PARTHENOS Training slides around audiences and communications in Research Infrastructures

1. • Theme 2: Audiences and
Communications
ESU Leipzig, 2016
Dr Jennifer Edmond
Trinity College Dublin

2. Remember: Infrastructures are like
Elephants
IMAGE
https://pixabay.com/en/blind-men-elephant-story-feel-see-1458438/
CC0 Public Domain
Parthenos@2016

3. A Few Basic Rules
- You need to know your mission…
- What is the scale of your project? What must it achieve, and
what might it achieve?
- But don’t be too narrow: think wider than your main outputs, there
is a lot of value at the fringes that could be neglected, your project
is bigger than you know!
- You need to know and prioritise your target audiences
- If you are building an RI, you are probably not building a general
public product
- What are you doing of value for your audience(s)? Who are not
targets for you?
- What are the key milestones in your project development, and how
can you use them?
- Even a digital project is also part of human networks, use them well,
trusted intermediaries and the context of a wider horizon can be key
- Be patient and persistant, some relationships take time to build,
some ideas need time to bed in. Critical mass and level of activity will
be important for some audiences/instruments (credibility vs
tumbleweed effect)
- Strip away layers of complexity to find the story, express it in 3
sentences and, if possible, find the picture too (especially for
journalists)!

4. Who are your audiences?

5. Who are your audiences?
Researcher Users
Researcher Peers
Content Owners
Management
National/International Policy makers
Peer Institutions
Parallel Projects
General Public
Media
Artists
Industry
Developers

6. PARTHENOS Audiences

7. What do you want them to know or do? (Value)

8. Become a user
Become a better user
Build your reputation
Tell their friends about you
Cite your work
Improve impact metrics
Give you data
Give you money
Work for you
Satisfy curiosity
Adapt policy for your
License your software
Tap into your knowledge
What do you want them to know or do? (Value)

9. How can you reach them
(Instruments)

10. Email Lists
Website
Peer Reviewed
Papers
Advertising
Branded Swag
Newsletters
Posters
Press Releases
Press Conferences
How can you reach them (Instruments)
Personal Contact
Conference Presentations
Training events
Word of Mouth
Network/Project contribution
Video/Still Image
Social Media (but what
platform?)
Referral traffic from SM too
Launch event
TV/Radio/Newspaper/
Magazine

11. • Communication for impact =
reuse/uptake outside of the
peer group
• An increasingly dominant force
in EU/UK
– UK REF Impact Case Studies
– Also implicit in the EU Open
Science Agenda
• PESTE/STEEP as an older model
for understanding and
increasing impact
• Co-Creation and Open Science
as newer paradigms
IMPACT

12. Thank you
www.parthenos-project.eu
Jennifer Edmond
Trinity College Dublin
edmondj@tcd.i
e
www.tcd.ie