Speaker
Description
I will present our experience with the production, recording, and publication of a series of 15 short outreach videos about Particle Physics, in Brazilian Portuguese, in the format of Instagram reels. The videos cover different aspects of our research work at the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), where I lead a group dedicated to QCD and Particle Physics. We produced videos with different emphases, covering very basic topics (such as “What is an atom made of?”, or “What is anti-matter?”), intermediate topics (such as “What is QCD?” or “What is the relation between Einstein’s $E=mc^2$ formula and your weight.") up to more advanced subjects, such as describing recent results obtained by us in the context of the muon anomalous magnetic moment. Some of the videos also contain interviews with the students working in the research group, and are aimed at showing glimpses of the life as a researcher. The videos last between 1:30 and 4 minutes. We are publishing one video per week in an Instagram account that was created mainly with this purpose in mind (instagram.com/fisicadeparticulas/). The production of the videos was funded by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) through two scholarships for undergraduate students, for 8 months. In our case, one of the students was a Physics major who was responsible, in part, for the scientific content and for part of the video editing, while the other student was a Media arts major and was mostly responsible for the technical aspects of the videos. In partnership with a media conglomerate, training was offered to the students involved in the form of online master classes. The videos were produced, in part, in a studio recently equipped for this purpose at the Sao Carlos Physics Institute of the University of Sao Paulo.
In the talk, I will present an analysis of the data available in Instagram in order to discuss how the different types of videos succeed (or not) with our audience of followers and non-followers and what types of videos lead to more or less engagement.
