Approach
On a small scale, successful outreach models of public science engagement abound. Events draw curious people who would not otherwise interact with scientists into museums, libraries, zoos, aquariums, technology companies and universities or community colleges. Face-to-face public engagement can be a powerful local force building confidence, trust, awareness and understanding of science. Unfortunately, these programs are often extremely expensive relative to the small numbers of participants they engage.
Great science media, on the other hand, is highly scalable. Although initial development cost can be more substantial than engagement programs, millions of people can be exposed to science through newspapers, books, television and film. But attracting and maintaining the attention of an audience can be difficult, especially those not already curious about science. And although measuring audience is easy, it can be difficult to know how many of them are truly engaged and are changed as a result.
But what if we were able to dramatically increase the numbers of people participating in community-based science engagement programming?
We believe that Internet technology, social networks, and innovative distribution strategies can be borrowed from business and applied to enhance the scalability of conventional engagement techniques. As social entrepreneurs, we see tremendous potential recombining the basic elements of science media and engagement in new ways. If we can help community-based engagement programs coalesce, we might accelerate the formation of a new kind of science media distribution channel. At the same time, very low-cost, high-quality science media can be used as a stimulus and content for developing local engagement programs.
The SME collaboration architecture is a methodology and framework for ad-hoc, interdisciplinary teams from autonomous organizations to leverage:
- common goals and metrics;
- feedback mechanisms;
- modest messages designed to build confidence in basic science (see examples at HowDoWeKnow.info);
- media designed for engagement (to amplify the best voices from the scientific community);
- engagement channels for media (to reach new audiences and to augment emotional impact at the community level);
- funding.