| As an important branch of communication studies,science communication is of great significance to enhancing national scientific literacy.Short videos as an emerging media form are popular,interesting,moderate in length,in line with the aesthetics of younger generations,and therefore have the advantage of becoming an effective carrier of science popularization in the new era.With the rise of domestic short video apps and the support of national policies,a group of individual science popularization video we-medias,which is different from official institutions,has received wide attention from the society for its high-quality content production.Bilibili bullet-screen website(bilibili for short)is positioned as a diversified entertainment community and an open inclusive video creation platform founded in quadratic element subculture.With a wide variety of vertical sections and circles,it has accumulated a huge generation Z user group.We-media blogger "He Tongxue",rooted in the science and technology zone of bilibili,has attracted a large number of generation Z fans by continuously outputting high-quality and out-of-the-circle scientific popular science videos,thus has certain typicality and representativeness.This we-media is deeply engaged in the field of short videos of popular science communication and digital product evaluation,with video content focused on digital product experience,evaluation,and dissemination of scientific knowledge.The author believes that the research on the communication characteristics and communication strategies of this we-media will help to provide some inspiration for the development of the science popularization we-medias and their scientific communication for generation Z audience.This paper takes a head Uploader of Bilibili science and technology zone "He Tongxue",whose works has been known out-of-the-circle,often shown on Weibo hot search and loved by generation Z user groups,as the research object.On the basis of domestic and foreign literature research,the author adopts case study method,content analysis method and text analysis method by selecting 43 videos released by "He Tongxue" from October 2017 to October 2021 as research samples.Under the overall framework of 5W theory,in-depth analysis are carried out from the five aspects of communication subject,communication content,communication channel,communication audience and communication effect.In addition,through semi-structured in-depth interview,the author recruited 16 generation Z fans of the blogger from the Weibo hashtag"He Tongxue" for in-depth communication after comprehensive consideration of the gender,age,occupation and time length of being a fan of the interviewees,and obtained the demand satisfaction of generation Z audience of this popular science video we-media.Based on the above,this paper attempts to explore the communication characteristics and communication strategies adopted by "He Tongxue" as a typical science popularization we-media,why this we-media is favored by generation Z young users,and what kinds of media needs these science popularization short videos meet for its user group.This case study is expected to provide some suggestions and inspirations for the communication of similar popular science video we-media to the Z generation user group.At the communication subject level,the author first comb through He,s personal experience and we-media development,then concluded its subject features:deconstructing scientific knowledge from a humanistic perspective,reducing dimensionality narrative to lower the threshold for popular science,and cyber accompany for generation Z audience.In terms of communication content,the author adopts content analysis and text analysis methods to study the 43 videos He released on Bilibili in five years from four aspects:topic distribution,release frequency and duration,audio-visual language,and text content production.The author found that the topics of He's videos are divided into Apple product evaluation,in-depth experience,science popularization,daily life sharing and fan feedback;his update frequency and number of releases show a relatively stable dissemination trend,with mostly medium videos of 5-8 minutes;his commonly used audio-visual techniques include first-perspective presentation,frequent diverse camera movements,visualization and music-picture correspondence;text production include both emphasis on rhetoric communication and rigorous logical structure.In communication channel aspect,He's two major distribution platforms are Bilibili and Weibo,which both have distinct advantages and complement each other.He uses Weibo's social attributes to break the circle outwards,while employing Bilibili's features to cultivate content inwards.At the communication audience level,the author made an overall analysis of the audience portraits of He's two communication channels,Bilibili and Weibo.Findings are the He's audience are mainly young adults with a basically even gender ratio;Overall He has a mainstream and popular audience.The author further conducted in-depth interviews with He's generation Z fans based on the uses and gratifications theory,and classified the gratifications of this group into five aspects:(1)cognitive needs of environmental monitoring(2)emotional needs and compensatory effects;(3)self-affirmation needs of with reference to bloggers;(4)social integration needs of interpersonal communication;(5)entertainment needs for stress relief and aesthetic enjoyment.As for communication effect,the author counted the playback volume of the videos submitted by He on Bilibili and drew a scatter plot of the comparison between playback volume and number of comments.The dissemination effect is rather good,and interaction index is relatively stable.Afterwards,a statistical analysis of the top 15 viewed videos of He on Bilibili is conducted,with results that topics with best dissemination effect mainly fall under digital product evaluation category,which is He's professional vertical field.Then this paper focuses on the research of He's popular science we-media communication strategy.It was concluded that He's subject strategy is to create a distinctive personal IP,which is subdivided into PUGC-style professional science background,distinctive personalized narrative and self-requirement for excellence.The content strategy is the combination of the professional and popular nature of science communication,including developing from a unique humanistic perspective,progressing with narrative and discussion,keeping up with hot topics and setting topics and adopting smooth editing skills.The channel strategy is platform selection and multi-channel distribution under self-positioning.The audience strategy is focus on the audience,divided into precise audience positioning with implementation of mass-decentralized communication;meeting audiences' diverse needs;ensure audience stickiness;strengthen interaction,enhance audience participation,and maintain a two-way emotional connection.Finally,this study considers that problems of He Tongxue's popular science self-media in terms of 5W theory are as follows:personal perspective is difficult to guarantee professional authority;update frequency is low and irregular;communication channel is limited to Weibo and Bilibili;audience is absent in the content creation process,with low participation.The author further proposes corresponding improvement suggestions,that is,stick to content and achieve a balance between professional science popularization and humanistic entertainment;resort to the authority of experts to ensure the source and credibility of popular science knowledge;fix update frequency and maintain high-quality original content output;actively expand channels to extend high-quality content to multi-platform narratives;users participate in creation and open up channels to enhance audience interaction and communication. |
PDF Full Text Request