All of the REU students just finished presenting their final work at a poster session at OIMB. It was interesting for me to see the projects everyone has been working on, especially now that I have a better understanding of what the process of a science project is like. During the session I was able to have some interesting conversations about science communication with people who are more on the science side of things.The line on my poster that attracted the most attention was: “Scientists are just people who practice science.” It seems like such a simple take away, but with all of the misconceptions and stereotypes plaguing science and scientists, it can be a difficult lesson to learn. It was mentioned to me that I may have had so much success engaging with the marine biologists on the cruise because of the embedded expectation of outreach in that field. Other fields of science may place a greater value on using high-level language and not reaching out to the general public for various reasons. If I had attempted to engage with rocket scientists, maybe I wouldn’t have had such a positive experience. While communication practices in each field and individual people may vary, the same goes for every other field that journalists engage with. From my perspective, some people want to talk and some don’t and that’s just the way it is.
All that being said, I don’t think that the lack of journalists involved in science communication is caused by a lack of scientists wanting to talk about their life’s work, but rather the label of “science communication.” It’s likely that many journalists get scared off by the word “science” and automatically assume that science communication requires a special skill set. A science communicator is just a more specific title for a journalist. Whether you’re covering a public event or writing about the research done in a lab, you’re going to be asking the same types of questions: why is this happening? What is the goal? Why should people care about this goal? Those basic questions can be applied to any story, including ones about, you guessed it, science. As the world around us changes, it becomes harder to avoid science. While some people still put in the effort to act like proven studies are full of false information or that the world’s problems don’t affect them, I believe that science has to become a more integrated part of our society for our own good. So, whether I call it science communication or journalism, I’m grateful that I was able to have this experience and recognize the importance, and fun, of telling these kinds of stories.
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AuthorI am a third year journalism student at the University of Oregon with a focus in traditional written journalism and interview techniques. Science communication is an underrepresented field of journalism that I’m excited to explore and produce content for through this internship. Archives
August 2018
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