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HESS Opinions: Science in today's media landscape – challenges and lessons from hydrologists and journalists

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posted on 2018-07-03, 14:28 authored by Stefanie R. Lutz, Andrea Popp, Tim Van Emmerik, Tom Gleeson, Liz Kalaugher, Karsten Mobius, Tonie Mudde, Brett Walton, Rolf Hut, Hubert Savenije, Louise Slater, Anna Solcerova, Cathelijne Stoof, Matthias Zink
Media such as television, newspapers and social media play a key role in the communication between scientists and the general public. Communicating your science via the media can be positive and rewarding by providing the inherent joy of sharing your knowledge with a broader audience, promoting science as a fundamental part of culture and society, impacting decision and policy makers, and giving you a greater recognition by institutions, colleagues and funders. However, the interaction between scientists and journalists is not always straightforward. For instance, scientists may not always be able to translate their work into a compelling story, and journalists may sometimes misinterpret scientific output. In this paper, we present insights from hydrologists and journalists discussing the advantages and benefits as well as the potential pitfalls and aftermath of science-media interaction. As we perceive interacting with the media as a rewarding and essential part of our work, we aim to encourage scientists to participate in the diverse and evolving media landscape. With this paper, we call on the scientific community to support scientists who actively contribute to a fruitful science-media relationship.

Funding

This project was in part funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 706428 (C.R.S.). S.R.L. was financially supported by the European Union under the Seventh Framework Programme (Grant agreement no. 603629-ENV2013-6.2.1-Globaqua). A.P. was financially supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 641939.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences

Citation

LUTZ, S.R. ... et al, 2018. Science in today's media landscape – challenges and lessons from hydrologists and journalists. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 22(7), pp. 3589-3599.

Publisher

Copernicus Publications © Author(s)

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-06-19

Publication date

2018

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Copernicus under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

1027-5606

Language

  • en

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