Science Communication Workshops

How the world engages with science — new global data from 68 countries A new study in Science Communication analysed 71,922 respondents across 68 countries to understand how people encounter and discuss science (HT Niels G. Mede). • Social media are now the main source of science information in 53 of 68 countries, overtaking traditional news outlets almost everywhere except Northern and Central Europe. • People in low-GDP countries engage more frequently with science online than those in richer nations — exposure to science-related content on social media is significantly higher in countries like Bangladesh, Kenya, and Indonesia. • News media remain dominant in Nordic and German-speaking countries, where professional journalism and public broadcasting are strong. • In collectivist cultures (East Asia), citizens are less outspoken about science in daily life, whereas lower education correlates with higher outspokenness worldwide. • People with limited internet access tend to engage more through museums, public talks, and protests related to science. The research highlights how economic and cultural factors shape the global “information diet” of science and why strategies for science communication must be tailored to local media systems, literacy levels, and civic traditions.

Science communication in the TikTok era: are we ready? This week, Nature Portfolio published an editorial urging researchers and science publishers to embrace the profound shifts underway in how people consume information and news. The journal itself joined TikTok just a few months ago. The evidence is clear, and many of us have witnessed it firsthand since the COVID-19 pandemic. Increasingly, especially among younger audiences, news is consumed through social media rather than traditional outlets. Short-form video is now a dominant format, but this shift started long before TikTok. During the pandemic, we saw news organizations rapidly adapt their storytelling for platforms like Instagram, even before Reels took off. I was pleased to see the World Health Organization’s presence on TikTok mentioned in the editorial. At the height of the pandemic, there were too few credible, evidence-based voices on the platform. TikTok approached us to help establish a trusted source of health information. At the time, we didn't have the capacity to produce daily TikTok-native content, so we adapted what we had. In a moment of global crisis, that was enough to make a difference. Six years later, we've learned a great deal about working with creators, video editors and new formats to communicate science and health information in ways that meet audiences where they are. But this post isn't about WHO. It's about a broader shift that is finally gaining momentum: science publishers, researchers and institutions are recognizing that if evidence-based information is to remain visible and relevant, it must evolve with changing digital media habits. This is also why I am working with Nature Medicine Commission on Quality Health Information for All to gather evidence from communication practice and expertise in the past decade and develop recommendations for the health sector. Our goal is not simply to adapt to TikTok, but to help health communication evolve for whatever comes next. The future of science communication may not look like a journal article. The challenge is ensuring that scientific rigor, accuracy and trust make the journey with it.

During my time as Managing Director of an agency, we went through more change than I care to remember. We bought smaller agencies, attracted outside investment, were acquired by a global consultancy and, when that didn't work out particularly well, completed a management buyout. Along the way came new structures, new priorities, changing expectations and more rebrands than even the designers could get enthusiastic about. From the boardroom, most of those decisions made sense. We could see them coming, understood the rationale and were often involved in shaping what happened next. For the teams living through it, the experience was often very different. I still see the same pattern today. A leadership team spends weeks discussing a change, testing assumptions, answering questions and refining the plan. The communication goes out. The rationale is clear. Then, two days later, half the organisation appears to be having a completely different conversation. Someone is convinced a restructure is coming. Someone else is worried about what it means for their role. A perfectly ordinary Teams message suddenly acquires the significance of a life-altering legal document. Meanwhile, Linda has concluded that William is selling the business because he cancelled their regular one-to-one this week. One thing I've learned after years of leading through change is that most organisations are reasonably good at communicating the facts. The challenge usually begins afterwards, when people start trying to work out what those facts mean for them. That is where uncertainty tends to take hold. People begin filling gaps in information with assumptions. They pay attention to tone as much as content. They look for clues in places that were never intended to contain any. A message saying, "Can we have a quick chat tomorrow?" can easily create an afternoon of entirely avoidable speculation. Earlier in my career, I thought communication during change was largely about clarity and confidence. If leaders explained things well enough, people would feel reassured. What people often need is something slightly different. - They need help separating what is known from what is assumed. - They need space to ask questions. - They need leaders who are prepared to repeat important messages without becoming irritated that they've already said them once. - And they need steadiness. Because when people are trying to make sense of uncertainty, reassurance rarely comes from a perfectly crafted announcement. It comes from the behaviour of the people leading through it. A question I often find myself returning to is, “When you're leading change, how much attention goes into communicating the decision itself, and how much goes into helping people navigate the uncertainty around it?” They're related, but they're not quite the same thing.

Here's something we're often told as leaders: if you don't have the answer, avoid the conversation until you know more. Gain certainty, then share with confidence. My take: I think this is bad advice. Not because honesty about uncertainty feels good. (It doesn't.) But because of something I've come to believe about how uncertainty actually lives in the body. Our nervous systems can handle a LOT of uncertainty. What our body struggles to handle is uncategorized uncertainty - the free-floating, unnamed kind. The kind where something is clearly off, everyone notices but can’t put the pieces together, no one's talking about it, and so then people are left alone to fill in the blanks with their imagination. It’s unnamed uncertainty that unravels people. Not the uncertainty itself. So here's a leadership move I think more of us should use. It's a script example. Feel free to steal it, amend it, edit it, take what resonates and leave what doesn’t. "I want to talk to you all about what’s been going on. And look, there are things I know. There are things I don't know. I’ll go through each. Here's what I know: our org structure doesn’t seem to be working. Communication is harder, frustration is growing, we’re moving at a slower pace than we were months ago. Something has to change. People can feel that too. Here's what I don't know… yet: exactly what changes. Whose role shifts. What the new shape looks like. The exact plan or timing for some shifts. But I’ll end with this: here's what I do know: I'm taking this seriously. The exec team is in serious conversation about it. And we’ll circle back at some point in the next few weeks with an update. We’re on it. Notice the key elements that are missing here: you’re not pretending to know, you’re not filling the space with corporate jargon, and you’re not leaving out the uncertain parts hoping no one notices (because yes, they notice). Here’s what makes this language structure so powerful: you’re taking the free-floating dread in the room and giving it edges. You’re giving it a named container: Things I Don’t (Yet) Know. So today, if you’re struggling with something and if you’ve been told you have to figure it all out before communicating to the team, ask yourself: are there already whispers? Are people already noticing? Is it possible your team doesn’t need 100% conviction or perfect answers but named containers for what you know and what you don’t know.

For centuries, the way we communicate science has remained remarkably consistent. Since the 17th century, when scientific societies emerged during the scientific revolution, researchers have recorded their hypotheses, methods, and results in written articles for others to read and build upon. But now, we’re in the digital age—a time when sharing knowledge can be faster, more dynamic, and more accessible than ever. One format leading this evolution is video. At the University of Utah, my colleague Dr. Feng Liu from our Materials Science & Engineering Department founded Coshare Science, an innovative platform for sharing science in video format. This platform allows researchers to present their original studies or review articles through peer-reviewed, DOI-registered videos. Even better, these videos are searchable and accessible on platforms like Google Scholar, making them a credible and impactful way to share findings. I recently had the opportunity to contribute to this exciting new medium with a video review on generative machine learning for discovering new materials. It’s an exciting frontier, and I hope more scientists embrace this modern way to communicate their work. Check out my video and learn more about this platform here: https://lnkd.in/eMBrzkbd What do you think about video as a tool for sharing research?

All Roads Lead to Rome: Why Ignoring Probabilities is the Real Gamble! I haven’t encountered another term in risk management that is so emotionally, philosophically, and psychologically loaded as probabilities. As I have recognized an increased amount of posts about cyber risk quantification lately, I am kicking off with the following cyber risk example: “𝘞𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 5% 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘥𝘶𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘤𝘺𝘣𝘦𝘳-𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘬.” This statement provokes many questions, such as: • Why do we know it is exactly 5%? False accuracy is at play! • Can we derive the 5% based on data, or is it just an expert guess? • Shall we avoid numbers and use qualitative scales instead?    The truth is that objective probabilities for most risks are unavailable. Companies operate in uncertain environments where rules and probabilities may change quickly. In cybersecurity, organizations lack large samples of repeated, identical data breaches, making fixed probability estimates misleading. So, should we give up using probabilities? Far from it. The only alternative to the unavailable “objective” probability is changing the fixed probability assumption (5%) to an uncertain probability statement. Expressing uncertainty unambiguously as a dynamic probability distribution is a game changer, such as: “𝘉𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢, 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 3 – 8% 𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘥𝘶𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘤𝘺𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘬, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘶𝘱𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦.” The key is accepting that no "true" probability exists and that the 3-8% probability is a current belief based on best available information rather than a fact. This is superior to avoiding probabilities, as all companies must make decisions based on uncertain information. Relying on gut feeling lacks systematic reasoning, and companies cannot improve their estimates as new information is available. By using numbers (3-8) and notation conventions (%), probabilities are no longer subject to interpretation like verbal scales (“𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩,” “𝘭𝘰𝘸"). All probabilities in corporate risk management are subjective, but avoiding them is no option (except for some rare risks), and neither is it to pretend that we know objective probabilities. By using probability distributions rather than fixed probability, we acknowledge our uncertainty and can update probabilities as new information becomes available. I have added a simple chart showing the fixed probability (red dashed line) versus the range of probabilities approach (yellow curve). The yellow curve is dynamic as it is continuously updated with new information. Doesn’t sound too bad? Institut für Finanzdienstleistungen Zug IFZ Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

Clinical trial participants give their time, and sometimes take real risks, to advance medical research. Until recently, most of them never saw the results. The EU Clinical Trials Regulation (536/2014) changed that. Since January 2025, sponsors must submit a plain language summary of results for every interventional trial conducted in the EU. Written for non-specialists. Published on the Clinical Trials Information System. Accessible to anyone. It sounds straightforward. It isn't. Translating a clinical study report into something a patient can read and understand, without oversimplifying, without being promotional, and without losing accuracy, takes real skill. It's one of the most demanding forms of medical writing, because the audience is not your usual one. I've put together a carousel breaking down what plain language summaries are, what the regulation requires, and what makes a good one. Swipe through and let me know: have you written one? What did you find most challenging? #MedicalWriting #PlainLanguage #ClinicalTrials #MedComms #SciComm #RegulatoryWriting

A few years ago, while I was still practicing law, I was sitting in a conference room with a CEO whose company was heading into a very public, very complicated situation. The lawyers were around the table. The bankers were sharpening their pencils. The financial advisors had already circulated their models. Before the meeting started, the CEO looked at me and said, almost offhandedly, “I don’t understand how all of this is going to land.��� I asked what he meant. He said, “I understand the legal strategy. I understand the financial strategy. What I don’t understand is what our employees, our vendors, our customers, and our lenders are going to think while we’re doing it. And if we lose them, we lose it all.” That comment stuck with me. What he was really saying was this: I am about to make the right decisions on paper, and I am worried about how to keep all of the company's stakeholders on side as it all plays out in the real world. In situations like that, companies are surrounded by incredibly smart professionals. Truly the best of the best. Lawyers making sure the process is airtight and navigating legal landmines. Bankers structuring capital solutions. Financial advisors focused on liquidity and cash management. Everyone is doing exactly what they are supposed to do. But to do it right, someone has to be responsible for managing the space in between. Communications experts focus on what employees will understand when they see a headline without context. How customers react to uncertainty. How vendors behave when silence creates anxiety. How quickly a narrative hardens before the facts are fully known. This conversation with this CEO made it all click for me. Communications is not something you do after decisions are made. It is one of the things that determines whether those decisions work at all. In moments of uncertainty, silence is not neutral. It is interpreted. And once others start telling your story for you, you are no longer managing risk. You are reacting to it. When companies understand that early, they preserve value, maintain control, and build trust with their stakeholders. Clear, intentional communication reduces risk and positions a company to succeed. In moments of business stress, communication is not messaging. It is leadership.

In 2021, I jumped off the academic hamster wheel and into a full-time career as a content creator. Leaving academia wasn’t just about leaving behind a traditional career path; it was about finding a faster, more effective way to connect science with the world. 🌐 The Problem: Research findings often stay within academic circles, locked behind paywalls or buried in jargon-heavy reports. By the time critical insights reach the public—if they ever do—it’s often too late to drive meaningful change. ⏳ The Missing Piece: Timeliness. Information needs to move at the speed of social media. Science is powerful, but if it’s not reaching people when they need it, it’s not making the impact it should. 🧩 My Solution: I took my passion for seafood and started creating content that simplified complex topics. Through Seaside with Emily, I’m translating science into accessible, actionable insights that everyone can understand and use to make better choices. Here are three ways I’ve worked to close that gap: 🔹 Breaking Down Barriers – Translating research into relatable language and real-life applications 🔹 Digital Engagement – Building a community around shared values of sustainability and transparency 🔹 Real-World Impact – Encouraging individuals to take small steps that collectively lead to big changes 💡 How are you making science more accessible in your field? Whether it’s through content, storytelling, or community engagement, I’d love to hear what’s working for you. Drop your thoughts in the comments! ⬇️ #ScienceCommunication #SeafoodSustainability #KnowledgeTranslation #DigitalEngagement

Science Communication: Turning Your Scientific Knowledge Into a Voice That Matters When I began my journey in science, I thought the only place my degree would shine was in a lab. But over time, I discovered another rewarding path Science Communication & Content Creation and it is a lane where scientists like you and me can thrive! I started by simply sharing what I knew simplifying microbiology terms, breaking down lab experiences, and guiding fresh graduates on career transitions on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Now? It is more than a hobby it is a career booster. How Can You Get Into Science Communication? You do not need a second degree. You need: 1. Curiosity ✔️ 2. Clear writing or speaking ✔️ 3. A desire to make science relatable ✔️ Here is how to build the skill: Learn the basics: Take free or low-cost courses on Coursera, ALX, FutureLearn, or EdX (topics like science writing, digital storytelling, video editing, Canva design, etc.) Follow experienced science communicators on LinkedIn or YouTube for inspiration Start practicing: ✅Write LinkedIn posts simplifying scientific concepts ✅Create short videos with tools like CapCut or Canva ✅Host Instagram/Facebook Live science talks ✅Build a portfolio and your posts, videos, and articles count ✅Join communities Volunteer to write or speak for student groups, NGOs, or science events Where Can This Lead? Science communication is not just about personal branding, it is a gateway to real jobs: 💼 Roles to explore include 1. Science Writer / Blogger 2. Health or Medical Content Creator 3. Digital Science Educator 4. Social Media Manager (for science orgs) 5. Public Engagement Officer 6. Science Illustrator or Infographic Designer 7. Communications Assistant (NGOs, research centers, EdTech) You can work with: Research institutes Health NGOs EdTech companies Science publishers Your own personal brand or YouTube channel What I have learned: Your degree is powerful, but so is your ability to communicate it well. You do not have to wait for a lab job to show your skill. You can create visibility, influence, and opportunity right where you are. Science is not only for journals. Sometimes, it belongs on a reel, a post, or a story. Let your voice speak beyond the pipette. 🌍 #ScienceCommunication #ScienceContentCreator #LifeAfterGraduation #Microbiology #FreshGraduateTips #DigitalSkills #LinkedInScience #PublicEngagement #ScientistsWhoWrite