Stories

The Rita Allen Foundation recently shared a new landscape report, Writing the Story of Civic Science Media, to help spark conversations and collaboration around how partnerships between media, communities, and scientists can extend the reach and impact of science. Project lead Sarah Armour-Jones and 2024 Civic Science Fellow Catherine Devine reflect on their work on the report and the power of storytelling for amplifying science’s reach and impact.

Last summer, baby KJ Muldoon was born with a rare genetic disorder, CPS1 deficiency, that causes severe cognitive and developmental delays. Six months later he became the first patient to receive a custom gene-editing treatment to fix his genetic mutation. It worked. His case feels miraculous, but it also gives us a glimpse at the real possibilities of targeted gene therapy and scientific collaboration.

At this unique and troubling moment in our country’s history—when we are grappling with unprecedented cuts to science funding, attacks on evidence, and concerns about the future of science in this country—KJ’s story serves as a reminder of what science can mean when it’s protected, prioritized, and made to benefit humanity. It’s also a story of federal investment in science that can contribute to a new narrative about science as a public or civic good.

The Association of Science and Technology Centers recently released national polling about how United States adults perceive science. As reported by the Civic Science Media Lab, while people value science and its impact on their lives, the Association’s Eve Klein and Erica Kimmerling (2020-21 Civic Science Fellow) suggest that the engagement community should consider “connecting policy actions and changes to the tangible, lived experiences with science.”

That raises some important questions: How do we make science feel less distant? How do we build a culture where science is not just something we observe, but something we shape together—for investment, for participation, for shared impact?

That’s the focus of a new collaborative overview, Writing the Story of Civic Science Media. The report offers a collection of civic science media projects and insights from field leaders to understand how media can strengthen the vital connections between science and communities. These stories make a clear case for media outlets to partner with both communities and scientists to amplify science’s reach and impact. The collaborations highlighted in the report offer new models of engagement that reflect community values and foster greater understanding and trust. They can help us build a new narrative about the civic nature of science.

If we want to create a new story of science, based on an understanding of shared benefit and deep civic engagement, we might think about how to incorporate narrative change into this work.

Why a new narrative? Narratives are a collection of stories that are invisible yet powerful drivers of social change. They create connective tissue in people’s minds, reinforcing ideas through a constant drip of images and ideas, shared by different messengers and across politics, policy, news media, pop culture, social media, lectures, press coverage, art, school, and the dinner table. Many of the stories highlighted in Writing the Story of Civic Science Media convey positive ideas about science’s role in community life through media-based stories and, when scaled and shared consistently and over time, can shape public sentiment and behavior.

Think about smoking in the 1970s, which was associated with freedom and sophistication. It took decades of coordinated narrative work across medicine, culture, law, and media to flip that script. Now, smoking is widely seen as dangerous and unappealing (beliefs) and rates of smoking (behaviors) have decreased steadily for decades.

Though narratives can drive progress, they can also amplify misinformation. Vaccine hesitancy shows how powerful, and perilous, stories can be when they spread unchecked and create a larger narrative about medicines being unsafe and science being part of government overreach. Stories like these must be countered with new narratives that shift people’s beliefs, and eventually, their actions. Like science, narrative change is long work, but it’s essential to building support for the public investments, policies, and engagement that support and improve science.

As we navigate this moment in our nation’s history, building a culture of civic science feels more important than ever. How might we expand our understanding of the narratives surrounding science and find ways to create new ones? How can the civic science community help shape the story of science itself? How do we thread science into the narratives that move people, not just inform them?

As we make progress toward answering these questions by both building on decades of promising work and forging new collaborations and career pathways across science and society, we invite your questions and ideas. Let’s work together to imagine a new story of science.