Information Seeking and Processing

In the context of science communication, the study of information seeking and processing is focused on what brings people to science information and, subsequently, what they do with that information once they encounter it. This area of research is of value to myriad practitioners, including scientists interested in building the public's (and policymakers') understanding of their work, educators, science museum curators, and scholars who want to maximize the potential for communication interventions to reach the public and improve the state of citizens' science knowledge. Both seeking and processing are often explored in terms of motivational factors and effort expended.