How can we present our research in a way that makes it accessible to the public?
Recently, after attending a
Research Advantage seminar on the importance of social media in the current
research environment, Dr Emily Freeman from the the School of Psychology at UoN decided to try pitching an article to The Conversation.
The Conversation is an “independent source of news and views sourced from the
academic and research community and delivered direct to the public” (www.theconversation.com). The
Conversation Australia reaches over 5 million users per month and is used by
many news outlets, such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as a source
of quality research stories and research experts when looking for people to
comment on current events.
Emily explains that she "pitched an article that would
ultimately summarise some of the research I’ve been doing looking at the role
of father-child rough-and-tumble play on child development. The editor liked my
pitch and asked for an 800 word article to be submitted the following week. I
then worked with another editor over a few days to polish the article and make
it more news-like rather than journal-like in terms of language. I was also
asked to find some related YouTube clips and the like to make it more engaging.
One thing I really liked was that they required links to journal articles to
support any claims I was making and that they also checked them to ensure the
scientific rigour of my article."
The article was published early
September and reached over 30,000 reads in only a couple of weeks (it’s now at
almost 40,000 which is pretty incredible especially given that Research Gate
recently congratulated me on one of my journal articles having reached 100
reads!!). The Conversation tracks reads, social media shares, the location of
people who are reading the article, the news outlets that are sharing it, and
you can also add any engagements that have resulted from it. The article led to
some radio interviews and Emily was even contacted by a screen writer interested in
making a documentary about dad and kids.
Overall, it was an interesting
experience and she is looking forward to pitching another article soon. Emily highly
recommend it to everyone to give it a try J
