A Year in the Life of Science Factory: Digital Outreach and Academic Networks in Public Egyptology

This paper analyses the trajectory and development of the social media channel and videopodcast Science Factory during its first year of activity. After more than ten years, La Fábrica de la Ciencia, a Spanish-language video podcast, created an internationally oriented multilingual section. Unexpected technical issues associated with the production of the international interviews led to the creation of an independent platform: Science Factory. Although initially conceived as a twin project, the two channels soon diverged. Whereas La Fábrica de la Ciencia continued to cover a broad range of scientific topics, Science Factory became exclusively dedicated to Egyptology. The content was structured around three main areas: archaeological field work, museum work and academic research. This paper examines the development of Science Factory as both a digital outreach initiative and a case study in public archaeology and science communication. The analysis is based on a database compiled from YouTube analytics collected during the study period (between March 2025 and March 2026), allowing us to evaluate patterns, audience behaviour and content performance. The results suggest the following ideas: the first one shows that the project’s academic networks were essential for establishing its credibility and facilitating access to internationally recognized specialists; and the second one illustrate that quantitative analysis proves that short and long-form interviews, rather than competing with one another, fulfil complementary functions: Shorts increased discoverability, while interviews promoted deeper engagement with Egyptological research. The study argues that digital outreach should itself be considered an object of scholarly research. Systematic analysis of platform metrics provides valuable evidence for understanding how specialized archaeological knowledge circulates beyond academia and offers practical insights for the development of future outreach initiatives, including the successor project Egyptology Now.