What role does social media play in science education? Interested researchers discussed this overarching question at the symposium of the SoMeCliCS project on 9 and 10 March 2023 and discussed the further development of this field.
The two-day symposium began on 09.03.2023 with the Keynote Lecture, at which Prof. Dr. Sascha Schanze gave welcoming words at the beginning. The focus was on the goals of the Leibniz School of Education on the topics of digitisation of teacher education, framed by various illustrative quotes from Mark Twain. This was followed by Dr Alexander Büssing with an introductory talk on the SoMeCliCS project, which is about the role of social media in the exemplary context of climate change. The last lecture was given by Dr. Friederike Hendricks, who spoke in her keynote on the topic of trust in digital media.
This was followed by a panel discussion entitled Climate Change in Social Media: A Perspective for Science Education, a panel discussion took place where people from research, but also a teacher as well as a student from the Fridays for Future group discussed the role of social media in digital science education. The round was chaired by Dr. Nadja Belova (University of Bremen), who was honoured with the Polytechnic Special Award for her project "HIQO - The Water with Conductivity Extract". The evening ended with a final reception where personal exchanges could be deepened.
The following day saw presentations from all participants covering the breadth of research. In addition to presentations from the SoMeCliCS projects on the use, competencies, interventions and deployment of digital research methods, other topics included the detection of fake news, the role of Nature of Science as part of science media literacy, as well as literature reviews on inoculation theory or interventions to promote competencies.
