I’ve really been slacking on the #SciCommChall front recently. So here we go with my contribution to April’s #SciCommChall: Science in just one Instagram story post!
Here is one:
And then, once I got going, here is a second one!
What do you think? Do you see what’s going on there? Or is it just confusing?
Inspired by the absolutely brilliant job that Kati is doing for my project GEO-Tag der Natur, I have recently started experimenting with “Insta stories” on the topic of wave watching.
Insta stories, for those who aren’t familiar with them, are a special type of post on Instagram that only stays visible for 24 hours (unless you save them as highlight, in which case they can be watched until you decide to delete them). They are usually used to give quick glimpses into what’s going on that day, and can be anything from random snap- or screen shots to elaborate stories. The latter is what Kati has been doing for GEO-Tag der Natur — she tells cute and engaging short stories about different topics, using photos and video clips, which she combines with fun gifs to make them even cuter (if you have an Instagram account you can watch them in the highlights of our account).
So that’s what I have been trying to do, too.
My first attempt is posted below — except that what I post below doesn’t contain the links and gifs and stuff, because it turns out that while you can export stories from Instagram, I couldn’t convert them into a format that my blog or vimeo would accept and still keep the gimmicks (original version here). But I still like the format of telling a story. What do you think?
https://vimeo.com/341862851
The feedback I got on that story was super positive, so I decided to do it again.
Since my second Insta story contained so many cute gimmicks, I didn’t even attempt to export it, but wrote a separate blog post using the same videos and pictures (But you can watch the story — including the cute gimmicks! — here).
(And then, when writing this blog post, I realized that if I did a screencast, I could that then convert into something my blog accepts. Duh! So below you can watch my story the way I see it when logged into my account — including how many people watched it and all the buttons that I could click to edit and exit etc.. In the future I should probably just do the screencast from a different account to give you a cleaner view…)
By this point, it started bugging me that I was putting effort into Insta stories but that I didn’t have a good way to use them on my own blog (remember, I hadn’t come up with the screencast idea yet). I like having full control over hosting the stuff I don’t want to disappear, and I don’t like telling the same story twice for different platforms (although I realize that customizing stories for each platform and thus audience is always good advice).
So the next story didn’t use fancy gimmicks (except on the last slide), and I could export the pictures and combine them into the .gif you see below.
Mmmmh, I like that!
Except now I am thinking I should still do an English gif for my blog and keep the German one to my Instagram. Which, again, feels like a lot of work for something that I want to do in random pockets of time like on my commute, not as a real task. So my next story was a language-free one:
So in the end it turns out that classical gifs work quite well for transporting my stories. Not nearly as cute as they could be, but maybe that’s ok?
What do you think? What style of Insta story would you like to see more of?
Option A: Give me cute little gimmicks like ducks on surfboards and ladies jumping into pools!
Option B: GIFs work well and I don’t need all the cutesy gimmicks
Option C: Other. Please elaborate! :-)
So today (and tomorrow and the day after) is the big event that I have been working towards all year in my not-so-new-anymore job: The GEO-Tag der Natur! If you are curious about what’s going on there, check out our Instagram account @geo.tag.der.natur that Kati is doing an amazing job with!
As you can imagine, the weeks running up to this weekend were quite busy and a little stressful, too. So last Sunday I went to the beach to hang out with friends and do some wave watching! Because nothing has a more calming effect on me than watching water…
For example below we see nicely the effect of the wave (and wind) breakers on the wave field. In the lee of the wave breaker, the water is completely calm, whereas towards the right of the bay waves form and grow larger and larger.
And below we see a pretty cool “diffraction at slit” example: Straight wave fronts reach the slit between two wave breakers, and as they propagate through the slit, they become half circles.
But to relax and get my thoughts away from my job, I tried something new: I created and posted my first ever Instagram story! I’m not quite sure it’s my format, but I definitely had fun! What do you think? Would you like to see more of those? (I only just realized the story is in german and my blog in English. Posting anyway… Would anyone like to see this kind of stuff in English? Then please let me know and I’ll see what I can do…)
https://vimeo.com/341862851
(P.S.: Since I made this for Instagram, the format of the video was optimized for viewing on a mobile phone. Therefore it looks crap embedded in a blog. But some you win, some you loose…)
What do you do to relax and get your mind off of work? Wave watching and posting about it on social media? Have you ever tried that? Or what else would you recommend?
Many big research projects and institutions regularly spend a lot of money on things like pens, mugs, canvas bags, or even pool noodles (I kid you not, one of my former employers did that!), all typically branded with the institution’s or project’s logo, that they give away in large quantities. Many of those are certainly useful and others funny. But since they are already budgeted for, anyway, why not use them as a tool in science communication?
For part 1 on what the literature tells us about giveaways, check out this blog post.
For part 2 on designing an actual giveaway, check out this blog post.
Now you have a whole bunch of ideas. Maybe you have a clear favorite, maybe there are several. In any case, I like to make sure that my giveaway checks all or most of these boxes:
Is it actually conveying my message?
Does it spark joy and the desire to keep it?
A couple more thing to consider: Does the giveaway suit the context it is to be distributed in? Will there be time & people power to explain what it’s all about or is there some information provided? If the giveaway is designed for a specific occasion (science day) and are there statistics on typical audiences? How do you make sure you target (and reach) only specific people, not everybody (so that you connect to the right people and don’t “waste” a lot of giveaways on people who aren’t even interested)? Is it easily mailable/transportable or does it need specialized packaging or something that makes logistics super expensive?
Basically, what I want from my giveaways is that they provide value for free, i.e. make sure your give-aways are products or services that people are happy to receive and to share. This should go without saying, but it’s scary how much stuff I have gotten over the years that I really don’t want in my life but was too polite to refuse in the situation. I have absolutely no use for ugly mugs, I have more pretty ones that I love than I could ever use in my home and my office and my imaginary holiday house (and even my even-more-imaginary seminar space in my future light house). Or key chains — is the one you are trying to give me really so awesome that you think I will be using it? Especially when it’s not even used as a lanyard for a name tag when you are giving it to me, but just an empty key chain?
When gifts are given with the intention to develop an effect beyond the first level of recipient, using that recipient as multiplier, marketing principles of viral online marketing can be applied (Wilson, 2000):
Now. Are you ready to come up with a giveaway for your project that ticks all the boxes of this and the two previous blog posts? Then you should check out #scicommchall on Monday, because (spoiler alert!) designing a giveaway will be April’s #scicommchall! :-)
Wilson, R. F. (2000) The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing. Web Marketing Today, Issue 70, February 1, 2000
Many big research projects and institutions regularly spend a lot of money on things like pens, mugs, canvas bags, or even pool noodles (I kid you not, one of my former employers did that!), all typically branded with the institution’s or project’s logo, that they give away in large quantities. Many of those are certainly useful and others funny. But since they are already budgeted for, anyway, why not use them as a tool in science communication?
For part 1 on what the literature tells us about giveaways, check out this blogpost…
Let’s assume you’ve gone through the three basic scicomm questions and know your goal, your audience, and your message:
1) Why do you want to give away a giveaway? Your goal.
2) Who do you want to reach and how will you reach them? Your audience.
3) What do you want people to take away from your scicomm activity? Your message.
Now how do you now come up with a good giveaway? I have collected a bunch of points that I think are helpful to consider in this context.
While giveaways don’t have to be physical objects, let’s assume that that’s what we want to give away, so people have something to take home with them, to look at, to use, to remind them of your scicomm activity or support them when engaging with your topic. So first, let’s think about what images come to mind that are relevant for your topic, then look at functions that might be connected to what you are doing.
It’s likely that some thought has already gone into creating a logo for your project, or an acronym, or a key visual, or some sort of visual representation. But that doesn’t mean you have to stick with that; and if there isn’t anything like that — now is your chance to come up with something!
Rapid ideation is a method that works well to come up with shapes related to a message: Come up with 30 different ideas for shapes or symbols related to your message, even if you don’t immediately see how they can be converted into a giveaway. Write them down, don’t stop before you have a list of 30! It’s amazing what you come up with once you get over the slump that happens after you’ve initially run out of ideas.
Now this is what I think of as the fun part: Combining the functionality of whatever object you decide to give away with the message. Or rather the other way round — figuring out what functionality would work well to remind people of your message.
For me, this leads to two main questions to ponder:
In what context do you want the recipients to be reminded of your message?
Depending on your goal, your audience and your message, you might want to bring it back to people’s attention at very different times.
Going back to the fish example of the previous blogpost, you might want to remind people of what fish to buy when they are out shopping, or maybe when they are at home, thinking about what meal to cook the next day, or maybe even when at the office, planning tonight’s dinner. For each of those cases, you would use different physical objects as your giveaways (and which one you end up choosing should really depend on good research about your audience so you know they will actually use the giveaways in the way you envision).
Here are a couple of examples (and there are probably tons more if you actually think about it): If you want to remind people of your message while they are at work, it might be a good idea to use office supplies, desk helpers, USB sticks, coffee mugs — objects that people regularly use at work. But remember, the assumption here is that this is when they make decisions about what fish to buy! If you think it’s more likely that those decisions happen when people are out, shopping, then using coin purses or those coin holders for trolleys or even canvas bags might be a better choice. And while fish-related cooking utensils are a cute idea (don’t you love kitchen gadgets??), it’s probably not the best timing for your scicomm, because the fish has already been bought at that point.
Another approach is to think about functions that are related to the message itself, not the time when you want to remind someone of the message:
What are functions related to the content of your message?
I’ve been thinking about this in the context of two collaborative research projects people at my old job were working with, one on magnets and one on materials changing properties with changing temperature. Both of those have cool applications that can easily be used in scicomm.
The one with the materials that change properties can do really cool things related to for example colors changing depending on temperature: there are all these cool “thermometers” like color-changing ducks that tell you the temperature of your bath, eggs that change color and tell you whether your eggs are soft- or hard-boiled, mugs that display different images when the contents are hot then if they are cold, or — my personal favourite — mood rings (!!!). Or if you want to make it about light changes rather than temperature changes, you could do these indicator strips for UV light that tell you when to apply sunscreen, color-changing nail polish (this actually exists!), fairy lights with sensors that come on when it gets dark, … All of these things show versions of what the research project is all about, and make great giveaways that can either raise interest or remind people of having been engaged in some scicomm related to that topic.
The collaborative research project that is all about magnets, on the other hand, could use anything related to attaching things to metal, pattern of iron filings in a magnet field, these little boards that kids have that you can draw on with a magnet.
While both of these projects have a very applied topic, but if your project was, for example, on salinity in the ocean, maybe consider nautical-themed a salt shaker branded with your project’s logo or a slogan that relates a number of shakes per cup with ocean salinity in different oceanic regions? (Now I want to design a giveaway for a project on ocean salinity just because I want to play with salt shaker ideas!!!)
…is what we will be talking about in tomorrow’s blog post, that provides a checklist of things I like to make sure I have considered before committing to a specific giveaway, and then some logistics stuff to keep in mind. Stay tuned! :-)
Many big research projects and institutions regularly spend a lot of money on things like pens, mugs, canvas bags, or even pool noodles (I kid you not, one of my former employers did that!), all typically branded with the institution’s or project’s logo, that they give away in large quantities. Many of those are certainly useful and others funny. But since they are already budgeted for, anyway, why not use them as a tool in science communication?
In the marketing literature, giveaways constitute the “low” end of the spectrum of corporate gifts, in contrast to high end gifts like holidays in the Caribbean or cars; “generally low value, high volume, less personal items that are used mainly to promote a company’s name” (Fan, 2006). They are used because verbal communication is easy to forget while gifts, branded for example with a company’s logo, serve as a reminder of that company, which may tip a business decision in that company’s favor (Axtell, 1990, in Fan, 2006).
Most research on corporate gifts is on very expensive gifts, like cars and Caribbean vacations, and therefore deals with legal and ethical concerns. I will ignore such concerns here because I am talking about the type of inexpensive giveaways that are customary in academia: Mugs, pens, hats, flash drives, stickers, all the stuff that you will be given at academic conferences, when visiting institutions, at open days or science fairs (it’s often the exact same items given to all the different audiences).
Marketing literature tells us that depending on the stages of a customer relationship, giveaways typically serve different purposes. Arunthanes et al. (1994) describe business gifts as “means of promoting products and services by strengthening relationships with customers and suppliers“. They distinguish three categories of reasons for giving business gifts relating to a company’s relationship to their customers: initiating relationships, cementing relationships and quid pro quo.
Initiating relationships
When initiating relationships, the goal is to create a positive first impression in and relationship with potential new customers, extending a gesture of good will as basis for a positive future business relationship. Fan (2006) describes this goal saying that giveaways are “used mainly to promote a company’s name”, and Beltramini (1992) describes the goal as increasing positive customer perceptions toward key product attributes.
In a scicomm context, this could mean that you want to attract a new audience to your scicomm topic — kinda like I did when I used the opening of an art exhibition to talk about physics. I was first going to continue saying “… except we would be giving them some small physical object”, but we do not even need the physical component, even a social gift of spending time, building relationship, stimulating thought might be considered a giveaway.
Cementing existing relationships
When giveaways are used to cement existing relationships, they can be used to thank clients for positive past relationships, for placing a new order or for referrals to other clients. Marchand (2017) points out that sometimes repeated (instead of one-off) gifts for might be necessary to keep up customer loyalty.
In scicomm, this might mean keeping an existing audience interested in your scicomm topic, giving people who are already interested in your science something that reminds them of how interesting it is and that they can come back to you for more cool and fun and fascinating information and discussion and engagement. So anything that they will take home and that helps them continue engaging with your topic might be in this category, like the magnifying bug viewer that you showed kids how to use and that they continue using when out and about with their parents or kindergarden group.
Quid pro quo
In the quid pro quo scenario, a giveaway is given in the expectation that the favor will be returned by the customer through other means, for example increasing consumer’s in-venue spending through sports promotions (Yukse, Smith and McCabe, 2017), or because customers have come to expect receiving gifts.
This is what I would refer to as “buying attention” — I give you a giveaway, you give me your time. Maybe this is the really flashy gadget that you get so fascinated with that you don’t even realize you are in a scicomm situation? Or a booklet that captures people’s interest? In a way, the magnifying bug viewer is also a “quid pro quo” thing, I spend money to make you look at bugs (which is what I want you to do because it’s my area of interest and I want you to get excited about it).
Anyway. No matter the stage of the customer relationship, objectives of giving giveaways can be classified very broadly into three categories: Cognitive goals (you hope they will learn something, which could be evaluated by looking at reach of a campaign, awareness of a certain product, or knowledge), behavioral goals (you hope they will change their behaviour, which you would see for example in a number of hits or downloads), and financial goals (you hope they’ll give you money, evaluated for example by the return of investment, brand equity, …) (Cruz & Fill, 2008).
Since giving and receiving giveaways has become the rule rather than the exception, givers seem to evaluate giving giveaways as overall positive and worthwhile, i.e. the objectives seem to be achievable by giving giveaways. Investigations show that business gifts are generally effective in increasing positive customer perceptions toward key product attributes, especially in the case of the low-priced product lines (Beltramini, 1992). For sports promotions, Yukse, Smith and McCabe (2017) find that promotional giveaways increase consumers’ in-venue spending intentions. These effects are explained by the principle of reciprocity, which has its theoretical foundation in the exchange theory (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005).
Marchand (2017) describes two critical dimensions of gift design: gift type and gift relatedness. Gift types can be described in the continuum from economic gifts (where the value of the gift is in the monetary value) to social gifts (where it is about the gesture, the connection, the feelings). Gift relatedness describes the closeness of the link between a gift and the gift-giver and their products and services. Gift-relatedness is high for a company’s own products, and low for other companies’ products.
Marchand (2017) recommends economic related (e.g., coupons) and social unrelated (e.g., unbranded chocolate hearts) gift designs over economic unrelated (e.g., coupons for products from other companies) and social related (e.g., exclusive events with company chairpersons) ones. However, even though social related gifts are generally not recommended, there might be goals for which they are still well suited. For example, if the goal is to learn the needs and problems of the client, to further client-seller relationships or to close a sale, lunch, evening meals, leisure activity or parties might help achieve just that (Arunthanes et al., 1994).
One example of a gift on the economic-related-to-economic-unrelated scale in a scicomm context are little business cards with key messages of a workshop that you hand out to participants (for example which fish to buy and which to avoid). If the card is branded with your institution, NGO, project, what have you, it would be a related. If you hand out a similar card that someone else made and branded, you might still be conveying the same message about what fish are good to buy, but you might at the same time be building up someone else as the trustworthy authority on fishing, rather than having people think of you as the authority because they saw your logo every time they were making decisions about what fish to buy.
On the economic-to-social scale, economic gifts in the sense that there is a large monetary value given are not common in academia (or at least I have never received or given any). Social gifts are more common — meeting with famous scientists, guided tours through famous institutions, that kind of stuff. But I feel like with scicomm giveaways, we’d be not in the extremes on either end of this scale.
Depending on the goal, in order to achieve long-term effects, one-off gifts might not be enough. Repeated gifts for customer loyalty might be necessary, otherwise, the reciprocity process could wear out (Marchand, 2017).
For scicomm, I think this might not be the case as much. Giving people pens so they remember this one phone number for your taxi company might be helpful (I know it worked for me as a kid, when the pen next to the phone (which was still on a cord) had a taxi number on it, that was the one I would use), but for scicomm I would hope that people’s engagement would not depend very much on who gives the coolest gifts. On the other hand, occasionally reminding people of your cool topics would probably not hurt, either. But then it’s not so much about “loyalty” as of being on people’s minds, which can happen by means of giveaways, but also by many different means like for example a radio interview they happen to hear or a poster advertising your open house day.
Gift-giving is depending on cultural context, which can have a huge influence on how a gift is perceived depending on the timing, the monetary value of the gift, the way it is being presented, or even the colors used (Arunthanes et al., 1994; for a broad overview over gift-giving across cultures check out Giftypedia, 2013).
Cultural context is always important to keep in mind, especially working in international settings such as academia. So not surprising that it might be an important consideration when designing giveaways, but worth the reminder!
Giveaways can develop both direct and indirect effects. In the same way that it often is a successful strategy in advertising to target children for products that parents will make purchasing decisions for (not only entertainment parks etc, but breakfast cereals, cars, …) it can be a strategy to not target an audience directly with your giveaway, but use other players to bring the message to your intended audience.
When the first level recipient is intended as multiplier, Berger & Schwartz (2011) find that while products that are cued more often were discussed more frequently, more interesting (or novel, surprising, original) products did not get more word of mouth overall.
This translates well to scicomm: If a topic is cued more often, it is likely that it will be discussed more. So make sure your giveaway is something people use daily and that makes other people comment on it!
Determining the “audience”, i.e. who you are giving your giveaway to, also includes determining who the gift-giver is (Cruz & Fill, 2008), since the same gift received by the same person can be perceived very differently on the context the gift-giver and the gift-receiver are in. It makes a big difference to the message a gift is sending whether the source of a gift are individuals or a corporation, i.e. whose relationship the giveaway-giving is supposed to influence. A paper clip branded with the logo of an institution might be taken as sign of appreciation when used on documents sent to a coworker at a different institution. The very same paperclip might not work at all when handed out as giveaway at a science day, even if the recipient is the same person in both these example
Let’s assume you’ve gone through the three basic scicomm questions and know your goal, your audience and your message, which is what you should always do first:
1) Why do you want to give away a giveaway? Your goal.
2) Who do you want to reach and how will you reach them? Your audience.
3) What is it that you want people to take away from your scicomm? Your message.
Now how do you combine the message with a physical object? That’s a very good question that I will try to answer in my next blog post tomorrow :-)
—
Axtell, R. E. (1990). Do’s and taboos of hosting international visitors. Wiley.
Arunthanes, W., Tansuhaj, P., and Lemak, D. J., (1994) “Cross‐cultural Business Gift Giving: A New Conceptualization and Theoretical Framework”, International Marketing Review, Vol. 11 Issue: 4, pp.44-55, https:// doi.org/10.1108/02651339410069245
Beltramini, R. F. (1992). Exploring the Effectiveness of Business Gifts: A controlled field experiment. JAMS, 87-91
Berger, J., and Schwartz, E. (2011) ,”What Do People Talk About and Why? How Product Characteristics and Promotional Giveaways Shape Word-Of-Mouth”, in NA – Advances in Consumer Research Volume 38, eds. Darren W. Dahl, Gita V. Johar, and Stijn M.J. van Osselaer, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research.
Cropanzano, R., and Mitchell, M. S. Social Exchange Theory: An Interdisciplinary Review. Journal of Management, Vol. 31 No. 6, December 2005 874-900 DOI: 10.1177/0149206305279602
Cruz, D., Fill, C. (2008) “Evaluating viral marketing: isolating the key criteria”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 26 Issue: 7, pp.743-758, https://doi.org/10.1108/02634500810916690
Fan, Y. (2006) “Promoting business with corporate gifts – major issues and empirical evidence”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 11 Issue: 1, pp.43-55, https:// doi.org/10.1108/13563280610643543
Giftypedia (2013); http://www.giftypedia.com/International_Gift_Customs (last accessed on xxx -> print relevant pages to pdf!)
Marchand, A., Paul, M., Hennig-Thurau, T., and Puchner, G. (2016). How Gifts Influence Relationships With Service Customers and Financial Outcomes for Firms. Journal of Service Research. 1-15. DOI: 10.1177/1094670516682091
Yukse, M., Smith, R., McCabe, C. (2018) Reciprocal Intentions: Effects of Promotional Giveaways on Consumers’ In-Venue Spending Intentions: An Abstract. In: Krey N., Rossi P. (eds) Back to the Future: Using Marketing Basics to Provide Customer Value. AMSAC 2017. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham
I’ve been coming up with #scicommchall challenges for well over a year now, and I have always met them. Except for last November, when the challenge was to do an elevator pitch and post a movie of it. Since this is something I really want to do, I decided to force myself to it and repeat the challenge this January. And man, was this hard! For a lot of reasons: I don’t think what I am saying captures the essence of what my job is about, I hate seeing myself on video, I hate listening to my own voice even more, and wow is it difficult to get some alone time in the elevator at work! I’m really not satisfied with the result just yet. But I am sharing to maybe inspire others to join me in my efforts. Will you join me? :-)
So here are two versions, first one with English subtitles.
And then here a non-subtitled one that includes a couple of takeouts (because those are always my favorite part of every movie ;-))
But I am not done here, and my #scicommchall to myself remains: to write a better script, to film it in an elevator, and to upload it on the internet! :-) How is this #scicommchall working for you? Show me your elevator pitches!
Just in case you have not listened to Ronja and Maxie’s podcast Treibholz yet, you definitely should! Ronja and Maxie are learning about oceanography and taking everyone along with them. Educational and entertaining to listen to!
And then I also got to be part of it last year, which was great fun! Check out the episodes that include interviews with me:
And then there are three advent specials, each approximately 10 minutes long, talking about being at sea on research cruises (1. Advent on why it’s awesome to be at sea, 2. Advent on what is being measured on oceanographic cruises, 3. Advent on what it’s like at sea).
And now I am eagerly awaiting the new and exciting stuff that will happen on Treibholz in 2019, looking forward to listening to more oceanography with Maxie and Ronja!
I recently gave an interview on my current pet project, #scicommchall. The interview was done by Anne Weißschädel, and published on THE German website on science communication research and practice, wissenschaftskommunikation.de. Quite an honor!
I’m reprinting it here with permission:
Heutzutage müssen beinahe alle Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler in irgendeiner Form Wissenschaftskommunikation machen. Viele müssen daran aber erst herangeführt werden und es ist ihnen gar nicht bewusst, dass sie nicht von vorneherein auf ein bestimmtes Format oder eine bestimmte Zielgruppe festgelegt sind. Die #SciCommChall gibt einen niedrigschwelligen und spielerischen Impuls, jeden Monat ein neues Format auszuprobieren: Mein Forschungsthema in einem Bild oder meine Forschung in den 1.000 meist genutzten Wörtern. So kann man einerseits ein Format ausprobieren, auf das man vielleicht selbst nicht gekommen wäre und andererseits sehen, wie andere das Format interpretieren. Ich möchte damit spielerisch zum Austausch und Austesten anregen.
Ich habe als Ozeanografin schon früher Wissenschaftskommunikation gemacht. Dabei habe ich gemerkt, dass es Spaß macht, ab und zu mal ein neues Format auszuprobieren. Mit einem vollen Terminkalender macht man das aber nicht einfach so, ohne Anlass oder Deadline. Also habe ich mir selbst am Anfang jedes Monats ein Ziel gesetzt – zum Beispiel ein Gedicht über meine Forschung zu schreiben. Nach und nach wurden dann Freundinnen und Freunde und auch das Kollegium darauf aufmerksam und wollten mitmachen. Außerdem habe ich die Promovierenden am Kiel Science Outreach Campus (KiSOC) motiviert, sich zu beteiligen. So wächst das Netzwerk langsam. Wir freuen uns über jede und jeden, die mitmachen möchte: Einfach unseren Blog besuchen, eine E-Mail schicken oder @scicommchall auf Twitter oder Facebook folgen!
Das ist schwierig zu sagen, das Format ist ja noch neu und im Wachstum. Ich kriege nur mit, wenn Leute tatsächlich Produkte einreichen oder Feedback geben. Ich nehme an, dass es zusätzlich einige gibt, die sich einfach inspirieren lassen und dann vielleicht doch nichts einreichen. Unter den Einreichenden sind auch jeden Monat andere Leute. Zuerst habe ich mich stark darauf fokussiert, unsere Promovierenden zu motivieren und das Projekt dann nach und nach geöffnet.
Wissenschaftskommunikation ist ein Thema, das uns im KiSOC speziell am Herzen liegt. Nicht nur, weil es unser eigener Forschungsgegenstand ist, sondern auch, weil wir die Praxis verbessern und gerne mit gutem Beispiel vorangehen möchten. Pro Wissenschaftskommunikation gelten natürlich die typischen Argumente, etwa, dass wir mit öffentlichen Mitteln finanziert werden und dass gesellschaftliche Unterstützung und Teilhabe an der Forschung wünschenswert sind. Außerdem glaube ich, dass es auch der Forschung zu Gute kommt, wenn die Leute schon während der Promotion Wissenschaftskommunikation machen. Da bekommt man einen ganz anderen Blick auf das Feld. Abgesehen davon, dass es natürlich auch motiviert, wenn man Feedback von außen für seine Arbeit bekommt, und dass es Spaß bringt.
Bisher gibt es nur vereinzeltes Feedback. Eine tolle Rückmeldung kam aber zum Beispiel von Sam Illingworth. Er arbeitet in Großbritannien und hat viel im Bereich Wissenschaftsgedichte gemacht. Als er dann bei uns angefragt hat, ob er eine Monatsaufgabe stellen darf, war das natürlich ein tolles Feedback. Die Oktoberchallenge kommt dann von ihm.
Ja, der Großteil unserer Promovierenden hat Instagram-Accounts, in denen es darum geht, den persönlichen Alltag in der Forschung darzustellen, und deren Highlights sammeln wir auf dem Account @kisoc_kiel. Dabei stellen wir beispielsweise vor, was wir inhaltlich machen und welche Methoden wir dafür anwenden. Das ist für uns intern ein wichtiges Projekt. Zwar haben wir noch nicht besonders viele Follower, aber wir haben es zum Beispiel geschafft, dass sich auch andere Kolleginnen und Kollegen am IPN, darunter auch eine Professorin, eigene Instagram-Accounts zugelegt haben und jetzt aktiv online Wissenschaftskommunikation machen. Der Impact ist also auf institutioneller Ebene da und wir stehen auch mit anderen Leibniz-Zentren in Kontakt, die uns einladen, um sie zu beraten. Wir erreichen so also unser eigenes Netzwerk und das ist für uns erfolgreich.
My private #SciCommChall for March was to start a science communication Instagram account, fascinocean_kiel. I had a pretty clear idea of where I wanted to go with this account:
This post is for all of you who are curious about
a) how that has been going (I will reflect on that below); or
b) what I have actually done on Instagram, since you don’t actually use the app.
So here we go! :-)
a) How Instagram is working for me (or, at least, the first couple of weeks)
My first impression after four weeks on Instagram: It’s fun! I thought it would be less work than writing a blogpost, but it’s actually not, it is just different. I have to take and select pictures a lot more carefully, crop them, sometimes put a filter on or something (except the green lakes — those were 100% real!), but now I have to think about relevant hashtags so people can find my posts…
And social media are really that, social. Through Instagram, I have connected with a lot of people who I only met through Instagram: On my very first day actively posting on Instagram, I have received an invitation to visit something really cool (will let you know when it’s not a big secret any more). Then, several people who I didn’t know before, messaged me to tell me they liked my “feed”. And then I got recommended for an interview about scientists and social media by someone I don’t even know! I am very impressed with the community on Instagram. And connection also works the other way round: I have found amazing science communicators on Instagram whose posts I look forward to reading every day, for example stories.of.a.scientist, science.sam, bakingsciencetraveller, and sci_wilson, just to name a few.
As for how many people I’ve been reaching (after less than a month on Instagram!): A picture typically get 30-40 “likes”. My best picture currently has 87 likes, but that’s a really awesome picture if I say so myself (see below). I think this picture performed so well for two reasons: because it’s a really cool picture, but also because it’s showing an exclusive view of my favourite restaurant in really really bad weather. I think that people recognized the spot and that I had an exclusive pic really helped.
