DISSEMINATION AND POPULARIZATION OF NEUROSCIENCE THROUGH A SOCIAL NETWORK

Abstract

The Internet is a communication outlet that provides to people all over the world a  way to connect and be informed, quickly, about several subjects all the time. One of the available instruments in the internet is the Facebook®, a social network, through which people share common interests, “liking”, sharing and discussing information. The internet can also be used as an ally to teaching in schools and universities, because it facilitates the communication. Neuroscience, the science that studies the nervous system, its components and its functions, needs to be discussed and disclosed. Regarding this, we created a page called “Neuroscience at School” in the social network Facebook®, in order to verify if the creation and use of this page is a valid alternative to the dissemination and popularization of neuroscience and its key role  at  the school environment, in addition to  try bringing together the community of neuroscience concepts and neuroeducation. To evaluate the effectiveness of the page/publications two instruments were used: (1) the statistics provided by Facebook® to the page’s administrators and (2) an online questionnaire developed by the researchers and published through the Facebook page to the public.  Answering the questionnaire was optional and anonymous. Until early 2015, the page obtained 500 likes, the  majority being Brazilian residents, but  there are also  public from other countries  following the page.  Analyzing  the success of the different types of publication on page, we  concluded that pictures and/or photo publications have a larger range (reach average 264 users/publishing) and greater involvement of the public (likes and comments). Regarding the second evaluation instrument, we received 10 answers, all claiming that Facebook® is an important tool for the dissemination of science and that at some point of their personal or professional day-to-day some page content has been useful to them. We also asked  the public  grade  the proposal. The assigned average, considering a scale from 0 to 10, was 9.4. This set of results demonstrates that the use of Facebook® is a valid alternative to the dissemination and popularization of neuroscience and reached the objectives of this study.