By Massimiano Bucchi.
A spacious meeting room in a prestigious university.
Vice-Chancellor - Good afternoon everybody and thanks for being here. I am the Vice-Chancellor for Public Engagement. We are here today to discuss how to improve our university public communication and public engagement strategy. Let me briefly introduce the participants: Professor Orange, Department of Physics; Professor Green, Department of Environmental Sciences; Professor Mustard, Department of Computer Science; Professor Turquoise, Department of Political Science; Professor Brown, Department of Statistics; Professor Blue, Department of Philosophy. And of course, Mrs. Black, who heads our communication office.
Mrs. Black - Thank you, Vice-Chancellor. I have asked also Mr. Mellow Yellow to be here with us today. Mr Mellow Yellow is a highly successful influencer and renowned specialist of social media and he is going to help us with his advice. He is a great expert in AI, storytelling and TikTok and the person behind several pieces of viral content, including the famous “Coconut dance” which you probably have seen…
(Mr Mellow Yellow makes some dance moves with his arms).
Vice-Chancellor (slightly embarrassed) - Thank you Mrs. Black. Dear colleagues, let me briefly remind you why we are here. Our public engagement strategy needs substantial improvement. We need to communicate more, and better, and be more visible on social media. And we are prepared to invest significant resources on this effort. Mrs. Black, can you report on the state of our university social media?
Mrs. Black - Yes. It is not very positive. Our Facebook page has slow updates and low engagement rate, particularly with young audiences. We have about 20,000 followers on Instagram. We are not on TikTok. Some of our professors, though, are quite active on social media, but as you can imagine we have no control over their content.
Vice-Chancellor - (sighs) Yes, that’s another problem.
Professor Orange - Is Professor Purple from the Department of Immunology still providing advice on diet, fasting and cooking suggestions on social media?
Mrs. Black - Yes, she is. And she has more than 40,000 followers on Instagram, ehm, that's double of our university page.
Professor Orange - I see. Our colleagues in food science are probably not very happy.
Vice-Chancellor - They are not. However, we are not here to discuss Professor Purple’s Instagram page. Let’s go back to our communication strategy. How can we can we improve?
Professor Blue - Sorry, a strategy to do what?
Vice Chancellor - I beg your pardon?
Professor Blue - Why do we actually want to improve our communication? What are our aims?
Professor Mustard - Because we want to attract more students!
Professor Turquoise – Because we need to fight misinformation, distrust in science and polarisation!
Professor Orange – Sorry, what is polarisation?
Professor Mustard - Polarisation is when people don’t agree with each other.
Professor Orange - I see. We have a lot of that at my home. I am going to tell my children that it is called “polarisation”, but maybe they know already…
Professor Brown - But it is simply not true that people have low trust in science. Every reliable source of data, national and international, shows that trust in science is high and increasing…
Professor Green - That’s not possible! I have a cousin who does not even believe in climate change! And my grocer once told me he doubts we have ever landed on the Moon!
Professor Mustard - That’s because they live in their own information bubble. It’s the algorithm, basically…
Professor Turquoise - And what about Trump, or Elon Musk? Or (pauses a bit for reflection) Brexit?
Professor Brown - I cannot see the connection among Trump, Musk, Brexit and trust in science…
Vice-Chancellor - Colleagues, please, let’s stay focused, we’re not here to discuss politics at large. Professor Brown, could you please share the data you refer to in our WhatsApp chat? Professor Blue, as you know, we also have obligations, and pressures from different stakeholders. The National funding agency asks us to do public engagement and duly report it about it. We also need to offer some of our results back to taxpayers and other funders…anyway, please Mrs. Black, can you illustrate the proposed strategy?
Mrs. Black - Thank you, Vice-Chancellor. First of all, with regard to social media. We will open a TikTok account and manage it with the help of Mr. Mellow Yellow and some brand new, highly engaging content. Mr Mellow Yellow, can you say something about it?
Mr Mellow Yellow – With pleasure. By the way, you can call me just Mellow. Or just Yellow, as you wish. After careful data mining and analysis of our competitor’s strategy and positioning…
Professor Blue – Competitors? Who are our competitors?
Vice-Chancellor – What Mr. Mellow, or Mr. Yellow, means is other comparable universities and colleges. Please go ahead Mr Yellow, or Mr. Mellow…
Mr. Mellow Yellow - After careful data mining and analysis of our competitor’s strategy and positioning, we are planning to launch on TikTok and Instagram a challenge for PhD students called “Scroll Science”.
Professor Orange - Scroll what?
Mr Mellow Yellow - Scroll Science. If you think about it, it’s quite obvious. What do most people do on buses, trains, undergrounds? They scroll notifications, states and stories on social media. So the challenge for PhD students would be to describe their main research achievement in a 30 seconds animated video.
Professor Orange - 30 seconds? But that’s not even enough to introduce yourself and the topic.
Mr. Mellow Yellow - That’s the attention span we need to work with, I’m sorry. People scroll for 30 seconds, then they move to the next. By using state of the art AI and with some investment in paid advertisement, we are confident that we can engage at least 100,000 TikTok users, and more than 50,000 Instagram users, a good portion of which will become our followers.
Mrs. Black – This would put us much higher compared to Bridgerton University. And also compared to Professor Purple!
Professor Orange – You seem to take for granted that our PhD students will be eager to participate, but what if they are not? These activities can take a lot of time. Also, some of them may not be technically savvy.
Mr. Mellow Yellow – Yes, we also thought about that. We will provide a specific training on how to make short, catchy, engaging videos. And for those who have no time, we just need the title of a paper and we will produce the video using AI!
Professor Blue – Can I ask again: what is the aim?
Vice-Chancellor (discouraged) – Oh dear. What do you mean Professor Blue?
Professor Blue – I mean, once we have more views and followers, what does it mean? Scrolling a video or even putting a like does not imply understanding of content. We are a university, not a company selling goods or advertisement!
Vice-Chancellor (discouraged) – Professor Blue, I can see your concern but we need to keep up with the pace of contemporary communication and audiences, otherwise we will be outrun by other universities!
Professor Mustard – Are you sure about the title of the challenge? “Scroll Science” does not sound very positive to me…
Mrs. Black – Actually we considered other options. But “Pills of Science” sounded problematic and potentially discriminating for some areas of study. “Shots of Science” was likewise problematic, particularly for young audiences…
Professor Brown – What about audiences who don’t take buses, trains, or the underground?
Mr Mellow Yellow (smiling) – Well, they scroll their phones anyway during pauses, meetings and… university classes…
(embarrassing silence)
Vice-Chancellor (sharp) - Dear colleagues, I am sorry but it is time to close this meeting now. Thank you very much for your attention and input. Please do not forget to cast your vote on the question “Shall we leave X/Twitter or not?” on our Telegram Channel. We will soon reconvene for more updates on our communication strategy. Have a good evening.
(to be continued)
Note: Names and characters are fictional. This little piece does, of course, not deny that there is high quality content on social media and that some universities are doing a great job with public engagement.