Cracking the Code: A Science Media — Research Collaboration

Managing diverse partnerships

This article is one of a multipart series exploring the unique media practitioner-academic research collaboration of Cracking the Code: Influencing Millennial Science Engagement (CTC) a three year Advancing Informal STEM Learning Innovations (AISL) research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) between KQED, a public media company serving the San Francisco Bay Area, Texas Tech and Yale universities. KQED has the largest science reporting unit in the West focusing on science news and features including their YouTube series Deep Look.

The author, Scott Burg, is a Senior Research Principal with Rockman et al.

Searching for common ground

One of the main barriers to initiating practitioner-research collaborations is knowing where to look for partners. While interest in cross-discipline science media and communication research has increased of late, researchers and journalists alike find it difficult to know where to start their search for new research partners. While potential benefits of such partnerships have been identified, there is limited guidance on how to find, select, build and manage effective research partnerships.

In her just recently completed study, Landscape of Science Communication in the Content Creation Community, Reyhaneh Maktoufi, PhD surveyed and interviewed 112 US-based science media producers, journalists and other science communicators to better understand their attitudes regarding research-practitioner collaborations, and explore methods for facilitating such connections. Some key findings revealed that while the interest for collaboration is there, there are barriers which make effecting these collaborations a reality. In particular the data revealed that:

• Content creators overall have a positive attitude towards using science communication research and while in the past they mostly were exposed to the research around once a year, they would like to have exposure at least once a month.
• Content creators identify the main barriers to using science communication research as inaccessibility of research and researchers, limited time, not being aware that such research exists.
• To receive information on the science of science communication, the top three modes of access were socializing with researchers, watching SciComm-related videos, and using guidelines and toolkits.

What the survey results underscored was that, not only is it important to know where to find a research partner, but it is equally important to find a partner that has right skills and resources to make the project work. Unfortunately, there are no playbooks.

Building the team

For KQED Science, identifying a research team to collaborate with on submission of their Cracking the Code proposal to NSF’s Advancing Informal Stem Learning (AISL)was not a totally linear process. Previous to this NSF submission, the Science unit had worked with independent evaluators and market researchers to assess science program impact with audiences, assess internal processes and communications, and conduct quantitative surveys to identify audience trends and themes. This work was carried out with the approval and oversight of KQED Science staff, but was not conducted in a truly collaborative fashion. In effect, while KQED Science staff had knowledge of and demonstrated some application of science communication research in their work, they had relatively little practical working experience with academic science communication researchers.

A main objective of Cracking the Code was to conduct a more deliberate form of collaborative research to answer two key questions:

1. How can KQED adapt and expand upon existing research to understand the role of science identity and curiosity in millennial engagement and interest in science media?
2. Which presentations — editorial tactics, platform choices, media elements, and outreach strategies — can increase millennials’ curiosity and cognitive engagement with science content, with special attention given to underrepresented and under-engaged audiences within the generation?

KQED Science’s focus on better understanding audience preferences in informal science programming led project PI and KQED Executive Producer of Science, Sue Ellen McCann to approach Drs. Dan Kahan (Yale University) and Asheley Landrum (Texas Tech University) to collaborate as research partners. Kahan and Landrum’s joint research on science curiosity, motivated reasoning, and science media engagement, appeared to align well with the project’s main research objectives. Landrum served as the PI for the research team, McCann served as PI for KQED. Kahan would serve as a consultant to the project and work directly with Landrum and the research team.

Additional research consultants included Jacobs Media, a research and consulting firm focusing on media and digital strategy, and DeltaV, a digital strategy firm that helps organizations execute digital outreach and understand online content impact across target audiences. The collaboration had a lot of moving parts.

Development of any NSF proposal is time consuming and arduous, requiring patience and an ability to build consensus. For this young collaboration, designing a research plan that met the needs and expectations of both KQED and the research team was particularly challenging. Similar to KQED’s lack of experience working with academic researchers, members of the research team had relatively little working exposure to science media producers and journalists. Previous to drafting the proposal, team members from KQED and the research teams did not have ample time to meet and familiarize themselves with respective working styles, communication methods, let alone the operating philosophies and expectations of each of their respective organizations. Research consultants from Jacobs and Delta V also had little communication with researchers from Texas Tech and Yale.

There were however some conceptual and operational commonalities that helped to bridge and facilitate completion of a relatively solid research proposal. Both teams were familiar with and invested in the use of design thinking practices to drive audience-related research. To best engage millennial audiences in science media and develop a set of best practices for the field, the research team proposed the application of a design-based research (DBR) approach to the joint project. DBR requires application of consecutive iterative cycles — feedback loops of design, enactment, analysis, and redesign and leads to sharable theories that help communicate relevant implications to practitioners and other educational designers. DBR was a common framework for both the researchers and practitioners. Both teams had tremendous respect and admiration for the other’s work, as well as a shared belief and enthusiasm in the research they were proposing.

While struggling at times to achieve consensus and a common understanding of an approach during the proposal development process, the development process itself helped team members begin to recognize the commonalities and differences that would shape much of their collaboration during the project’s subsequent three years.