SciencePub - Module 5. Public outreach

(Delen av prosjektbeskrivelsen som omhandler formidling til allmenheten)

NGU Gudmund Løvø (Module leader), OUC Thore Roksvold (Co-leader), NPI, UiB, UiT, UMB, Science centers in Tromsø, Bergen and Trondheim (SC)

  1. Improve public awareness on natural environmental changes in the Arctic
  2. Contribute to a lasting legacy of the IPY research efforts

Science for the society. Dissemination of research results to the public has commonly been neglected by the scientific community. Improved communication between the public and the scientific community is a major challenge for the future. Up-to-date scientific results on Arctic research are a prerequisite for proper environmental management as well as political decisions on both national and multi-national levels. Our challenge is to raise the level of public and political awareness regarding the natural environmental change in the Arctic.

Outreach strategy and legacy. A main goal is to communicate knowledge on Arctic environmental change to the younger generation. We will promote public outreach by establishing a fully integrated project module with this focus. The module networks information officers at all partner institutions. Thus, the public outreach will be an ongoing activity carried out from the initiation of the project. Such a structure relates professional journalists directly to the scientific activity at the partner institutions. This strategy will improve communication between information officers and scientists on Arctic subjects, and we expect this cooperation to build relations beyond the IPY period. For the legacy of the IPY effort, we will also highlight the training of science journalists by their participation in field work and expeditions, and the exhibitions at the Science Centres.

Outreach products. Exhibitions aimed at primary and secondary school level will be developed in collaboration with the Science Centers in Tromsø, Trondheim and Bergen. The results of the projects and the experiments will also be presented to a broad audience including pupils and students at different locations in Norway during 'Forskningsdagene' (www.forskningsdagene.com) and at Polaria in Tromsø (www.polaria.no), and to the Russian public through Russian collaborators.

We will contribute to the education of research journalists by involving students from the Faculty of Journalism, Oslo University College in fieldwork, and to present science results as part of their curriculum. This will be organized through the faculty's master program in science journalism, bachelor course in science writing, and bachelor course in information and communication.

Through this network of information officers, we will establish and maintain SciencePub's web pages, and produce and publish popularized articles and presentations in newspapers/journals, on national/ local radio and TV-networks, on relevant web sites (e.g. the national popular website for research www.forskning.no) and on partner institutions web-sites.