Striving for excellence and openness in science communication and public engagement

Storytelling is one of the oldest, and most well used communication tools in human history. May it be in the forms of bedtime stories to our children, learning from fables, myths and legends, stories from our relatives past told over a family gathering or from news bulletins, it is a tool we use on a daily basis sometimes without even realising.

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Stories contain the power to incite emotion and promote change, and because of this it can also be used as an excellent communication tool for science research. Multiple researchers have proven the benefits of using storytelling as a method to communicate  research, its impact and its importance.

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Climate change and environmental science scicomm is starting to capitalise on this strength, and being able to create engaging narratives is becoming a science communication and public engagement professionals bread and butter. 

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I don't claim to be a storytelling expert, but have spent many hours thinking about how best to create narratives surrounding our daily decision making and how this relates to climate change. As part of my Msc we had the opportunity to develop this further, and for this I decided to look into interactive stories.

Snippet of this story can be seen in the form of text messages between two friends. 

 

This takes me back to my childhood of reading books where at the end of each chapter you can choose the action the main protagonist takes to decide the outcome of the book. Today engagement narratives have developed inline with technology, now watchers of TV platforms can gain similar experiences through their TV watching habits; as we can see in Netflix's Bandersnatch. 

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My concept is an interactive story which contains elements which a younger audience may engage with; text messages, social media platforms etc. The story which follows two friends planning a weekend and the decisions they could make which may impact climate change. I chose this method as it shows how small changes we make impact the environment.

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The full story, and decision making options the audience would engage with can be found here. 

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My evaluation and learnings from this project is also available online. 

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