Scientific Communication

Communicating knowledge – a guide from the "Junge Akademie"

Crisis situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic have shown just how important sound research communication is. Well-founded, up-to-date knowledge from various scientific disciplines is also necessary for social discussions on efficient measures to combat climate change or issues of social justice. To ensure that communication between science, society and the media is as successful as possible, the Junge Akademie's "Communicating knowledge" project group has developed five key points for research communication following discussions with numerous experts. The guidelines argue in favour of a clear separation of factual basis, level of knowledge and evaluation, advocate a realistic classification of extreme values in the debate and want to encourage communicators to trust the public with more complexity. In this way, public discourse can become more objective.

The Junge Akademie guidelines are available for download under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-ND 4.0 (in German only).

Short video clips for contemporary research communication

An effective means of making scientific content accessible and counteracting misinformation, especially for a younger generation, are short video clips that scientists can present on their social media channels or websites, for example, to present their research results and scientific expertise. The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society has created a guide to creating short videos on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, which is aimed specifically at researchers who are enthusiastic about research communication and want to learn about storytelling, video editing and audience interaction techniques in order to place their topics in a contemporary way.

You can find the guide here.

Support in the event of hostility and attacks on scientists

Anyone who speaks publicly about science and research runs the risk of experiencing hostility and attacks or receiving hate comments – especially when it comes to politicised topics. The good news is that there is support for those affected. In addition to organisations that are generally committed to combating hate speech, there are now also services that specialise specifically in supporting scientists – the SciComm Support for example. It is a national contact point for attacks and unobjective conflicts in research communication and a joint institution of the Federal Association of University Communications and “Wissenschaft im Dialog”. SciComm Support is available daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on 0157 923 448 04 for free personal counselling. It also offers a guide that provides an overview of possible courses of action and strategies for dealing with (digital) violence and hate speech and answers the most important questions.

We have compiled further contact points and counselling services in cases of violence and/or discrimination on our website www.uni-erfurt.de/en/university/consulting-service/emergencies-and-complaints/help-in-case-of-discrimination-harassment-and-violence.