytical tools at several international conferences.

Prof. Arno Scharl was an invited speaker at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference, where he served on an AAAS panel focused on "New Tools to Engage Publics and Assess the Impact of Science Communication". The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society, an international non-profit organization ‘’dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association.’’

At the panel, Dr. Scharl and his fellow scholars tackled such pressing questions as ‘how can science agencies and other organizations know if they are successfully helping their publics to understand and appreciate the beauty and benefits of science? And how can they be sure their publics understand new science results, or that they see how the available data and information services relate to their lives, values and priorities? Prof. Scharl’s talk focused on the role of news and social media monitoring to investigate the impact of science communication. The topic was very well received, with more than 90 people attending the 3-hour event.

A recent paper at another conference represents the most up-to-date and complete documentation of the presented Web intelligence application, the Media Watch on Climate Change. The paper stems from the proceedings of the 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, regularly voted among the top ten international conferences in the field of information systems.

Looking ahead, the Media Watch portal will be further advanced and extended through the department’s ongoing research activities, for example through the DIVINE and uComp research projects. At next year’s HICSS-47, Prof. Scharl will also serve as the co-chair of the Decision Support for Sustainability mini-track.