75-2 The Question Behind the Paper: What Drives Public Engagement with Geoscience Research?

Abstract:

Public understanding of science plays an important role in building trust in scientific evidence and reducing vulnerability to misinformation. Consequently, many geoscientists now communicate their research through social media, newsletters, podcasts, and video platforms. Understanding how audiences engage with geoscience research may help scientists communicate evidence more effectively and foster lasting engagement with science.

To explore patterns of audience engagement, I analyzed 113 paleontology and Earth history stories published on Climate Ages, an independent science communication platform that reaches more than 21,000 readers across Medium, Substack, and LinkedIn between 2024 and 2026. Stories were categorized according to topic, narrative framing, and the extent to which they focused on a specific publication versus a broader scientific question. Audience metrics included presentations, views, reads, read-through rates, newsletter open rates, engagement rates, and subscriber growth.

Topic and framing influenced audience discovery on Medium. Deep-time stories converted presentations into views at significantly higher rates than non-deep-time stories (16.0% versus 8.9%; Mann-Whitney U test, p < 0.05), and several title-framing variables also showed significant effects on story discovery. In contrast, newsletter open rates on Substack varied little across topics and narrative frames. Together, these patterns suggest that topic and title framing play a larger role in attracting new audiences than in maintaining engagement among established subscribers.

A qualitative review of the highest-performing stories revealed a recurring pattern: the stories were rarely about the paper itself. Instead, research papers were used as evidence to explore broader questions about evolution, extinction, climate change, adaptation, and Earth history. Conventional distinctions such as mystery versus explanatory framing produced comparatively modest differences in audience engagement.

These observations suggest that audiences engage most strongly when individual studies are presented as evidence contributing to larger scientific questions rather than as isolated discoveries. Effective geoscience communication may therefore depend less on simplifying research findings and more on helping audiences understand how scientific evidence contributes to our understanding of Earth and its history, fostering trust not only in scientific conclusions but also in the scientific process itself.

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