Sarang Park is creating a safe place on Twitter for science communicators to share ideas, tips, and skills.
When Sarang Park reflects on what good science communication means to her, a single word springs to her mind: approachable. And that doesn’t mean relying on gimmicks to get the message across. If anything, the simpler the better.
“People often feel like the flashier it is or the prettier it looks, that means they’re doing good science communication,”says Park, who is studying medicine at Fudan University, Shanghai. “But more often than not, people just want to be talked to at eye level.”
It’s the ethos behind I Am Sci Comm, a rotation curation Twitter account created by SciComm Hub and run by Crastina, an international platform that brings together science communicators to share ideas, skills and knowledge. Since 2018, Park has been managing the account, which involves enlisting a new sci comm curator each week to create posts about what they’re working on, the skills they’ve picked up, and their hard-won lessons.
It’s an eclectic roster of scientists, educators, policymakers, artists, and anyone else who’s passionate about science communication. But the backbone of I Am Sci Comm is built on the exchange of the ideas and insights, says Park.
“It’s a place where people can really think about the value of their work,” she says. “I think people who have opinions are essential to driving the direction of science communication.”
When pictures beat words
While there’s no shortage of social media accounts dedicated to science communication, what sets I Am Sci Comm apart is that no topic is too niche, too broad, or too weird. “It doesn’t really have a specific play on any different angle,” says Park. “It’s just science communication and how to do it well.”
For some on Twitter, that means explaining complicated concepts in no more than 280 characters. But others prefer to do away with words altogether to ensure that their message cuts through the noise. Albert Rapp, a data visualisation blogger and mathematics PhD candidate at Ulm University, Germany, is a great example of the latter. In November 2022, Rapp took the I Am Sci Comm steering wheel to give a week-long ‘tweet-orial’ on creating effective data visualisations.
Rapp’s threads covered topics such as why the most popular chart types — box plots and heat maps — are not always the best choice, and how to turn “boring” visualisations, like tables, into something that will capture people’s attention.
On social media platforms where word space is lean, data visualisation is picking up speed as a powerful storytelling tool, particularly for sci-commers who cover topics that can’t be easily explained by photos and videos, such as maths and engineering, says Park. “I think data visualization is something that needs to take more precedence,” she says. “Within one picture, you can get so much information and absorb so much.”
In the age of Zoom and Teams meetings, a decent PowerPoint presentation can be worth a thousand words. In May 2022, Matt Carter, a biologist at Williams College, Massachusetts, took over I Am Sci Comm to dive into the nitty gritty of designing effective science presentations.
Carter’s posts covered everything from deciding on the best background colour (pro tip: cool colours such as blue and green win) to choosing the right pictures and graphics for maximum impact. Carter’s posts were “insanely popular” and struck a chord among I Am Sci Comm’s 40,000 followers, says Park. “[Scientists] may be doing the most amazing research, but showcasing it properly is something that people really, really care about,” she says.
When the world changes, so does sci comm
After steering the I Am Sci Comm ship for five years, Park has kept a close eye on the evolution of science communication in the fast-paced world of Twitter. For one, she’s noticed that the art of crafting tweets has become more dynamic, with users relying on threads to tell a story instead of standalone posts. Interactive, two-way conversations are also coming to the fore through the use of stitch videos, says Park. “It’s becoming more of a chamber where you can say things and people will respond,” she says. “It’s not just you talking to yourself.”
Park also points out that more science communicators on social media are going back to the basics and making fewer assumptions about what their audience already knows. Another welcome trend is the use of alt text on image and video posts, making them more accessible for people who are visually impaired and those living in countries that restrict access to certain social media sites. “That’s been pretty amazing,” she says.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, Park has also witnessed a shift in what audiences want to know about science – a trend that’s reaching further than the social media sphere. Several studies have shown that the public now view science and researchers in a more positive light than they did before the pandemic.
On Twitter, Park has noticed an increased appetite for more detailed information. “They don’t want to just know the overarching facts anymore,” she says. “They want the key, differentiated facts.”
Changing minds one tweet at a time
But perhaps the biggest lesson Park has learnt from managing I Am Sci Comm is that having a huge following isn’t necessarily a reflection of quality or skill. “Just because they have a lot of followers, it doesn’t mean that they are good science communicators,” says Park. And while reaching as many people as possible may be the ultimate dream for many sci commers, Park says that it’s important to remember that small-scale science communication can be just as valuable.
“Someone always learns something,” she says. “If that’s your end goal, then one person is good enough.”
Park’s path into science communication didn’t emerge until she was an undergraduate at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany, where she studied biochemistry and cell biology. In 2018, Park got her first introduction to the field while she was helping to recruit speakers for a TEDx event hosted by her university. One of those speakers happened to be Olle Bergman, Crastina’s founder and project leader.
The connection proved to be a fortuitous one. Not long after the event wrapped up, Bergman reached out to Park to see if she was interested in managing the I Am Sci Comm account. While she admits that she had no idea what she was getting into at the time, Park hasn’t looked back. “Making sure that the communication of science is done well became this passion I didn’t know I had.”
Follow I Am Scicomm on Twitter
Story by Gemma Conroy