Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ENJOI (ENgagement and JOurnalism Innovation for Outstanding Open Science Communication)
Période du rapport: 2022-07-01 au 2023-12-31
The Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and other global challenges highlight the urgency of improving science communication and journalism in a systematic way. The media ecosystem is living a crisis of trust and accountability. While many organizations have put an effort into improving the quality of science communication (SC), there are not as yet well-defined standards that the science communicators can refer to as a guideline and that audiences can use to judge the quality of the information they receive.
The main objective of ENJOI (ENgagement and JOurnalism Innovation for Outstanding Open Science Communication) is to provide a new set of Standards, Principles and Indicators (SPIs) to define outstanding open science communication (OOSC) with a very strong focus on journalism and any platform-mediated science communication. ENJOI addresses the challenge by exploring and testing in-depth engagement as a key asset of innovation in the field. At the same time, ENJOI looks at how different innovative digital journalism approaches have potential to reach audiences that are not already engaged in and with science. Co-creation is a crucial feature of the ENJOI approach: each action develops from the intertwining of multiple experiences and skills.
Through Engagement Workshops (EWs), Labs, field, landscape and participatory research, evaluation and testing phases, ENJOI co-designs and validates the SPIs. The SPIs are then condensed into a Manifesto for an OOSC that guides people who are producing, consuming, and sharing scientific information.
The ENJOI’s flagship product is the Observatory for OOSC, through which the results and a range of useful innovative tools are made available to foster capacity building and collaboration of all actors in the field. The Observatory should become a reference point for those acting in the fields of science journalism (SJ) and SC. It will be the lasting landmark outcome of ENJOI as it will live well beyond the Project's lifetime.
Working in 4 countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Belgium), ENJOI takes into account different cultural contexts to understand barriers experienced by SJ in Southern European countries (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) compared with other EU experiences (Belgium as a European benchmark).
The main objective of ENJOI (ENgagement and JOurnalism Innovation for Outstanding Open Science Communication) is to provide a new set of Standards, Principles and Indicators (SPIs) to define outstanding open science communication (OOSC) with a very strong focus on journalism and any platform-mediated science communication. ENJOI addresses the challenge by exploring and testing in-depth engagement as a key asset of innovation in the field. At the same time, ENJOI looks at how different innovative digital journalism approaches have potential to reach audiences that are not already engaged in and with science. Co-creation is a crucial feature of the ENJOI approach: each action develops from the intertwining of multiple experiences and skills.
Through Engagement Workshops (EWs), Labs, field, landscape and participatory research, evaluation and testing phases, ENJOI co-designs and validates the SPIs. The SPIs are then condensed into a Manifesto for an OOSC that guides people who are producing, consuming, and sharing scientific information.
The ENJOI’s flagship product is the Observatory for OOSC, through which the results and a range of useful innovative tools are made available to foster capacity building and collaboration of all actors in the field. The Observatory should become a reference point for those acting in the fields of science journalism (SJ) and SC. It will be the lasting landmark outcome of ENJOI as it will live well beyond the Project's lifetime.
Working in 4 countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Belgium), ENJOI takes into account different cultural contexts to understand barriers experienced by SJ in Southern European countries (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) compared with other EU experiences (Belgium as a European benchmark).
ENJOI explored the existing innovation landscape and openness in SJ and SC to understand if and how citizens’ information needs are getting appropriate and useful responses. The investigation's results focused on 4 lines of innovation experimented by the media industry recently: how engagement has been exploited by digital media in covering science; how the use of data can specifically contribute to excellent journalism; how innovative media formats (interactive, visual, cross-media) can effectively communicate science to users; how solution journalism is used in science topics.
The quality and effectiveness of interactions between scientists and media have been investigated through a specific literature review to detect the state of the art of the interaction and possible areas for improvement.
The process of defining SPIs consists of several phases aimed to fine-tune the results obtained in the previous one (cascade approach). The process is managed according to the agile philosophy. The desk research marked the starting point for identifying what is already available regarding SPIs. A preliminary SPIs inception report has been used to move into a co-creation phase by sharing it with relevant stakeholders in a round of 4 EWs (in 4 countries in local languages). EWs benefited from a methodology designed to strengthen both the way collaborative partnerships are to be engaged and how the workshop should be implemented to maximize the collaboration. Mutual learning meetings were held after each EW to improve the methodology and increase participants’ capacity to express their information needs and demands for high standards in quality content. The results from the 4 EWs have been discussed in an ENJOI Consensus Workshop to define further and distill the SPIs.
A small exploratory study was also carried out to develop and implement an analytical framework for the qualitative analysis of a set of SJ/SC products disseminated in traditional and digital/social media in the project’s 4 local languages (example of SPIs in use).
The ENJOI Communication and Dissemination Strategy has been designed to multiply the project impact not just in the 4 countries but also in other EU contexts and overseas. Visual identity, website, ENJOI Zenodo community, and social media accounts are in place. ENJOI was also disseminated at key events: ECSITE, Dataharvest, ESOF.
The Short Policy Brief RP1 provides balanced information to help policymakers formulate useful policies.
The quality and effectiveness of interactions between scientists and media have been investigated through a specific literature review to detect the state of the art of the interaction and possible areas for improvement.
The process of defining SPIs consists of several phases aimed to fine-tune the results obtained in the previous one (cascade approach). The process is managed according to the agile philosophy. The desk research marked the starting point for identifying what is already available regarding SPIs. A preliminary SPIs inception report has been used to move into a co-creation phase by sharing it with relevant stakeholders in a round of 4 EWs (in 4 countries in local languages). EWs benefited from a methodology designed to strengthen both the way collaborative partnerships are to be engaged and how the workshop should be implemented to maximize the collaboration. Mutual learning meetings were held after each EW to improve the methodology and increase participants’ capacity to express their information needs and demands for high standards in quality content. The results from the 4 EWs have been discussed in an ENJOI Consensus Workshop to define further and distill the SPIs.
A small exploratory study was also carried out to develop and implement an analytical framework for the qualitative analysis of a set of SJ/SC products disseminated in traditional and digital/social media in the project’s 4 local languages (example of SPIs in use).
The ENJOI Communication and Dissemination Strategy has been designed to multiply the project impact not just in the 4 countries but also in other EU contexts and overseas. Visual identity, website, ENJOI Zenodo community, and social media accounts are in place. ENJOI was also disseminated at key events: ECSITE, Dataharvest, ESOF.
The Short Policy Brief RP1 provides balanced information to help policymakers formulate useful policies.
ENJOI reviewed results and outcomes from previous SC projects and a trove of published literature and reports focusing on diverse aspects of SC (other Swafs19 projects; science festivals and fairs; reports from Nieman Lab, Reuters Institute for Journalism; meetings and papers by PCST; ECSITE; ESOF and more).
The literature and landscape research, as well as the EWs results, indicate at least 3 blind spots that might benefit from research and co-creation activities in the second part of ENJOI and beyond: digital innovation in SJ; in-depth engagement, and the ability to reach and co-work with people and communities who do not seem interested or attracted to science. These 3 blind spots have become more evident while working on the results from the 4 EWs integrated with insights and learned lessons from the desk and landscape research. Therefore the SPIs resulted thus far need to be further tested and developed during the Labs with 4-helix stakeholders before being organized into a useful Manifesto for OOSC. The Labs will explore new ways of creating, delivering, and receiving content and information on science.
The activities deployed in RP1 set the scene for the next more tangible phase: co-designing, producing and testing 2 sets of innovative, practical tools for various SC users and 4-helix stakeholders. The tools consist of training resources, academic courses, inspirational e-books for scientists, guidelines for policy-makers to support them in communicating risk and crisis-related issues to a broad range of communities, and MOOC or webinars for media producers in SC.
These outputs will be available to producers and users of SC through the Observatory for OOSC to foster capacity building and collaboration of all actors in the field. Special care will be put into reaching out to those producers and users who are not specialists and experts in the field of SC.
ENJOI will continue and reinforce the collaboration with the other Swafs19 projects through meetings, joint proposals, conferences, and joint publications, such as the Opinion article published in the OA journal Frontiers in environmental sciences. Furthermore, the collaboration between all Swafs19 projects, and the exploitation of the ENJOI outcomes, is ensured by the success of the joint proposal COALESCE, a project that aims to build the European competence center for SC, due to start in early 2023 and to continue for 4 years.
ENJOI aims to go beyond the EU region. Thanks to existing connections with Latin America, it will set up collaborative workshops with relevant stakeholders overseas to enhance bi-directional knowledge exchange and incorporate the non-western perspective on SC.
The literature and landscape research, as well as the EWs results, indicate at least 3 blind spots that might benefit from research and co-creation activities in the second part of ENJOI and beyond: digital innovation in SJ; in-depth engagement, and the ability to reach and co-work with people and communities who do not seem interested or attracted to science. These 3 blind spots have become more evident while working on the results from the 4 EWs integrated with insights and learned lessons from the desk and landscape research. Therefore the SPIs resulted thus far need to be further tested and developed during the Labs with 4-helix stakeholders before being organized into a useful Manifesto for OOSC. The Labs will explore new ways of creating, delivering, and receiving content and information on science.
The activities deployed in RP1 set the scene for the next more tangible phase: co-designing, producing and testing 2 sets of innovative, practical tools for various SC users and 4-helix stakeholders. The tools consist of training resources, academic courses, inspirational e-books for scientists, guidelines for policy-makers to support them in communicating risk and crisis-related issues to a broad range of communities, and MOOC or webinars for media producers in SC.
These outputs will be available to producers and users of SC through the Observatory for OOSC to foster capacity building and collaboration of all actors in the field. Special care will be put into reaching out to those producers and users who are not specialists and experts in the field of SC.
ENJOI will continue and reinforce the collaboration with the other Swafs19 projects through meetings, joint proposals, conferences, and joint publications, such as the Opinion article published in the OA journal Frontiers in environmental sciences. Furthermore, the collaboration between all Swafs19 projects, and the exploitation of the ENJOI outcomes, is ensured by the success of the joint proposal COALESCE, a project that aims to build the European competence center for SC, due to start in early 2023 and to continue for 4 years.
ENJOI aims to go beyond the EU region. Thanks to existing connections with Latin America, it will set up collaborative workshops with relevant stakeholders overseas to enhance bi-directional knowledge exchange and incorporate the non-western perspective on SC.