Although Google Arts & Culture platform maps almost all science museums and is a reference for museums of all areas of knowledge, especially in view of the growth of online exhibits, the contribution of STEM institutions to promoting virtual visits is still barely observable on it. Such a fact has opened a range of reflections on the underfunding of science museums for the maintenance of online communications (Kemp, 2021), platforms’ biases behind the digitalization of art and culture (Kizhner et al., 2021), absence of socio-scientific controversy in the collections of those institutions (Colombo Junior & Marandino, 2020), and a view of science that minimizes its sociocultural dimension (Davies et al., 2019).
The three online exhibits prepared by STEM institutions, which are the focus of this study, are detailed in what follows.
Online exhibits
Coronacene – thoughts in times of pandemic (1)
Conceived by the Development and Management Institute in partnership with Estúdios Globo, GloboNews, and Fiocruz, Coronacene is a temporary exhibit of the Museum of Tomorrow – an institution founded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2015, with the help of public and private authorities. The institution aims to provide “ideas, explorations, and questions about the time of great changes in which we live and the different paths opened up for the future”. The exhibit, made possible by the Culture Incentive Law and consisting of 37 slides, was launched in March 2021 and curated by Luiz Alberto Oliveira, Leonardo Menezes, and Eduardo Carvalho and showed the impacts of the pandemic on the role of science, struggle, and mourning.
In this perspective, it mixes texts (in English, Portuguese, and Spanish), statistical data, images, videos (2D and street views), and audio and shows both the physical space of the institution and tourist and everyday places around the world. It also displays testimonies (from a virologist and an indigenous leader), virus models, laboratories and scientific instruments (e.g., microscopes, computers, and flasks), and people (anonymous ones, visitors, indigenous ones, families, students, victims, teachers, cleaning professionals, health professionals, drivers, food delivery professionals, and scientists).
COVID-19 – mass manufacturing a vaccine (2)
The exhibit is part of the collection of the Museum of Engineering Innovation, a virtual institution created by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering and maintained by technical professionals, engineers, designers, and computer scientists in partnership with societies, companies, and universities. The collections, available in English on Google Arts platform since November 2020 under the label “this is engineering”, showcase engineering aspects not obvious in everyday life and inspire the next generation of professionals.
Twenty-seven slides show the work of a team of engineers at King’s College London responsible for the development of a large-scale production process for RNA vaccines, called the factory-in-a-box, against Covid-19. Texts and images compose the narrative, illustrating and describing scientific instruments (Eppendorf flasks, Petri dishes, among others), products (factory-in-a-box device and vaccines), virus models, laboratories, and people (team of engineers formed by professors and graduate students).
Field in focus: predicting pandemics (3)
The third exhibit, containing 40 slides, was organized by the Smithsonian Institution – a group founded in 1846 by the US Congress to value culture and science – in partnership with Myanmar ministries. With offices in Washington, United States, the Smithsonian organization has an international complex of museums, research centers, and cultural, educational, and zoological parks maintained with government and private fundings. The exhibit, available in English, retrieves a series of videos from the institution and adds elements from January 2020 for illustrating the work of scientists and government and society members in protecting animal species and predicting pandemics, including those caused by coronavirus.
Set in Myanmar, the online exhibit features texts, images (photographs of viruses obtained by scientific equipment, researchers, people, and animals), and videos (2D and 360°). The pandemic theme is explored in its emergence, highlighting the relationship between wild animals and diseases, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Although old materials had been gathered from the institution and mixed with current images of coronaviruses, the exhibit took shape on the platform in the face of the current pandemic, especially to illustrate the birth of pandemics in nature – and not in the laboratory, as certain controversial speeches about Covid-19 dedicated themselves to affirming.
Frequency of the contents and elements identified
Figure 2 displays the recurrence of textual, visual, and audio contents, as well as elements related to the teaching of controversial science topics in the exhibits. Each slide can concomitantly show more than one type of content, so that the number of UA of the three exhibits overlaps the total number of slides. The inter-rater reliabilities of the recurrence of the exhibits contents, calculated by Cohen’s kappa, were 0.86 (Exh 1), 0.92 (Exh 2), and 0.83 (Exh 3) – all reached the maximum level (Landis & Koch, 1977).
According to Fig. 2, textual content was the most recurrent resource, followed by visual and audio ones (50%, 47%, and 7% on average, respectively). In exhibits 2 and 3, the textual content was similar to popular science texts, since journalistic lead, explanatory procedures, boxes, eye-catching titles, among other aspects, were used for the dissemination of information (Vieira, 2007). According to Majetic & Pellegrino, 2018, and Tuten & Temesvari, 2013, popular science texts have mediated innovative didactic strategies that aim to provide skills from public communication of science and technology, such as critical thinking, information literacy, and oral and written expressions. The use of other textual types rather than the formal teaching of STEM is observed especially in exhibit 1, which included poems, revealing humanistic aspects of the scientific theme.
On the other hand, less frequent audio and video contents enabled exhibits 1 and 3 to be more interactive, making the Internet user be part of the experience, especially through the use of different online media formats (Bardoel & Deuze, 2001; Schultz, 2000). As an example, the museums incorporated street views and 360° video tools into their slides so that the visitor could explore the exhibit site even in front of a computer screen, thus opening up a range of interpretations for the concept of “visitation”. Exhibit 1 gave voice to its interviewees through the inclusion of podcasts, providing a more intimate experience to the visitor (Lindgren, 2016).
Indeed, the choice of contents of those exhibits revealed the way issues that limit science museums with a face-to-face structure also apply to an online environment, especially regarding debates on the contemplative and interactive nature of the exhibitions, which call into question the possibility of the visitor acting as a mere observer or pusher of buttons (Cazelli et al., 2003; Pedretti & Iannini, 2020). In digital format, information competes for the Internet user’s attention (Zulli, 2018) and, therefore, betting on attractive and interactive resources can facilitate the retention of the visitor in that environment, since it is enough to close the browser tab for leaving the exhibit.
Figure 3 shows data on the frequency of the elements commonly present in the teaching of controversial issues per online exhibit on Covid-19 prepared by STEM institutions, evidencing their recurrence in the different types of content used in the narratives (textual, visual, and/or audio). The inter-rater reliability of the analysis, calculated by Cohen’s kappa, was substantial for exhibits 1 and 3 (K = 0.74 and K = 0.69, respectively) and almost perfect for exhibit 2 (K = 0.81), according to Landis and Koch (1977). Such elements are not exclusive, i.e., a same UA can contain references to more than one element, and they are also intrinsically connected with the approach chosen by the exhibits.
Social elements were the most recurrent in all contents of exhibit 1 (33% present in textual contents and 33% and 43% in visual and audio ones, respectively) due to the focus given to the socio-scientific controversy of COVID-19 pandemic, which covered mainly the impacts of coronavirus on the society. Figure 3 also shows how the disease affected the daily lives of people and different social groups, the economy, and the routine of cities. Therefore, the significant and well-distributed presence of political, economic, and moral elements, elements that oppose the fear discourse, and the civic and productive exposition of different opinions, ideas, discourses and/or knowledge can be observed in its contents.
In contrast, exhibit 2 focused only on economic and social elements. The first stands out and corresponds to 83% and 67% of visual and textual contents, respectively, due to the perspective adopted by the museum, which portrays a methodology for a mass production of vaccines against the coronavirus. As a result, the social element was also considered to showcase the importance of engineers in dealing with the pandemic (33% of textual content and 17% of visual one).
Similarly to exhibit 1, exhibit 3 showed a predominance of social elements in the three types of content, followed by a civic and productive exposition of different opinions, ideas, discourses, and/or knowledge, and the elements that oppose the fear discourse – the latter two present mainly in text and audio contents. Such recurrence is associated with the fact the museum focuses on the importance of science and collaboration among governments, citizens, and scientists to map and identify new viruses, thus preventing the occurrence of future pandemics. In addition to the social aspect, the theme enabled the emergence of political, economic, and moral discussions.
In general, social and economic elements were the most frequent in the three exhibits (33% and 30% on average, respectively), in contrast to political ones (5% of the contents identified, on average). The results regard the approaches chosen by the museums to address the controversial topics, discussed in what follows.
Political, social, economic, and moral elements
Regarding the political elements, present only in exhibits 1 and 3, the museums aimed to show mainly the relevance of cooperation among the various organizations for solving the Covid-19 pandemic (e.g., WHO), mentioning, among other aspects, health guidelines, government measures to support research, and the impacts of political events on the pandemic scenario:
Global Health Program researchers work closely with resident scientists — and collaborate with Myanmar’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation; Ministry of Health and Sports; and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation — to collect and analyze biological samples from wildlife and the humans they come in contact with (Exhibit 3, slide 5).
The community that surrounds the non-formal and informal teaching spaces often does not perceive the political dimension attached to them (Allen & Crowley, 2014; Lewenstein, 2016); consequently, they do not exercise their political role in society, which resides in their being attentive to.
(...) a multiple range of actors and processes that constantly re-examine the social aspect from its interactions, not to configure a heroic narrative or to situate it as a unique agent of change, but rather to unveil its complexities, alter its meanings, and relate it to other social agents. In this light, the position of the museum in relation to its interaction with networks of social agents, citizenship, and the various institutions, practices, and actions must be analyzed (Montero, 2012, p. 79, our translation).
Such a lack of perception of the political dimension is evidenced in exhibit 2, which focused on the economic elements associated with the theme from the following statement: “To bring Covid-19 under control with a vaccine, we will need to vaccinate about 60% of the almost 8 billion of people on Earth” (slide 6). Economy is projected in exhibit 2 due to its focus on a method of a large-scale manufacture of vaccines for Covid-19. However, as pointed out by Shimizu (2020), the issue of vaccination concerns not only infrastructure, but also social, cultural, political, and historical aspects. In this sense, the museum environment and the controversial debate lose their potential to promote democratic education and a sense of citizenship (Pedretti & Iannini, 2020) to be considered by curators, teachers, and instructors in view of the activities offered.
In the other exhibits, the economic elements were mostly associated with the employment issue (exhibit 1) and the scientific research infrastructure (exhibit 3). In those cases and in line with the approach chosen by the institutions, the intersection of those aspects with the socio-political dimension of the theme was more explicit in contents such as.
Transformed societies. Have you ever stopped to think you might go through a pandemic? For many, the answer is no. In 2020, companies went bankrupt, business closed its doors and our routines were interrupted due to the new coronavirus. Though it seems like a science fiction film, this really happened. Brazil, 14.1 million unemployed. 3rd quarter/2020, IBGE, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística/Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Exhibit 1, slide 15).
Social elements were present in all exhibits, associating human behavior with the development of the pandemic in texts and images. Exhibit 1 portrayed the consequences of the disease for the society, showing its impacts on people’s daily lives, in the forms of communication and interaction with the world:
COVID-19 disproportionately affects groups who are neglected by society. It is essential to face these social problems for tackling this challenge. Otherwise, we will never be able to fully overcome the 2020 pandemic or other future ills, even with vaccines or medications (Exhibit 1, slide 28).
Exhibit 2 highlighted the researcher’s civic duty of seeking solutions to health issues, and in exhibit 3, the social elements focused on the impacts of science on studies of the nature and prediction of pandemics. By approaching those elements, museums favor reflections on the social dimension of science, sometimes suppressed throughout STEM careers. They are also aligned with the science, technology, and society (STS) movement, which aims at teaching science that forms citizens capable of making critical decisions and envisioning the implications of science and technology in everyday social life (Mansour, 2009).
Finally, the moral element emerged in some moments of exhibits 1 and 3. In the former, it stood out in the memorial dedicated to the victims of Covid-19 in Brazil (Fig. 4), whereas in the third, the attitudes and values of organizations towards respecting the human-wild animal relationship and concomitantly fighting the pandemic were discussed:
At times, it may also be difficult to ask local participants to wear the protective equipment when they have long interacted with these animals without it. Ultimately, the team’s goal is to put as little stress as possible on their partners in the field, the local community members they interact with and the animals they sample (Exhibit 3, slide 29).
By highlighting the moral character of socio-scientific controversies, museums show aspects external to science, i.e., those that dialogue with personal values, behaviors, and attitudes (Pedretti & Iannini, 2020), which, according to Meyer (2009), is a potential for museums to not only address a controversial topic, but also generate controversy.
In general, bringing debates over social, political, economic, and moral issues to the exhibits contributed to the discussion of social events in the light of evidence and to teaching, favoring a more “real” and “human” science in the eyes of the public (Pedretti & Iannini, 2020). Such debates show characteristics of a science that deals with problems faced in everyday life and that moves away from an absolute truth. From this perspective, exhibit 2 highlighted the provisional nature of science, i.e., that science is mutable, favoring the emergence of new knowledge as new evidence rises (Sotério, 2022), especially in the face of an unprecedented disease:
(...) Currently, we don’t even know how long immunity from a vaccine will last because Covid-19 is so brand new. We may need one or two doses, or it could be needed every year like the flu jab (Exhibit 2, slide 6).
By approaching those aspects, museums are no longer spaces for the presentation of a finished and immutable scientific knowledge as a transforming agent of reality concomitantly affected by its demands. They increasingly assume the role of contemporary agoras (Pedretti & Iannini, 2020), acting as a “safe space for difficult discussions” (Science Center World Congress, 2008, p. 1).
Elements aimed at civic and productive exposure of different opinions, ideas, discourses, and/or knowledge
The civic and productive exposition of different opinions, ideas, discourses, and/or knowledge in the exhibits prepared by STEM institutions is evident in the proposition of provocative questions, giving space to the confrontation of ideas without distancing itself from the scientific discourse. Such elements appeared only in exhibits 1 and 3; they can be included in museum exhibits precisely through provocative questions, favoring public engagement in discussions on topics considered complex and leading to a confrontation of the visitor’s personal values with scientific evidence (Pedretti & Iannini, 2020). Exhibit 1, in which such elements are more recurrent, showed both texts and audiovisual contents that promoted those aspects.
Turning point. Microorganisms have always shaped human history. Just like the Black Death, the Spanish flu, and HIV. In 2020, the new coronavirus affected us all. Will life ever be the same as it was before? Do we want that? Will this struggle prepare us for other global challenges, such as the climate change? (Exhibit 1, slide 3).
In fact, our questioning on whether we want the same life as the one we had before leads to a contraposition of ideas, thus opening paths for reflections on the “old” and “new” normal. The dilemma refers to what Kuhn proposed when weaving relations between the already established (normal) science that responds satisfactorily to the current paradigm but which, in the face of events whose solutions are no longer satisfactory, gives rise to a new (revolutionary) science that, with time, tends to become a normal one again (Kuhn, 1970). Such a behavior reflects the way moments of rupture provide scientific advance. Indeed, we tend to leave the pandemic towards a daily life with more advanced technology in which, for example, vaccines are produced in record times (Lurie et al., 2020). Concomitantly, we will also get used to a way of existence with at least 6 million fewer people in the world — WHO data from April, 2022.
On the other hand, the civic clash of ideas appears through the taking of a position by the STEM institutions, within a controversial topic. As an example, exhibit 1 cited the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus without giving space to the negationist discourse that limits the subject, but positioning itself alongside the scientific evidence:
From virus to pandemic. The first records of the SARS CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, are from the city of Wuhan, China in 2019. The initial outbreak among regulars of an exotic-animal wet market suggests that the disease was transmitted by an animal (Exhibit 1, slide 12).
Such a position has become quite emblematic regarding the Covid-19 theme, thus leading to a clash between scientists – armed with evidence of the emergence of the disease from animal vectors – and conspiracy theories about the creation of the virus in the laboratory. The same issue was portrayed in exhibit 3 towards destigmatizing the human-wild animal relationship in the light of scientific knowledge (Fig. 5), compensating for unilateral communications made by the media that fomented xenophobic discourses and unregulated slaughter of those species as a disease containment measure (Abutaleb & Harris, 2021; Budhwani & Sun, 2020; Maron, 2021; Sacramento et al., 2020).
Exhibit 3 also brought perceptions of different experts (e.g., ecologists, veterinarians, and social scientists) on the pandemic at different moments of the narrative, offering the visitor a range of knowledge equally relevant to solving the problem at hand. The inclusion of such elements has contributed positively to the dissemination of undistorted views of science through non-formal teaching spaces, since they show collaboration among groups, teamwork, and multidisciplinarity (Pérez et al., 2001).
According to Pedretti and Iannini (2020), the exposure of controversial topics can potentially develop argumentative and critical skills fostered by exhibits in situations such as those aforementioned. However, museums occasionally miss such an opportunity by suggesting unique answers and/or interpretations to questions raised. As an example, although exhibit 1 has opened space for reflections on the future desired in a post-Covid-19 pandemic scenario, it has delivered an answer that speaks for the collective: “When all this is over, we want the Tomorrow that is more sustainable, less unequal” (Exhibit 1, slide 7).
Elements that oppose the fear discourse
Elements on this topic were detected only in exhibits 1 and 3, and both elements that oppose the fear discourse, aligned with the desirable elements in teaching controversy (Huddleston & Kerr, 2015), were identified.
Exhibit 1 used elements that oppose the fear discourse to highlight the way pandemics are naturally recurrent in the history of life in society and, therefore, should be seen as a learning period for future pandemics, which is facilitated by scientific development, as shown in:
Science is the protagonist. During the pandemic, science took its place at the forefront of the response to the coronavirus, developed health guidelines that slowed the infection rate, and prevented healthcare systems from becoming quickly overwhelmed. Now, scientists work to develop diagnostics and healthcare products (Exhibit 1, slide 25).
Similarly, exhibit 3 reinforced the need to discuss the prevention of pandemics through science, which is possible only with the collaboration of local communities and government. In this case, elements that oppose the fear discourse point to the destigmatization of the public debate on such a controversial topic by illustrating a community in which those groups operate together despite their differences (Fig. 6).
On the other hand, the fatality of the disease, materialized in a video showing coffins and graves (Fig. 7, referring to exhibit 1), promotes the audience’s awareness of the seriousness of the matter and the importance of searching for accurate information.
Evidently, Covid-19 has brought daily life closer to an imminent tragedy; however, the denialist discourse has also appropriated the theme of fear and catastrophe towards discrediting the facts. As an example, the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, started to defend the number of people recovered from the disease in order to omit the state of public calamity, alleging mental exhaustion of those who followed the “pessimistic data” (Lemos, 2020).
As highlighted by Shimizu (2020), fear articulates different positions in a controversial debate, both trust and distrust. In the latter case, exhibits may lose the potential to promote educational engagement, i.e., to attract visitors to an experience that results in learning (Pedretti & Iannini, 2020), thus moving away from the aforementioned elements, which they value for a teaching that destigmatizes debates on controversial issues.