{"id":155,"date":"2021-02-08T13:21:12","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T13:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/gsi\/?p=155"},"modified":"2021-02-08T13:21:12","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T13:21:12","slug":"gsi-seminar-blog-ayesha-tandon-science-journalist-at-carbon-brief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/gsi\/gsi-seminar-blog-ayesha-tandon-science-journalist-at-carbon-brief\/","title":{"rendered":"GSI Seminar Blog: Ayesha Tandon (Science Journalist at Carbon Brief)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Taken from GSI Seminar coordinator Daneen Cowling’s\u00a0blog post\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ayesha shared her insights and reflections from experience with climate change communication from a range of lenses. Her talk was interactive, thought provoking and was a great reflection exercise for academics to assess how we conduct our own communication.<\/p>\n

As well as climate communication at Carbon Brief, Ayesha has also had science communication experience at governmental bodies (The Met Office), and in academia during her MSci Natural Science student at Exeter.<\/p>\n

As lead science editor for the undergraduate STEM journal at Exeter University, Ayesha describe practices in academic models of communication, familiar to her academic audience. Highlighting how the audiences of scientific papers are confined to the same academic circles the authors are within. The specialist and technical language used in these papers to communicate ideas and arguments with accuracy, make them inaccessible to those without this knowledge \u2013 even if they have the want to be engaged.<\/p>\n

Ayesha then went on to explain how the style, format and emphasis of science communication shifts outside of academia, in the cases of the Met Office and Carbon Brief. Both parallel in assumptions their readers do not get further than the first couple paragraphs of a piece. Ayesha explained the importance of \u201cfrontloading\u201d \u2013 ensuring all key bits you want the reader to take in and go away with \u2013 are at the very start.<\/p>\n

Also important to these communication outlets were use of graphics to explain the statistical results. In academia there is a responsibility to communicate results precisely, but as told by Ayesha\u2019s experience at the Met Office and Carbon Brief; numbers are not well received by government and general public audiences. Instead, infographics are more engaging and accessible.<\/p>\n

Ayesha shared some great examples of infographics, highlighting how informative they can be without the need for the full context. One example used were the\u00a0\u2018Climate Stripes\u2019 by Ed Hawkins<\/a>. This visualisation has been so impactful because it\u2019s accessible \u2013 redundant of any text or numbers, the colours are universally understood.<\/p>\n

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Example of infographics used to communicate climate science. From l Met Office State of the UK climate 2019
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Ayesha concluded her talk with\u00a0key takeaways\u00a0she\u2019s gained from her climate communication experiences:<\/strong><\/p>\n