How to communicate science

Associate Professor Jen Martin spent many years working as a field ecologist until she decided the most useful thing she could contribute as a scientist was to teach other scientists how to be effective and engaging communicators. Jen founded and leads the University of Melbourne’s acclaimed Science Communication Teaching Program, @UniMelbSciComm. She is deeply committed to helping scientists develop the skills they need to be visible, make connections and have impact. Jen also practices what she preaches: for 15 years she’s been talking about science each week on 3RRR, Australia’s largest community radio station. She writes for a variety of publications, MCs events, was named the 2019 Unsung Hero of Australian Science Communication and received the 2020 University of Melbourne David White Award for Teaching Excellence. Jen is also a member of the Homeward Bound Teaching Faculty.

"Hello I'm Dr Jen Martin. I founded and lead the University of Melbourne Science Communication teaching program and I'm so excited to be talking with you today about an introduction to science communication.

There are so many reasons why you might want to improve your communication of your science - perhaps you want to broaden the audiences that you're connecting with, or perhaps you're thinking about the impact of your work. Whatever the reason, I always come back to: so much of the work that we do as scientists is publicly funded, so I reckon the public should be able to access what we do and understand what it means. 

So the first point that you need to think about always is your Goal: what is your purpose of communicating about your work? What would a successful outcome look like? What are you trying to achieve? 

Once you have your goal clearly in mind you can start to think about your Audience. Now, we've all heard the science communication maxim of ‘know your audience’ and yes, you should do your best to know who they are and what's going to be relevant to them but first you have to work out who is the target audience and of course, that depends on what your goal is. Who is it that you're trying to connect with? Who is it that you're trying to influence so that you can work towards your goal? 

Once you're clear on what your goal is and who your audience is, next you need to think about your Message. How are you going to craft a message that is relevant to this audience? A message that's going to resonate with them. And it may be that the message that you’re used to saying or writing about your work is quite different to the message that’s going to resonate and make sense to this audience. So we have to think so much about our messages and how we tell them. 

So once you’re clear on what your goal is, who the audience is that you want to speak with, and how you’re going to craft a message about your work that’s going to bring them onboard with what you’re trying to do, the next thing to think about is what Platform or communication channel is going to be right for you. Perhaps you need to give a talk, perhaps you need to write a blog article or a piece in the Conversation. Perhaps you need to do a whole lot of work on social media. There are so many different platforms available to us and you’re going to have to think carefully about the right platform to share your message with this audience. 

And then when we’re thinking about our message there are a few other things to think about. Firstly I really want you to think about starting with a hook - whether you’re writing, whether you’re speaking, the very first words you use are so important because that’s how you convince a potentially busy, time poor, quite distracted audience that they should pay attention to you. That they should listen, they should read your words, they should give you some of their time. So the hook could be a little anecdote, maybe it could be some striking statistic, it could be an amazing picture if that works for the platform you’re using, but something so that from that very first moment your audience is convinced: ‘this is worth my time’. 

And the other thing that I think is just so important for all of us is to think about the language that we use. One of the key goals of science communication is being inclusive, is recognising the privilege that we have as people who’ve been trained in science. And sure, we can use a whole lot of technical language when we’re speaking with one another - that’s fine, it’s like a shortcut - but if we’re trying to communicate with people who haven’t had that privilege of all those years of education, it’s so important that we use language that’s accessible. Because we want people to understand - what are the questions we’re asking? What are the problems that we’re trying to solve? Why do they matter? And if we use language that’s inclusive we can bring a whole lot more people into the world of what we’re doing and why we want them to care about it. 

So I think the most important thing to always start with is, what’s your goal? What’s the purpose of you communicating about your work? What are you trying to achieve? Always come back to your ‘why?’

Once you’re clear on your goal, think about the audience that you need to connect with and communicate with. Make sure you know who they are and how you’re going to make your work relevant to them. Part of that is thinking about a really good hook to start with, that’s going to convince them this is relevant to them, this is going to be interesting to them.

Think very carefully about the language that you use, make sure you’re not falling into the habit of using technical words that this audience is not going to understand. 

And finally always think about how you can use a story to have your audience on the edge of their seat wanting to know what happens next."

Top tips for getting your science out there (Nature 2020; subscription required)

AAAS Communication Fundamentals

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Casey Visintin (PhD, BArch) is a registered architect, applied ecologist, and wildlife conservationist who researches the impacts of the built environment on ecological systems and the potential of urban constructs to enhance biodiversity.

His work involves interdisciplinary collaboration in the fields of ecological modelling, infrastructure modelling, risk theory, data science, wildlife management, conservation planning, and architectural design.

"I often see in conservation science and working as a conservation scientist there's lots of really good science and methods and different, sort of, experiments being done. Unfortunately the visual communication, because that's not a formally trained discipline in science, kind of lacks behind and I think it's really important, with some sort of small tips, to bring up the game so that we can convey our science in a really engaging and meaningful manner visually.

So I wouldn't expect anyone who's trained in conservation or ecology to have a rich understanding of design and visual communication, so what I like to normally do is distill it down to just some very basic principles that we think about when we're thinking about visual communication and design. So that's colour, it's a color theory, contrast, balance, things like fonts, there are certain areas that I think are really important and some simple rules of thumb to keep in mind when you're putting together your visual media just to make it a bit stronger and a bit more clear.

When I’m talking about contrast I'm thinking about the sort of, the brights and darks between stuff. What I see a lot that happens is people will use light text on light colours and dark text on dark colours and so forth and so on. And so it's really important to think about the contrast of those two things.

The other thing about contrast, the difference in lights and darks, is sometimes in a slide you may have a lot of dark, sort of, material on one side and a lot of light material on the other side and so the slide gets a bit imbalanced. That's why it's important to do what we call the squint test where you actually squint and look at it and any areas jumping out more than the other you want to rethink about how you might be playing with contrast in the slide just to make sure it's very benign and very balanced so people aren't getting distracted with what they're looking at. 

When I think of colour you know the way we use colour palettes is really important for, sort of, visual communication. One thing I see all the time is usually standard templates, people default to standard templates because they don't know any better. All those standard templates have gotten better over the years but they still use just a very horrible colour palette, usually very bright. When we think of, like, that intensity of colour - we call that chroma - you want to soften the chroma as much as you can just to make, you know, the visual chromation a little bit easier on the eyes. So I usually like to think of analogs and pastel versions of a colour as opposed to just the standard stuff that you might get from Microsoft or something like that.

When we talk about balance we're talking about the overall balance of a composition, so that might have to do with things like the alignment of stuff, how the different elements relate to each other. It's really important to have consistency through that, so if you're using some sort of shape or visual cue like, for example, a map enlargement or an inset or something like that using a rectangle, then the enlarged area should also have a rectangle just to have that visual sort of cue there. You know when you're thinking about things that need to, sort of, be read along the same place like two, sort of, let's say graphs or figures or something like that, that relate to each other, you want to have those aligned. Same with fonts and text, you want everything to have a bit of alignment. The other thing that's really important, I find, is just having a bit of space and not trying to get too much stuff into a slide or a composition - that can be a bit overwhelming. Same thing happens with figures - we put too much information, too much data into it and it becomes really overwhelming to try and digest the information so it tends to get lost. 

And just one of my personal pet peeves is, and this is because of templates, the title headings on slides. Normally the title heading we give so much real estate to and really it's probably the least important thing on the actual slide. So I always let people know to really make that small, get rid of it all together if you don't need it for wayfinding, get rid of those those titles and actually put the material, the graphs, the figures, the charts that are really important, the stuff you really want to convey, give those the real estate.

Visual communication doesn't have to be a big overwhelming thing, it can actually be really enjoyable. Everyone's got the ability to do it even if we're not formally trained, there's just a couple things we just need to keep in mind. These are all stuff that we can do, you don't need a formal training, they're just ways of upping our game a little bit, getting people engaged with the visual media, getting people to really hone in on what you're saying.

And you know, it's good fun."

Seeing Science: How to Visually Explain Complex Concepts

Seeing science: using graphics to communicate research

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Professor Euan Ritchie leads the Applied Ecology and Conservation Research group in the Centre for Integrative Ecology and School of Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin University. He is an experienced and award-winning science communicator, regularly discussing his work via traditional and social media, on The Conversation and 3RRR’s Einstein-A-Go-Go. Euan is an Associate Editor of Austral Ecology, a member of the Media and Communications Working Group for the Ecological Society of Australia, and is Deputy Convenor (Communication and Outreach) for the Deakin Science and Society Network.

Kylie is a conservation biologist with her sights set on saving species in cities and towns. Based at the University of Melbourne her research has focused on identifying the challenges and opportunities for nature conservation in cities and developing tailored approaches to protecting urban biodiversity. But this involves changing perceptions - in public and policy - about the importance of nature conservation in cities. To do that, Kylie has had to flex her communication skills across a broad range of audiences, whether it's through the media, regular radio spots, pub talks and even TikTok. She has received several awards for science communication and is currently one of Science and Technology Australia’s Superstars of STEM.

Euan: “So in recent decades obviously we've seen a real change in the way we communicate. So we've seen the advent of social media platforms and importantly they have massive audiences. I think one of the things I really like about social media is that you can probably have conversations with people [and] it's really difficult to have those conversations otherwise. And I've heard criticisms that, you know, it's a lot of time to invest and, you know, maybe we're not being given sufficient time to do that… what I would say is, you know, many of us are spending days, months, in some cases years, often involving blood sweat and tears to understand our favourite animal, our favourite plant, ecosystem, whatever it might be… to not go that extra little bit of effort to communicate, you know, what that research means - it seems a bit of a shame to me. So I think we live in this information age and if we just sort of put things out there passively and expect people to find them and understand them we're probably kidding ourselves.

One of the challenges of course with beginning to use social media and communicate is, you know, if you're just starting you're going to have no followers, you're not going to have a big network, and it can be a bit disheartening when you put a message out there and you might get zero likes or one like and then you can see colleagues that are getting hundreds of likes and hundreds of, you know, retweets and shares and so forth. My advice would be to really reach out to people in your network who might have those big audiences already, those big networks, and ask for help. There's many of us in the community that are fortunate and have worked really hard to cultivate and, you know, create those networks and those groups of followers that really would love to be able to help, you know, get your messages out as well so make use of the community. 

The point about you know how many followers you have how many likes you get and so forth I think in some ways that misses the point of what, you know, good science communication and use of social media is about because I would argue that even if you connect with a single person and they understand the importance of your work in a better way and they might actually then go on to share that with others, use that in their lives - that should be, I would argue, the metric of success rather than, yeah, whether you've got 10 000 followers or a million followers.

So I think it's really important when we think about social media about the ways that we can both provide information and also how people might receive that and understand that information. So some people love text, so things like Twitter and so forth can be useful in that sense. Other people might be really visual learners and so things like Instagram as an example or even Tik Tok with videos and so forth can be a really powerful way of getting your messages across. And of course often if we combine those platforms you can actually amplify your message, so be really aware of that.

There are very different audiences and demographics on the different platforms so whether that be Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, Snapchat, and so forth, be aware of that and target those groups.”  

Kylie: “So, why start Tik Tok?

I realized pretty quickly as someone working as a conservation scientist that I needed to convince people to do things differently and I also realized that I was spending a lot of my time talking to people who already knew what I was going to say and so if I wanted to reach newer audiences, different audiences, broader audiences, that I needed to try something different and that's why I ventured into the world of Tik Tok. It's been an interesting experience but it's been really incredible because it's forced me to think more carefully about what the average Australian already knows and what they're interested in and try and meet them there with that knowledge instead of just force my ideas down their throat. And it's been a really incredible way of forming a community of people, you know, hearing the kinds of things that they're interested in and responding to those. You know, people ask me questions and I get to respond with a funny little video. When people show me their, you know, their amazing thing that they saw in their backyard and they want to know more about it… And it's a really nice way of having a conversation with people about nature rather than just providing information in a pamphlet.

Tik Tok is very daunting to get involved in, particularly if you're above a certain age, and I think the easiest way to approach it is just to really be yourself. Find something that interests you, find a way of communicating that feels really authentic and really you. I think the hardest thing to do is to get on there and try and do a performance or try and do something that doesn't feel right to you. What I really like about this kind of platform is people really respond to authenticity - they can tell that I care what I'm talking about and that I love, you know, just going out and nerding out and saying ‘hey did you hear that bird? Did you know what it is? Look, here are all the things I know about it!’ And people really respond to that so I just encourage you to keep it simple and be yourself.”

Euan: “There are some definite challenges in using social media and unfortunately difficult conversations, controversial topics and trolls are all part of social media. Personally speaking, I work on dingos, kangaroos, feral horses, feral cats, and that can sometimes lead to prett heated and emotive conversations. I think the important thing there really is to stop and listen to other people - as difficult as that might be it can actually lead to change and then they're better conservation outcomes. Obviously if people are being overtly horrible, nasty trolls then there are functions of course to deal with that including blocking people and reporting them and so forth. In general a lot of people who use social media in a scientific sense talk about how supportive the social media community is, including sharing challenges. 

I think the most important thing, and most exciting thing for me, in terms of engaging your social media is just the excitement that people have. I think we forget quite often how much people are just excited about stories to do with nature and wildlife and they just are craving for these wonderful stories about the weird and wonderful things that we do. And also hope and that good things are happening - you know, we’re awash with doom and gloom in this world with the climate change and the biodiversity extinction crisis but there are people doing wonderful things and having wins, you know, whether it be ingenious ways to help the forty-spotted pardalote have higher nesting success in Tasmania or whether it be numbat numbers increasing in Western Australia, we are having wins, and conveying and sharing that information is really important because it's a positive motivator.

We know unfortunately that often groups like fungi or invertebrates just often don't get the attention that they deserve, despite the fact that they're super diverse, they're wonderful, they're amazing, they're so important for the environment. There are really passionate communicators on social media talking about these groups, their connection with these species, their work and the importance of that for our world. So I think it's really important therefore that we're hearing diverse voices to make sure that the work that we're doing and the importance of that work is both accessible and also relevant to a diverse cross-section of society.”

Social media can add a new dimension to how scientists communicate with colleagues and the wider community (Australian Science Media Centre)

Social media for ecologists (British Ecological Society)

Social media for scientists (Nature Cell Biology)

Networking for introverted scientists (Nature, subscription required)

How we use Instagram to communicate microbiology to the public (Nature, subscription required)

How to use Twitter to further your research career (Nature, subscription required)

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Jaana Dielenberg has generated over 1000 media stories on ecological research. She has a BA (Geography) and M. Environment both from The University of Melbourne and worked in waterway management for over a decade before spending the next decade in knowledge brokering, stakeholder engagement and communication roles for large environmental research consortiums including the National Environmental Science Program’s Threatened Species Recovery Hub and the National Environmental Research Program’s Northern Australia Hub. She is now the Communication and Engagement Manager for the independent Biodiversity Council, where she continues to amplify the voices of scientists and Indigenous Knowledge holders.

“One of the reasons to get involved in doing media, as in sort of mainstream media, radio interviews, online articles, things like that, is because it really gives you an opportunity to reach very large and diverse audiences. You'll reach many more people than you would say through a social media account and also with social media you tend to be talking to the people who are already interested, whereas mainstream media gives you a chance to reach those people who maybe had never even thought about the kind of topics that you're doing research on.

First of all, when you choosing to do some media work I think it's really important to think about your partners and communicate with them and consult with them and let them know that you're thinking about doing media or you've been approached for an interview. They can often be really helpful in providing additional, say, photos or video footage that you might not have available. It can be a really positive relationship building experience if you loop them in where everyone feels like they got something great out of it. 

So if you've been approached by the media, asked to do an interview, there's some things you should do beforehand to prepare and also some tips for during the interview. So one of the key things when you get approached is: what program is this for? Will it be online? Is it radio? Is it TV? How long a piece are they looking for and is it pre-record or is it live?

So before your interview, prepare by thinking about what are the key messages you want the audience to walk away with. We're talking sort of short messages, things that they can you know, in under 10 words what can they remember and walk away and potentially tell one of their neighbors or someone in their family. And then what are the other bits of detail you should give them to substantiate those so that they really believe and feel like they were compelling messages so they hopefully go off and repeat. 

The other thing you can do to prepare is you can help to prepare the journalist. You have to think of journalists as smart busy people who don't have subject matter knowledge in the area that you do. And they're super busy and so often if you just send them an email in advance saying ‘oh just in case this is helpful, here's some information you could use for my introduction which already says this is so and so from this particular, you know, research group, who's an expert on blah’. Don't be afraid to give them an intro blurb for yourself that says you're an expert in Australian spiders or something because that's how the public will see you and often they will use those introductions and it means that the introduction is correct and usually names your institution correctly and all the kinds of things that makes all sorts of people happy. You can also suggest some topics that they should ask you, in questions. I frequently send, you know ‘here's a few questions you might find helpful’ to journalists. I don't tell them they have to use it but it's surprising how often they do because you've just made it so easy for them to do a really interesting and good story. But you've got to give them the kind of questions that are not the kind of questions that you as a scientist think are the really interesting questions but it's like, someone at home in the public, what would they find interesting that also enables you to give them the key messages you want?

Make sure all your answers to questions are in plain language and plain language is not what you think people should be able to understand but it's really the kind of language you can imagine them using. So unless you can imagine the people listening down at the milk bar talking about trophic levels, for example, don't use trophic levels. Use simple terms. Don't dumb down the findings but just express it in a way that enables everyone to understand what you're trying to say. 

Make sure that you explain what something means and why because you might feel like giving someone the statistic of a such and such percent decline of a particular population of a certain period is self-evident what that means, but to the broader public, which is generally who you're reaching through the mainstream media, they often don't know that. It really helps, even if they had a sense of it from what you were saying, that you reinforce it and say ‘so what this really means is, you know, the mammal decline rate in this national park has really accelerated over the last 10 years which is very concerning’.

Sometimes people might question the amount of effort it takes to do a media campaign especially because it's not always a sure thing - you don't know how much coverage you're going to get. But I have many times been involved in running a campaign that's resulted in a lot of new action or investment for a species. So when the Threatened Species Recovery Hub did a campaign about the most imperiled reptiles in Australia, which is a group that typically doesn't get much attention, government and other groups stepped forward and offered new money for some of those species. The same happened for the most imperiled birds - there was new surveys and other action for those species because of the media retention we did.”

'Ecologists, be heard! How to get your science in the media and reaching the public' - Jaana Dielenberg CBCS Tuesday Morning Seminar (YouTube)

Dealing with the media (Australian Science Media Centre)

How to get media coverage and boost your science’s impact (Nature, subscription required)

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Dr Jessica Walsh is head of the Conservation Science Research Group at Monash University. Her research focuses on evaluating the effectiveness (and cost-effectiveness) of conservation management actions for threatened species and ecosystems, and prioritising conservation efforts to increase outcomes for biodiversity. She is passionate about finding ways to bridge scientific research, policy and practice to improve conservation decisions. For more information about Jessica’s work, visit her website.

"So I'm really interested in policy engagement because I feel like the research that we do, it's great to be understanding the conceptual ecological theories and a better understanding of the environment, but really the key reason why I do it, research, is to have an impact, to conserve biodiversity, ensure that the environment is better managed. So making sure that your research has an impact - it's not just sitting on a shelf collecting dust or sitting in your computer files collecting electronic dust, if that exists!

So how do we do this effectively? How do you make sure that your research is not sitting on a shelf collecting dust? There's five things you can use to help inform policy makers about your research.

So the first one is knowing your target audience. So understanding who is the most relevant person or organization or institution who could take your research and apply it to decisions. Once you've identified your target audience then you try to understand the constraints that they work under, understand their priorities, get to know their language - so if there's a particular policy that's relevant to your research, understand that policy and then be able to really clearly articulate how your research fits into that policy. 

Tip number two: build trust and relationships with policy makers so once you've identified the target audience start to engage with them, ideally on a regular basis if possible, so eventually they'd be able to be comfortable to pick up the phone and ask you questions about scientific advice.

So tip number three: identify the avenues of how you're actually going to engage. There's lots of different ways of engaging. One is being proactive: so if you've got a research project that's really relevant, policy makers need to know about it, be proactive about that by letting them know. And you can do that by creating a policy brief, so a one to two page document that identifies why it's important and then what your research findings are and recommendations for that particular issue, and then contacting them and trying to set up a meeting with the people who are relevant. The second is reactive: so when there's lots of opportunities for public submissions and public comment on the issues that the government needs feedback and consultation on. 

Tip number four: keep your messages simple and sticky. By sticky I'm meaning that they can understand what you say and remember and tell someone else about it in a week's time. So to make your messages simple and sticky you have to tell a story - keep it concise but also credible. That credibility comes through backing up your story with the evidence and the science and the research. Less is more, so rather than providing them with all the facts like big pages and documents about ‘these are all the reasons why’, choose your one and two key reasons why it's important and stick with them, otherwise people just get overwhelmed and the message is lost.

So tip number five: policy engagement is hard and it takes time so I really just recommend persevering and practicing and learning as you go. Evidence use or the uptake of evidence is very rarely in a linear process it's really uncommon that a particular research paper then directly translates into a policy change. It's more about this big like soup of information where there's lots of different factors and information coming in from many different stakeholders - your research is just one part of that puzzle that the decision makers have to try to put together to then make informed decisions. And so even if you don't see immediate impact or direct impact, just being present providing that information, eventually that message will come across either in the concepts or their general thinking and understanding of how the system and ecosystems work.

So finally the last thing is just to remember that your voice and expertise as an ecologist or a conservation scientist is really valuable. By providing that time and input into policy engagement it's, yeah, it's very useful and important and just give it a go!"

Making a submission (Parliament of Australia)

Guide to engaging with your MP (Ecological Society of Australia)

Policy Guides (British Ecological Society)

Australian Science Policy Fellowship Program

Policy windows for the environment: Tips for improving the uptake of scientific knowledge (Environmental Science and Policy)

How to Write a Powerful Submission to Government (The Commons Social Change Library)

Policy Engagement for Sustainability Leaders