Science Communication (SciCom) plays a key role in addressing today societal challenges. To be effective, it must be conceived as multi-directional communication, involving scientists, policy-makers, journalists, other communications actors and citizens. On one side, scientists produce research results but are not always equipped to communicate effectively to the public and to policy-makers. On the other, journalists and other communications actors act as the interface between science, citizens and other audiences, although they may face challenges in fully comprehending the scientific message. Citizens will have a varied perception of the information received but limited knowledge and tools impeding a qualitative assessment. The variety of means of communication existing today makes communications faster and easier, but that increases the complexity of these interactions and the challenge to communicate “sound” science. We need to consider that much of today SciCom passes through the digital media, as the advent of digitalization has changed the way in which information flows and opinions are shaped, also regarding science. Social media are one of the key representatives of these modern means of communication, deserving a special focus. In this context, the challenge faced by SciCom is in finding effective, non-hierarchical ways to exchange these diverse forms of knowledge, by making SciCom stakeholders interact in a constructive way through the different media.
QUEST faces this challenge with a multi-step approach aimed at: (1) understanding the dynamics of today SciCom (2) designing tools to evaluate SciCom quality (3) experimenting best practices and proposing innovative ways for SciCom (4) supporting capacity building in SciCom (5) building an engaging SciCom community. The focus is on Journalism, Social media, Museums, as strands of high impact in this context. Climate change, Vaccines and Artificial Intelligence are used as case studies.
Following this approach, QUEST has produced a series of exploitable outputs for promoting quality and effective science communication, that can be adopted by scientists, journalists, museum explainers, communication officers, social media content managers, decision makers and the lay public.
These outputs include:
(i) Summary reports on European Science Communication today and on Science Communication education and training in Europe,
(ii) Guidelines for QUEST stakeholder engagement approach,
(iii) 12 KPIs for Quality Assessment in Science Communication,
(iv) 4 Educational Toolkits on quality Science Communication for scientists, journalists, museum explainers and social media content managers, with 6 podcasts, a digital tool for journalists, Summary report on good practices for Science Communication on Social Media, New Form of Handbook for Academic Writing in Museums, checklists for supporting scientist in quality communication, science explainers for journalists, guidelines for social media quality science communication,
(iv) Policy and incentive Recommendations for promoting quality science communication.
All of the QUEST outputs are available in a digital and printable version at QUEST and project partners’ websites.
