Abstract:

In the last 2 years, mainly because of the Covid-19 confinements, a new short video format, recorded vertically and with a maximum length of one minute, has become popular on digital video platforms.

This new type of video is known as tiktok, reel or short, depending on the platform in which they are posted on. All of them presents a nice fresh opportunity for the modern teacher and science communicator to reach a young audience. Users of this content pills are younger than other social media users. So, one major benefit of this format is that it makes scientific content accessible to broader audiences.

In this communication we are going to analyse what are the main differences (in terms of age, gender, origin, audience retention or average viewing time) that as scientific disseminators we can find when publishing content on the main platforms of short format: Tik Tok and YouTube Shorts. To do this, we will use as an object of study the videos in this format published on our YouTube channel Shorts PonteBata (115.000 subscribers) and Tik Tok Ponte_bata (200.000 subscribers) throughout 2022 and early 2023.

The results show that the profile of the users of both platforms is similar, but with slight and interesting differences. In the final communication, the different patterns of content consumption found among the platforms under study will be presented and analysed.

Keywords:

Science popularisation, video, YouTube, chemistry.