Team:Aix-Marseille/Press
For the Aix-Marseille team, communication has been a pillar of our activity. We have put a lot of effort into public engagement and participated in lots of events that have helped us carry out our project.
During these events, we wanted to explain synthetic biology as well as molecular engineering to the general public. In France, GMOs are not appreciated and many people find this term is scary. Our team wanted to show that GMOs, despite having some disadvantages, can also have advantages. Therefore we wanted to establish a strong dialog with the general public on this subject.
Beyond our commitment and engagement in the different public events in Marseille, we wanted to extend our communication as far as possible. For this, we contacted the local press, local radio as well as the regional television channel France 3. This resulted in several interviews about our project and the competition, that gave rise to articles that appeared in the local press.
The biggest local newspaper La Provence published a full page article on our project, and this was taken up by several other newspapers in the same group. The Marseille edition of the free newspaper 20 minutes also published an article on our project. These articles generated a lot of interest, with many people contacting us for information about our trap and offering to let us test it. The articles also brought more interviews and press interest.
During the European researchers night we were given the opportunity to discuss our project on the microphones of the local radio station Radio Grenouille.
We also had the chance to explain our project to the cameras of France 3 Television, the regional television channel. A camera crew came and filmed us at work in the laboratory and then we had an interview, after a whole afternoon of filming and interviews they had enough material for their clip!! As a result, we appeared on the regional news (90 seconds for an afternoons filming), and they put out a video on their website. The video also produced a lot of interest in our project, thank you France 3.