Note: This is an AI-assisted English translation of the original Portuguese post published on 7 June 2013 at Ciência ao Natural. The original text was written by Luís Azevedo Rodrigues and is reproduced here for archival and educational purposes.
I have just returned from the SciCom PT 2013 congress — the national congress of science communication in Portugal, held in Lisbon — and I am still processing the experience. Rather than writing a conventional summary of the programme, I want to share five ideas that struck me as particularly important, and that I think deserve to be taken seriously by anyone working in science communication in Portugal.
1. Nothing replaces personal contact
I met many people at SciCom PT with whom I had been interacting for years — on Twitter, on Facebook, by email — but whom I had never met in person. The phrase I used most often during the congress was: "We finally meet in person — outside of Facebook/Twitter/email!"
This may seem like a trivial observation, but I think it points to something important. As José Vítor Malheiros put it, nothing beats personal contact for better communication. And this is especially true in science communication, where trust, credibility and the ability to read an audience are crucial. Online networks are powerful tools for connecting people and sharing information, but they cannot fully substitute for the depth and nuance of face-to-face interaction.
2. Science communication as a moment of reflection for scientists
Science communication is often discussed primarily in terms of its benefits for the public: it increases scientific literacy, it builds support for research funding, it helps citizens make informed decisions. All of this is true. But I want to suggest that science communication also has an important function for scientists themselves.
The act of explaining your research to a non-specialist audience forces you to step back from the technical details and ask fundamental questions: What is this really about? Why does it matter? What assumptions am I making? As Baudouin Jurdant argued, science communication can be, for the scientist, a moment of zen — or of horror — in the face of their own work and the scientific questions that underlie it. I agree, and I think this reflexive dimension of science communication deserves more attention.
3. Most scientists and science communicators cannot communicate visually
This was one of the central ideas to emerge from the session I moderated on Visual Communication in Science Communication. Looking at the posters and presentations at SciCom PT, it was clear that science communicators need to invest more in their visual literacy. This need can be addressed through interdisciplinary collaborations — with scientific illustrators, information designers and visual communication specialists.
While significant effort has been made in recent years to train science communicators — primarily by journalists — training in the visual component has been neglected or marginalised. This is a serious gap, given the increasingly visual nature of contemporary media and communication.
4. The public — especially children and young people — can collaborate in science communication
Pedro Russo argued that the public, and particularly children and young people, can contribute to science communication projects by formulating direct questions to scientists — objective questions, framed as if they were hypotheses to be tested. This approach, while challenging to implement in practice, is one of the most interesting models for citizen science and public engagement with research.
I recognise that there are real practical difficulties in implementing this kind of participatory approach. But I think it is one of the fundamental principles of meaningful public engagement with science: allowing people to ask scientific questions, however basic they may seem.
5. Science communicators are afraid of microphones
Despite being surrounded by science communicators — people who are professionally skilled in personal contact and in summarising and communicating complex ideas — I discovered that a single sentence and a single object were enough to intimidate most of them. The sentence was "Do you have 45 seconds for me?" and the object was a voice recorder.
I understand that time is precious, and I accept that my presence can be intimidating (especially when I am trying not to be). But I always hoped that the recorder would calm people down. The truth is that many of my fellow science communicators are frightened by a microphone — at least at first.
The brief responses of some of the science communicators who attended SciCom PT can be heard in a special episode of the Ciência Viva À Conversa podcast.
Until SciCom PT 2014 in Porto!
Original post published on 7 June 2013 on the blog Ciência ao Natural.
Written by
Luís Azevedo Rodrigues
Palaeontologist & Science Communicator