As graduate students, we often find ourselves immersed (and maybe even siloed) in our niche topics. However, the ability to convey our research to a broader audience is crucial—not only for public understanding but also for securing funding, influencing policy, and advancing our careers! This blog will explore various strategies and tools to help you become a more effective science communicator, ensuring your research has the impact it deserves.

[Image Description: Spongebob from Spongebob Squarepants at a desk preparing to write with the text “Prepare to be written!”]

Get started by knowing your audience
Knowing your audience is the first and most crucial step in communicating your work. Who are they? Is there a certain tone or etiquette expected from them? What are they hoping to get out of your presentation? We communicate research and science to many audiences: classrooms full of undergraduate students, panels of grant reviewers, dissertation committees, journal editors, policymakers, public audiences, and more. Each audience will come in with a different expectation and goal–thus, it is important to tailor your communications accordingly to be engaging, clear, and accessible. For example, technical, field-related jargon might be more appropriate for a dissertation committee or presentation at scientific conferences–but less so for policymakers or public audiences (lest it alienate the listener). Getting some information about your audience and their potential expectations is always a good idea before you begin crafting your story. (TIP: regardless of audience-specific expectations, we should always aim to be clear, concise, and use relatable examples to help illustrate our points.)

Crafting your narrative
Humans are storytellers–and listeners! We connect with stories on an emotional level, which can make the information conveyed in stories more memorable. Think about the fables we use to teach children morals, the stories about our lives that shape our personalities and our behaviors, or even the stories you enjoy listening to most in podcasts or on TikTok–what do they all have in common? Most have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Setting the stage with a compelling introduction can help hook the reader/listener in–so it’s important to frame your project or research question in ways that are interesting, compelling, and relatable for an audience (what is your topic and why is it important to research this topic?). Once hooked, you prime the audience to take in the information in the middle (what you did along the way such as methods and analyses). And finally, a stirring exposition paves the way for a big finish and ending (what you found and what it means). 

[Image Description: Michael Scott from The Office television show leaning forward and placing his face between his hands in keen interest with a caption saying “Go Ahead”]
[Caption: What you want your audience to look like after you’ve hooked them in]

Tools to make an impact
In addition to being storytellers (and listeners), humans are also multimodal learners. Conveying information through multiple modalities (e.g., visual, auditory, tactile, etc.) is often more engaging and better for understanding and retention compared to unimodal information. To better ensure your research has the impact you desire, consider adding visual examples via pictures, figures, and graphics to your talk to help illustrate your points. When discussing abstract scientific concepts, examples or images can bridge theory and the real world. Examples can ground your research in relatable scenarios, helping your audience see the relevance of your work for themselves. In addition, relatable examples tap into an audience’s emotions–which can help engage an audience. Emotional connections (e.g., highlighting the impact of an illness, the outcome of a significant historical event, or the emotions felt while performing a certain act oneself) can help audiences resonate with the work and drive home its importance, making it more likely that your audience will support, share, and remember it. Suppose your work doesn’t have many emotion-evoking examples. In that case, you can try to pepper in some humor (e.g., memes, funny anecdotes, jokes, etc.) because positive emotions can also be effective memory retention tools!

In addition to images and examples, think about what your information looks like to an audience. It may seem like minor concerns, but font style, color use, text spacing, and PowerPoint animations can all impact how your information is received. My recommendations are to: 

1. Use only 1 - 2 font styles across the entire product (if the product is text like a paper or a grant proposal, just one font is best)
2. Do a you-pick-two between BOLDNESS, ITALICS, and UNDERLINES because all three in the same product can feel overwhelming
3. Stick to a set color scheme that is applied relatively consistently throughout (and check your visuals/graphs for color blindness accessibility!)
4. If presenting with a verbal element, balance what is conveyed in text versus as speech–and do NOT just read out what is on the slides (most people can read faster than you will be talking, and will finish the slide before you)
5. Finally, researchers and scientists LOVE a good graph, but remember to tailor your figures to the audience (e.g., a plot of a three-way interaction may be something a researcher-heavy audience can understand, but likely not a lay audience) and to walk your audiences through graphs so that they do not zone out while you are talking

[Image Description: Hand holding a smartphone with icons of different social media apps popping up]

Translation across different media platforms
Finally, different platforms offer unique opportunities for sharing your work, each catering to distinct audiences and communication styles. TikTok, reels, and other video-based social media platforms provide opportunities for “bite-sized” science–short, sweet, and meant to make viewers return for more. YouTube videos and podcasts, on the other hand, offer opportunities for deep dives into a topic as well as discussion with others about the information–you might consider joining existing science podcasts as a guest (FUN FACT: UCR has its own grad-student run science podcast) or starting your own series focused on your field of expertise. Lastly, blogs and popular psych articles are a great way to reach a broader audience who might not have a scientific background. When writing for platforms like blogs, magazines, or news outlets, aim to simplify the language without diluting the science. Focus on the storytelling, use examples and analogies to explain complex concepts, and highlight the broader implications of your research. 

Whether you're aiming to inform, inspire, or influence, effective science communication is key to making your research memorable and meaningful!