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ScieNcE Together

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NET (ScieNcE Together)

Reporting period: 2020-05-04 to 2021-03-03

The ERN edition 2020 was marked by the still ongoing covid-19 pandemic. This experience has redefined the the approach on scientific communication, which has necessarily been reconsidered and organized in new different ways.The original project involved direct meetings with the citizen, such as workshops, trekking or experiments, but, due to the Covid-19 emergency, some of our activities took place in the presence and others online, such as virtual tours or games for kids. The main objective of NET project is to build a consistent network to contaminate the territory with science. NET's strength is its high-level partnership. NET’s Network offers a long-lasting path through which researchers can share their passion for science getting closer to citizens by a correct scientific information on simple and complex questions. This would be one more step to achieve a major goal: to build and plan a research-based society, increasing the number of young people pursuing research careers. This will constitute a new way of dissemination path that increasingly meets the needs of knowing and awareness of people. NET researchers were the main actors in the activities with citizens, aiming at promoting the specific role of authoritative and rigorous information source, especially in response to disinformation and fake news
WP1. AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
On-line tools
WEBSITE
SOCIAL MEDIA
SPOTS AND TESTIMONIALS
VIDEOS Researchers’ stories
Off-line tools
PRESS OFFICE
Promotional materials
Pre-events In presence pre-events
7 scientific talks “Notti di Scienza” – Arena Parco Talenti
3 Scientific aperitifs
10 urban and naturalistic scientific trekking
2 astronomic observations
“TALENTI PER LA SCIENZA” – 25-26 September 2020 – Arena Parco Talenti: 11 laboratories, 2 conferences, 2 show-conference, 2 demonstrations
Collaboration of NET project with “ISOLA DI EINSTEIN” in Polvese Island
ON-LINE PRE-EVENTS
Collaboration of NET project with CHANGE Achitecture City Life
Università della Tuscia held a science festival which included a series of dissemination activities (including scientific treks mentioned). Among the events, 6 online conferences on environmental sustainability issues.
TRAINING ACTIVITIES FOR NET RESEARCHERS: NET project has dedicated significant space to the internal training of its researchers. The training course for NET researchers conducted by the science journalist Giovanni Carrada
OVERVIEW OF THE RESULTS: NET's communication campaign, taking into account the first edition experience and the particular year in which it took place, achieved good results with an overall number of about 5.400.000 people reached by NET information channels, including the most important institutional stakeholders channels. 41 in presence pre-events and 19 digital pre-events saw the participation of more than 33.000 people, including many cities throughout the country, remaining central to the city of Rome

WP 2 ACTIVITIES DURING THE NIGHT
ON-LINE PRODUCTS
5 HANDS ON ACTIVITIES AND GAMES
2 CITIZEN SCIENCE ACTIVITIES
37 LESSONS anda experience
14 MEETINGS WITH RESEARCHERS
15 NET TALK VIDEOS
13 VIRTUAL TOURS
5 INTERACTIVE GAMES
4 DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILMS
3 VIRTUAL TOURS AND EXHIBITIONS
32 LIVE MEETINGS WITH RESEARCHERS
22 EXPERIMENTS AND EXPERIENCE ON DEMAND
European Corner: The European corner was organised as a dedicated page of the NET website. Located on our web site testimonials/activities conducted by researchers funded by the EU, in particular Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions with their success stories being on site collaborating with NET partners

WP3 IMPACT ASSESSMENT
ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY AND EVALUATION TOOLS: The impact of the activities carried on by the consortium partners within the NET project was assessed by a multi-method approach, involving the use of traditional and innovative methods of data acquisition and analysis. Data from different sources were collected in order to have an evaluation of the activities both from qualitative and quantitative point of views. Below, the list of the raw data considered: number of attendees for each event, number of researchers involved in each event, number of researchers having taken/taking part in FP7/Horizon 2020 involved in each event, number of hits on the project website and on the related pages on the partners’ websites, number of friends and followers on the social network pages dedicated to project events, (facebook, youtube etc), evaluation of media coverage
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS: As a further method for analysing the impact of the project, the sentiment analysis was proposed in the project proposal. In particular, we proposed to analyse Twitter post, if the data access possibilities would have enabled it. Actually, the project account on Twitter is the account #scienzainsieme, which had been successfully used in 2019 as part of the activities and events carried out by Scienzainsieme project. It was blocked by Twitter since end of august 2020 due to a technical error. From that moment we have maintained constant contact with Twitter trying to reactivate the account, but this inexplicably only happened in December 2020. Despite this, we performed the analysis. A sentiment analysis associated with the events of the Researchers' Night was conducted in December 2020. Through the Tweet Catcher software, all Tweets that contained a set of keywords and/or posted by a particular user were downloaded
OVERVIEW OF THE RESULTS: During the NET project 86769 attendees participated to the events according to the information available, distributed against pre-events (which being held in the summer months could be in presence) and NIGHT events (which being held in autumn, during the second pandemic outbreak, had to be mainly online). Details about the number of attendees for the various types of activities are reported in Table 1 and Table 2 for pre-events and events of the NIGHT, respectively. 345 researchers were involved in the activities (see Table 3 for details)
These numbers are really encouraging and beyond the expectance that had to be rescaled because of the pandemic emergency

WP 4 MANAGEMENT:
USE OF RESOURCES: Some of the partners had to reallocate parts of their budget, since due to the Italian covid-19 regulations, the in-presence planned activities for the months of October and November could not be carried out, while considerable extra effort had to be devoted to the planning and realization of previously unforeseen online activities. Most of the partners consequently reallocated part of the saved money to their “direct personnel costs” (especially resources planned for travel), to cover extra person/months effort
Although the conditions for this type of project were difficult, we believe it has helped to increase increased awareness among the general public of the importance of research and innovation and more favourable general attitude towards its funding. Multiplying the opportunities of meeting researchers through different communication formats, thanks to several on line tools too, made possible to talk both about the content of their researches and about the processes needed to develop them. Communication training for researchers contributed to the improvement of their skills to engage with a diverse audience and made them better advocates for the research and innovation importance
NET - identity