Striving for excellence and openness in science communication and public engagement

Engaging members of the public (the public in this instance referring to non-specialists), in theory, has always been one of the core aims behind science communication. However, in recent years, in order to step away from a deficit model of communication public engagement has become an focus area in its own right, and no longer seen simply as a part of scicomm.

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Although, there is still space for this industry to develop in its own right, the culture of engaging the public has improved over the years with science research funders such as UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and its research councils starting to provide specific funding calls and other means of attention to this practice. 

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As part of my Msc I had the opportunity

to explore the ways in which I would

conduct a fictional public engagement

project and apply for funding (again a

fictional funding call), which is very

different to my usual role as the funder

through my work as Public Engagement

Programme Manager at the Natural

Environment Research Council (NERC),

part of UKRI. 

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In my fictional application I propose a

project where citizen scientists take

photos of their local environment and

upload onto social media (primarily Instagram), stating what they were doing at the time and their emotions using relevant hashtags. This would create an informal classification of data, and through data mining and artificial intelligence, would allow the project to capture the links between mental health and engagement with the local natural environment. 

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The aim for this project would to generate evidence-based reports on the mental wellbeing impact of landuse in identified geographical areas. The "Image: 100 words" project would then aim to utilise the evidence to influence land use deivison making within local authorities. 

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The full 'mock' proposal can be found here.