Science for All? Practical Recommendations on Reaching Underserved Audiences

In a world decisively influenced by scientific developments science communication grows ever more important to enable informed decision making and participation of citizens in society and political discourse. However, science communication, being it public talks, or participatory projects, often reaches only certain parts of society. While this problem is increasingly recognized, only some empirical results and practical recommendations on success-factors for promoting diversity and inclusiveness in science communication exist so far. If at all, many projects and reports focus on very specific areas with only a few aggregated and overarching best practices and guidelines. This article contributes to filling this gap and presents a set of practical recommendations on reaching and engaging underserved audiences of science communication activities. The proposed guidelines have been developed from the experiences and empirical evidence from the research and practice project "Science for All" in Germany, and are based on a review of existing guidelines and recommendations. They are corroborated by interviews with practitioners, scientists, and underrepresented groups. The seven recommendations include listening to underserved audiences, reducing the distance, illustrating the relevance of science for daily life, going where the people are, cooperating with stakeholders, and multipliers, as well as the problem of too much openness, and one-time activities. The guidelines are primarily addressed at practitioners in the field of science communication and meant to encourage and support a first step toward more diverse and inclusive science communication. However, they are limited wherever the roots of exclusion lay at the societal and political level and are open for discussion. While inclusive science communication alone cannot fix discrimination and inequality in society, a continuous self-reflection and improvement of the communication of science organizations, including the improvement of inclusion and diversity within the organization themselves, is an important contribution to a more equitable society

Science for All? Practical Recommendations on Reaching Underserved Audiences

In a world decisively influenced by scientific developments science communication grows ever more important to enable informed decision making and participation of citizens in society and political discourse. However, science communication, being it public talks, or participatory projects, often reaches only certain parts of society. While this problem is increasingly recognized, only some empirical results and practical recommendations on success-factors for promoting diversity and inclusiveness in science communication exist so far. If at all, many projects and reports focus on very specific areas with only a few aggregated and overarching best practices and guidelines. This article contributes to filling this gap and presents a set of practical recommendations on reaching and engaging underserved audiences of science communication activities. The proposed guidelines have been developed from the experiences and empirical evidence from the research and practice project "Science for All" in Germany, and are based on a review of existing guidelines and recommendations. They are corroborated by interviews with practitioners, scientists, and underrepresented groups. The seven recommendations include listening to underserved audiences, reducing the distance, illustrating the relevance of science for daily life, going where the people are, cooperating with stakeholders, and multipliers, as well as the problem of too much openness, and one-time activities. The guidelines are primarily addressed at practitioners in the field of science communication and meant to encourage and support a first step toward more diverse and inclusive science communication. However, they are limited wherever the roots of exclusion lay at the societal and political level and are open for discussion. While inclusive science communication alone cannot fix discrimination and inequality in society, a continuous self-reflection and improvement of the communication of science organizations, including the improvement of inclusion and diversity within the organization themselves, is an important contribution to a more equitable society

Preaching to the choir? Science communication and the audiences not reached

Various parts of society are not reached by the established forms of science communication. This challenge for equitable participation is increasingly addressed in research and practice (e.g. Bultitude 2014, Dawson 2019). However, a comprehensive overview of underserved audiences is lacking so far. The heterogeneity of the underserved audiences makes it difficult to define concrete groups. Often, it is a combination of different factors and practices of science communication that lead to marginalization. Therefore, we took the approach of identifying exclusion factors based on a systematic review of research and practice literature, resulting in a comprehensive typology. This typology includes 31 exclusion factors — categorized into three layers: individual, social and systemic factors (Schrögel et al. 2018). In this talk, we are going to introduce the typology and present qualitative and quantitative data to corroborate it. The quantitative data are based on an analysis of the representative survey on societal attitudes and opinions on science “Wissenschaftsbarometer” in Germany. The qualitative data stem from interviews with three underrepresented audiences, which have been chosen as exemplary case studies: Muslim youths with a migration background, socially disadvantaged people in marginalized neighbourhoods and students in a vocational school. Both types of data show the impact of the factors and make the exclusion effects visible. The typology allows science communication practitioners to address exclusion mechanisms and might be a useful framework for researchers investigating inclusion and diversity in science communication

Environmental Science Communication for a Young Audience: A Case Study on the #EarthOvershootDay Campaign on YouTube

Addressing global sustainability challenges such as climate change in democratic societies requires thorough political and societal debates. Science and environmental communication is needed to inform these debates. However, not all parts of society are equally reached by traditional science communication. In particular young people, especially without academic background, are often left out. The cooperation of science communicators with influencers on the video platform YouTube can be a way to convey scientific information and raise awareness for environmental issues with new young audiences. This case study looks at three videos from the campaign #EarthOvershootDay on YouTube by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) Germany and the educational initiative MESH Collective. The focus of the analysis lies on the established success factors of communication through influencers—specifically authenticity, comprehensibility and storytelling—and how they play out in detail in the three exemplary videos. Besides the analysis of the videos, the study is corroborated by interviews with the producers and a comment analysis in order to include the perspective of the viewers. Our analysis confirms previous findings on science communication with influencers and illustrates the practical implementation of these findings. It shows that authenticity is a central aspect which is not disturbed through the presentation of scientific content. The storytelling approaches are tailored to the respective influencer and their style. The language and structure of the videos are simple and comprehensible, scientific arguments focus on selected aspects and are tied to examples from everyday life. The comments by the users support these findings with the majority of comments addressing the three aspects of our analysis being positive. However, evidence for an in-depth engagement with the scientific contents could not be found in the comments. The stated goal of the campaign to reach educationally disadvantaged young people was only reached to a limited degree according to the assessment of the producers. Additionally, the views of two of the three videos remained below the average for the respective channel. Taken together this indicates that cooperation with influencers might not be an “all-purpose tool” guaranteeing success for science communication

Science Slams as Edutainment: A Reception Study

Science slams are a prominent form of science communication especially in Germany that seeks to entertain. While some view science slams as an excellent vehicle for disseminating knowledge, others argue that the imperative to entertain undermines the scientific value of this form of presentation. Drawing on empirical data from three science slam events, this explorative study examines how audiences and presenters perceive the science slam, particularly as it relates to entertainment and the communication of scientific knowledge. Our multi-method analysis includes audience surveys (n = 469), an eye-tracking study, and interviews with science slammers (n = 18). Our results show that the main reason audiences attend a science slam is for entertainment, yet they also have a strong interest in scientific content. Assessing the slammers’ aspirations concerning the audience, we find entertainment to be an important part, but the motivation to impart scientific knowledge is key for most. When asked to evaluate individual presentations (n = 20), spectators tended to rate both the entertainment and scientific value of the presentations as high. However, in terms of visual attention within individual presentations, spectators spent more time considering scientific content than entertainment content. Overall, we do not find evidence for the common claim that the focus on entertainment undermines the scientific value of science slam presentations—rather, entertainment and scientific content are combined to produce “edutainment” in a positive sense

Interview mit Jean Pütz: Wissen als demokratisches Prinzip

Philipp Schrögel im Gespräch mit einem begeisterten Wissensvermittler über die politische und moralische Verpflichtung zum Austausch

Feeling Left Out: Underserved Audiences in Science Communication

Science communication only reaches certain segments of society. Various underserved audiences are detached from it and feel left out, which is a challenge for democratic societies that build on informed participation in deliberative processes. While only recently researchers and practitioners have addressed the question on the detailed composition of the not reached groups, even less is known about the emotional impact on underserved audiences: feelings and emotions can play an important role in how science communication is received, and “feeling left out” can be an important aspect of exclusion. In this exploratory study, we provide insights from interviews and focus groups with three different underserved audiences in Germany. We found that on the one hand, material exclusion factors such as available infrastructure or financial means as well as specifically attributable factors such as language skills, are influencing the audience composition of science communication. On the other hand, emotional exclusion factors such as fear, habitual distance, and self- as well as outside-perception also play an important role. Therefore, simply addressing material aspects can only be part of establishing more inclusive science communication practices. Rather, being aware of emotions and feelings can serve as a point of leverage for science communication in reaching out to underserved audiences

Science Slams as Edutainment: A Reception Study

Science slams are a prominent form of science communication especially in Germany that seeks to entertain. While some view science slams as an excellent vehicle for disseminating knowledge, others argue that the imperative to entertain undermines the scientific value of this form of presentation. Drawing on empirical data from three science slam events, this explorative study examines how audiences and presenters perceive the science slam, particularly as it relates to entertainment and the communication of scientific knowledge. Our multi-method analysis includes audience surveys (n = 469), an eye-tracking study, and interviews with science slammers (n = 18). Our results show that the main reason audiences attend a science slam is for entertainment, yet they also have a strong interest in scientific content. Assessing the slammers’ aspirations concerning the audience, we find entertainment to be an important part, but the motivation to impart scientific knowledge is key for most. When asked to evaluate individual presentations (n = 20), spectators tended to rate both the entertainment and scientific value of the presentations as high. However, in terms of visual attention within individual presentations, spectators spent more time considering scientific content than entertainment content. Overall, we do not find evidence for the common claim that the focus on entertainment undermines the scientific value of science slam presentations—rather, entertainment and scientific content are combined to produce “edutainment” in a positive sense