News and Events

Webinar hosted by Observia (in Italian)

On Thursday 17 February, the Observa team will host a webinar on the TRESCA policy briefs. Giuseppe Pellegrini and Chiara Piccolo from Observa, together with Marco Bresadolafrom the Univ. Ferrara and Leonardo Alfonsi from Psiquadro will discuss the topic: “Managing the public communication of science in times of uncertainty”.

The webinar will begin at 17:30 and will be in Italian. You can register via this form: [click here]

Project results and deliverable reports now available!

Earlier in 2021, the TRESCA consortium received a positive review from the European Commission on the work completed in the first project period. This means that our results from the first period are now made available for download on the Results and Downloads page. These documents and their contents are the property of the TRESCA consortium. The content of all parts of (public) documents can be used and distributed, provided that the project and authors are referenced appropriately. Deliverables marked as confidential are only available to consortium members and the Commission Services.

How to communicate science in a world of misinformation

This was originally authored by Science|Business and can be found on their website [link].

Distrust and misinformation: The challenge for scientists

The scientific community has astonished the world by delivering a range of highly effective SARS-Cov-2 vaccines in an incredibly short time—far faster than could reasonably have been expected when the crisis went global in early 2020. But the European Union is now struggling to vaccinate citizens anything like as quickly as the UK or the US. While there are multiple reasons for that, there is a serious concern that misinformation about vaccine risks is deterring some people. Misinformation spreads quickly on social media, especially in the current environment of heightened anxiety and state-enforced isolation.

So how can scientists properly communicate their work to politicians and the public in a world like the one we have today? Science|Business and the TRESCA project convened a panel to discuss this question.  The Trustworthy, Reliable and Engaging Scientific Communication Approaches (TRESCA) project is an EU funded research initiative led by Erasmus University Rotterdam. It looks at the consequences of the public’s loss of trust in news media, the main channel for science communication, and how to address them.

To share your thoughts on the TRESCA policy brief: https://survey.zsi.at/index.php/289265?lang=en

Reflection on the TRESCA workshop at the Public Science|Business Annual Network Conference

Our research director Sara Degli-Esposti (CSIC) presented the initial TRESCA policy brief on science communication and evidence-based policy making at the Science|Business conference. Lead author of the policy brief, Pamela Bartar (ZSI) highlighted the importance of close cooperation between scientists, media experts and journalists, and policy makers, to balance social impact and awareness of research and innovation.

We would like thank the workshop participants for their valuable input. For some insights about what was discussed in the workshop (including links to our live tweets of the event):

• Dominique Leglu: Not all science journalists are the same and it is important to fact check and not communicate too quickly. [link]
• Anna Mouser: Quality, creativity, and simplicity should be balanced in science communication. A lack of quality can lead to misinformation! [link]
• Sara Abdulla from Nature: Social media organizations can open up their algorithms so that we can reverse-construct AI in a way to fight misinformation. [link]

 

We enjoyed the discussion and look forward to future events!