Science Media & Engagement Strategies

Between 2004 and 2007, together with partners, SME Strategies sought to engage technical specialists, engineers and scientists in dialogue with their local communities stimulating and informing public conversations about basic science in the context of pressing policy issues on the environment and public health.

We believed then and still believe that carefully designed messages, organized outreach and media are all necessary:

• to overcome negative perceptions and fear of science,
• to leverage the most powerful and authentic voices from the science community,
• to engage community leaders directly with scientists from their own communities,
• to build understanding of and strengthen a broad-based support for science in society as a whole,
• to enable citizens to cope with technical information and participate in decisions that affect them socially, politically and economically.

Furthermore, it seems that there is untapped potential in existing science outreach infrastructure to deliver engagement experiences that are both effective and much more scalable by using:

• Partnering relationships between research science, science media, science education / outreach and sponsors of science communications;
• Information and communications technology;
• Social networks and communities of practice.

In 2007, SME Strategies offered science communications consulting services to organizations in each of these communities to explore, define and develop partnering strategies based on our SME architecture. We wanted to create, staff and manage ad-hoc projects that leverage resources from our own extensive networks spanning these communities, produce, and then deliver science media and scalable outreach programs with targeted social impact.

Since 2008, however, SME Strategies has been largely dormant.

Read more about what we do and how we do it.

You can check out Steve Quatrano's bio here.

Interested? Are you a science writer or educator? Media producer or funder? A research scientist? Contact us if you would like more information.