Why is science communicant important? What relevance does it have to? It actually has a lot. I remember when I first started out doing small research around middle school. Teachers would ask us to find an outside source and write a couple of paragraphs on how it relates to what we are studying. I know that one point or another we have all stumbled across an article that makes us want to shut down or give up. There are statistics we do not understand, and references that we do not get. This is where science communication steps in. The idea is that scientists help reword and create an understandable and accessible article or another type of media for the average person to understand.
Introduction:
Science communication is the process of taking scientific research or concepts and forming them into an article, television show, or some other media platform, to inform the general public of these advances in science.
Science communication seems as though it is an easy task. Something that scientists should be able to do without worry. They have written research papers and even books, so why is there so much emphasis on science communication? This form of communication runs into multiple problems like language barriers (Alda, 2016), mistaken dissemination (Smith & Reute, 2017), and lack of stated relevance (Feliú-Móger ,2015).
Language Barriers
As for language barriers, in the interview with Alan Alda, a writer, actor, and science enthusiast, he explains that when scientist are trying to inform the public of new innovations or research conclusion, that they use too much “jargon”. When the public is represented by these words and concepts that took years to understand, they are not sure what to do with it. Alda then goes on to talk about how a scientist needs to create a comfortable and personal learning space for their audience. He explains how the scientist’s job in science communication is to “expect the ignorance and curiosity”, but also “if there is ignorance, get us curious” (Alda, 2016). Scientists must take responsibility for the conclusion that the audience forms at the end of the day.
Mistaken Dissemination
Language barriers are also formed when scientists form dissemination instead of science communication. Dissemination includes papers for peer-review. This is what Smith calls a scientists “day job” (Smith & Reute, 2017). Some scientists are researching and developing concepts for the main purpose of getting published. However, Smith states that researchers owe it the public to communicate what there are doing since some are using taxpayer money (Smith & Reute, 2017). Reute argues that good science communication should be addressed to multiple audiences with the relevance to society included (Smith & Reute, 2017).
Lack of Relevance
The relevance that Smith and Reute talk about is also brought up by Monica Feliu-Mojer in “Effective Communication, Better Science.” Feliu-Mojer examine public communication as understanding the “big picture”, and that one must have a deeper understanding of the research, and concepts that apply, to be able to relay that to the general public (Feliu-Mojer, 2015). She explains that to have this deeper understanding means that scientist will relate the information to a broad span of concepts, and “ increase the impact of science in multiple dimensions (Feliu-Mojer, 2015). By doing this, the audience is able to see the relevance of the research.
Applied to Life
Through the examination of each article, the problem that science communication faces and the corresponding resolution have been represented. It is important to remember when attempting science communication to create a comfortable and personal environment, to think about the audience and how they deserve to have access to knowledge and to fully understand the topic at hand and make a deeper connection to society. All of these steps related to one another, but each has their own part to make science communicate indulgent for the audience.
To dive more into this idea of writing for the audience, there was a study conducted by Wilkins and the others, that focused their research on different groups of people and how they obtained their information based solely around environmental science communication. Their conclusion is based on a sample size of one thousand and thirty out of the possible five thousand and was obtained through a mail-in survey. The conclusion stated that people were more favorable of in-personal experiences and hands-on activities. This was then followed by visual media be the second most favorable. The least favored formal educational opportunities. This would include lectures and classes (Wilken, et al., 2018).
This study relates back to science communication by supporting the idea that the audience needs to be engaged and able to relate the information to their own lives. With hands-on activities, the individual is able to physically apply the concepts he or she is interested in. They are able to create that sense of relevance themselves instead of being told that it is there one. This can create a more memorable experience. As for as visual media, the audience can at least physically see a connection to the world, rather than just read it on paper or online.
It’s Okay to Be Smart Review
The blog “It’s Okay to Be Smart” created by Joe Hanson is a very interactive blog with captivating videos along paired small excerpts. These little excerpts would relate the topic at hand to Hanson life that was relatable for the audience. It was easy to notice the spacing out of ideas that were done to not overload the reader. As far as color, the color was provided by the videos themselves. There were no colorful backgrounds.
LEGOS and a Donald Trump Caterpillar
In the blog post “How LEGO Helps Blind People See” begins with him talking about how Legos played a role in his childhood. The post is linked to a video that then goes on to describe how instructions are formulated in text for people who are blind. The video also explains how the other sense of the blind is heightened as an attempted by the body to make up for the lack of sight. I thought that this post was interesting, but I personally would like to have more words than a video. With videos, I understand the concept better as a whole, but with words, I understand details. I know that when I create my blog, I will struggle with being too word, which is why I do want to start incorporating a video here and there.
I also looked at the blog post “Meet the Donald Trump Caterpillar!”. In this post, Hanson created his own video. He started the video by examining the Megalopygid Caterpillar, or the Donald Trump Caterpillar, and moved into talk about Batesian Mimicry by explaining that a species of bird’s young that mimics the caterpillar. I appreciate how Hanson starts off with a captivating narrow topic but then relates it to a much broader concept.
Moving Ahead with this Blog
Using all that I have learned from these videos and articles, I know that I need to make my blog more entertaining. I may have the full understanding of science communication, but I need to find ways to make the reader as interested as I am. I want to create my own videos for the topics moving ahead. I also need to pay attention to relating the topic at hand back to the bigger picture.
Work Cited:
Wilkins, E.J., Miller, H.M., Tilak, E., & Schuster, R.M. (2018). Communicating information on nature-related topics: Preferred information channels and trust in sources. PLOS ONE, 13(12). 10.1371/journal.pone.0209013
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