Video recording, resources, and tips from the CASW Connector Chat on Sunday, November 8, 2024

On Sunday, November 8, CASW Connector hosted a hybrid session at the ScienceWriters2024 meeting that introduced science writers to audience engagement practices. The CASW team co-created the session itself with its audience, using an online survey and posterboards at the meeting to collect input from ScienceWriters2024 attendees about their experience talking to and engaging with their readers, as well as their questions about audience engagement.

The session included brief presentations from several speakers with experience in reporting projects informed by their audiences. Breakout groups gave attendees the opportunity to discuss different aspects of engagement. The session was live-streamed for virtual participants.

Speakers included:

  • Celeste LeCompte, CASW board member and independent consultant
  • Betsy Ladyzhets, CASW Connector community manager and editor at The Sick Times
  • Jena Brooker, environment and food reporter at BridgeDetroit
  • Melba Newsome, independent journalist and professor at Wake Forest University
  • Kelly Kauffman, engagement journalist at MuckRock
  • Dillon Bergin, data reporter at MuckRock

Check out the presentations and report-backs from the breakout sessions here:

Findings from the pre-session surveys

  • More than 90 people responded to our questions across the poster boards and online survey.
  • When we asked if getting input from your audience was useful, respondents answered with a resounding yes, responding with mainly 4s and 5s on a 1-to-5 scale.
  • Some science writers are already engaging with their audiences by asking for story ideas, surveying people, organizing and participating in events, and other methods.
  • The biggest challenge that science writers face with doing engagement work is knowing how to get started. Other challenges include a lack of support from their organization and not enough resources.
  • Science writers have many questions for (and about) their audiences, including wanting to understand what people know and feel about different science topics, how people get their news and what they do with stories, and aspects of audience demographics and experiences. (See more details in the session slides.)
  • “What’s your favorite frog?” was one popular question among audience members.
A poster board full of post-it notes and colorful stickers. The title reads: "On a scale of 1 to 5, how useful do you think it is to get input from your readers?" Most notes and stickers are on the 4-5 side of the board.
A posterboard full of post-it notes and stickers. The title reads, "What prevents you from talking to your audience?" Most stickers are on the note reading, "I'm not sure how to do it"
A posterboard full of notes and stickers. The title reads, "If you could talk to your readers directly, what would you want to know?"
A post-it note on which someone has written, "What's your favorite frog?" The note has several stickers on it, indicating others agree this is a good question.
Shot of the conference room during the CASW Connector Chat session. Speakers at the front of the room are sitting at a panel table, while audience members listen.

What “audience engagement” means for science stories

  • At a fundamental level, “audience engagement” means getting feedback from your community to shape your reporting.
  • This can happen at different stages of a project. It might look like:
    • Asking for story ideas;
    • Getting questions or feedback about an idea or topic;
    • Sharing initial findings from reporting;
    • Sharing final results;
    • Following up on questions that people have after a story is published.
  • Speakers from MuckRock described getting a question from a community member during an engagement event for a project on air pollution in Cicero, a suburb outside Chicago. She asked, “Why does this matter?” and pointed out that she’ll continue to live in the town regardless of pollution.
    • The reporters responded by ensuring future parts of the project provided actionable information, such as what people can do to deal with high-pollution days and how they can seek accountability.
    • The project included passing out physical cards informing people in the town about the story’s findings and inviting them to share their experiences.
    • Several Cicero community members also participated in reporting by placing air quality monitors in their homes to help collect data.
  • Engagement is often an ongoing process. Speaker Melba Newsome described working with local activists while writing an environmental newsletter for eastern North Carolina through Facebook’s Bulletin initiative.
    • The environmental justice activists shared story ideas; Melba reported on those issues, then they took the information back to their communities. She described it as a “symbiotic relationship.”
    • “It took a while to develop that trust where people felt like I would really tell their stories,” she said.

Tips for getting started

  • Give people opportunities to ask you questions!
    • This might be a form on a website, an option to reply to a newsletter, a text messaging system, or other options.
    • One story that speaker Jena Brooker wrote to answer a reader’s question became one of BridgeDetroit’s top stories for the year.
  • Use simple reader surveys to learn about people’s experiences and/or gather questions about a topic.
    • Some of the people who fill out the survey can also be sources whom you interview.
  • Solicit feedback, ideas, questions, and/or people to interview on social media, through newsletters, or with callout boxes in stories.
    • Betsy Ladyzhets solicited questions from The Sick Times’ readers ahead of an interview with the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She received over 100 questions; while she wasn’t able to ask everything, readers later expressed appreciation and trust at being invited to participate in the interview process. 
  • For local stories: Print out a story or print cards with key findings and hand out those physical copies to people directly impacted by the reporting. 
  • Organize an event with your community or audience. This can be in-person or virtual! Ask attendees to share ideas, answer their questions, etc.
  • “Community reporting can be as simple as adding a line to your story, asking readers to email you if they have experience with [the topic], have another question, or have something to add,” Brooker said.

Reflections from breakout groups:

  • If your outlet is new to engagement reporting, one way to find resources for an engagement project may be partnering with another organization that has more experience and/or finding a grant to support it.
  • Sometimes engagement can be negative, such as when a vocal minority of a publication’s audience objects to a publication’s coverage of a controversial topic.
  • When thinking about how to get feedback from your audience, try to ask specific questions, such as “What do you want to know about [x topic]?” or, “Where do you get your information about [y topic]?” rather than really broad questions, like, “How can we better serve you?”
  • Understanding your audience can be difficult for some organizations, such as scientific institutions and publications that serve a wide variety of people. Institutional writers may also face challenges in getting buy-in to start doing this work.
  • Audience engagement can help people who write about more technical topics by getting a sense of what people do and don’t understand, and adjusting the level of technical detail in stories accordingly.
  • There are many ways to get creative with audience engagement! It doesn’t have to be a huge, resource-intensive project to be meaningful.

Articles discussed in session:

Resources on engagement: