RAPID: Influencing Young Adults’ Science Engagement and Learning with COVID-19 Media: Process Evaluation report

This collaborative research project between KQED, a public media organization serving the San Francisco Bay Area, Texas Tech University and Rockman et al conducted research to study how best to provide effective COVID-19 science news and social media content for young adult audiences.

To start the work, four “Knowledge Gap” studies – Twitter Misinformation, Mask Wearing Messaging, Germ Knowledge and Conceptual Mapping – as well as social media testing were conducted to address our first research question: How could COVID-19 coverage be designed to best inform, engage and educate millennials and younger audiences about the science of virus transmission and prevention?

KQED and Texas Tech advanced professional knowledge in the journalism and science communication fields around crisis reporting and building a media practitioner and academic researcher collaboration for audience research through a study conducted by Scott Burg of Rockman et al.  Rockman gathered data between October 2020 - May 2021, interviewed KQED Science staff and participated in virtual observations of KQED project and related staff meetings to answer our second research question: Can KQED develop a more efficient process of disaster reporting that responds to both constantly updating information and changing audience needs which can be used and expanded upon by media outlets?

Rockman et al (REA), an employee-owned research and evaluation firm was contracted to conduct an external process evaluation to provide insight into the relationship between project activities, communication and implementation methods, and observed project outcomes. This process evaluation report, authored by Scott Burg, covers project activities from May 2020 - April 2021.​