Monday 31 March 2014

Top tips for risk communicators

  

An amusing example of precisely inaccurate communication about volcanoes from a tourism company in BaƱos, Ecuador

Risk communication is successful if it reaches all of those who need it, is comprehended by the end user and received within a timescale that they can make use of it. How we communicate science: what we say, how we say it, who says it, why we say it, is vitally important when the goal is to help people make informed decisions. This takes a wide variety of knowledge and expertise:

“Meeting that goal requires collaboration between scientists with subject matter knowledge to communicate and scientists with expertise in communication processes—along with practitioners able to manage the process” Baruch Fischhoff 



Fischhoff - is a world leader in research on risk communication and this post is focused on a recent publication of his entitled “The sciences of Science Communication”.

Around volcanoes, and also when dealing with other natural hazards, as scientists we often can’t afford to make mistakes when communicating risk. Some do it well, some do it very badly – but it is important for the new generation of scientists working with risk communication to learn how to do it properly. We must ask ourselves: How can we not only get it right, but understand when we do, and crucially why sometimes we get it wrong.

It is true in volcanology that often the best risk communicators do it naturally. Some of this is intuitive; some of it has been learned via a vast number of experiences, including some mistakes. In this world, where we are increasingly interconnected socially, with information available at the click of a finger – we may only get one chance to communicate effectively – with so many alternative sources of information out there…we can only expect to hold the public’s attention through competence, care, integrity, reliability, fairness and openness (some of the dimensions of ‘trust’). So it is important for us to learn from those who have experience and also to get technical about it – in essence to understand the sciences of science communication.

In Fischoff’s recent paper, he describes 4 tasks for a science communicator:

Task 1: Identify the science most relevant to the decisions that people face.
Task 2: Determine what people already know.
Task 3: Design communications to fill the critical gaps (between what people know and need to know).
Task 4: Evaluate the adequacy of those communications.

Fischhoff then goes on to describe a series of mistakes, common to many instances of failed or inadequate risk communication.

Common mistakes:

·      Did they get the science wrong, and lose credibility?
·      Did they get the wrong science, and prove irrelevant?
·      Did they lack clarity and comprehensibility, frustrating their audiences?
·      Did they travel through noisy channels, and not reach their audiences?
·      Did they seem begrudging, rather than forthcoming?
·      Did they fail to listen, as well as to speak?
·      Did they try to persuade audiences that wanted to be informed, or vice versa?

So whether you are currently a risk communicator or think you may be in that position in the future, write these things down, think about them and don’t simply rely on being intuitively good at it. Don’t take my word for it – read Fischhoff’s paper  - it is really great (if you cant get it just ask me for it).


Fischhoff, B. (2013). The sciences of science communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(Supplement 3), 14033–14039.