Testing Strategies and Impacts of Communicating the Value of Museum Biological Collections

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Museums are information centers whose mission is to serve and empower society through conserving nature. Museum biological collections provide snapshots of the past to answer questions about the present and future in ways that were not previously imagined. These questions vary widely in both topic and relevancy to the lives of the members of society museums serve. However, the local reach of museums is limited to those who attend in-person to view the small number of displayed specimens, while the remainder of the specimens are housed behind closed doors or even offsite. Funds for the preservation of these collections have been decreasing, putting these collections, their staff, and scientific discoveries at risk. Therefore, determining how museums can use online digital media to expand their reach and how those communication strategies impact perceptions is essential to understand how these largely publicly funded institutions can safeguard their future.This research will use three related studies to understand and develop evidence-based communication practices for improving public perception of museum biological collections and their associated research. First, a content analysis of the posts of prominent museums on multiple social media platforms will be used to examine how museums use social media to communicate their role in research that benefits society. Second, a survey of U.S. adults will be conducted to assess whether scientists-as-communicators are more or less effective than third-party communicators when presenting research summaries in video format and whether that effectiveness is consistent across research topics that vary in relevancy to an audience’s daily life. And third, a survey of U.S. adults will be conducted to assess whether repeated exposure to museum collection-based research summaries in video format increases support for collection infrastructure funding and whether that support is moderated by whether the scientist themself is the communicator.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.