Research Communications Planning
This website offers tips and resources for researchers who would like to share their expertise with the wider community. It can be used as a stand-alone guide to creating your messaging and project or be the starting point for a deeper dialogue with advisors at the Communications Office.
Information ≠ communication. Facts and research results are information. Communication is the process of disseminating information to an audience in order to change their attitudes and behaviours – of instrumentalising information.
A connection with your audience becomes even more important when planning community meetings, dialogues with stakeholders or citizen science initiatives. A reserach communications plan is a tool to help you think through the process of transforming information to communication.
The basics
The Stockholm University web offers a few ways to make yourself visible to the public and press. The foundation for this are your profile site and the research project descriptions. These are among the most visited types of pages on our website and time spent creating compelling texts and adding pictures will be rewarded.
How to create your profile page
Guide to services and advice offered by the Communications Office
Ultimate goal of your communication project
What would you like to accomplish? What would success look like? Increase awareness, change attitudes and behaviours, spread information, elicit an action…?
Current situation analysis
Are you trying to solve a problem? Fulfil a need? What are the challenges you might face? What are the positive aspects of the current situation you might utilise?
A SWOT analysis can be helpful. Evaluate the current situation or the science you are communicating, or make separate lists for both:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
Audience
Make a list of the audiences you would like to reach and prioritise them. What needs and previous knowledge do they have? Do you need more information to make these judgements?
Put yourself in their shoes and imagine how their way of thinking might be different than yours – empathise. What would you like them to know, think and/or do?
Message
Defining your message is the single most important step to creating science messaging with the potential for a breakthrough. It is the step where you build a bridge from your research to your audience. The main questions are: What can you say that will reach your audience and achieve your goals? Is the message relevant and appropriate for the audience?
An excellent tool for creating a powerful, targeted message is the Message Box developed by COMPASS, a coalition of researchers, non-profits, press and educational institutions.
The message box
The Message Box presents the evidence-based core principles of effective communication in a format that specifically tackles the most common issues for researchers. Although originally developed for marine researchers and natural scientists, it is well suited for the humanities and social sciences. It is flexible enough to plan outreach campaigns, presentations and media interviews and most other communication genres.
How to create your own message box
COMPASS’ Message Box website gives insight into how to develop your messaging. Below is a quick guide; you can go into greater depth and see more examples at the COMPASS website or searching "compass sci message box".
Audience
The core of the message box is to find the way to connect your work to your audience. If you listed more than one audience above (i.e. governmental agencies and the general public) you should fill out a message box for each
The issue: What are you working on (broadly)?
What keywords would you search to find your topic online?
- Identifies the overarching issue
- Concise and clear – a few words
The problem: What specific dimension of the issue are you addressing?
- More focused on your particular work than the broader “Issue”
- More than one? Try to prioritise or eliminate (think of the audience)
So what? Why should your audience care?
- This will be different for every audience
- What does your audience value?
- How does it impact them or something they care about?
The Solution: What can they do about it?
- How does it address the “Problem”? The “Problem” might need to be refined.
- Does your audience have the power to do this? The audience might need to be reconsidered.
The benefit: What are the positive outcomes if these steps are taken?
- Who benefits and how?
The message box is an iterative process because the parts need to fit together. It can be very helpful to share and discuss your work with people who have a variety of experience.
Channels and senders
Where can you reach your audience? How you distribute your message is dependent on your goal and target audiences. Is it through web, email, social media, special groups, speaking opportunities, events or press? Most communication campaigns use more than one channel. Many times, using existing channels is more effective than starting from nothing. Does it make sense to partner with another organisation or work with another professional? Should it be sent by one person or by an organisation?
Stockholm University-based services
Timing
When can you have the best result? Do you need to reach out multiple times? Are there any events or news stories that might make your contribution especially relevant?
Budget
What will it cost and what resources do you have? Is your budget (of time and money) appropriate for the impact you would like to have? Does it make sense to plan to hire a communications professional on areas that you struggle with or don’t have time for?
Sustainability
If your communication is more than a one-off, who will continue the work (web updates, social media channels, maintaining contacts)? How can you learn from this project to better succeed on your next project? What tools should you start developing (networks, mailing lists, etc.)? How could insights from this project help others to succeed?
The most common pitfalls and how to avoid them
Focus on clarity
You do not need to overly simplify your work to make an impact, but you will have to dig deep to present your arguments as clearly as possible. This means limiting jargon to the absolute minimum and replacing statistical expressions with words.
Avoid the “firehose” of information effect
There is a limit to how many pieces of new information people are able to absorb at one time. Make sure your examples and arguments are finely honed. Less is often more.
Turn the academic structure on its head
Most audiences expect the most important parts (for them, of course) first: results and implications. Include background and methodology sparingly, only when absolutely necessary. This is especially important in documents that will be read quickly, like press releases and policy briefs.
Make a connection
Try to understand your audience. What are they struggling with? How can your work help them? How do they prefer to communicate? Keep these questions in the forefront as you develop your communications plans. Communication is not just information: It’s information that connects with and inspires action in an audience.
Resources
Principles of research communications from Universities Denmark (English version at the bottom of the page)
These principles emphasise transparency: authorship, the degree of agreement in the scientific community, potential conflicts of interest and delineating fact from opinion. The section on communicating uncertainty is especially relevant, but remember that uncertainty should be expressed in a way that is understandable for your audience: words rather than equations.
Communicating research – tips and advice from Vetenskapsrådet
The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) has published a short guide to research communications that presents the broad benefits of research communication and some examples of interactive projects.
Research communications guide from Public & Science Sweden (Swedish only)
A guide to potential audiences and actual projects that include two-way dialog and collaboration with non-researchers.