Photo of IMSc

In recent years the coverage of science in the Indian media has increased in depth and vibrancy. This has been accompanied by an active dialogue between some scientists and journalists on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Some very interesting recent discussions on Confluence [1] [2] covered science, journalism and issues faced by both sides in science reporting. These highlight the need to address communication gaps between scientists and science journalists. 

This workshop brings together scientists interested in communicating to the public across multiple media and science journalists with an interest in accurately describing Indian science, its breakthroughs as well as its problems. It will attempt to provide scientists with an idea of “what journalists really want” as well as to provide journalists with an idea of scientists concerns about how their work is represented. Several scientists and science journalists have responded very positively to the idea, and a tentative schedule is up now.

The format will be based on panel discussions rather than long talks. Panels of 3-6 people will discuss a variety of topics, with each panelist making short presentations before opening the topic to discussion, enabling active participation by all attendees.

This meeting is being held in collaboration with Dialogue: Science, Scientists, Society, the recently-launched journal of the Indian Academy of Sciences. 

UPDATES

The meeting is over and was very well received. Photos available here.

A livestream was shared on the IMSc and Dialogue channels on youtube. Cleaned-up videos, broken by session, are now available on this playlist.

Thanks to several participants for actively live-tweeting: check out this thread by the Bangalore Life Sciences Cluster team in particular.

Thanks to Vimal Simha of Gubbi Labs for this detailed write-up.

And for Tamil readers, here's Peer Mohamed's article in Ippodhu.com.

Organizers:
Gautam Menon, Rahul Siddharthan
The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai
CONTACT:  scimedia@imsc.res.in