Can Snapchat tell a science story?
Snapchat being used to capture science at Game Lab at @SalfordUni part of Manchester Science Festival, @McrSciFest
OK, so here’s the task: To document Manchester Science Festival using the popular image sharing app; Snapchat.
Let me just add some background here. Manchester Science Festival takes place every October; the Festival spans across all of Manchester with innovative, surprising and meaningful experiences, where people of all ages can ignite their curiosity in science (Manchester Science Festival). The SciComms playground; Game Lab, presented by the University of Salford at MediaCityUK.
I was entirely unprepared to use Snapchat as a communication medium for a science festival. It’s limited to sending images and video in, up-to, 10-second ephemeral bursts. If you thought Twitters’ 140 character limit was difficult Snapchat is much worse (Bradshaw, 2018). Interview styles should be conversational bite-sized chunks rather than the traditional top-down editorial pieces. Snapchat stories defined its audience of 158 million daily users are between the ages of 18 and 34, just 15% of its users are 35+ (Forbes.com, 2018).
Snapchat has captivated its user base with fast-paced images and videos, celebrity gossip, how-to media, funny selfie filters and lots and lots of emojis. There’s little-written text using this medium. That, on the one hand, is its utter brilliance and on the other, it’s complete downfall.
Can you describe a complex scientific issue using 10-second bursts? The University of Michigan attempted just that to promote The Michigan Journal of Medicine via a Snapchat story with the total duration running to 3:14. The result is far from professional, strangely marketing a traditional editorial scientific research journal where the ‘gatekeeper’ review process is a month.
Another issue, as with all social media, is auto-moderation. Humanless processed censoring based on patterns of behaviour (Cross, 2018). However, this is mainly flawed as regular LGBTQ YouTubers discovered their videos were being hidden in Restricted Mode. An algorithm designed to filter out “mature” content. These hidden videos have no apparent mature content, yet, were being automatically interpreted as mature by the algorithm (McCormick, 2017).
YouTube is Anti — LGBT? (Restricted Content Mode). (Ellis, 2017)
Snapchat, in its defence, delivers citizen journalism. A considerable range of perspectives, opinions and viewpoints (Miah, 2017) by the bucketload, forgoing the filter of information reaching public consumption. A majority of these stories are entirely unfiltered as there is no editing video once the button is released, the options are, to delete and re-record or to send to your network, providing an instant delivery of the story with no traditional gatekeepers and waiting around for editing and approval.
Back to my experience at MSF and documenting Game Lab using Snapchat. There were some big topics to record over three floors. Initially, I tried my method of using Snapchat that as a camera where I add emojis, doodles and text to photographs. Telling science stories with a picture is ambiguous, emojis are too. So this wasn’t helping to explain, something like a human cell, to the viewing audience. Quickly realising that video was probably the best way to report a basic overview of what was going on. I flooded the story with 10-second clips of interviews, vlogs and random shots. In hindsight what I didn’t provide was any context for the viewer.
In conclusion, Snapchat is an excellent medium to publish, almost live, short bursts of information. Some great examples include @generalelectric, @NASA and @SourPatchSnaps. (Although the latter is not scientific it shows how Snapchat’s Spectacles can be used to immerse the viewer as if they were there.) Telling a science story with some depth could be possible but it would need to be planned before opening the app and not just turning up to a science festival with no plan at all.
@NASA Snapchat story detailing hurricanes. (Snapchat, 2018)
References
Manchester Science Festival. (2017). About Manchester Science Festival — Manchester Science Festival. [online] Available at: https://www.manchestersciencefestival.com/our-story/about-manchester-science-festival/ [Accessed 4 Jan. 2018].
Forbes.com. (2018). Snapchat’s Big Weakness: The Olds. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2017/03/01/snapchats-big-weakness-the-olds/#9bed5aa230b2 [Accessed 4 Jan. 2018].
Bradshaw, P. (2017). Snapchat for journalists: a great big guide. [online] Online Journalism Blog. Available at: https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2016/05/11/snapchat-for-journalists/[Accessed 4 Jan. 2018].
Snapchat Story: Michigan Journal Of Medicine. (2016). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxrQ_usDHxg [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018].
Cross, K. (2018). IT’S NOT JUST LOGAN PAUL AND YOUTUBE — THE MORAL COMPASS OF SOCIAL MEDIA IS BROKEN. [online] Theverge.com. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16850798/logan-paul-youtube-social-media-twitch-moderation [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018].
McCormick, R. (2017). YouTube apologizes for hiding LGBTQ users’ videos in its Restricted Mode. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/19/14978318/youtube-lgbtq-videos-hidden-restricted-mode [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018].
Ellis, R. (2017). YouTube is Anti — LGBT? (Restricted Content Mode). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=Zr6pS07mbJc [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018].
Miah, A. (2017). Nanoethics, Science Communication, and a Fourth Model for Public Engagement. NanoEthics, 11(2), pp.139–152.
General Electric (2014). #EmojiScience. [video] Available at: https://vine.co/v/O6nW5JqjA2x/ [Accessed 8 Jan. 2018].
Snapchat. (2018). Snap Inc.
