Use video to cut through jargon

• Published in: Nature (London) Vol. 556; no. 7701; pp. 397 - 398
• Main Author: Smith, Adrian A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group 19-04-2018
• Subjects: Audiences; Families & family life; Jargon; Museums; Science; Scientists; North Carolina; United States > US
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/d41586-018-04606-2

In the past three years, I have produced and posted ten videos tied to institutional press releases about scientific research papers originating from my or my colleagues' labs. We want to use press releases as a way to make our research narratives directly accessible to a mass-media news audience - just as I made my paper accessible to my mum. Since the paper's release in May 2015, it has accumulated around 12,200 page views - but the video about the paper has received more than 62,300 views. First-person accounts of science were not a part of my life when I was younger. Adrian A. Smith is head ofthe Evolutionary Biology & Behaviour Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and a research assistant professor in biology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.