Danube Watch 2/2019 - Clash of titans: Science and Communication
Clash of titans: Science and Communication By Catherine Buchwald
E ven though science and communication are separate fields, both have much in common: they study aspects within their subject matter and make use of analysis. Ideally, science and communication go hand in hand to serve each other’s purpose, sharing obtained information with the public.
Why communication matters and is crucial to every scientist
Communication offers scientists the chance to share news within their field of expertise, their knowledge and what they are, or were, working on with their peers, the media and the general public. For many scientists, it is part of their job to write proposals and papers, give presentations and talks as well as to share facts and research results.
Outreach efforts can be a useful tool to share with a broader audience and to promote a scientist’s work and knowledge. Beyond self-promotion, however, effective communication can help to increase public understanding of a matter and allocate (further) funding for projects, research equipment and staff, and, therefore, shape the scientific landscape and its further development. In a nutshell, communication has the potential to make a difference and help push scientific work to reach its full potential.
What makes communication good and effective and why professional communicators are needed
Traditional media, online and social media offer plenty of ways to address target groups and to share scientific topics. Merely getting the relevant messages out whenever will not do the job though. At their best, communication and outreach efforts are built strategically to conform to their target audience, which is defined in every communication plan. Among other things, such a plan defines, for example, the famous “5 Ws” (who, what, when, where, and why) as well as the “how”, and is complemented by social media usage statistics and press reviews. Timing, frequency, quality, format, community involvement and press contacts too have an important impact. Furthermore, collaborations with partner organisations and institutes can foster the promotion of relevant topics but also general branding. Imagine scientists had to deal with all outreach efforts on top of their work? Overloaded, the chances of one of the two parts getting (unintentionally) cut short would be very high.
Challenges for science and communication
All too often, scientists and communication professionals can experience mild clashes when working together. The reasons can be quite diverse, from scientific topics being cut short or simplified too much, to timing issues, wording, lacking photo quality, information sharing and/or general misunderstandings between the two fields. In the end, both fields need to realise that they need each other: the scientists, to get the word out, and the communication experts for something to talk about and stories to share. In the best case, this means material relevant to a big group of people yet also easy enough to understand for every reader.
Let’s imagine how a typical misunderstanding could play out: a scientist writes about the Danube, but without further elaboration, that: “the water quality in Germany improved all the way to Ingolstadt”.
As a scientist and anybody familiar with the flow of the Danube, this makes sense. Europe’s second-largest river indeed passes Ingolstadt, and its water quality would have been of good quality further upstream from this Bavarian city. However, this stand-alone sentence with no further explanation may lead the general reader to ask whether the author of such a sentence was tipsy, as Germany and Ingolstadt were mentioned as though the latter were not located in the same country. What’s more, it states 'water' in general (so groundwater, sewage, etc. right?) For this reason, the communications person will suggest adding or editing this sentence for the benefit of readers who do not know the Danube’s route.
Even though this sounds like peanuts to most readers, in reality, such little things keep science and communication staff busy and make their joint work quite cumbersome. The more often such situations occur, the more the scientists may feel teased, while the communications person might wonder at what point in life the scientist started to forget how to write for non-scientists.
Another example: imagine our staff working together and trying to involve the public. Press releases including photos and contacts are getting passed to media outlets, reports and publications are going online and yet the efforts still don’t bring the desired results… No coverage in newspapers, TV or radio; no one expressing their interest through calls, emails or online comments; expert talks are barely attended and, if so, just by other specialists in the field. So, how does one get other people engaged? That is where campaigning needs to be re-thought, to translate scientific work into media capital: could a partnership with another organisation or governmental body improve the situation? Would a testimonial or famous personality as ambassador help? Perhaps a new approach of this kind could be of benefit to our projects. Let’s look at how it worked with one of our flagship collaborations between science and communication: the fourth Joint Danube Survey (JDS4).
How communication helps with JDS4
The goal of JDS4 is to collect data on special parameters, not normally analysed and certainly not in such a comparable way across the Danube River Basin. Additionally, raising awareness of the Danube’s water quality, ongoing protection efforts and full implementation of the EU’s Water Framework Directive (WFD) are vital to the project. But how to harmonise communication and science?
Along with a unified international social media campaign (under the hashtag #JDS4), this year's survey's new approach at the local level keeps local scientists and local communicators in close touch. National teams deal with both scientific methodologies and their own communication contact points, creating a synergy that's increasing public relevance and accessibility while assuring scientist the final say over accuracy when portraying their work. JDS4 has seen unprecedented local media coverage in Hungary and Serbia, above average public turnout at events in Romania and piles of social media posts in Austria and Ukraine. It is a testament to just how mutually beneficial closer synergies between science and communication staff can be.
