Public Engagement Framework and Definition
📌 The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) defines public engagement as providing opportunities for mutual learning between scientists and the public, fostering a two-way dialogue.
🔬 The traditional deficit model (one-way communication by providing facts) is increasingly ineffective, especially when facts counter existing beliefs.
📈 An informal Twitter poll showed that 42% of respondents engage in casual conversations about science in their everyday lives.

Planning Engagement: Goals and Audience
🎯 Goals for engagement can be big picture (e.g., encouraging trust in science), individual (e.g., preparing for one specific talk), short-term (e.g., meeting a journalist), or long-term (e.g., building partnerships with educators).
🔑 All goals must be actionable; focus on what you hope the audience will *do* as a result of the engagement, not just inform them.
👥 Audience perceptions on controversial topics (like vaccines or GMOs) are heavily influenced by demographics such as age, ethnicity, political affiliation, and religion, not just scientific knowledge.

Crafting the Message
✍️ Scientists must reverse their typical communication structure (details first, results last) for the public, leading with the headline or key finding first.
💡 Utilize the "3 Ms of Messaging": Miniature, Memorable, and Meaningful. Aim for three key words or phrases that summarize your topic.
🍔 When ensuring messages are meaningful, use universally relatable analogies (e.g., comparing rock types to food items like fudge or cookies) while being aware of the trade-off between accuracy and relatability.

Overcoming Communication Barriers
🚫 Jargon (specialized terms) must be replaced with universal, common language; if a critical technical term is necessary, it must be explicitly defined for the audience.
🤔 Be mindful of words with dual meanings, such as "significant" (scientific proof vs. general importance) and "theory" (scientific model vs. mere opinion).
👂 Key personal engagement tips include being brief, curious, a good listener, and encouraging curiosity in others, as curiosity fosters openness to new information.

Implementation and Evaluation
🛠️ An engagement plan should be timely, attainable, and narrow in scope, focusing on concrete next steps that can be achieved soon (days, semester, or year).
🔄 Engagement is a cyclical process: planning (goal, audience, message) leads to implementation, which is followed by evaluation (self-reflection and feedback) that feeds into the next cycle of goals.
📣 Opportunities for practice and feedback include attending AAAS workshops on social media or policy communication, or using the "Share Your Science" booth (Booth 1615) to record and review messages.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ Prioritize two-way dialogue over simply dispensing facts; seek opportunities for conversation and feedback (e.g., allowing comments on blogs or responding to emails from policymakers).
➡️ When connecting with an audience, find shared values, interests, or concerns to establish an entree for meaningful conversation, as seen with the Alaskan fishing village example.
➡️ If unsure of audience expertise, assume a baseline of high school or even 8th-grade level science, as only about 30% of US adults have taken a college-level science course.
➡️ For immediate messaging preparation, jot down your three core message points—the things you would write on a sticky note for a brief encounter with a journalist or stakeholder.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Oct 23, 2025, 13:20 UTC