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April 3, 2024

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Five Challenges Facing Science Journalists in the Post-COVID World

Why is communicating science more challenging than ever? Hear about the top five challenges, according to Jeremy Abbate, Vice President and Publisher of Scientific American.

Challenge 1: Audiences are fragmented and fatigued.

Today, people turn to different sources — including their friends and social media — to get their news. It's a fractured audience. In any given year, anti-science factions rail against objective, evidence-based reporting. During the COVID-19 pandemic, you found people saying, ‘You said this last week, and now the science has changed. You lied to us.’ The public needed to be reminded that this was an evolving virus and therefore an evolving story. But that caused COVID fatigue.

Today, everywhere you look, there are the exigencies of a changing world that is threatened by AI, by climate crises, by the next pandemic. People are tired of the doom and gloom, and science journalists must work hard to regain their trust in rational, evidence-based thinking.

Challenge 2: Past innovation successes have created unrealistic expectations.

Science advances have radically changed the world in many instances. During the COVID pandemic, science, government, and industry all worked together to bring forward vaccines in an accelerated timeframe. The public has gotten used to innovation solving problems almost immediately. Now, if a cure isn’t found overnight, it fuels a suspicion that the scientific community isn’t giving the public the whole story.

Challenge 3: Clickbait is eroding credibility.

Headlines about AI have either noted its wonders or how the world's going to be overtaken by robots. Media companies are somewhat to blame because they have to be a bit provocative to get clicks. But anyone communicating science must balance the hype with credible reporting about where an innovation is really going to lead society.

The public needs to be more vocal that they don’t want the hype as well. They need to demand to hear about all of the nuances — the good, the bad, and how the impact of an innovation will evolve over the course of a year, two years, 10 years and beyond.

Challenge 4: The public doesn’t want to be spoken down to.

Despite the increase in science skepticism and misinformation, there has also been a swell of science literacy that has led people to want to see behind the cloak of wizardry. Scientists and science journalists need to come down from their ivory tower and create a two-way engagement where people are part of the dialogue throughout the journey, rather than only being shown the end outcome.

Challenge 5: The nature of science is that it changes.

The public needs to understand science in order to comprehend the world, and leaders must have a clear view of where science is going to fuel future innovation. Because scientific advancement is fluid, journalists must continuously track and report on its dynamic evolution. And so, the story continues…

Look for Scientific American online and in your email inbox, or listen to its new podcast “Science, Quickly.”

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