Skip to content
Mathematical Communication

The Where

About the Lesson

Purpose

Introduce the methods and best practices for sharing your work publicly

Goals and Outcomes:

  1. Participants will be able to describe the different methods for sharing their work themselves
  2. Participants will be able to describe the different methods for sharing their work through the media
  3. Participants will critically appraise if they should share themselves or share through media
  4. Participants will write their own draft of a press release for their work
  5. Participants will practice being on both sides of the interview process

Lesson Notes

The Big Questions for all Communications

  • What is your Point? What do you want people to take away?
  • What is your Goal? What do you want out of the communication?
  • What does success look like? How can you tell if you succeed?
  • Always keep these in mind!

Who is going to do the sharing?

  • You
  • University
  • Journal
  • Department
  • Reporter
  • Event Promoter

Who controls the message matters

  • Why would you want to work with a reporter/outlet?
  • Why would you want to share your work yourself?

Deciding which path is for you

  • How much control do you want?
    • If the answer is anything other than you do not care or none, then you want to share it yourself
  • How much work do you want to do?
    • If the answer is anything other a lot of it, then you want someone else to share it
  • Are you sharing your results or your process?
    • If it is your process, you probably want to share it yourself
    • If it is your results, either path is good
  • How niche is your work?
    • The more niche the more likely you will have to share it yourself
  • Is there an outlet/reporter that already covers your area?
    • If there is you have a choice
    • If there is not, you don’t

  • Would the media even cover it?

    • Newsworthiness
      • How many people could be impacted?
        • The more people the more newsworthy
      • How recent/new is your work?
        • Media craves newness
      • Is there a hook into recent events?
        • Older research can be made newsworthy if world events make it so
      • Can your work be located in a place?
        • Local news reporters want to cover news that is about their location
        • Stories are easier to tell if they take place somewhere specific
        • Readers are more interested if a story takes place in their community
      • Is there a conflict/disagreement involved in your work?
        • Conflict drives narrative
      • Is there something unexpected about your work?
        • The more out of the ordinary the more newsworthy
      • Is anyone who took part in your research, or their institutions, well known?
        • Public figures and institutions are more newsworthy
        • Does your research say something about a public figure or their actions?
      • Are there visuals?
        • The more breathtaking the more newsworthy
      • image

Sharing your own mathematics

  • Style

    • Explainer
      • Area focused
      • Problem Focused
      • Application Focused
    • Narrative
      • Person focused
      • Subject focused
      • Fiction
    • Marketing
      • Fund Raising
      • Policy Push
      • Result Publicity

  • Writing

    • Publishing with an outlet
      • Feature/News Piece
        • Great for sharing results, helping to educate about a field, and building your profile. A medium amount of time constrained work.
      • Opinion Piece/Letter to the Editor
        • Great for adding context to hard to explain topics, advocating for a specific public policy, and helping to influence public thought. A medium amount of time constrained work.
      • Pitching
    • Personal Blog
      • Great for process and results, building community, and building your public profile. Amount of work can vary, and no time constraint.
    • Fiction, Comics, Poetry
      • Can reach wider audiences that may not be specifically interested in mathematics, or other STEM areas. Much more about sharing a general sense of what it means to be a researcher and how it feels than sharing anything specific. Amount of work can vary, but it is time constrained.
    • Zines
      • Can reach people who might not be reached by any of the other methods. Since it is a physical object it can be felt to be more valuable to those who have them and therefore it is a good bonus for people who support you and your work in some way. A lot of time constrained work.

  • Audio

    • Platforms
      • Radio
      • Podcasts
    • As a Guest
      • Great for sharing results and building your public profile. Minimal time constrained work.
    • As the Host
      • Great for building community and building you and your guests’ public profiles. A lot of work with possible time constraints.

  • Video

    • Platforms
      • TV/Movies
      • YouTube
    • As a Guest
      • Great for sharing results and building your public profile. Minimal time constrained work.
    • As the Host
      • Great for teaching, building community, and building you and your guests’ public profiles. A lot of work, with possible time constraints.

  • Social Media

    • Text
      • Mathstodon
      • Threads
      • Twitter
      • Blue Sky
      • LinkedIn
      • Great for sharing process, can be useful for building community and profile. Minimal to medium work per post, but a lot of work overall with no time constraints
    • Visual
      • Still Images
        • Instagram
        • Facebook
      • Video
        • TikTok
        • IG Reels
      • Great for education and building community and profile. Medium to a lot of work per post, and a lot of work overall with no time constraints

  • Community Outreach

    • Professional Communities (Conferences, Discord, Listservs, etc)
      • Tends to lean more technical, great for networking and advancing the scholarly conversation. Minimal to a lot of time-constrained work.
    • Informal Education spaces (museums, libraries, etc)
      • Great for education and helping building interest in STEM. Medium to a lot of time-constrained work.
    • Live Events (storytelling, public lectures, maths busking, etc)
      • Great for helping build public interest in STEM. Medium to a lot of time-constrained work.

  • Example Time

  • Pitch session

    • If you were going to share your research story using one of these methods:
      • Which would it be
      • What would you do
      • Why?

Having your mathematics shared

  • Press Releases

    • What they are
      • Jagon light summary of research result, usually an article
      • Share on institutional websites and services like Eurekaalert and Newswise
      • Often shared directly with journalists
    • Activity: Write the first paragraph of a press release about your most recent work
      • 5 W’s and H of the Inverted Pyramid image|500
    • AND, BUT, THEREFORE
      • This is true/happened AND this is true/happened BUT this thing complicates that THEREFORE we did this which resolved things

  • Where to go for help

    • PIOs and University Communications Offices
      • Help spread news of recent work
        • Help with press releases
        • Directly pitch to journalists
      • Connect media to researchers looking to report on a story
    • Journal Press Relations

  • Being a part of someone else’s piece

    • Journalists and Mathematicians
      • How they are similar?
        • They both ask questions
        • Answer questions through investigating current knowledge, testing existing knowledge through reproducuction, and then developing new knowledge where there are gaps through observations and gathering and analyzing data
        • Cite existing knowledge to support claims
        • Communicate their findings and take part in a larger community conversation
        • Should be self-correcting
      • How they are different?
        • Different audiences
        • Different time scales
        • Different bosses and business priorities
    • Questions to ask
      • What is the output?
      • Who is the audience?
      • What is the timeline?
        • Journalists often has tight deadlines to work with
      • How will what I tell you be used?
        • direct quotes
        • paraphrasing
        • background
      • Are there other people involved?
    • Interviewing Best Practices
      • Concise
      • Avoid Jargon
      • Mention where more context or a tangent is possible, but wait for the reporter to bring it up
      • Reporters generally do not share questions or articles pre-publication
        • They may be able to share back the quotes they plan to use though
    • Interviewer/Interviewee Activity
      • Share your Press Release paragraph with a partner
      • Develop 3-5 questions from the paragraph
      • Ask your partner your questions
      • Answer your partner’s questions

Acknowledgements

  • Much of this material was adapted from previous work by the wonderful Sadie Witkoswki