The Science of Communication

Tools for Sharing Community-Engaged Learning with Others

By Sanjna Das ’21

Engaged Ambassadors at a 2019 Engaged Cornell Hub Coffee Hour.

Editor’s note: The Engaged Ambassadors (EAs) are a team of students who work in the Office of Engagement Initiatives and help build a culture of community-engaged learning at Cornell. They mentor students pursuing the Certificate in Community-Engaged Leadership, lead workshops and discussions, coordinate outreach efforts, manage funding opportunities and more.

A few weeks ago, I facilitated the weekly EA seminar, where ambassadors convene for 90 minutes on Tuesday afternoons. These meetings not only serve as a way for the various EA teams to share what they have accomplished and hope to implement in the future; they also offer a chance for an EA to explore an aspect of community-engaged leadership with the group.

Long before this seminar, I knew I wanted to touch upon how we, as EAs who are deeply invested in communities and understanding their needs, can effectively communicate our experiences to specific audiences. The inspiration for this seminar came from an Applied Science Communication course co-taught by Dr. Mark Sarvary, Director of the Investigative Biology Teaching Laboratories, and Kitty Gifford, a communications consultant in the Ithaca area.

I’ve been involved in research here at Cornell and even before that in high school, and so the need to learn how to share the work that I was doing, not only with those who are well-versed in the subject, but also a more general audience, was readily apparent. This was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, an ongoing crisis that has been plagued with misinformation that poses a threat to the safety of the population at large.

According to a piece in The Atlantic, vaccine hesitancy, which marks a real threat to the herd immunity that we desperately need, stems from a number of factors including conspiracy theories. As the author, Derek Thompson, writes, the vaccine should be something of a no-brainer, especially after the catastrophe that has ensued over the past year or so, but that’s certainly not the case. Rather, it appears that Americans are fragmented across racial, political, and other lines that cannot be addressed with a single strategy.

Fig. 1 Message triangle, a tool to organize a communication plan

The need for specific, targeted messaging in addressing vaccine hesitancy is reflective of the idea that communication strategies — whether related to science or otherwise — are not meant to be blanket strategies. In my communication class, we spent considerable time on a diagram termed the message triangle, which presents a clear and rather uncomplicated tool to organize a communication plan (Fig. 1). In the context of community-engaged learning, the triangle is a way to think about how to effectively communicate your story and work while calling others to action. The goal is what the audience should think or do (“call to action”), and this is supported by talking points aimed at getting the audience to care. I like to think of the talking points as extensions of the “story of self,” or a personal narrative that conveys those values and issues that are most important to me.

One of the hardest aspects of building my messaging triangle last semester was choosing a specific audience. My project was aimed at sharing my research on using bird vocalizations to study speciation and what this means for biodiversity and conservation efforts, and I naturally felt that everyone should care. Yet, I learned that the success of the strategy depends, in part, on the specificity of the audience.

In the same vein, it’s understandable to feel like everyone should care and be moved to action around social issues that are important to us. However, we vary immensely in our values and beliefs — so much so that a message triangle should focus on bringing a specific group (the smaller the better!) to action. I think of the audience as the “us” in the “story of us.” This doesn’t mean that the audience has to sympathize with everything we think or feel, but there should be some common ground or level of understanding that we can leverage to convey a specific message.

Fig. 2 Conversation Prism 5.0 conversationprism.com

In the modern world, there are countless ways to share community-engaged leadership experiences, call attention to important issues, and find support for our causes. This can be visualized with the conversation prism (Fig. 2), an aesthetically pleasing rainbow wheel that I’m sure has continued to evolve with the pandemic. What I find to be key, however, is that communication involves listening, learning and engaging/co-creating. Public communication is as much about sharing information and experiences as it is about dialogue and meaningful conversation. The “listening” comes into play with not simply putting information out into the world, but really taking the time to tune in and understand how the audience responds. The next step of the process is learning, by which we reflect on the current communication strategy and consider ways to enhance messaging. Then, the last step is engaging and co-creating, whereby we turn the reflection into tangible changes.

Engaged Ambassadors completed their own messaging triangles to promote community-engaged learning, leadership, and research

Social change is about doing good in communities but also taking this a step further and considering how we can involve others in meeting a given community partner’s needs. This hinges upon effective communication, which I learned about in a scientific context but applies equally to community-engaged leadership. I would like to thank my instructors Mark and Kitty for allowing me to share their content with the other EAs in seminar and here on the blog. In my next post, you’ll get a chance to hear from Mark and Kitty themselves!

Sanjna Das ’21 is an Engaged Ambassador with the OEI and is majoring in Biological Sciences (CALS). She enjoys writing about science, exploring its intersection with community-engaged work, and highlighting student and community voices.

--

--

The Ripple Effect
The Ripple Effect

Published in The Ripple Effect

On the Ripple Effect, Cornell University students, faculty, staff, alumni, and partners share their community-engaged learning experiences, expertise, and lessons learned. Brought to you by the David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement.

David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement
David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement

Written by David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement

The Einhorn Center for Community Engagement at Cornell supports a university culture where Cornellians and partners work together to create a better world.

No responses yet