Uniting science and stories: Perspectives on the value of storytelling for communicating science

Science helps us identify problems, understand their extent, and begin to find solutions; it helps us understand future directions for our society. Scientists bear witness to scenes of change and discovery that most people will never experience. Yet the vividness of these experiences is often left out when scientists talk and write about their work. A growing community of practice is showing that scientists can share their message in an engaging way using a strategy that most are already familiar with: storytelling. Here we draw on our experiences leading scientist communication training and hosting science storytelling events at the International Marine Conservation Congress to share basic techniques, tips, and resources for incorporating storytelling into any scientist’s communication toolbox.

[1]  Norman Kaplan,et al.  The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations , 1974 .

[2]  G. Bower.  Experiments on Story Understanding and Recall * , 1976 .

[3]  J. Lubchenco.  Entering the Century of the Environment: A New Social Contract for Science , 1998 .

[4]  T. Brock,et al.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology the Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives Text Quality Individual Differences and Situational Influences Transportation Scale Items Gender Differences Discriminant Validation: Need for Cognition Effect of Text Manipulation Beli , 2022 .

[5]  K. Sand‐Jensen,et al.  How to write consistently boring scientific literature , 2007 .

[6]  Michael F. Dahlstrom.  The Role of Causality in Information Acceptance in Narratives: An Example From Science Communication , 2010, Commun. Res..

[7]  Ann A. Flowers.  On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research: Third Edition , 2010 .

[8]  U. Hasson,et al.  Speaker–listener neural coupling underlies successful communication , 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[9]  Randall Stilla,et al.  Metaphorically feeling: Comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex , 2012, Brain and Language.

[10]  S. Garrod,et al.  Brain-to-brain coupling: a mechanism for creating and sharing a social world , 2012, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[11]  R. Kelly,et al.  Narratives Can Motivate Environmental Action: The Whiskey Creek Ocean Acidification Story , 2014, AMBIO.

[12]  Martin Krzywinski,et al.  Points of view: Storytelling , 2013, Nature Methods.

[13]  Jameal F. Samhouri,et al.  How Good Science and Stories Can Go Hand‐In‐Hand , 2013, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[14]  Ayelet Baram-Tsabari,et al.  Measuring mumbo jumbo: A preliminary quantification of the use of jargon in science communication , 2014, Public understanding of science.

[15]  Michael F. Dahlstrom.  Using narratives and storytelling to communicate science with nonexpert audiences , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[16]  Ko de Ruyter,et al.  The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers' Narrative Transportation , 2014 .

[17]  Susan T. Fiske,et al.  Gaining trust as well as respect in communicating to motivated audiences about science topics , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[18]  Thomas L. Griffiths,et al.  Supplementary Information for Natural Speech Reveals the Semantic Maps That Tile Human Cerebral Cortex , 2022 .

[19]  Taylor H. Ricketts,et al.  Policy impacts of ecosystem services knowledge , 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[20]  Christopher M. Danforth,et al.  The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes , 2016, EPJ Data Science.