Engagement and journalism innovation for outstanding open science communication
There are no recognized standards in science journalism and communication, nor principles or indicators of quality. And yet they are needed, particularly in a moment when science communication is more than ever a key factor in facilitating democratic deliberation and in fighting misinformation. To fully benefit from a digital society, citizens need to feel that the information they receive responds to their needs and is useful to face and solve their problems. The climate crisis, the recent pandemic and many more global challenges can only be dealt within a framework of policies and actions properly informed by science, allowing all relevant stakeholders to decide and act on the basis of evidences and not of noises and misinformation. ENJOI will explore and test engagement as a key asset of innovation in science communication distributed via media platforms, with a strong focus on journalism. Through a combination of methodologies and in collaboration with producers, target users and stakeholders of science communication, ENJOI will co-create and select a set of standards, principles and indicators (SPIs) condensed to a Manifesto for an Outstanding Open Science Communication. ENJOI will deploy a series of actions via Engagement Workshops, Labs, field and participatory research, evaluation and testing phases.It will also build an Observatory as its landmark product to make all results and outputs available to foster capacity building and collaboration of all actors in the field. ENJOI will work in four countries: Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain, taking into account different cultural contexts. ENJOI’s ultimate goal is that of improving science communication by making it more consistently reliable, truthful, open and engaging. Contextually, ENJOI will contribute to the active development of critical thinking, digital awareness and media literacy of all actors involved in the process.