Suppose you have a really good story to tell. You
could achieve maximum attention by doing the following:
- Telling your
story in different ways and using different media such as movies, blogs, Twitter and 'old-fashioned' paper and face-to-face…
- Picking the right
moment.
- Making sure it is
interesting for a wide audience.
Excellent work is now being done by the group Your wild life a group of
scientists, science communicators, students and citizens based at the North Carolina State
University in Raleigh. Their “core message” is
that the communities of bacteria, ants, lice and other animals that exist right
under our noses, from the surface of our skin to our backyards, are just as interesting as those found in tropical forests. But
surprisingly, these familiar places where we spend our everyday lives have been
so little studied. ‘Your Wildlife’ aims to change that.
Accordingly, the group is adopting all possible means
to tell the same story again and again: by making use of bloggers
(entomologists from around the country); tweeters and film makers. Naturally,
the group has published books. And they are organizing meetings for citizens
and amateur scientists including retired professionals, school teachers and students. These people are counting ants in their gardens,
inventing names for a mites or giving samples of their belly buttons (2300
different microbe species were found in 300 belly buttons); Sure, the details
of the stories are different every time, but the overarching message remains
the same: Look how interesting our surrounding are!
What’s more, the group is adept at reaching a
broader public. They don’t just come up with the formal results of peer
reviewed articles, but with the on-going-results of the citizen research:
including new camel crickets in garages, basements and garden sheds, and
previously undiscovered ant species in New
York, or the bacteria species in your armpits. The
stories are meant for everyone who is participating. And if you participate, you will
be getting something back: credits and interesting information about your own
surroundings. The stories are about people, their homes and their concerns
(including yours…) and that is normally more interesting than stories
that only focus on bacteria, ants or mites.
So the group
is harnessing a community, both to discover more about our surroundings and to market their products. But this enticing mix of science, science marketing and journalism takes time and money. Fortunately, scientific organizations including the National Science Foundation, the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute and a NASA Biodiversity Grant are now paying for it. But the question is always: what will happen with the initiative when they stop paying?
Or this one: the World Water Monitor Challenge - a science and education program to involve citizens and schools in a worldwide monitoring the water quality. This is one of the first citizen science projects with a global goal.
One of the best examples in the Netherlands is www.natuurkalender.nl, paid by Wageningen University and Research Centre and several nature organizations. It is a pity that the site is not linked to comparable initiatives abroad,
