Reality-based thinking isn’t popular in American society today. From policy and religion to social media and town halls, science is viewed with increasing suspicion. While it’s easy to blame entrenched economic and social interests, we in the scientific community must look at ourselves in the mirror, too. Too often, all our presentations are too abstract for the general public to understand. Too often, we hide behind science’s authority instead of admitting our limitations. In turn, audiences perceive us as people who love thinking and economic comforts but are irrelevant to their lives. Of course, scientists see that perception as far from the truth. Indeed, science needs to inform our lives more, not less, with so many looming crises. In this book, Emma Frances Bloomfield seeks to help scientists construct their message and their careers in a way that they communicate more effectively using narrative strategies.
In my life, I’ve been torn between two communities: the academic community of higher education and a religious community of the church. Even though I’ve found more intellectual rigor in academe, the church tends to surpass in its ability to communicate and relate to common individuals relatively untrained in academic methods. I’ve witnessed in a democracy, the common folk still hold the levers of power, and they recently view scientists and their message with increasing suspicion. I’ve wondered what pastoral skills of communication in a community might accomplished when crossed with scientific knowledge.
Evidently, science communicators like Bloomfield have thought along similar lines. She posits a narrative framework to plot scientific communications based on the message’s level of abstraction and concreteness. Some messages need abstraction, like when generalizing theories; other messages, especially to the public, need relatability, like Darwin’s tome Origin of Species written to the wider population. Scientists can further increase a sense of audience by building relationships with their local communities to increase trust and empathy.
She uses four contemporary issues to enliven her model: climate change, evolution and creationism, vaccinations, and the COVID-19 pandemic. She illustrates how those messages can be analyzed and honed based on her framework. Although scientists often view storytelling with suspicion, good stories move the needle most with popular audiences. Combining effective narration with rigorous truth can persuade audiences that science’s benefits did not stop in prior decades but can advance national and global benefits today.
Scientific communicators comprise an obvious audience for this book. I suggest broader groups like those engaged in doing science should benefit, too. Even non-scientists interested in advocating for science can benefit from learning how to engage individuals and audiences more effectively. Though not a science communicator myself, I’m constantly communicating factual knowledge to different groups. This book helped me think about how to engage those people in a more lasting and contributory way.
Science v. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators
By Emma Frances Bloomfield
Copyright (c) 2024
University of California Press
ISBN13 9780520380820
Page Count: 274
Genre: Science Communication
www.amazon.com