SciComm Conversations: “Identities in science communication”
Listen to “Identities in science communication. Guest: Dr Nic Bennett” on Spreaker.
Transcript
Achintya Rao [00:09]: Welcome back to SciComm Conversations. My name is Achintya Rao. After an unexpectedly long break, we are continuing with our second season, with this episode featuring an interview with Dr Nic Bennett about the SciComm Identities project. You can find out more about the project at scicommidentities.org.
This interview was conducted by my colleague Sara Urbani of Formicablu. Sara spoke to Nic at the international conference of the Public Communication of Science and Technology network, or PCST, held in Aberdeen earlier this year.
Nic Bennett [00:44]: I’m Nic Bennett. I’m a postdoc research fellow with the SciComm Identities project, and I’m at Michigan State University.
Sara Urbani [00:54]: Let’s focus on the main thing that you are taking here to PCST. So, basically, what can you tell us something more about this SciComm Identities project?
NB [01:04]: Yeah, this is a project that was funded for five years. And April 25th, as many might know, in the US, many National Science Foundation projects that had a social-justice basis were cut, and we were one of those. So, [the] SciComm Identities project is interested in… There’s so many science-communication training programmes around the United States, and are they doing a good job? So far, it seems like in some ways, yes, but in other ways, actually they treat the training like a one-size-fits-all. And often, that one-size-fits-all means the dominant type of person, a cis, white, heterosexual, relatively affluent person.
And so we were curious about what if a training centred people’s culture, people’s identity. So there’s a training programme that’s a fellowship for pre-tenure environmental-science faculty who are racially or ethnically marginalised in the US. So there’s like the training programme, and we’re developing it, and studying it, and evaluating it, and then on this other side, well it’s not really a side, it’s kind of mixed in, is research as well. There’s theories that say that identity and communication are actually not separate, even though often we don’t talk about them in the same way. What kinds of research are needed to think about how science communicators’ identities actually affect the engagement that they do, yeah.
SU [02:40]: Okay, and at what point is this research or this project right now? What are you presenting at PCST?
NB [02:49]: Yeah, it was in its fourth year when we got cut, so we are presenting the story so far, and the story to come. So the story so far is, before I joined the project, I joined last year, so it’d been going on for a couple of years before I joined as a postdoc. The team is very huge.
SU [03:08]: How many people?
NB [03:10]: I have all the names on the slide that I would love to… I don’t want to miss anyone’s names. It’s got quite a lot of people. The team has folks at the University of Rhode Island, including the principal investigator, Sunshine Menezes. We’ve got Jason Jaacks, Evelyn Valdez-Ward used to be a postdoc on the project, and has since moved on to her own project. Amirali Momeni is one of the graduate students, and we’ve also got Erin Edmonds, Fara Warner, Amanda Gilmore, Katharine McDuffie, and Phoebe Neel at University of Rhode Island. And I’m at Michigan State University. I’m advised by Bruno Takahashi, and we’ve got Eric Freedman there. Sooyoung Shin used to be a graduate student there. She’s now at Alabama, but she still collaborates with us. There’s Iasmim Amiden dos Santos. Leilane Rodriguez is a graduate student that used to work with us, and has since moved on to amazing other projects. We’ve also got Donté Smith, Barb Miller, Dave Poulson, and Leigh Anne Tiffany, who used to be a graduate student there, moved on to the EPA, or Environmental Protection Agency, in the US. So there’s a lot of us, people coming in and out, so I’m one of many. So I’m representing folks here at PCST, but there’s a lot going on.
So before I joined, they did some qualitative interview research to ask scientists who are marginalised in science, so folks who are not white, “How does your identity affect the communication you do?” And the interviews really showed that it’s more complex than we usually treat it. Usually the stories are kind of a binary one, of like, “Well, there’s the dominant group and the non-dominant group.” And we cannot treat folks who are marginalised as just one thing. And so that first study was, “Wow, identity is complex and fragmented and dynamic.” And it’s what we knew in theory, but to hear the stories from people was really powerful. So the next step was to then look at this in kind of a more numerical way.
And so we did a survey last year trying to sample as widely as possible environmental scientists in the United States. And our questions were, “How do people perceive their own identities?” And we borrowed some theory thinking about identity layers. So, oh, I’ve got an ethnic identity, a professional identity, my personal identity, all of these different layers make up who I am. And they are not separate. It’s not really like a cake layer. It’s more like they kind of play and feed together. And so one of the first things we were interested in is who thinks about these identities more than others. And we expected folks who don’t feel like they belong in science spaces, so folks who are not white, we expected they might be more aware of their identities. Because they’re having to kind of constantly think about their culture, think about their identities because they’re trying to either match the space or negotiate the space. Whereas white scientists don’t have to think about these things. It’s invisible. And even though it’s kind of an obvious question, any marginalised scientist is going to be like, “Yeah, duh!”, we do have now some quantitative data to back that up, showing that scientists who are marginalised think about their identities a lot mo—, they have higher identity perceptions than white scientists.
And this makes a lot of sense and really makes the case for why identity is important to think about. The kind of next piece of that same survey that I want to highlight is that we were also thinking about something called identity gaps. So there’s all the… lots of different identity layers that you can have, but we’re thinking about like how you think of yourself versus how others see you. If there’s a difference between that, there’s an identity gap. So if I see myself in a certain way, but others are seeing me in a different way, then I would have a large identity gap. And we were hypothesising that if you have a large identity gap, it might affect your communication. So feeling understood, even wanting to engage all these sorts of communication outcomes were things we measured.
And while the exact model that we proposed didn’t quite fit mathematically, we did find a negative association, which means the larger the gap, the more my identity doesn’t match with how others see me, the worse I feel about my communication outcomes. So I’m not feeling understood. I’m probably not as likely to go to journalists to do an interview. The same kind of conclusion can be interpreted from that, of it really does matter about culture and identity and science communication. It’s not something that we can ignore. Folks who feel this kind of mismatch, that’s affecting their communication. And we really need to think about this. And it speeds into that training part that we are working on, of what happens then, if we centre identity and culture and training, rather than pretending everybody has the same experience and culture. And assuming that that is a white culture, in the US.
From there, of course, like any research project, we now have more questions. [laughs] And a lot of these were like nice platforms where we were like, we probably think that this is what’s happening with identity, but we would like to get some quantitative answers. And so right now we’re working on two parallel projects to go more in depth with different groups. So I’m co-leading a project with Natasha Jones about black scientists and we’re using a method called photo voice, where they will go out and take photos of what it means to be a black scientist in the US at this time, which is an interesting time to be a black scientist in the US. And so this is a participatory project in which they’re going to be co-researchers with us, so they’re going to end up shaping it. So we come in with this kind of initial offer, but they’re going to end up shaping it and telling us what it actually needs to be.
In that project, I’m really curious about it going beyond kind of having to prove marginalisation, like instead of having to constantly prove to dominant groups that black scientists are marginalised, instead thinking about the questions that actually matter to us materially and thinking about what our space is to look like. Where do we feel like there is what bell hooks would call homeplace? Like there are some… maybe all of science doesn’t feel like a place of belonging, but sometimes there are pockets, or maybe it’s not in science, maybe it’s in your community. And what are the ingredients there? Take pictures of them, we talk about it, and we dream about what science communication could be. So that’s one side of things.
SU [10:22]: And the other?
NB [10:24]: The other is speaking with immigrant scientists who come from South American and Central American countries, who speak Spanish or Portuguese. It’s a complicated way to say it, but it’s a specific experience in the US. And so that project will be a testimonials project, which is like a really in-depth interview with one question. So it’s just like “Tell me your story,” and then letting the person kind of take it from there and go really deep in their story. And similar objective, different group, kind of thinking about what are the ways in which we can treat scientists of different cultural backgrounds, different languages, not as like a monolith, not as like one group, but like the ways that they see the world and that they imagine the world to be, is a better place. It’s better for everybody actually. So these are our two current projects. We’re also going to hopefully follow up in the [Northern hemisphere] fall with another survey. The dream there is to maybe connect some of the work on identity with some of the previous work on science communication.
So we know a lot about the theory of planned behaviour. So when is a scientist more likely to communicate? If they have particular attitudes, if there are norms in place, if they feel what we call self-efficacy, that is like, can I do this? And so we’re curious about how identity and the work that we found before my interact with that. So if I have a big identity gap and I’m not feeling understood, I’m probably less likely to feel that confidence. I’m probably less likely to engage with the public. So kind of really connecting our work more to some of the communication scholarship that’s out there in that quantified way as well. We dabble all over the place in the art space world and qualitative and quantitative, trying to kind of paint this picture of why identity matters in science communication.
SU [12:23]: You mentioned the ethnic background, I don’t know how to say it, but it does it always has to be in that area or the mismatch can also cover maybe gender identity or other types… Because you said layers or different type of identity. So what else?
NB [12:44]: Oh yeah, I imagine that it would happen with all sorts of mismatches. We’re particularly interested in race and ethnicity and so that’s what we were looking at. But I can imagine that that mismatch would show up and loss of different dimensions of who we are.
SU [13:00]: Could it be a new project maybe?
NB [13:03]: Absolutely could. [laughs] Yeah, one thing about working in this part of the field is that there’s lots of lots of area to explore. So anytime someone new shows up, I’m like, oh please come. There’s no scarcity of work to be done over here. There’s lots of great questions.
SU [13:19]: And did you find any maybe distance or scepticism from… I mean people would be happy to be engaged in this type of research or maybe they may be afraid of putting themselves on the stage and say, “Yes, I’m going to tell my story.” “Maybe I’m not comfortable enough.”
NB [13:36]: Yeah, that’s a great question. I don’t know about that first interview study because I wasn’t involved with it. The photo-voice study and the testimonial story are happening during this second Trump administration. I don’t have any like direct stories of people saying I’m afraid to talk, but they’re probably not saying that to me. I imagine that it’s a time when speaking out is not… especially… is something that someone has to kind of manage for their own safety, how they want to go through the world. But one thing we did think about was how people could contact us. I’m also a community organiser. And so we think about security quite a lot. We think about safe ways to contact one another. “Oh, the protests is going to be over here.” If I’m sending a message that I don’t want to necessarily be found like that, I would send it through Signal. And so we actually for the first time I had my like community-organising world and my science world had to meet each other and I taught my research team Signal. And I was like this is… and it was an option when I was recruiting for this latest study, where I was like you can e-mail me if you want if you feel comfortable, knowing that people could probably read our e-mails, they could ask for our e-mails. Or you could message me on Signal and say you want to be a part of this study. So there’s definitely some difference there in terms of political climate. And I imagine there’s many more that I don’t hear about, the people that didn’t even say anything.
SU [15:07]: So in a way is… and this is getting more political of course, but I think it’s inevitable being you know this theme. So in this specific historical moment in the US but not only, this is something like I see attention between the need to speak up and you know raise these questions but also, yes, some fear or you know legitimate fear of, “Yes, I don’t want to be singled out and maybe I don’t want to risk my position,” or maybe “I’m, you know, young and maybe I’m here from another country, I can’t risk my visa.” So how do you manage yes the safety but at the same time the necessity of taking this this theme out.
NB [15:59]: Oh yes I’ve been thinking about this question a lot. I’ll tell you a story. So, before we were defunded, we were going to a conference and we were asked by the conference to abide by the [presidential] executive orders. Even though the executive orders are not laws, even though they cannot be enforced.
SU [16:19]: Confidence was in the US?
NB [16:21]: It was in the US, yeah, and so they were saying if you still want… And this was running a workshop on some of the programmes… And so it is inevitable in a SciComm Identities project workshop that we’re going to be mentioning many of the words that were not allowed anymore by the National Science Foundation. So we had a really difficult meeting as a team, to talk about this and I’m really glad that we were a team. On my own… I am trans but I’m white. I am a postdoc, which gives me a little bit more risk but I have my PhD, so I have like a specific mix of risk and, like, ability to kind of be a bit more visible and be a bit more loud. And I know my own tolerance for that, so if it was just me that would be a different decision. And I might be a bit more clownish about it, I might use it as a protest moment, which I could totally use in jokes with the team but we’re team.
And we have everything from people who have tenure and have way more secure positions, but also a mix of other marginalised identities, being immigrants, speaking different languages. But we also have graduate students who are on visas. And so in those conversations, they’re the ones I’m thinking about and in the end that’s who I wanted, who we all wanted, to defer the decision to. We wanted to make a decision that we were all comfortable with. It’s very difficult for me to do what they call “obeying in advance”, which kind of lets fascism run its course. It’s how it’s working right now. And at the same time I wanted the most vulnerable of our students to make that decision. And they… it wasn’t safe for them to be loud and boisterous like I could be. And maybe I can’t be, maybe it would have affected me as well. And so we made the decision to cut all of those forbidden words from the slides itself. I wasn’t there at the conference and I think that the parts that were spoken were maybe continued to be the same, but there was like we allowed that censorship in the slides in order to protect the most vulnerable of the students.
And like anything there’s no template. There’s no, like, here’s what you do. I see lots of people online being, like, “Here’s a, like, easy way to, like, do this.” It’s like… there’s no easy way. All of these decisions have to weigh your own comfort with risk, your own vulnerability, and it is that kind of time in the United States… A lot of my community organising is with other white people and trying to get folks to take responsibility. And thinking about those of us who have less risk, actually it’s a time for us to take on a bit more responsibility. But that question is everyone’s to answer for themselves and that own mix. And as a team is even harder. And so we were like let’s go with our most vulnerable folks and link arms and leave no one behind.
SU [19:32]: Good. I think it wasn’t an easy decision. And how did it go? I mean the conference, except for the forbidden words.
NB [19:42]: Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t at the conference. I heard the workshop went quite well. There was definitely some weird audience member taking photos of the slides and texting other people maybe they were just very excited about it. Maybe they were there watching. But it’s easy to be paranoid in these times that that’s happening. But overall there wasn’t any problem with our slides.
SU [20:04]: Good, good. And how do you feel being here? Do you… I mean coming from the US? Do you feel like in Europe it’s kind of… this is my curiosity… It’s a little better? Or do you do sense that we are coming your way?
NB [20:17]: Yeah, I think the world is connected. There’s a very simplistic narrative in the with many US academics of, “Oh, I’ll just go to Europe!” I think we’re missing that this is happening everywhere. Not only does what happens in the US affect other countries but this kind of right lean, lean towards authoritarianism, is happening globally. It’s a time of change and crisis. It’s a time where as humans we’re very uncertain, and when we’re uncertain we can choose fear. Or we can choose that love and choose protecting one another. And we’re watching people take those choices. And it gives me hope that some people are still choosing the love. And that is why I keep doing this work and why I’m here trying to find others like that. It’s been hard as an early-career academic in the United States to kind of wrestle with that decision of… I’ve built my career on doing social-justice work and science communication. And it’s not as simple as changing words.
SU [21:26]: But on a lighter note, I mean let’s… because these are deep, deep themes and I know exactly where we are right now globally. But do you think when you joined this project that you’re presenting here – and maybe the next one that are coming – do you feel… I mean it’s an interesting question, it’s an interesting field of research but you mentioned something that, it’s a place where your history, your personal history and the values that you believe in are coming together in your research as well. So is this something that makes a lot of sense, like not only in a scientific way but also in a deeper way?
NB [22:17]: Yeah, for me or…?
SU [22:18]: For you.
NB [22:19]: Yeah for… I mean that’s the question I keep asking myself. I really like doing the research part of this and I think I like asking those, especially those questions that we’re asking now, that are not necessarily centring people who are sceptical of social-justice work. Because often in social-justice research, we’re having to like prove oppressions or just kind of exhausting distractions. Like if I present the chart that says marginalised scientists are more aware of their identities than white scientists, a marginalised scientist is going to go, “Yeah, duh!” and yet some of this work is important to make that point. But the work I’m most excited about is that… the dreaming about a better world. And so I don’t know if that necessarily happens within the ivory tower for me. I always find myself like needing to kind of touch and be with the world, whether that’s in the art spaces or community organising or maybe in a more interdisciplinary academic space. I’m not sure where it is but I know what the work is, I don’t know what the job is. [laughs]
SU [23:30]: Good, good. Let’s start with this and then we’ll see where you go.
This episode was edited by Sneha Uplekar. Find out more about Sneha’s work on her website, microdragons.co.uk.
Music for SciComm Conversations is by Brodie Goodall. Follow Brodie on Instagram at “therealchangeling” or find them on LinkedIn.
SciComm Conversations is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
The COALESCE project is funded by the European Union to establish the European Competence Centre for Science Communication.
Views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the guests only and do not necessarily reflect those of COALESCE or of the European Union.
