Thread by @Constababble

Scicomm researcher: The fact is that telling people more facts doesn't change their mind.

Scicommer: Ok... But I think this piece I'm writing to debunk pseudoscience will help.

SR: NO IT WON'T BECAUSE LISTEN TO THE SCICOMM FACT I JUST TOL- oh... oh dear...

#scicomm

I'm a scicommer with much respect for both scicomm researchers and fellow scicommers. It's ok for us to laugh at ourselves everyone!

Don't come here to get defensive about your piece that debunks pseudoscience please 😂 or do! Up to you mate 😘

Interesting to note: Scicommers familiar with scicomm research seem to get this tweet and laugh at the complexity and paradoxes of their field.
Those more unwilling to accept this seem to be research scientists who do scicomm but aren't familiar with relevant scicomm research.

If you are a scientist or scicommer who does any form of scicomm (noting there are many ways and reasons to do scicomm), I suggest you research scicomm. Evidenced-based scicomm is effective scicomm otherwise we're just doing what feels right because it makes us feel nice.

Perhaps when science communication is respected as a field of expertise we will see more professional scicommers employed to facilitate evidence-based scicomm in institutes and labs. Right now it is seen as a hobby that requires no knowledge of scicomm research to be done well.

If you are a scicommer or a scientist interested in doing scicomm on the side and you're looking for a place to start to research scicomm this will depend on what your desired outcome for scicomm is and the problems you face. Scicomm intersects with many fields of research too.

If the desired outcome of your scicomm is to change minds in relation to a controversial topic then you have a lot of scicomm research to read up on! Start with looking into the relationship between belief and culture, identity, politics, social in group, emotion.

Are you doing scicomm simply to teach "the general public" about your field? Firstly... are there specific people in "the public" you want to reach? Are you reaching them? What form of comms may reach them? If education is your aim are you familiar with basic pedagogy research?

Are you doing scicomm simply to challange stereotypes of science? To increase appreciation for science? To convince young people to pursue careers in science? To show people science is fun? All are legitimate aims for scicomm and all are areas you can research for best practice!

Telling yourself that being good at science means you are automatically good at scicomm is not good enough and completely understates the complexity of scicomm. This mindset stops us from harnessing our collective influence to not just communicate but strategically communicate.

Want to do strategic #scicomm? This applies any comms!

1. Know your desired outcome and audience you want to reach to meet it.
2. Know your message.
3. Tailor your communication method, platform, style etc to reach your desired audience.
4. Evaluate. Did it work as intended?

Let's apply comms strategy to this thread!

Audience: Scientists & scicommers
Desired outcome: Draw attention to need to familiarize ourselves with scicomm research
Platform: Twitter as my target audience is here
Style: Humourous/Concise/Informative
Evaluation: Twitter analytics

Part of my evaluation of the effectiveness of this thread for 'scicomm comm' would be not just counting tweets and retweets but reading the responses. Positive and negative responses and side discussions tell me where the gaps in understanding are.

*scicomm comm is a thing now!

Feedback tells me how I can better tailor my scicomm comm next time! For example, the number of research scientists with "#scicomm" in their bio who have contacted me to ask where to find research on scicomm tells me that knowledge of the field and it's breadth is lacking!

I've had a lot of scientists contact me via DM and in replies asking for links to "this scicomm research you speak of" as if it's some tiny field summarized by one literature review... In the interest of not spending my day doing literature searches for scientists, tips below.

(Keeping in mind this depends which area of scicomm you want to know about)

Starting points include:
1. Journal of Science Communication
2. @SciCommPLOS
3. Research shared at this hashtag #scicommevidence
4. Search scicomm articles at The Conversation theconversation.com/au/search?q=Sc…

Scicomm is transdisciplinary. Fields of research relevant to science communication:

Education/Pedagogy
Communication
Journalism/Media
Psychology
Political science
Sociology
Marketing/PR
Risk/Security comms
Finance/Econ comms
Arch/History comms
Doctor-Patient comms

List goes on!

Suggested key words to search in your scicomm research literature search if looking into effective scicomm on controversial topics:

Science communication AND

Deficit model
Climate change
Vaccination/antivax
Controversial/controversy
Identity
Risk
Politics
Culture
Belief
Trust

And if anyone is interested in the "facts don't change minds" issue, check this out.

Hat tip to @LadyNaturalist

heleo.com/facts-dont-cha…

I should add that debunking and fact-sharing do have their place! As I keep saying, but it bears repeating, your method of scicomm will depend on the topic, your intended audience and desired outcome.