9.5 Opportunities for Improvement
231
Care ® (ICCA, 2019), there is still an ongoing need to continue developing a
deeper dialogue within society. A qualitative review of four chemical companies
(Burningham et al., 2007) explored how company executives characterized the
public and related this to the company’s approach to public engagement and
communication. Often, the study found that companies viewed the public as
consumers of their products or as neighbors to their manufacturing sites. In these
roles, the chemical industries viewed the public as being important to (1) understand
the public’s consumption patterns and interest in the industries’ products or (2) avoid
their industry having negative impacts on the community that could lead to conflicts.
However, in this way, the public was not seen as providing the industry with any
knowledge, and overall the review found the companies to have little interest in
engaging the public more widely or earlier in the design process.
The exception to this, the study found, were the few very large corporations that
were able to allocate the additional time and financial resources to invest in initiating
what are often costly stakeholder dialogues.
The study argues that the chemical industry will need to continue shifting its
perception of the public from just consumers and neighbors to instead considering
them as valuable stakeholders that through dialogue can provide knowledge and help
create benefits. The many smaller companies will need to work toward following
the model of their larger competitors and expand their efforts to promote societal
dialogue.
Other stakeholders can also improve their contributions to societal dialogue.
Hartings and Fahy (2011) argue that chemists (and other scientists for that matter)
are themselves important voices in the risk-benefit discussions within chemistry.
However, scientists have classically not worked on actively communicating their
knowledge and research to nonexperts and instead rely on their scientific publications or on scientific journalists to do this for them. Chemistry, unlike the fields of
evolutionary biology and cosmology, also generally lacks inherent narratives that
help with storytelling. To help scientists improve communication of their research,
R. Olson has written a couple of books on the topic (Olson, 2008, 2015), and
Hartings and Fahy recommend scientists consider the following five strategies to
help with this:
• Practice research-driven communication: Use research from existing communications studies and science communication to understand public stakeholders
and how they receive information.
• Understand the audience: Consider that there are many types of audiences with
different levels of background knowledge and levels of interest in the topic. Aim
to understand the audience’s attitudes, values, and beliefs about the topic.
• Participate in the new communication landscape: Relying on science journalists
is a weakening trend, and scientists often have their own social media channels
and platforms to communicate and share information. Scientists need to be able
to adapt to this modern environment.
231
Care ® (ICCA, 2019), there is still an ongoing need to continue developing a
deeper dialogue within society. A qualitative review of four chemical companies
(Burningham et al., 2007) explored how company executives characterized the
public and related this to the company’s approach to public engagement and
communication. Often, the study found that companies viewed the public as
consumers of their products or as neighbors to their manufacturing sites. In these
roles, the chemical industries viewed the public as being important to (1) understand
the public’s consumption patterns and interest in the industries’ products or (2) avoid
their industry having negative impacts on the community that could lead to conflicts.
However, in this way, the public was not seen as providing the industry with any
knowledge, and overall the review found the companies to have little interest in
engaging the public more widely or earlier in the design process.
The exception to this, the study found, were the few very large corporations that
were able to allocate the additional time and financial resources to invest in initiating
what are often costly stakeholder dialogues.
The study argues that the chemical industry will need to continue shifting its
perception of the public from just consumers and neighbors to instead considering
them as valuable stakeholders that through dialogue can provide knowledge and help
create benefits. The many smaller companies will need to work toward following
the model of their larger competitors and expand their efforts to promote societal
dialogue.
Other stakeholders can also improve their contributions to societal dialogue.
Hartings and Fahy (2011) argue that chemists (and other scientists for that matter)
are themselves important voices in the risk-benefit discussions within chemistry.
However, scientists have classically not worked on actively communicating their
knowledge and research to nonexperts and instead rely on their scientific publications or on scientific journalists to do this for them. Chemistry, unlike the fields of
evolutionary biology and cosmology, also generally lacks inherent narratives that
help with storytelling. To help scientists improve communication of their research,
R. Olson has written a couple of books on the topic (Olson, 2008, 2015), and
Hartings and Fahy recommend scientists consider the following five strategies to
help with this:
• Practice research-driven communication: Use research from existing communications studies and science communication to understand public stakeholders
and how they receive information.
• Understand the audience: Consider that there are many types of audiences with
different levels of background knowledge and levels of interest in the topic. Aim
to understand the audience’s attitudes, values, and beliefs about the topic.
• Participate in the new communication landscape: Relying on science journalists
is a weakening trend, and scientists often have their own social media channels
and platforms to communicate and share information. Scientists need to be able
to adapt to this modern environment.