New media drive growth of scientific knowledge

Making a stand

The information imbalance prompted science professionals to make a stand. For example, Dingxiang Doctor was founded in 2014 with the aim of bridging the misinformation gap between medical professionals and laymen. It quickly became one of China's most successful platforms, with most of its articles garnering more than 100,000 views.

The platform's content is written, provided, reviewed and verified by qualified doctors with traceable academic backgrounds from public hospitals. Each article clearly names the writer, reviewers and references.

"We hope to let readers feel as much as possible that we are producing our content in a professional and systematic way," said Wang Lu, Dingxiang Doctor's social media director.

According to Wang, the average age of the platform's readership has been falling in recent years. At present, active users are mostly ages 18 to 35－particularly 18 to 25, which was considered a minority audience just a few years ago.

"It may have something to do with the growing attention paid to health issues in recent years, but it is also because our content and presentation styles are more acceptable to them," she said.

Among key factors contributing to greater public awareness of science are the language used and creative content presentation.

Changes in presentation

Many traditional methods of communicating science lost readers' interest because the content was too serious, long and technical, but China's science communicators have never stopped exploring ways of producing jargon-free articles.

This year, a group of young scientists from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences gained great popularity by livestreaming experiments and simultaneously interacting with viewers on a video-sharing platform.

Yuan Shuo, a guide at the National Museum of China who uses the online pseudonym Hesenberg－a play on the name of a renowned German quantum physicist－became famous, attracting more than 4 million followers on Weibo, by providing information in a way that is more like story narration than teaching.

Guokr also promotes a range of science-related products, including calendars that feature animal or plant species, and holds offline activities such as workshops and exhibitions that offer alternative ways of engaging with the scientific community to visiting museums.

Li, the Shanghai resident, said one of the main reasons she enjoys Dingxiang Doctor is that the articles are fun and easy to understand. "They explain the information in regular language," she said.

Wang said Dingxiang Doctor initially tried to paraphrase the contents of textbooks and publish them in various formats, such as question-and-answer articles. The contents were solid and professional but not reader-friendly, because they contained too much jargon. After realizing the problem, the team began to make adjustments.

"We decided to take a style that talks people's language, with popular colloquialisms integrated with more interesting and creative content," she said.

In some recent articles, for example, the platform used animations to explain topics such as constipation and the origins of fatty liver disease. It also publishes short videos, normally 60 seconds long, that probe daily phenomena such as why girls tend to crave food more than boys do, or why there's always a longer line at women's restrooms than those for men.

"We've never abandoned that element. We want to provide popular science that everyone can understand. We are not pursuing a sense of superiority, absolute authority or seriousness. We want closeness, friendship and a sense of trustworthiness with our readers," Wang said.