Team:Imperial College/scicomm

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Communication Strategies Guide

What is science communication and why do we do it?

Science communication in short is the exchange of scientific information with others who tend not to be experts in the field of science being communicated. Synthetic biology as a field is interdisciplinary in nature and synthetic biologists have varying degrees of experience and knowledge in any discipline. Personally, we found this apparent when discussing our project with electrochemists who had less experience with synthetic biology. Therefore, effective communication is essential for advances in synthetic biology. Additionally, as a subject that is highly linked to industry, communication with industry leaders is essential in translating synthetic biology to the real world. In general, science communication is important for a few reasons:

Increasing scientific literacy and curiosity among the public

Science communication makes science more transparent and accessible to the public, making it easier to visualize and support the impact science will have on people's daily lives, increasing scientific literacy and curiosity. This encourages young people (such as ourselves) into science in the future as well as making the public more likely to support scientific progress.

Influence policy and ethical decisions regarding science

With the support of the public, lawmakers are more inclined to fund science, or change policies to make science easier to conduct. Increased public scientific literacy means more science-based policy decisions as well as informed decisions on science policy.

Influence individual decision making

Increased scientific literacy means that the public will be less fearful and more eager to adopt new technology as well as incorporate science in the decisions that they make in their daily lives. Lastly it makes people less likely to believe in pseudoscience or misinform/misrepresent science which is very important in the age of fake news and misinformation.

What is the Communication Strategies Guide?

We've designed a 4-stage protocol for science communication optimized for iGEM. Much like the engineering design framework synthetic biologists follow when designing new technology, it is cyclical and iterative in nature. Our approach is also modular, reflecting the modularity of synthetic biology. To demonstrate its ease of use, we have created a customizable science communication guide following the framework.

Our framework in more detail

Stage 1: Identifying Audiences

The first consideration when designing a science communication protocol is the audience. Being able to characterize audiences means that we can optimize communications tailored to that specific audience.

Firstly, the level of knowledge the audience has on the subject matter you wish to communicate must be considered. In this regard, typically only academics, relevant industry leaders and some university students will have any knowledge on said subject matter. If they have no background, considering the level of education (High School Graduate, Undergraduate, Postgraduate, etc.) will be helpful (the more academic an audience is, the more comfortable they are with academic terms and complex ideas, even without a prior background on the subject). If both parameters are unknown, the age of the audience can be taken into consideration (older audiences tend to be more mature and should at least have a high-school/university education and vice-versa). If your audience belongs to a certain archetype (i.e. if they are children), consider unique characteristics to your audience (i.e. children have short attention spans, do not know too much and prefer visual media).

Secondly, we must consider why the audience should care about the subject matter being discussed. To start, consider your project; Is it something that is likely to have wide societal impact? Is it likely to be controversial? Is it novel or interesting? Does it fit in with the issues society is dealing with today (zeitgeist)? Then think about how the socio-economic and cultural background of the audience may impact the reasons they should care about your project. The reasons why audience should care about your project will shape the way you communicate with them.

Stage 2: Evaluating Familiarity

Thirdly, we should consider the purpose of science communication for your project, to what extent does the audience need to know the finer details or background of your project. Following Bloom's taxonomy, we can roughly define levels of knowledge required for an audience. If we expect the audience to have a low level of understanding after communication, we should expect them to be able to remember and understand the basic points that underlie the project. If we expect them to have a medium level of understanding after communication, we should expect them to be able to apply and analyze the project (find new applications and point out certain issues with the project). Audiences who are expected to have an advanced level of understanding should be able to critically evaluate and synthesize new approaches for the project. Expectations must be realistic however and you should only expect only one level of improvement. It is also highly unlikely that anyone other than academics or industry leaders will be able to critically evaluate and analyze the project as the level of background knowledge required is far too high.

Stage 3: Designing Communication

Fourthly, we need design a method of communication suitable for these audiences. To start, consider when and where communication will occur. Certain audiences would prefer specific times and places for communication to occur. If communication is happening on the cloud, consider the online media being used, the audiences of specific social media are relatively well characterized and some media allow targeted marketing of audiences which extends the reach of your communication. Next, consider the medium of communication, you could choose online communications which has wider reach but less responsivity or offline communications which may have lesser reach but have better interactivity. Additionally, consider which media your audience is more likely to consume. Lastly, consider the type of communication that you will be using, certain audiences prefer certain types of communication (whether it be text, audio, visual or video based) and it is wise to tailor the type of communication with the audience chosen.

Stage 4: Improving Design

Lastly, it is very important to be interactive and dynamic with science communication. To increase the effectiveness of future science communication, it is important to always get feedback not just with your project but with the communication itself. A few important metrics to consider is verifying if the target audience is the same as the intended audience, how much did they learn (how much did they know before versus how much they know now), attempting to see if there is a change in perception with your project if they had a prior opinion and whether they have any advice or issues they had with the way the project was communicated. Consider the method of feedback as well, people prefer quick and easy to answer feedback however these forms of feedback may not be as comprehensive. Finding a compromise with good question design is very important.

Example demonstrating how our protocol can be used

An iGEM team had a project investigating co-cultures wanted more public awareness of the importance of co-cultures on the daily lives of people (i.e. has wide societal impact). They chose children as their target audience and their goal was to educate them on the importance of co-cultures in their daily lives and did not expect prior knowledge on the subject. Following the science communication design framework, they would be completing the first two steps. They then considered that an online based media would have a wide reach for their target audience and that they needed to choose a media that would not only be attractive to children but also informative. They ultimately chose to create a video game as a visual media it is easy for children to understand what is on the screen. Moreover, as it was interactive, it was able to capture the attention of children for extended periods of time. Lastly, they used surveys to collect not only feedback on the game, but also feedback for potential new applications for their project on co-cultures as well.

To our guide

Custom Science Communication Guide

Who is your audience?

Public Academia Industry
Children Media Undergraduates
Next

Why should they care?

It will affect the world! It is controverisal! It is novel and interesting! It fits in with the current global mood!
Back Next

How much does the audience need to know?

Low Medium High
Back Next

Choose your communication media!

Internet Article/Blog Social Media Email Interview Presentation Exhibition/Stall News Article
Back Next

Choose your communication type!

Text Audio Visual Video
Back Finish

Display your personalized science communication guide!Reset Page

How did Imperial implement this protocol?

Science Museum Surveys: We traveled to the Science Museum as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to get feedback on how much people know about biotechnology and the implications of our project. We performed these surveys over a 3 week period. We originally designed paper surveys and spoke to people directly. We found this approach cumbersome and inefficient. To improve, we decided that all future surveys will use electronic media (iPads, etc.). Additionally, our initial survey designs testing knowledge were yes/no questions asking whether participants were aware of the meaning of a specific term in biotechnology. These initial survey questions were not only long in length (30+ questions), they were uninformative on how much the participants actually knew about biotechnology. We decided on asking fewer, but harder and more open-ended multiple choice questions. This complete overhaul in survey design came as many participants questioned us on both the method of delivery of the survey as well as the content of the surveys.

Art Exhibition: After determining that level of knowledge had no impact on opinions about GMOs, we recognized that it was important to emphasize other societal aspects of synthetic biology rather than explaining how synthetic biology systems work. Hence, we decided not to focus on outreach that involved explaining the function of our system but rather explaining our system implications on our society and our world. Hence, we contacted artists with whom we shared common views about patterning, its emergency and its role in living systems in order to comission pieces of art related with these topics. We hope that viewers of the art exhibition will view life as we know it as a result of patterns our system could potential reproduce. By characterizing our audiences better through the use of surveys, we are able to design communications that better resonate with our audiences.

Socio-ethics discussion: As previously mentioned, our primary goal with outreach is to explain our system in context of society. Our project, and much of synthetic biology in general, is all about the idea of being able to control life. Widespread use of synthetic biology will likely hinge upon public perception of the nature of this control. Hence the need to receive public feedback on both the level of control we as a society want to have over life as well as the level of control over the potential applications of synthetic biology systems. By hosting a socio-ethics discussion, we were able to gather public concerns from different cultural, economic and social backgrounds and thus gain a more nuanced perspective on the sociological effects of technological innovation. The conclusions we drew from the socio-ethics discussion will be paramount to shape future outreach.

Board Game: We developed this board game as an outreach method at New Scientist Live! Fair. We recognized that the fair has been marketed to mostly children and teenagers. Hence the most appropriate outreach effort is one that aims to educate key concepts and get the children or teenagers to be interested in the subject so that they learn more. We designed a board game that aims to teach simple but key concepts in synthetic biology, such as the idea of metabolic burden, the roles of genes in cell physiology as well as the modularity present in synthetic biology. Unfortunately, we did not anticipate that our booth at New Scientist Live! was far too small to set up a board game. Reflecting on this, we have decided to make a printable version of this board game so that educators can easily access, download, print and use our board game to teach synthetic biology.

Fairs: We attended two fairs, the first being New Scientist Live! and the second being Fresher's Fair at Imperial College. At New Scientist, we expected children and teenagers to be our main target audience. We designed a simple poster that illustrates how our system works in a very simple way and displays applications that younger audiences can understand. For teenagers we also created a "molecular biology cheatsheet" which not only serves as outreach for our project, but also a quick revision guide for their upcoming GCSE, As and A level examinations. At Fresher's Fair our main target audience are the new upcoming cohort of Imperial students, as well as returning students. As incoming students should know as much as the teenagers at New Scientist Live! we reused most of the outreach materials and also persuaded them to come to our seminars and socio-ethics discussion.

Integrated Human Practices and Consultations: Synthetic biology is a highly interdisciplinary field that requires the expertise of multiple different fields of science and engineering. This often means bringing in expertise that may have no background knowledge of synthetic biology. In particular, a large chunk of our project involves electro-chemistry, a field no one on our team, supervisors included, can claim any understanding in. Likewise, not many electro-chemists can claim to have expertise in synthetic biology. Bridging the gap between these two fields is an endeavor that required explaining experimental results as simply but also in a manner that can bring proper discussion on how the system works. We tried a variety of methods to court our electro-chemists, we started by invited scientists and engineers outside of the Synthetic Biology Centre at Imperial to our departmental seminars and tried to actively engage them during discussion sessions. Through these discussions we all gained a rudimentary understanding of our respective fields and this enabled further and more personal discussion outside of these departmental seminars that were crucial to the success of our experimental set-up. The evolution of these communications reflects the iterative nature of the sci-comm framework where feedback from our audiences is used to improve future communications. A similar approach has been adopted for Integrated Human Practices and can be seen in our flowcharts.

Changelog

Version 1.0: Sci-comm guide implemented (June 30th)
Version 1.1: Based on feedback from KUAS-Korea iGEM, we've added examples, visual detail and also made minor edits to parts pertaining to industry as well as correcting minor grammatical and spelling mistakes. (August 31st)

Sources

Colorado State University Writing Guide
Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda
Effective Communications: Raising the profile of your archive service

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