Market your science on YouTube
This past Christmas break I read Explaining Research by Dennis Meredith. As his bio states, “Dennis Meredith’s career as a science communicator has included service at some of the country’s leading research universities, including MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Duke and the University of Wisconsin. He has worked with science journalists at all the nation’s major newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV networks and has written well over a thousand news releases and magazine articles on science and engineering over his career.”
Given this expertise and a recommendation from Mary Golden, I dove into the book. By the end, I was convinced that we scientists could do a lot better in communicating our science to the public. The opportunity arose to give this a test with our latest research article:
Schultz, D. M., and J. M. Sienkiewicz, 2013: Using frontogenesis to identify sting jets in extratropical cyclones. Wea. Forecasting, doi: 10.1175/WAF-D-12-00126.1
I think the combination of the dramatic imagery of the strong winds from the October 1987 storm and explaining the mechanism for the strong winds using a simple conceptual model figure allows for a concise, yet memorable, presentation aimed at the general public.
I especially like the point that the strongest winds occur where the front is weakening most rapidly.
Thanks to Aeron Haworth, Media Relations at the University of Manchester, for working hard to make this video and the accompanying press release.
Excellent post and materials relating to your research! My prior experience with media relations specialists at Texas A&M University in the early 1990s matches the results you’ve shown here through partnership with Mr. Haworth.
While the Web and social media/publishing applications make self-promotion easy, researchers should never discount expertise from media relations departments at their organizations, and in fact, should seek it out. Publicly-funded research will face intense scrutiny and comparison to other spending categories over the coming 20 years in terms of value for expenditure. An excellent way to make that value proposition is through coordinated (speaking engagements, video, text) media releases.
In addition, the public should never be considered an amorphous blob to be spoken to (i.e., one-way communication). Just as we may read/view discoveries in far-removed fields, researchers in other fields may find out about our work through coordinated media releases. I wonder how many opportunities for interdisciplinary research have been missed due to a lack of cross-fertilizing communications?
Hi Jon,
Excellent points! When I give workshops on publishing papers, one point that I make is that many of us scientists are funded by the public through the National Science Foundation (US) or the Research Councils (UK). Taxpayers should expect to learn about what they’ve been paying for, and these press releases and speaking engagements, for example, are some ways to demonstrate that the public is receiving value for their investment in science.
Your last point about how we find out about scientific research in other disciplines is spot on. How many times have I read a press release, then tried to go find the article upon which it is based? A great tool to communicate to scientists, too.