Here's my talk from the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution Nooner Workshop on Thursday 19th July 2018: The why and how of Tweeting Science, with Dr. Shoshanah Jacobs and friends, held at Guelph University, Ontario, Canada. I hope that the other superb talks by excellent Canadian scientists on social media will also be made available online, Open Access.

1. Communicating Science
to policymakers
Dawn Bazely @dawnbazely
University Professor
Biology Department
York University
Toronto

2. My roadmap… for situating science
❖ …acknowledges that
ecological research is one of
many factors influencing
policy, along with
economics, values, emotions
& political will.
❖ …encourages scientists to be
confident in defending peer-
reviewed results and not
conflating them with policy
and politics... here’s how:

3. Three-3-questions
1.What is policy & who makes
it?
2.How do policymakers hear
about science research?
3.What to keep in mind when
tweeting about science to
policymakers?
Talk Topics
OPS = Ontario Public Service

4. What is a policy?
❖ “A policy is typically described as a principle or rule to
guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s). The
term is not normally used to denote what is actually
done, this is normally referred to as either procedure or
protocol”
❖ Wikipedia
❖ See also: Evidence-Based Policy
Context

5. Context
Who makes policy?
Closed door session at COP23 in Bonn, Germany
— government Climate Change negotiators

6. Know your relevant policy documents & players
The science-policy-
politics ecosystem
Hoogensen, Bazely et al.
International Polar Year-
related books & articles
Context
Politicians

7. Know your relevant policy documents & players
The science-policy-
politics ecosystem
Hoogensen, Bazely et al.
International Polar Year-
related books & articles
Context
Politicians

8. Three-3-questions
1.What is policy & who
makes it?
2.How do policymakers hear
about science research?
3.What to keep in mind when
tweeting about science to
policymakers?
Talk Topics
Café at the closed zone at COP23
Policymakers

9. Where do policymakers hear about science research?
❖ Usually NOT from reading your journal papers
❖ Sometimes from executive & plain language summaries
❖ Also, from 🗣🍻📺📻💻📱🖥
❖ eg Klenk & Wyatt. 2015. Forest Policy & Economics.
61:77-86.
Science to policy pathways

10. –Oxford English Living Dictionary
“Websites and applications that enable users to
create and share content or to participate in social
networking.”
Definition of Social Media
Science to policy pathways

11. scientists find social media useful
Science to policy pathways

12. Three-3-questions
1.What is policy &
who makes it?
2.How do
policymakers hear
about science
research?
3.What to keep in
mind when tweeting
about science to
policymakers?
Talk Topics

13. Know your policy-politics landscape
❖ The relevant policy
documents for your
research
❖ Aim to meet and speak
with the players —
policy makers &
influencers
❖ Make your research
Open Access
Reaching out to policymakers

14. Practice communicating in interdisciplinary spaces
❖ collaborations between science academics, NGOs and
government bureaucrats (multiple stakeholder groups)
≠
❖ collaborations between science academics and different
kinds of academics from the social sciences and
humanities
❖ they are, all, nonetheless, “interdisciplinary” situations
Reaching out to policymakers

15. Craft clear, short, strong messages
Reaching out to policymakers

16. Don’t be a patronizing scientist…
the fastest route to people zoning out 🙉 is claiming science is
objective & neutral
“The value-laden nature of science:
… most natural scientists have been brought up on the notion that
science is value neutral. This belief proves to be a barrier both to
working across disciplines and to doing good science.”
Lélé & Norgaard. 2005. Practicing Interdisciplinarity. BioScience 55:967
Reaching out to policymakers

17. Your challenge
❖ choose one policy-relevant research result that you
want policy-makers to know about
❖ ID two organizations/people that develop or
influence policy
❖ compose a policy-relevant tweet with hashtag & url
to your OA research
❖ Can it work?
❖ YES — OMNR Minister Donna Cansfield (2009)
rolled out the evidence-based Provincial Human-
Wildlife Conflict policy that she back-burnered
after political advocacy, after I met with her in 2009
Reaching out to policymakers