By Sevtap Savas, PhD., Kayla Crichton, Janine Taylor-Cutting, and Jason Wiseman.
Podcasting can be a valuable public communication tool to connect new dots, hear new perspectives, and disseminate useful knowledge on cancer.
Podcasting can be a valuable tool for generating public knowledge and sharing content with the wider community.
In this blog post, we discuss our experience with podcasting as a public engagement tool.
First, let’s introduce our partnership!
Public Interest Group on Cancer Research is a group of three scientists and 10 community members located in Newfoundland and Labrador, a Canadian province with one the highest cancer incidence and mortality rates in Canada.
One of our projects in 2023-2024 was about creating digital stories and knowledge on cancer, including sharing lived experiences, providing information on cancer care and support programs, and advocacy. A part of this project was dedicated to podcasts. The project was co-led by a community member, Jason Wiseman, who also acted as co-host in select podcast episodes in addition to other co-hosts, Janine Taylor-Cutting, Kayla Crichton, and Sevtap Savas.
Creating a podcast has been a new and valuable experience for all of us.
Podcasting does not require a lot of funds
The limited funding we had prompted us to acquire technical expertise to create, edit and post the podcast files in an economical way.
We used a tool available via our institution (i.e., WebEx platform – which is used to record the podcast conversations virtually) and publicly available tools (e.g., Kdenlive – which is used to edit the MP4 file and convert it to MP3 format). Note that tools such as Zoom can replace WebEx. Using these free tools (and when needed, getting tech support from a research staff), we were able to create 14 podcast episodes with diverse guests and at minimal cost. We posted the episodes on Spotify.
Initial scheduling conflicts led to our productivity
At the beginning of our podcasting journey, we experienced scheduling conflicts among the guests and hosts.
Partnering and working with community members who have lived experience is essential for meaningful public outreach activities and the creation of public podcasts, as we aimed in this podcast project. Community members were volunteers on this project and they had professional and personal commitments. Therefore, it was not always possible to schedule the recording sessions in a short time, or when they were preferred by the guests.
After a discussion within our team, we decided to offer the guests predetermined times/dates that were good for Jason and Janine, our community co-hosts. As she could schedule her time more freely, Sevtap Savas (the project co-lead and scientist), stepped in as a host when the timings did not suit our co-hosts.
This experience helped with three aspects of the project and partnership:
- Re-recognizing and respecting community members’ needs and commitments, while affirming that these are important parts of a sustained and satisfactory partnership.
- Availability of the scientist co-lead as the podcast host meant creating more podcasts, and hence, efficient use of funding.
- In our experience, listeners appreciate knowing what to expect from the podcast producers. Hence, a number of podcast episodes were generated and aired for public access continuously between February and July 2024.
Privacy considerations can be tough but are manageable
Finding a balance between the guest’s privacy (or the privacy of other people that the guest might want to talk about) and conducting a well flowing and genuine conversation requires some skill sets and a priori discussion with the podcast guests.
We informed all guests in writing as well as verbally prior to the start of the podcast recording that they did not have to say anything they were not comfortable with. This is empowering to guests. We also found that it helped address the potential power issue when the host was the researcher.
If anyone accidentally talked about others’ medical history without consent, these sections would be removed from the final podcast file. Hence, in some cases, podcasting required communication with the podcast guests after the recording as well. Note that this project was funded by the Office of Public Engagement at Memorial University and required adherence to funder/university policies.
We’ve evolved as we go!
Podcasts are supposed to be informative, have interesting and accurate content, and be genuine and conversational. Having a conversation means both the guest(s) and the host(s) are talking to each other, but sometimes it felt like guests would be asked one question after the other. Hence, it could feel like an “interrogation”. Striking a balance regarding involvement by the guest and host is therefore very important.
In our case, this balance required hosts to speak more over time. In many cases, Sevtap used this opportunity to either provide scientific facts on the topic or summarize and emphasize the guests’ contents. This being said, we believe that care should be continuously exercised so that the conversation will not be dominated by the host.
In summary
- Podcasting requires preparation and interactions with the guests before, during, and if needed, after the recording.
- If it involves patient/community partners as co-hosts, the researchers need to respect that their schedule and level of engagement will be different from that of an academician. Hence, community-partnered activities are likely to take longer time so that they can be equitable, enjoyable, and of high-quality. The slow science school of thought could easily apply to community-researcher partnerships. This is an important reminder for not only the researchers but also the funders and podcast users.
- Podcasting can be a cost-effective way to reach out globally for researchers, as well as an essential part of community engagement.
- Privacy can be a particularly tricky subject for scientists/academics and may need to be carefully considered in public podcasts.
- Podcasting is a very enjoyable and meaningful way to speak up, listen, learn, and contribute to the community – by both hosts and guests. In our case, feedback from podcast guests indicated high satisfaction.
- Podcasting is also a great skill development activity for all sides involved, and can help improve researchers’ science and public communication proficiency.
We hope that our experience will encourage you to partner with community members and podcast for public outreach.