Science Communication

Overview
Science communication is the practice of sharing science-related information with the public. This field can also venture into the wider disciplines of STEM, such as engineering and mathematics. The media through which the communicator engages with the public greatly varies, ranging from reports and newsletters to lectures and press conferences.[1] Communicating science topics to non-experts takes a firm grasp of both the presented topic and the audience that will consume the product. In the university setting, science and technical communication often pair together as a degree.

Content Research
Unless the science communicator is the one conducting research, most content research will come through interviews or secondary research. Genre research can also prove helpful.

Subject Matter Experts
When the science communicator is not the researcher or expert on their topic, they often need to talk to someone who is. This is where a ‘subject matter expert,’ or an SME, comes in. An SME is a person whose experience or knowledge in their specific field has given them status as an expert. A science communicator will likely have to interview an SME multiple times in their career. Interviewing SMEs can come at varying times in the process, either to get the knowledge of the material from the source as well as to fact-check material. As the field of science is so broad, there will likely need to be multiple SME’s worked with. “…we need the full range of social, behavioral, and decision sciences presented at this Colloquium, coupled with the best available subject matter expertise.”[2]

Secondary Research
Secondary research is a familiar process for many people; it is familiarizing oneself with a topic through reading websites or articles regarding the topic. In the matter of science communication, secondary research is incredibly important. When the communicator is not a scientist or has not done their own primary research on a topic, they can rely on the primary research of others to inform them on these topics. A detractor of secondary research can be if there are not any or many studies performed to the specifications that the communicator requires for their work.[3] This is where interviews with SMEs can come in, which work closely with primary research, as often the interviewees performed the research themselves.

Genre Research
Genre research has used across many disciplines, though some use it more than others do. The foundations of genre research have been around since Aristotle’s Rhetoric.[4] In the instance of a business or nonliterary work, genre research can show a communicator can see the best ways to write or speak in order to reach their own specific purpose. In Solving Problems in Technical Communication, Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber propose that their readers look at genre research as social action. Thinking of genre research in this way helps in using the rhetoric to its full potential. Genre research as social action means that “…the participants in a community recognize patterns in their communication forms and the situations in which communication is necessary.”.[4] When a communicator can look at why a method is typical and understand how the communication in that genre does its work, they can use the genre to achieve their own goals.

Audience Analysis
An important part of any communication is audience analysis. Audience analysis is the practice of identifying the particular readers or viewers of a product and adapting the product to meet their needs.[5] Audience-centered approaches can approve the effectiveness of a communicator; however, as the complexity of a topic increases, so does the difficulty of the identification of the audience and their needs.

Stakeholders
Stakeholders are people with an interest or concern in something, often a business or topic. In the realm of science communication, stakeholders are most commonly assumed to be scientists and members of the ‘lay public’. However, the identities of stakeholders can vary drastically between different scientific fields.[6] Because of this uncertainty, it is the job of the communicator to determine exactly who the stakeholders are in each situation. The communicator must also then determine the different concerns and perspectives of each of these stakeholders. Think of this portion like a marketing strategy, especially in the case of nonexperts. “Science is like any other good or service—it must be strategically marketed (or communicated) if we want members of the public to accept, use, or support it in their daily lives.”[7]

Use of Voice
Once the communicator has identified the stakeholders and their needs, the communication is then tailored to fit them. This tailoring is most easily done through the voice or the tone of the communication. “Using the language of science, although it is essential for certain occupational tasks, is often criticized in the public sphere for being inaccessible to nonexperts, disempowering them, and therefore failing to have a helpful influence on decision making.”[6] Therefore, the science communicator must find a tone that welcomes the non-expert rather than disempowering them. This can be tricky, however, there are ways to communicate complex ideas in a uniform way to allow most anyone to understand them. In fact, there is already a STEM language in place to ensure uniformity and less jargon. In 2014, the International Association of Language and Social Psychology developed a Task Force on STEM language to “examine the role that language and social psychology (LASP) could and should play in understanding science communication.” Janice Krieger and Cindy Gallios argue that LASP could play a role in understanding science communication by using “applied linguistics to social psychological perspectives on how humans comm). unicate and create shared meaning. Language scientists examine in detail the ways in which words and nonverbal behavior signal social and personal identities, improve or exacerbate intergroup tensions, and position speakers in interaction relative to each other, audiences, events, and contexts.”[6]

Communication of Complex Ideas
In relation to audience analysis, there are also complex ideas within science communication that the writer or speaker must convey.

Metaphor
Metaphors are a figure of speech in which an object or process is described in a way that is not literally true. Metaphors can connect technical or complex ideas to more familiar ideas in order to make them more easily understood. This practice has years of examples, but in the field of science communication, a pair of scientists have put this to particularly good use. Rachel Carson and Loren Eiseley worked as marine biologists and anthropologists- respectively, in the early 20th century.[8] Both Carson and Eisely use metaphors to subtly employ their own arguments as well as a way to provide readers with familiar processes to compare with these new ideas. “Both argue that the way we characterize science matters greatly and that the practice of science must be rooted both in a personal engagement with nature and an ethical attitude toward the environment.”[8]

Jargon
Like all technical fields, science has a lot of subject-specific jargon. This jargon can make it harder, if not impossible, for non-experts to understand a topic. Therefore, science communicators need to be as conservative as possible with jargon or acronym use. Jack Bushnell of the University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire argues that it is only when the “‘jargon-barricaded’ ‘neutered language’ of scientific prose… has been replaced by a human-centered, accessible idiom” that it can be called good scientific writing.[9] This is because Bushnell believes it is also the science communicator’s job to excite the audience. This cannot work when jargon is inhibiting the understanding of the topic for a large portion of the intended audience. An easy way to identify jargon is to determine whether a 9th grader would understand the word, though it is also important to consider whether the word has multiple meanings in a public versus scientific setting.[10] “There is almost always a less-technical way to say things.”[10] However, if jargon is necessary, be sure to accompany it with clear and concise definitions.

Plain Language
Plain Language is in a similar vein to jargon. Where jargon inevitably makes any communication more difficult to understand, plain language makes communication easier to understand. The United States government has a website on plain language, made after the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which requires federal agencies to use clear language and communication that the public can understand.[11] There, they cite techniques that can be used to communicate in plain language, which includes active voice, logical organization of material, short sentences, and common everyday words.[11] When coupled with the conservative use of jargon, plain language can be an invaluable resource for science communicators, especially when it comes to communication with non-experts.

Rhetoric and Narrative
Traditionally, rhetoric and science have been thought of as separate ideas.[12] When thinking of rhetoric as a space, Aristotle argued that there were common spaces where all with ‘ordinary’ intelligence could understand and that there were special places that required extra knowledge and background to enter. Therefore, specialized sciences would be found in these special spaces and would lose the intended audience.[12] Alternatively, an example of science as used in rhetoric is prevalent in the work of James Watson and Francis Crick in Watson’s The Double Helix. Watson not only uses a narrative to appeal to his audience but also focuses on the work of another scientist (Linus Pauling) to frame his writing in a similar fashion.[12] Having wanted to be like Pauling in writing style, yet different enough to preserve his own voice and style, Watson used rhetoric in his communication. “The importance of sameness-difference tension for rhetoric is illustrated by traditional notions of stylistic variation as saying the same thing in different ways, and by the current interest in rhetorical genres, or classes of rhetorical acts that for critical purposes can be regarded as both the same and as different from each other.”[12] The way in which Watson wrote The Double Helix shoved aside the traditional dispassionate writing that scientists are often associated with and made room for science with narrative and ethos. “Scientific discourse can be studied as an evolving human tradition, continually shaped by the conscious choices of working scientists and technical writers.”[12] Rhetoric and narrative can help the communicator appeal to and persuade their audiences in a way traditional science communication has had a hard time doing before.

Academic Inquiry
An academic inquiry is a paper that is written to pose questions or discussion while not providing clear answers. [13] In the field of science, academic inquiry is inherent to the practice as academic inquiry papers can cultivate discussion. These papers can also point out areas of necessary further research, as a research proposal is considered an example of an academic inquiry paper. With the exception of some of these research proposals, many academic inquiries end up in trade journals. Many of these journals can be found on the SAGE Journals database, such as Science Communication and the Public Understanding of Science. Unfortunately, research shows that most dispersals of scientific knowledge are pushed along channels like these journals, which nonexperts or non-students do not frequent.[14] Academic inquiry engages students and the public in a way that the presentation of facts cannot do, academic inquiry urges thought and problem-solving on the part of the readers or listeners. Because of this, academic inquiry is making its way into science classrooms. This would require a complete overhaul of the current question-and-known-answer-based format that most K-12 public schools offer, making it more akin to a discussion-based college classroom.[15] Using this method of academic inquiry to teach students a more proactive and involved way of learning science can also be applied to the teaching of science to a nonexpert public. "Inquiry‐based science instruction offers great promise as a means of actively engaging... in authentic scientific problem-solving..." [15] When this discussion-based science happens in public spaces, however, it can lead to controversial debates that can change or insert confusion into public opinion. One relevant example of this includes the idea of climate change. In fact, a science communication study in the New York Times proves that “even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader’s perception of a [science news] story” and that even “firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters affected readers’ perception of science.”[16]