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Strategic Science Communication: A Guide to Setting the Right Objectives for More Effective Public Engagement
What tactics can effective science communicators use to reach a wide audience and achieve their goals? Effective science communication—the type that can drive behavior change while boosting the likelihood that people will turn to science when faced with challenges—is not simply a matter of utilizing social media or employing innovative tactics like nudges. Even more important for success is building long-term strategic paths to achieve well-articulated goals. Smart science communicators also want to create communication opportunities to improve their own thinking and behavior. In this guidebook, John C. Besley and Anthony Dudo encapsulate their practical expertise in 11 evidence-based principles of strategic science communication. Among other things, science communicators, they argue, should strive to seem competent, warm, honest, and willing to listen. Their work should also convey a desire to make the world a better place. Highlighting time-tested methods for building rapport with an audience through several modes of communication, Besley and Dudo explain how to achieve each strategic objective. All scientific communication is goal-oriented, and Besley and Dudo discuss the importance of recognizing the right goals, then employing strategic and tactical communication in order to achieve them. Finally, they offer specific suggestions for how practitioners can evaluate the effectiveness of their communications (and in fact, build evaluation into their plans from the beginning). Strategic Science Communication is the first book to use social science to help scientists and professional science communicators become more evidence-based. Besley and Dudo draw on insightful research into the science of science communication to provide readers with an opportunity to think more deeply about how to make communication choices. This guidebook is essential reading for all professionals in the field.
- GenresScienceNonfiction
336 pages, Paperback
Published September 27, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 16, 2022
What tactics indeed. Where were they? I was very disappointed by this book in both content and presentation.
The synopsis suggested a promising, educational read on strategies for improving one’s own effectiveness at science communication. The book spends the first chapter summarizing various “communication objectives” of competence, integrity, shared values, etc. that a science communicator ought to strive to achieve towards a larger goal (e.g., funding, advising on public/private sector decisions). Sadly, the book wastes the subsequent 10 chapters going laboriously over surveys of how important/ethical/high priority the scientific community views each “communication objective”, and filling the remaining space with smatterings of one-off studies illustrating fairly common sense ideas like “don’t be a jerk to your audience” and “tell them you care about them”. The book highlights these objectives as things to consider when communicating to an audience, which is admittedly useful, but then fails to provide any guidance around how to achieve the objectives with useful tactics-tone, timing, medium, venue, etc. The last chapter acknowledges as much, with the authors making a plea for increased funding and resources to study effective tactics.
The book was also a terrible slog of a read. Despite the authors being communication/public relations researchers, I found their writing style disorganized and hard to understand at several points in each chapter. The disorganization was made worse by overly meandering language. I was constantly forcing myself to continue because I thought I might glean something useful out of the book. I’m still not sure I have.
Save yourself some time and headache—just read the first and last chapter, and then be done with it.
The synopsis suggested a promising, educational read on strategies for improving one’s own effectiveness at science communication. The book spends the first chapter summarizing various “communication objectives” of competence, integrity, shared values, etc. that a science communicator ought to strive to achieve towards a larger goal (e.g., funding, advising on public/private sector decisions). Sadly, the book wastes the subsequent 10 chapters going laboriously over surveys of how important/ethical/high priority the scientific community views each “communication objective”, and filling the remaining space with smatterings of one-off studies illustrating fairly common sense ideas like “don’t be a jerk to your audience” and “tell them you care about them”. The book highlights these objectives as things to consider when communicating to an audience, which is admittedly useful, but then fails to provide any guidance around how to achieve the objectives with useful tactics-tone, timing, medium, venue, etc. The last chapter acknowledges as much, with the authors making a plea for increased funding and resources to study effective tactics.
The book was also a terrible slog of a read. Despite the authors being communication/public relations researchers, I found their writing style disorganized and hard to understand at several points in each chapter. The disorganization was made worse by overly meandering language. I was constantly forcing myself to continue because I thought I might glean something useful out of the book. I’m still not sure I have.
Save yourself some time and headache—just read the first and last chapter, and then be done with it.
March 10, 2026
it's not bad,its just not too useful either
despite being published in 2022 it feels like it was written in 2010
their assumptions of peoples assumptions on science feels outdated, some of the links don't work (dead sites very sad),and otherwise just,eh?
ig in a sense the table of contents describes the book really well.
there is a "new" (since 2016) wave of culture online that affects the real world, a lot of the new misinformation groups use more grey hat tactics (biases,framing,etc).
none of that isn't covered in this book, it pretty much is just stuff that would work for boomers.
despite being published in 2022 it feels like it was written in 2010
their assumptions of peoples assumptions on science feels outdated, some of the links don't work (dead sites very sad),and otherwise just,eh?
ig in a sense the table of contents describes the book really well.
there is a "new" (since 2016) wave of culture online that affects the real world, a lot of the new misinformation groups use more grey hat tactics (biases,framing,etc).
none of that isn't covered in this book, it pretty much is just stuff that would work for boomers.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews