Everyone can be a Scientist!

The team from the National museum for Science and Technology in Sweden explain how they are using social media to encourage participation.

We are driven by the belief that Tekniska museet should be a place to discover the world of science and technology in Sweden. This is why we are keen to explore how social media can help us achieve this aim.

In many ways, communication has always been at the heart of what we do. For example, in the 1920s we made silent short films. We were also one of the first places where visitors could watch television. In the 1990s we offered daily guided tours of the Internet! In the present day, one of the most popular activities during school visits is the television studio, where children make programmes using real news from news agencies.

As the popularity of social media grows, we are convinced that our audience is also our content provider!

As the popularity of social media grows, we want to connect our activity across the museum with our digital communication channels. As a museum, we are convinced that our audience is also our content provider. This is why we chose to participate in the Swedish Digital Identity Programme (SweDip). The programme gave us the reason we needed to sit down and co-ordinate ideas across the organisations. This includes departments such as exhibitions, collections and communications teams.

From a strategic perspective, we want to use social tools to interact with the audience and invite participation.

Social media is already part of our everyday life and is essential to the museum’s communication strategy. We have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr and so on. From a strategic perspective, we want to use these tools to interact with the audience and invite participation.

With this in mind, our key development questions are — is there a way to synchronize our efforts (across the museum and across our different channels) so that we can create genuine dialogue with our friends and followers online? Secondly, can we use a model of engagement that encourages people to contribute?

As part of our discovery phase (Phase 1 of SweDip) we considered the idea of starting a YouTube channel where we could challenge our audience to experiment to promote the concept that everyone can be a scientist. We imagined a series of productions, but the scale of work involved to make this happen was beyond the capacity we had.

So we revisited the idea and developed a stripped-touch approach that would still allow us answer the two development questions. We used the Stockholm Mini Maker Faire to experiment. The event took place in early May. Seventy maker projects gathered at the museum. This includes angel wings, a humanoid robot, blinking bling-bling and LitttleBits projects.

We set out to find and engage influencers to increase the visibility of the event online. For example, we searched for makers and anyone connected to the Stockholm Makerspace. This includes Teenage Engineering and Makertjej. We also regularly used the hashtag for the event on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts and encouraged visitors to share their visit online. As a result, even the former Minister of Foreign affairs @Carlbildt visited and commented on a working pulse jet engine to his 417K followers!

This first experiment showed us the reach we can achieve if we talk about our events and programmes in a co-ordinated way. Our next step is to use this visibility to create useful impact.

We plan to work in close collaboration with a partner to engage young people with science across Sweden. As part of this project we will develop original content — 4 short episodes that feature children carrying out experiments.

We will publish these episodes online and find influencers who will be given a friendly challenge to run their own experiments. By trying to involve new and unexpected partners we want to communicate that everyone can be a scientist. We hope this will encourage and enable many more people to conduct their experiments and share their results with us on social media.

This blog post has been written by the team from Tekniska museet working on the Digital Identity Development programme in Sweden. It has been edited by Kajsa Hartig who is a consultant and facilitator on the programme. To find out more please click here.