Author: Mădălina
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How was the "Social media for science promotion" workshop?
Last week I held a workshop for researchers from the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi and UMF Cluj about social media for science promotion especially because the topic is out of my comfort zone. Because it's a "task", and not something I do easily, I learned how important strategy, planning and consistency are - and all of these can be worked on.
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Science and Communication Newsletter #4
This edition contains a collection of free online science communication courses and a case study in which I explained at length what was involved in writing a science popularization article.I (hopefully) comment on the interesting reading part, where I selected some Romanian research articles on COVID-19.
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Speculation vs. science: not all studies are created equal (in Mindcraft Stories)
I wrote for the science magazine Mindcraft Stories about how quality studies differ from knee-jerk studies and why it's important not to draw conclusions too quickly from small sample research.
In communication, researchers are being asked by the press and the public to drop the nuances, to stop being so cautious, to risk a forecast. But at these times, I think the reverse is the case: the public needs to understand what the limitations of a study mean, small sample, conclusions not validated by peer review and pure speculation.
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How to structure a scientific explanation - an example
An example of science communication is Romanian-born researcher Albert-László Barabási, who talks about why it is necessary to "stop the world", even if the virus is unstoppable. How did he structure his message? He ended up talking about the "Gaussian curve", but he got there by first going through the heart of the audience.
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For journalists: how to find experts for a story
BrainMap is a kind of Facebook, but with researchers. Perhaps its intention is more to connect experts with each other. There was a need for such a tool because even researchers (sometimes even from the same university!) find it hard to find each other, when someone in the sociological area needs a project partner in, say, physics. But it is also a good tool for journalists and this is what I want to focus on now.
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Babeș-Bolyai University's strategy to bring academia closer to society. An interview with Daniel David
There is a major obstacle for researchers who want to communicate with the public: they have no institutional motivation to do so, quite the contrary. They are judged more on the results of their research (articles, books or chapters, etc.), and not at all on the number of press interviews, community events or experiments they do for children. At absolutely every researcher communication workshop I have given I have been asked this question at some point: So why would I communicate?
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Science and Communication Newsletter #2
Yes, Coronavirus has also infected this newsletter with two articles, but you can also read about how the IQ of Romanians has increased by 3 points in the last 10 years, about public funding of universities in Romania and why it is a signal that we need to invest in promoting research, a study from Romania about women in science, an analysis of who and how communicates science in Europe and how to get a career in science communication.
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