Episode #1:
How to communicate science and fight misinformation with Andrew Youngson
In this episode of The Craft podcast, join Shorthand’s Dawn Murden and Andrew Youngson, the News and Campaigns Content Manager at Imperial College London. They discuss how communication leadership has changed over the last decade, the importance of measuring user enjoyment on social media, and how to stop the propagation of misinformation online.
How to listen:
This episode's guest
Name: Andrew Youngson
What he does: He's the News and Campaigns Content Manager at Imperial College London.
Company: Imperial College London
Noteworthy: Andrew is a published author. He wrote a Sci-Fi mystery novel called The Memory Project.
Where to find Andrew: LinkedIn
Links from this episode
Episode highlights
How communication leadership has changed over the years
"Very quickly, as soon as I joined, they brought in social media as part of the role. So not just helping people create the content, but also helping to promote the content. That was a big thing for me. I had some social media experience beforehand, but this really was something that I needed to properly get to grips with when I joined here. So that was the first big step. And then maybe the last two and a half years or so, there was this recognition that the approach that we were taking to our news content output, promotion, and evaluation could be rolled out further. And since I've been here, the communications division has grown quite considerably as well, with new teams in some cases, but certainly more people and more campaigns."
Be open to experimenting
"If I've learned anything in my early career, it's the importance of experimentation and being open to trying new things and not just taking what your organization gives to you as parts of your daily role. We all have our job descriptions. It must meet the requirements, all of it, but the moment that we just take that as the full boundary of what we do is really dangerous for our own personal development and, in turn, bad for the organizations that we're working for."
How do you fight misinformation?
"It's understanding where, at each point of your communications process, might misunderstanding and misinformation creep in. So knowing how something's going to be perceived is such a vital part of our role for handling misinformation. [...] It just makes us better communications professionals to always be thinking about what the audience reaction will be, or what the audience’s understanding will be. Therefore, are we communicating well, knowing that it's real people that are taking this information on? We're not communicating as one institute to the government. We're not just communicating with other people who have multiple PhDs. We're telling people like me, like anybody, that this information is valuable too. So we need to communicate in a way that is understandable."
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