Lessons in geoscience broadcasting

Tell us about your background in geoscience communication and broadcasting

Anna: I got into geology as a very small child. My father was one of the radar boffins working in the Second World War on the south coast and we used to holiday there. It wasn’t just the fossils, I remember my father showing me a pillbox that had been sitting in the war on top of the cliff, and by the time I saw it, it was upside down on the bottom of the cliff. That really struck me: this is an interesting subject!

After school I went to the University of St Andrews to read geology. I couldn’t get a job as a geologist in those days because I was a girl, so I ended up doing a graduate traineeship with the BBC as a studio manager. I trained both on the technical side of all aspects of broadcasting, so I worked in drama, news, everything – you name it, I did it. And I went on to be a producer, a reporter, and then I was asked to be a presenter in 1989.

Iain: When I was young, I wanted to be an actor, and I think that’s important because quite a lot of the presenters that I’ve met have got some kind of creative interest, music, drama or something, often tucked away and they’re kind of frustrated performers. For me, I did geography at university, and a PhD, and then went into academia. But I always felt that lecturing was a performance and so I enjoyed performing. It was not that surprising then that I’d want to elevate from performing to 30, 40, 50 undergraduates in a room to much broader. I remember thinking: why isn’t geoscience, this really interesting subject that I loved, more widely known and on television and the media? So I started to take time away from the research to explore that and it kind of worked out.

What are your main approaches to geoscience communication and how have they changed over the years?

Anna: I think the key thing, and it’s the same today, is what Lord Reith set out with the BBC, is that you have to inform, educate and entertain. Education and information are different. So, a news programme will be informing, not doing quite so much educating. Blue Peter will be educating and entertaining, as well as informing. But all three of those elements have to be there, but in different mixtures; the Venn diagram is slightly different for each programme. It had to have a good story, there was a storytelling element to this. Writing was incredibly important, both in how you were communicating with producers, decision makers, and editors, and also how you wrote scripts and let the story unfold and to make it engaging. The use of metaphor and analogy was extremely useful and I don’t think that’s changed.

You have to inform, educate and entertain. All three of those elements have to be there, but in different mixtures.

Iain: I think of science communication in three domains. The type of stuff that myself and Anna are doing I refer to as “make and sell”. It’s very typical of 90% of science communication. We make science somewhere, an academic paper or a conference paper or something, and we sell it to the public and we say this is amazing. But then this new thing of, I call it “sense and respond”, is about understanding the science of your audience, how you segment your audience, how you frame things. Psychology, anthropology, and things like human sciences came in. But then the third area, and the area I’m interested in most now, is this idea of working with communities about science. Where we’re not pushing our science, we’re actually thinking: what is the public interested in and what is the community interested in? How can science help that? I call that “guide and co-create”. The irony is that that’s a very different communication skill set to the “make and sell”. “Make and sell” is all about media journalism and storytelling, fine. But actually “guide and co-create” is about empathy and trust, it’s about facilitating relationships with people, which is an absolutely fundamental part of good communication.

If you had unlimited resources, what projects would you invest in to improve geoscience communication?

Iain: I would percolate geoscience communication through the undergraduate degree, because I think that there’s still a temptation, and geology is probably one of the ones that still works, that assumes that there’s a technical skill set, that to be a geologist you need to have this technical toolkit and you’re not one without it. And so, what you find in the departments is that there’s a fixation with the same skills that the lecturers, the professors learnt, this idea of passing on this thing. But the reality is that we’re in danger of becoming redundant or peripheral to many of the big issues of the day. And I think we shouldn’t be. We are interdisciplinary scientists. We deal with uncertainty, which is certainly one of the big issues of the day to do with the planet and sustainability and all the rest of it. So I would clearly instigate geoscience communication in all geology degrees at all years in order to build that spine all the way through.

I would clearly instigate geoscience communication in all geology degrees

Anna: I would like to see some money spent on an Instagram campaign and I would direct you towards the Royal Society, see what they do, and also to the Etches Collection along the south coast and their Instagram feed, which appeals to children of all ages from 8 to 80. I would want some funding for a visitor centre, like the Etches Collection, to be free. We could do with another bigger one on the south coast. There’s a huge amount of specimens without a home and they’re all telling a story, a story that feeds into the planet, how the planet changes, how climate changes, how things aren’t static.

This is an excerpt from the podcast GeoConversations: Anna Grayson and Iain Stewart. Listen to the full interview at https://geoscientist.online/sections/podcast/podcast-geoconversations-with-anna-grayson-and-iain-stewart/

Authors

Anna Grayson is a geologist by training, writer and broadcaster by profession, and is now working as an artist (https://www.annagrayson.com/)

Iain Stewart is the El Hassan Research Chair for Sustainability at the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan and Professor of Geoscience Communication at the University of Plymouth, UK

Interview by Marissa Lo, Assistant Editor, Geoscientist magazine

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