“COMMUNICATING THE FUTURE”

Department of Energy, Office of Science Strategic Communications Plan, by Rick Borchelt

For a science agency, DOE has brought little of the scientific and intellectual rigor that it applies to solving technical problems to bear on the challenge of communication. Too often, communication is seen as an “art” practiced by some people who somehow became good at it. Even in the Office of Science, communication seldom is viewed as the science that it is, and held to standards of accountability and replicability that one would expect of a scientific enterprise.

Moreover, a review of the science communication literature suggests that the current strategy of “public education through the media” pursued by the Department of Energy is flawed, probably irremedially, and constitutes a tremendous wastage of scarce outreach resources. Rather, under this approach, DOE cedes the responsibility for communicating its own research to a third party with few of the scientific skills necessary to make sure the result is both credible and accurate.

It is little wonder, then, that news accounts of DOE research often are less than inspiring, and often inaccurate. It is also no surprise that DOE is seldom associated in the public mind with advances in science and technology. This has important ramifications come budget time at OMB and in the halls of Congress.

At least part of the blame for this state of affairs can be laid to rest on the patchwork quality of public communication about science and technology practiced by the Department of Energy. Basic research news is seldom a priority in a Department dominated by security, environmental, and defense issues. Moreover, the disaggregated nature of the National Laboratories and their contract management often pits local public affairs concerns against national agency public affairs concerns, and creates an atmosphere of distrust and credit-seeking that ultimately diminishes the science messages we manage to produce.

Many of the challenges facing DOE in the communication of taxpayer return on investment in basic research are those faced by every other research institution: low levels of public scientific literacy, complex and sophisticated research that demands varying levels of translation for public consumption, and an increasingly atomized news environment that makes the mass media an even less likely partner for carrying research information in the future than it is today.

However, DOE is not without resources to address these challenges. It has state-of-the-art communications technologies ready to hand, an exciting portfolio of current research, and a cadre of dedicated scientists and technical professionals who lack communications training or skills but nonetheless want nothing more than to see the Department continue to perform world-class research. What it has not had is a strategic vision, coupled with an appreciation for research in public understanding of science and technology, to guide its efforts in communication.

A New Vision for Science Communications at DOE

Eight principal findings emerged from a review of the literature and from conversations with both academics and practitioners of science communications that are relevant to the outreach work of the Office of Science:

• Basic research on public understanding and communication of science and technology is completely lacking. Unlike many other science agencies, DOE pours few if any resources into understanding its audiences, what their needs are, and how best to serve their communication interests.
  
  
• The Office of Science (and DOE generally) has completely undervalued the impact of dialogue-driven, rather than information-driven, communication. DOE, as with most Federal agencies, clings to a model of communications that emerged in the 1940s and has not kept pace with new communications technologies. Its commitment to one-way communications channels is outdated and counterproductive.
  
  
• When it chooses to reach a public audience directly, the Office of Science routinely fails to recognize that there is no such thing as a “general public.” Rather, a variety of publics have varying degrees of interest in science and require different communications media and approaches. Far and away the most valuable public audience for science communication is the science-attentive audience, and this is where scarce public communication dollars should be concentrated.
  
  
• The Office of Science has completely underinvested in web-based communication efforts, which are likely to become a dominant (if not THE dominant) communication medium for science and technology communication. Web products of the Office of Science and DOE generally continue to treat the Web as just another kind of newspaper or news release service, rather than maximizing the true and unique abilities of the Web to reach important constituencies such as Congress, professional societies, and university research leaders.
  
  
• The Office of Science continues to place far too much emphasis on reaching media targets rather than going directly to the audiences of concern. Mediated communication is difficult under the best of circumstances, and web-based communication in particular offers a realistic and less-expensive means of directly reaching key audiences.
  
  
• The DOE communications system (including contractors, field offices, and headquarters) places far too many restrictions on how and when its scientists can and should communicate to the public and the press. Advance clearance of discussion about basic research should be the very rare exception rather than the rule, and the Office of Science should encourage and reward researchers who receive SC funding for their efforts to reach non-peer audiences.
  
  
• Most of DOE’s communication efforts are, in reality, efforts to bolster the image of the Department rather than to increase public understanding of S&T. The future of DOE science, as well as all other Federally funded science, rests not in how well individual agencies can sell their individual achievements, but in educating key publics about how and why science is being done at the Federal/DOE level in the first place. Unless and until DOE comes to understand the importance of communicating about science, rather than communicating about DOE, the agency will always draw the short straw in face-to-face funding decisions with respect to other Federal science agencies with more easily understood missions or perceived intrinsic value.
  
  
• The Office of Science (and again, DOE generally) underinvests in ways to help recruit and train third-party advocates for DOE science (professional associations, NGOs, public affairs officers at research institutions, public affairs officers at the national laboratories, and citizen-scientists among them). Dollar for dollar, programs that help DOE advocates do their job better could yield better returns in credibility and visibility than do dollars spent on DOE programs themselves.

The Office of Science has the unique ability, by virtue of its research grounding and its proximity to the research bench, to fundamentally change the way that the Department of Energy communicates about science and the value of basic research. In fact, it is possible that judicious support for communications research and a commitment to science communication as an enterprise within the Office could, in fact, make DOE the de facto model for Federal best-practice science public affairs.

While defense, contamination, security and other crisis issues du jour always will dominate the attention of the front office and the traditional public affairs offices of the Department, science can be an equally powerful message that requires a completely different public affairs approach, as outlined below.

Implementing the Vision

In order to realize the benefits of public communication about its research portfolio, the DOE Office of Science should adopt the following recommendations, grouped by audience or recommendation type.

• General Recommendations
  Establish a blue-ribbon panel of advisors on science and technology communication to help guide SC efforts in this field.

  Develop appropriate metrics and formative research guidelines for the conduct of science and technology communication, and formalize these metrics and guidelines for both DOE and contractor performance.

  Develop and prototype funding set-asides in major SC grants for education and public outreach (EPO), similar to those in use at NASA science programs and NIH. Hold these EPO sections to the same rigorous peer review standards as the rest of the grant, and require detailed accountability for their success.

  Expand the Brookhaven National Laboratory pilot “peer review” process across the SC laboratories.

  Host, in conjunction with the National Institute for Standards and Technology (and other potential Federal sponsors), a national, juried conference on “best practices” in public communication of science and technology.
  
  

• Recommendations for Communication with Policy Makers and Other Opinion Leaders
  Identify and characterize the nation’s cadre of legislative, Executive-Branch, and state/local policy makers and opinion leaders. Develop this database as a living tool to be used to communicate about DOE-funded research and initiatives.

  Develop and market to Congressional press aides and similar audiences “plug-and-play” releases about significant DOE research findings, including custom-developed Internet modules for use on Members’ WWW home pages.

  Develop and market custom information web sites for individual legislative and Executive-branch aides.

  Initiate and host a series of “Science for Dummies” lectures and workshops for Congressional and Executive-branch aides.
  
  

• Recommendations For Recruiting and Communicating with Potential Third-Party Validators
  Host a series of regional “draw-in” meetings, half professional development and half DOE indoctrination, for university public information officers, association representatives, and university research managers (i.e., university research vice presidents)

  Develop a coordinated and systemic program of professional development for HQ, field office, and contractor public affairs officers who are responsible for crafting the DOE science message.
  
  

• Recommendations for Communicating with “The Public”
  Begin a systematic effort to revise existing materials and craft new popular science material from the Office of Science to reach the science attentive audience rather than a nebulous, mythic “general audience.”

  Develop a consolidated web site for all Office of Science public communications, utilizing where possible new technologies that allow a single site to serve multiple audience needs. Enable the most sophisticated web statistics package possible on this site, and use those data to drive enhancements to the site.
  
  

• Recommendations for Communicating with the Mainstream Media
  Contract for a DOE-science-specific environment on the well-respected and heavily-trafficked AAAS EurekAlert! science web site.

  Support a pilot “writer-in-residence” program for up to two national laboratories a year, funding two junior science journalists for a one-year sabbatical at a DOE science laboratory.

  Coordinate and support a national science-book tour for authors with recent book releases on topics within the DOE science portfolio. Target bookstores in the home communities of DOE science laboratories.

  Host annual “Frontiers of DOE Science” meetings in Washington for a cadre of young researchers supported by DOE funding (modeled after the successful National Academy of Sciences effort), with the aim of encouraging emerging young science stars to talk with each other and the press about new frontiers of discovery.

  Develop and promote a series of science “white papers,” multi-laboratory in nature and addressing key issues of public concern in science and technology for which DOE may not be well known as a key player.

  Develop and market Internet modules about DOE research efforts for use on local-TV station web sites and coordinated through local-TV weather broadcasters.