 Okay so I think it's time to start the webinar. Thank you everyone for joining us so far. And welcome to this special webinar on how to communicate sensitive science to non-experts with a special focus on natural hazards. My name is Simon Clark and I am the European Geoscience Union's Project Coordination Officer. Today we have two speakers, experts in science communication on natural hazards. We have Samantha Montano, Assistant Professor of Emergency Management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, co-founder of Disaster Research for Justice, and author of Disasterology Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis. We also have Sam Mitchell, block analogist and research official and University of Bristol. As previously experienced in public talks, documentary consultation, school workshops, including dealing with misinformation and biotech perceptions on the eruption crisis. We'll have an audience Q&A at the end of this session. At the bottom of the screen you should see a Q&A box where you can enter any questions which we or our speakers will answer towards the end of the session. And also where you can upload questions which we'd like to be answered by the panelists. Beyond that, there's not much more for me to say. So to begin, Samantha, would you like to take over? Yeah, thank you for that introduction. Hi everyone. Happy to be here with you all today. I'm going to get my screen shared here. So I kind of wanted to go over today where we have been in terms of disaster science communication and kind of where we're going and how that is changing in the 21st century, given changes to technology, but also in terms of the urgency of communicating risk to the public themselves. So a little bit more of a background on me just so you kind of know where I'm coming from here. I first got started doing disaster work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the Levy failure about 17 years ago now. And I ended up moving to New Orleans and I did all kinds of recovery work with different nonprofit organizations that, you know, we're doing everything from rebuilding houses to helping people fill out insurance paperwork. And kind of all of the like grueling tasks that come with a major disaster recovery. And in the process of doing that, I became very disillusioned and very frustrated with how we approach emergency management in the United States and how resources are not being effectively used and equitably distributed in communities. And I started going to some other disasters that were happening around the United States, the BP oil disaster on the Gulf Coast, the Joplin tornado in kind of the middle of the country in Missouri. And I saw kind of the same problems coming up again and again in all of those responses and recoveries and so I ended up deciding to go to graduate school so that I could. The plan was to kind of learn what the research said about how we should be managing disasters and then go back to working with nonprofit organizations who were on the ground doing that work and try to integrate that research into the work we were doing. In the process of going to grad school I came to find out that we have some like broader problems with how we approach actually managing these events. And so I've kind of gone down a little bit of a separate path, much of which has led me to doing a lot of public engagement type work. So, you know, Simon mentioned I wrote a book. I have, I spend a lot of time on Twitter and social media talking about disasters to the public do a lot of interviews with journalists, helping them kind of analyze disasters as they're unfolding. And, you know, kind of anything and everything in helping communicate disaster research to the public. So I ended up but it really wasn't kind of what I intended when I started. So I kind of wanted to talk through the path to getting to where I am now, because I think maybe some others are in a similar position. I'll also say right off the top on this issue of sensitive topics. So much everything in disaster science is a sensitive topic, at least kind of in certain contexts and to different groups of people. And so this issue of how to approach engaging with the public and really respectful and kind of approachable ways is something that's kind of central to all of the science communication or all of the public engagement work that I try to do so you'll have to read it throughout here. So, in terms of when I was first starting out in the field, I think I had no interest in doing anything called science communication. It never even really occurred to me my kind of vision of what it meant to communicate science to the public was very limited to, you know, having grown and grown up watching shows like Bill and I the science guy or like what Brian Cox says Neil deGrasse Tyson which is I think this perhaps kind of a limited perception of what disaster or what science communication is. As I kind of became more engaged in research and going through graduate school there were certainly some other scientists that I looked to who were not only talking about science kind of as being on inspiring, but also taking that next step into helping people understand how the science that they were studying affected their day to day lives so people like Rachel Carson and Carl Sagan, speaking out on issues of the environment going to Congress, pushing for specific policy reforms. In their work was something that kind of spoke to me, although not necessarily something that kind of falls under that traditional kind of like pop science communication that we tend to think about. And I think kind of on the other end of the spectrum here you have actual scholar activism like bell hooks and Angela Davis, people who are coming from traditions of really building political and social change into the science that they are doing every day and into how they're engaging with the public. So I think the first thing to kind of think about here is really where you fit on the spectrum of this public engagement, depending on kind of what your intentions are the resources that you have. Also the topic that you're studying, I think there's a kind of a can be a big difference between somebody who is very specifically studying hazard, and the people who are studying the fallout of when that hazard interacts with us and things go bad. And so kind of depending on on where you are kind of falling on that spectrum, you know, kind of the the path forward that you take is probably going to look different. So in terms of disaster science specifically. I would say, you know, going back to like the 1950s we have pretty limited or been pretty limited in our science communication efforts you see some of the kind of founders of disaster research doing some limited interviews with journalists. We're starting a couple of popular press stories, and kind of engaging in some more formal science communication initiatives but it's all pretty limited for many decades. I think as we've come into the 21st century we're starting to see this really shift. One of the kind of first major changes and questions that we've seen is this question of who are we actually communicating with. This model here is specific to disaster management. So we generally kind of break this up between the discipline so the people studying disasters, the profession, the people who are doing disaster management in practice. And then the users which is not a great name but kind of everybody else the people who are on the ground doing the work of disaster management so the public survivors of that event nonprofits businesses. Other government agencies all of the people who are, you know, getting the lights turned back on opening shelters doing all of that work. And when you look at kind of where our focus has been in terms of the discipline we've really focused on communicating and bridging the gap as we say, between the discipline and the profession but as you can tell from these arrows. We want to be seeing this communication between the discipline and everybody else who's engaging in this work and I think this is kind of the foundational model here for why it's so important for us as researchers to be engaging specifically with the public to be engaging with these other groups that are involved in disasters so as we kind of think about what this looks like moving forward. I think that most of this public engagement or a lot of it is going or takes place online on social media. And I think we're in a place, kind of especially in the, in the middle of but still in the aftermath of the pandemic of there being this real breakage of trust between the public and scientists, where you know having credentials that you have to be demonstrating on a regular basis to people that you know what you are talking about that you are giving them effective information that, you know, they that you are somebody that they can look to to trust. Certainly this issue of trust is this this huge challenge for us kind of across the board in any discipline. I think also one of the biggest challenges here is being able to actually show people why it is that they need to care about what you're talking about. There is so much that you have to break through in order for your message to reach the public that you really need to be able to demonstrate to people why it is that this is an issue that they need to care about. I think for me as I've gone about doing this work. I have three kind of like guiding principles for myself, which is how remain visible to people remain accessible and to build trust over time. The work that we do with engaging the public is I think probably pretty rarely kind of a one time thing I think for a lot of researchers this is something that you have to build up to over time. And being again there and present and visible to the public on a regular basis is kind of what is building that overarching trust. So the way this is the maybe like take home piece of this for you. The way that I have approached this and think about this is in terms of building a brand and finding an audience and I want to start by saying I absolutely hate those terms that I it's like terrible I think that we have to use this approach. But at least for me this is what has been effective. And I think it's kind of a useful model and this specifically is a useful way of kind of organizing this in your head as you're thinking about how to engage in this work. So I, for me, when I started doing disaster research, I have this kind of one overarching goal for myself, which is that I want to make emergency management more effective, efficient and equitable. And everything that I do tries to work towards that goal in some way and so by product of being a professor I'm kind of bound by my, my, the tasks that I have to do for my job, but I generally find that my work is falling in these three categories of research teaching and activism. And everything that I do for those three categories I find a way to connect to public engagement in some way and that will look very different right that could be writing an op ed or talking to journalists when there's a hurricane. Like doing a thread on Twitter posting something on Instagram. It could be writing an entire book or doing a TED talk. But all of that public engagement that I'm doing is connected back into research teaching and activism and so this looks, I think very different than maybe this more traditional idea that we've had of you do a study you do a piece of research and then you kind of one directionally try to spread that finding out to the public. This is this approach has a lot more feedback coming in from the public. So it looks like having these different modes of putting research out and really what you're doing is kind of creating this entire ecosystem within which you can put out the findings of specific pieces of research or when a disaster happens, you have an entire platform and ecosystem that you can use to get out that life saving information and to amplify the work of local officials as they are trying to send out warnings or evacuation orders or whatnot. I'll give you just a super quick example here so one of the projects that I have been working on with one of my colleagues John Carr is how we can use disaster movies as a way to engage the public on disaster science. And so you'll see here we published this article in disasters, looking at the landscape of disaster films over the past 20 years. But once we publish this piece of research, it, because we had this kind of ecosystem of this brand and this audience created you're able to take the findings from that and push it out to the public in all of these different ways. So, when the movie Don't Look Up came out, we were, or I was invited to give a talk about disaster film in the climate era before a showing of the film. We presented it at academic conferences, gave various, John gave a talk about warnings and film and how that connects to the research. We also do something called Disasterologist at the movies on Twitter, which is where we pick a disaster movie every couple of months and anybody can come and watch it with us and we talk through the science and the research in it using the hashtag DATM. This is a really great way to directly engage the public and be able to answer questions from them directly. And then we also went through kind of more traditional media in order to talk about this research. So, again, when Don't Look Up came up, the timing ended up being kind of good for us here. There was a lot of interest from NPR, CBC, other outlets on how climate change and disaster films influence kind of the public perception of these movies. And this also is not just about kind of getting publicity for your research but of course is about making actual tangible change. And so one of the things connecting specifically to disaster film is this connection to a group called Good Energy, which is working on helping to get climate stories into Hollywood stories. And so being listed as an expert on their website for anybody who's writing a script for TV or movies to be able to get more accurate portrayals of disaster in Hollywood films. So, the last thing I'll kind of say here is that very often I think we think of how we're going to engage with the public as being something extra that we do. It's really important to be thinking about that kind of 24 seven right as you're doing your research, like the second you have that research question to be thinking about how, how are we going to engage the public with this. Particularly when you are doing research that has a direct impact on people's lives and livelihoods, making sure that those communities are kind of written into that right from the beginning is really important. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the obvious kind of institutional political and societal barriers that we all have to kind of work through as we're doing this public facing work and I'm happy to talk more about that in the Q&A. The last thing I'll leave you here with are two books that I have found really instructive, both on science communication and on scholar activism that you might want to check out. So I will stop there I think I'm just about out of time. Sure. Thank you so much. We'll quickly move on to our second speaker, Sam Mitchell. Okay, great to all hello everybody and then thank you also to Simon for inviting me along to this and thank you so much for giving a really really great overview of the topic there which I think leads quite nicely into many of the things. But I'll talk about within this time. So in terms of, you know, communicating sensitive topics to non experts, we're also considering ourselves as scientists as well, particularly in areas that we may not actually have as much experience in. So what I will do today, there'll be a lot of focus on volcanic crisis which is my, my background as a volcanologist, and how this is portrayed through so particularly through social media news outlets articles. And, but so a lot of what I will talk about is translatable across many different types of hazards. So hopefully you will see that as we as we go through this today. I know more about about my background and kind of as Samantha did as well. So my background is in geology and then into volcanology, which is what I do now. But in terms of the science communication journey, I also didn't intend to go into science communication as part of my career part of what I do it more just kind of grew over time through interactions through Twitter and Instagram and back six, seven, eight years kind of started on that journey, particularly over on other platforms such as Instagram science communication wasn't really a particularly done thing it was a lot more prevalent on Twitter where academic and science circles are and interact more. More visual platforms such as such as Instagram and nowadays, you know, tick tock as well. It was it wasn't quite as strong back then and so there was an outlet and an opportunity to, you know, start talking to people about volcanology about geology. This isn't to say I was the only person out there there were plenty, but it has become more prevalent over time. I'll give you a brief kind of overview of some of the things I will talk about today. And one thing I'll bear in mind as well is there is going to be some imagery within here nothing that's particularly triggering as as such, but it's something for us to think about just as a preface to start this talk. When we share imagery through media through social media, what potentially are the outcomes of the images that we share. I'll just bear in mind as we go through this. So the first thing I'll consider is what do we classify as a sensitive topic, and some actually portrayed this very nicely by saying well, and anything can potentially be a sensitive topic when it comes to natural hazards that are so many different directions and different facets to what happens during a crisis. I mean, how do we use media during during natural hazards and during actual crises themselves. When is the right time to post that information if you're somebody thinking, I'm on social media something's happening in the world I should be talking about I should be trying to educate people about this. That's that's fantastic for us to do that and as scientists as science communicators, we feel that need and that urge to communicate to the world as much as we can do. There's also a balance that we have to achieve about when the right time to post information is versus what might actually be happening in that crisis at that moment in time. And that kind of leads on to talking about a balance between educating people but also the empathy that we have to convey and that we have to show during these events particularly in events that are causing a lot and particularly that are causing large crises that are having significant impacts to people's lives, livelihood environments, and we'll explore some more of those in a second. And then that kind of builds into again something Samantha mentioned at the end maintaining the trust and the public perception of us as scientists as science communicators. So how do we safeguard our own careers are owned, you know, our followings our reputations our credibility. How do we make sure that that isn't tainted by something that we might do accidentally. What another thing I'll say before we dive into this is all of us are learning. I have made mistakes, many of us have made mistakes along our journeys of trying to become science communicators. This is making sure we learn from those, and we recognize and also publicly acknowledge the potential places where we've downfallen and the things we are doing now. And the things we are we are learning listening to others taking on board advice from others. So that's something for us to always bearing in mind this is a process. There is no one answer that solves the question of how do we communicate sensitive topics effectively there's no one clear answer to that. But let's dive in. So the very first thing sensitive topics, actually during natural hazards and crises themselves. There are so many different angles and no one hazard will have all of these in particular. You can compare volcanoes to earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, climate crisis, environmental degradation. Every single one of these has all of these different properties so just looking at a few of these loss of home property land is a fairly standard and fairly basic impact that happens and because it's a sensitive topic. It's something that might be happening to people on the ground during the time when it comes to personal loss of course injuries casualties loss of life, and particularly when we communicate these things over social media. We may end up in the sphere or audience of people who are being directly impacted, or the friends and the families of those who are being impacted. So that's a big one that we always have to consider particularly from respect and empathy for those who are going through that crisis. The long term effects as well are also something that is a sensitive topics. When you have so particularly small nations or small communities that can lose almost everything during a crisis the long term. So that financial economic socio economic environmental implications can be something quite sensitive, particularly to those. They may have disappeared from the news articles and from social media, but there are still people on the ground who are going through those long term impacts. And one that we are starting to recognize more, and as you know that we are what we talk about these things more and we put these things into public perception is the loss of potentially indigenous and native culture, and also even history during these things and again that's an incredibly important thing to be sensitive and respectful of in the events of a situation something that we may not be able to comprehend very easily. And if we're not part of that culture as such but if it's something incredibly important to the affected communities. It's something we have to be very careful and considerate of. Based on the environmental and ecological impacts and loss, some of these things may be irreversible. And for those who work in conservation, those who work in a wildlife preservation all those kinds of fields when we're thinking about how our environment is changing. Again, this is a potentially sensitive topic. And social vulnerability injustice in equity, all of those factors that play into different social groups, when you have crisis when you have crisis when you have natural hazards affecting people. Disproportionately affects different communities. If you have floods, as an example you may have certain communities that are built in different areas. And so over time, you know, the communities do become separated and you may end up with communities being more severely impacted than others purely down to social barriers and social vulnerability. So it's one that we always have to consider is that potentially a natural hazard may end up causing and some racial or social imbalance in the impacts And then a similar kind of reason also political divisions that can actually be exacerbated by crises themselves when this isn't something I'm an expert on at all. So I've just put it there as something to mention. But you can have these divisions either geographically and or elsewhere if it's through media itself. And so that's something else that should be considered. And essentially, all of these come under one single umbrella of what a sensitive topic is and that's something that can potentially be can have an emotional impact or burden on someone it may cause a post traumatic or traumatic conditions. It can cause anxiety, it can cause upset, of course. And this isn't to say that we shouldn't talk about sensitive topics they're why we go into death disaster science they're why we go into science communication, so that we can hopefully reduce these impacts and or mitigate them over time. I said just before not all of these topics will present themselves during a single hazard. Some are very specific to the crisis at the time. And a lot of them will change depending on the type of hazard themselves. I'll focus more on volcanic, which I guess you consider as more of a sudden or active hazard it's something very very visual and very perceptible by the public it's something that we can understand and comprehend in real time, whereas other hazards that present themselves as longer term crisis or that are more slower over time. And it's sometimes a lot harder to change public perception about those kinds of hazards. So that's something we'll touch on at the end. There's a brief overview of this so why do we actually use media during a crisis well social media is incredibly useful. And so I never want to discourage anyone from using social media for science education for science communication, because there are many benefits, but that's not to say that we shouldn't take into consideration all the factors that can impact it. So that's why social media can be useful. Of course, it's one of the main sources of news out of news nowadays. And so you're getting information to people, but from hopefully correct sources of information. It can result in a faster spread of information and resources for the people who need them. So that might be the people being impacted, the friends, the family, the responders of people who are being impacted. So fast spread of information can come the fast spread of misinformation at the same time, and also oversensationalizing certain topics or certain things that are happening and also over speculation as to what might happen in the future. It can also allow us to impact people. And so alert people to the impacts are happening. And without the, the wow factor, this is one of the things we always have to consider as science communicators. We, we are fascinated by our natural world. It is why we do what we do. But for the people who are being impacted. They are not worried or do not care about the fact that this may look spectacular or the nature is powerful, because someone's lives are being directly impacted by what is happening. And so when we use social media, it's always important for us to consider the empathy first, before we jump into things. It's a lot harder to rectify that kind of say you've created posts that is, Wow, this is incredible. This is beautiful. And in a later comment to address, I also want to address the, you know, I'm very sorry and hope these people are safe and okay. That is good to do, but the more we can do that at the beginning, and as a prior consideration, the better. So other considerations that we might want to think about when we use social media during a crisis during natural hazards. What is the purpose of this post? Am I, is it intriguing facts as something about that I find really fascinating about what's happening. Is it information that is directly helpful to those being impacted, or those looking for information about the impacts. And then on the other side of things, which is the more unfortunate one are people posting things for popularity. When we think about our audience and our bases, when we, you know, communicate things over social media, and through any kind of media outlets, in that sense, a larger base means potentially you are getting information out to more people. So wanting to grow your audience wanting to essentially gain more popularity and increase that base is not a bad thing, but to make sure that is not your sole driver of why you're posting what you're posting is key. So are you using the right platform between Twitter, Instagram, TikTok in more recent years, YouTube, Facebook, news articles, blog posts, every platform is different, some are more visual, some are more text heavy. So always thinking about that is important for deciding what topic you actually want to convey. So are you wanting to get information out to people, or is it a case where you do want to show visual imagery because it's educational, as opposed to lots of text. A big one is are you the right person to be posting this other other people out there do have more expertise, and can you amplify their voice, instead of potentially your own. Somebody might be doing a better job than you said you should step back, but considering at that moment in time, who is the right person to be to be delivering this information. Is it someone working for a in emergency management in disaster response and with their credible sources backed up by the organizations who would be working on the ground. And that again falls into is this the right times post. There may be lots of really interesting and cool facts about what might be happening during a hazard. I take volcanoes as an example, because they're visually spectacular that's why most of us do what we do in volcanology because it's that beautiful, incredible displays of nature, but there's certain things that can wait. So as I say a key part of this is preempting the possible scenarios and responses that can come about from what you're posting. So just trying to think ahead of time is always useful. I'm very briefly touching on four different and volcanic crises that have occurred just in the last four years. And so we have the eruption of tackle that a, and on coming over here in La Palma last year, the killer way of eruption in Hawaii in 2018. And the ongoing and recently stopped activity in Iceland of the last two years, I got a spell and going to learn. I get, sorry, going to the building of the law. And, and then also just in this year, the hunger hunger hunger up high eruption in the kingdom of Tonga. So, each of these all volcanic eruptions, but with very, very different sets of factors and scenarios that play into the sensitive topics that we might talk about. So for example on come with a vehicle. This is a highly impactful event on people's livelihoods property and the local economy. It's an area that isn't used to such a crisis in it frequently, as opposed to some other places that might be used to affect activity on the order of years, or just a decade. And so there was a lot of as a large effort of rapid onsite scientific interest in this eruption where a lot of scientists descended very quickly onto this so there was a lot of voices there was a lot of photos there was a lot of imagery and people talking about this eruption. It gained global attention as most of these major ones that impact communities do, but there was a lot of tourism around the area as well because people wanted to view this activity. But there were many, many hundreds of, if not thousands of people being impacted by this event. Over in killer wears quite similar in terms of the impact on livelihoods property from lava flows and unfortunately the loss of some important indigenous land along with that so again, playing into thinking about native culture in that situation, which is something that happens a lot in Ireland and small community that are affected by volcanism. It's not the one that gained global scientific attention and a rapid response, but it's also an island is used to quite frequent volcanic activity in different places over time. And, but it's an area that was still impacted, nonetheless. So just because communities might be used to this kind of activity, doesn't necessarily mean that they don't feel the same you know trauma and impacts of course the others might do. There are different types of hazards occurring in different places all at one time. hunger hunger, God was to think about a lot of very different things, and very very sudden, unanticipated scale of the event breaking of records, it was an incredible volcanic event, and with global with global impacts essentially from the tsunamis that occurred as a result of the eruption. One of the key things that happened during this eruption and was the information blackout over several days on the islands of Tonga. And so we had no idea what the actual impacts on the ground were until we had made contact with people on the islands. I think of 36 hours and in time after the eruption. And so these were impacts impacts were very very small and isolated island community. There was a lack of access to get to those areas to assess the impacts, and what happened at the eruption site presented a very different sets of topics to think about. But then over in Iceland, it was a very very different scenario just looking at those different photos as backgrounds. The one key thing you can see in the Icelandic photo is the number of people this was an incredible amount of tour, an incredible tourist community. It was considered relatively safe in comparison to you know some of these other ones we are looking at people felt safe to approach under their, you know, their own, and other their own advice on safety. Very little local impacts as apart from where it was contained these eruptions were quite contained close proximity people were considering considering what they were doing. There was spectacular displays of what was happening. So it's a real difference what was happening here versus some of these other volcanic eruptions. And that is down to the scale of what is happening. And so, thinking about sensitive topics in each of these areas. Like I said, there is no one single hazard or one single event where everything happens at once. I'm just kind of thinking about this a little bit more so I don't take up too much time of when when and should I post this information if you want to post something on social media. But the fact is you should be considering beforehand. Is there currently an ongoing loss and loss of life property land livelihoods. I'm not going to talk about the impact yet. That was the example from hunger Donga was, we had no contact on the ground for almost a couple of days, but we had the satellite images. So when the first satellite images were being shared over media and by news articles. That's something that's potentially very very traumatic for those waiting to hear on information as to what was had happened. All we had was a satellite photos as an indication of the impact we had no information from the ground. It's always something for us to consider. And is the people who need the information, do they have access to it. Has there been a significant cultural indigenous historical or racial impacts as to what might have happened as a result of a crisis. And it's something we always need to consider when we talk about these things. And many will be waiting to hear from those impacted. So we should always consider that as well before we post something that might be a wow or spectacular and content and words that may be culturally insensitive is quite a big thing as in Hawaii for example, with the native Hawaiian culture and particularly that ties into essentially that the narratives that are built around of built around the land so what they call the more level, which is the sense essentially the native Hawaiian history and narratives that are tied into the islands and the oceans the volcanoes around them. And so when people say post about saying you know, an eruption has happened. Pele must be angry. We do need to consider what we are saying in these eventualities in the situations. So the things that we should try and avoid. And that is, you know, photos for the wow factor at the wrong times, like say for something like Iceland, where there was very very little impact and it was a large tourism site it was considered relatively safe. And that is a time where those things can be shared. But in other cases that might be potentially triggering or have imagery that show impacts or losses, then we should need to be incredibly careful about the information going out of those. Don't address the impact or consider that empathy. Like I say, this stuff should always be prefaced with the, you know, you, you understand the considerations at hand. Leaving open questions that results in over speculation, over speculation can be very dangerous can lead to large amounts of misinformation. So it's something we should consider as well. And like I say, considerations being made after the fact in later comments or in for following days, the damage can sometimes have already been done. So thinking ahead of time is always useful. And like I say, we're not perfect and we're all learning. And but this is just one of the things that you can consider when using media online. I've just put these up again but for the sake of time I'll put it again at the end of the slide so I'll just roll past that slide for now. So one of the things we want to do is achieve a balance. We want to be able to, I'm not saying we shouldn't post scientific information or educational facts. We do need it, of course, because that's how we educate people about the natural world, but it's considering the right time to do it, which is what we just looked at before. And then considering others perception of your media, think if you're posting something, think about the possible outcomes of something you might have said before you say what we say. So sharing and compiling information from credible sources and organizations rather than maybe your own opinions and thoughts of course is the best way forward. If the information is already out there, if it's put succinctly in the right way, then absolutely talk and share that information. And look for an amplified information that addresses the things that we've talked about. There will usually be a lot about the physical science over social media during these events, but the empathetic considerations and some of the sensitive topics. If you see that information out there, do amplify it, do share it. It is okay to call out insensitive behavior posting information. Some unfortunately is done in a malicious way. And most of the time it probably isn't, it's just people learning and not considering something that they don't know. So if it might be a friend or colleague that has shared something, it is okay to message them and let them know that is fine when we learn on this journey together. And so, like I said, consider your timeline is absolutely necessary to post that content at this moment in time. Listen to those with experience and particularly those in expertise of social science and the psychological impacts as a result of this. Like I say, I'm a physical scientist, but in my journey through science communication I have learned and taken on so much from people who work with people. And so making sure we listen and share their voices is just as important when we talk about sensitive issues. So if it's a process, we will make mistakes and as long as we consider that and acknowledge it, then we can prepare for it and learn from it and hopefully make less mistakes as we go on. So I think this is that yeah this is the last slide I kind of have on this. So in terms of how we change public perception. Children events can create change quite quickly in people's minds, but those longer term more like benign kind of hazards or impacts. It's sometimes harder to change people's perception about those. So we do want to achieve this balance we want to be honest with the public about our own backgrounds you know we want to share physical science facts we want to talk about the incredible things that nature happens. So as long as we alert people that we are aware of, you know the personal impacts and the more sensitive things that occur as a result of hazards. It safeguards ourselves but also creates better public trust in scientists. So does the public know what drives you as a scientist that's a big thing that helps build that trust barrier. Did you come into science because you find nature fascinating did you come into science communication, because you want to help people learn about natural hazards with a lot of the time we think about how we can empathize with those being impacted, but also can we get the public to empathize with us. That's actually quite a big thing to consider. There was a really really well written article during the La Palma crisis last year by Robin Andrews about the volcanologist paradox, and how we might see something spectacular in nature but at the same time we're seeing tragedy at the same time. So as we're perceived, we may all appear heartless or cold if we're not addressing the empathy that we should be considering or we're not addressing the trauma and the tragedy on the ground. So we can back, we can back each other up like I say this is a journey that we do together. The community of science communication is very supportive. And we think I think we all have learned from each other I'm sure Samantha will agree to this as well with the people around us, our circles are one of our best resources. And I think I already kind of said this but it can be a lot easier to change perception over the for these very sudden events, whereas some impacts that are a lot slower over time. So that's probably where one of our challenges lies in the future. How do we change people's perception about the natural world and what they should be considering. And so that's kind of all I want to address today so I am going to leave just kind of those sensitive topics that I mentioned so hopefully you know you can just have a read through and look a bit more. But those are just some of the main things we need to consider and underlying it all is we want to be respectful we want to be considerate and pathetic to what people might be going through, or what they may be, if they're being directly impacted or waiting to hear from others. And so that's the main takeaway from this message today. And to remember that not all of these will happen. So, thank you. I'll leave it there. Excellent. Thanks. So we can set a Q&A session, we have time for perhaps two or three questions before the webinar closes. I just want to begin, perhaps jumping off your slide on changing the perception. So, experts and researchers tend to be passionate about trying to create impactful network, but that is changing perception or influencing people's behavior. And this question is open to both of you. Have you noticed any key obstacles or mistakes people make when trying to miss a response from the public on these kind of subjects? Is there anything I should say people should avoid doing when trying to communicate when they're trying to help people change perceptions of areas? Yeah, I would say one thing that I kind of see scientists fall into a trap of is replying to people on Twitter with kind of these strings of journal articles saying, well, you're wrong. Here's all the research and you just kind of like throw it at them. And I definitely understand the like instinct to do that it can be very frustrating when some random person is, you know, incorrectly tweeting about the thing that you study. That almost never ends well for anybody, right? If your goal is to actually have them understand that topic or change their behavior related to that topic, then I think approaching it in a more like subtle way is better, right? And I'm just saying, well, hey, have you read like, here's one article to start with, like go read this thing and go from there and approaching it more in kind of a humble way is really important. And again, I understand that instinct, but you know, you wouldn't walk up to somebody on the street and like throw five journal articles at them. So maybe don't do that online. I suppose one way of saying that is the science comedy speak by itself, you also need to be a vector to kind of make sure it's easy digestible. In a way, yeah, so I'm sorry. Yeah, as Samantha said there, you know, and even then, even if it's one article, the likelihood that somebody might go in and think, okay, I will actually go and read all of this information that's in there. So anything you can do to help if your purpose is to educate someone through that reply, then help them along their journey find the quote that best describes what you need it to do. And as Samantha said it should be done in a, in a humble way you're there to educate not tell someone off. It's kind of what I was thinking, you know, even if it's, you know, calling out a colleague, it's not necessarily even calling them out on something. It's just reinforcing, you know, maybe the fact or the exact, the exact nature of something. Sure. So, as much as you'll have data, it's not to start offering later up there we need to, I suppose metabolize. And one question I've had in is to give an example of how you engage with the public, or not necessarily the public as far as the users are generally is that so when it comes to communicating on these issues perhaps in the time of crisis. What do you think about communicating that particular, for example, material use or approach. I can start with this so for me because I study across hazards for most disasters I'm posting something or sharing some information about it. My general rule of thumb is to always prioritize sharing life saving information, and then kind of work your way down from there. Also, I think this kind of ties into this idea of doing this work in the long term and kind of building up this ecosystem. At this point, there's usually like a go to article or video or something that I can share about almost any topic that's going to come up during a disaster of like, why do we not use the term natural disasters like what is the role of this government agency and recovery though it's the same questions usually over and over. And so after you've been doing it for a while you're able to rely on those resources that you or others have kind of curated over time, to be able to more quickly approach those common questions so it's like life saving information, answering questions, and then kind of like going from there in terms of what I'm looking at. Yes, likewise as well I say more specifically you know for volcanic crisis for me whenever there is an event. I now know who I want to go to to look for the right information what organization what volcano observatory, what experts in that fields, if it's a particular type of volcanism if it's a particular type of eruption. And who I should be going to for that information, because there are, there are situations where I may not be comfortable in, you know, posting my, not my thoughts because it's not thoughts and opinions, but putting out information. I can't fully back up if someone comes back to me with a question, whereas there are areas that I can do, and I feel confident to be able to do so. And so being able to have that network in place or to ask, and you know if someone asks a question to you over social media. If you have any information about this, if someone is happy for you to tag them in or if you say I'm the honest if you're not an expert in the area is a key thing. And to tag people in if you can. Thank you both. So pop is prioritizing life saving information. And also make sure you build up a resources or reputable information to share as well. So this is a question from the audience. This is asking about disasters related to anthropogenic activities. I suppose that's a large number is, and it's how do you communicate to public regarding these crises in a way that highlights how we contribute to the better way about doesn't pass either use it or play to a recitalization or perhaps scare the public at all. So I usually look to various hazard scientists depending on what hazard it is specifically but looking at to climate scientists meteorologists to see what it specifically they are saying about that given event and then amplify that. I kind of see my role as putting that climate change in the like broader context right there's never one cause of a disaster so I find that it's pretty easy I think for me to kind of talk about climate change but then also keep in mind all of those other factors that are contributing to that disaster. I think the overarching rule with climate change is to not exaggerate but to not underplay and that is difficult to do. I don't know events I think, but I don't like you should not be afraid of saying we don't know I say that all the time right, like, if we haven't done an attribution study yet for hurricane and then I'm going to say, yes climate change probably affected it in some way I don't exactly know. I don't know exactly how yet come ask me again in a week when we have the study done you know. So I think it's also, you don't need to be all knowing, but you need to be honest with what we do or don't know and then this is also the opportunity to tag in those other researchers that more specifically study those experiences. So any factors that can play into what exacerbates or creates a disaster. And that's something that's human cause whether it is something that stems from emergency management already prior in place how responses set up how the public are educated. It's important we talk about those things. And as it's definitely not downplaying it we should, we should be exaggerating that because that's what actually causes the impacts at people in the short term and more so into the long term. That's not to say you will always see basically now after every single hurricane events did hurricane x was hurricane x as a result of climate change. So every single one of these ones. It's very, very difficult to answer that question whether yes or no of course in that moment in time. Likewise with volcanic eruptions or earthquakes and other geohazards, if multiple ones happen in a short space of time, the one thing we always have to tackle is what's happening around the world. Is it something that we're doing for those ones for volcanic eruptions tying into each other. But it's something we always have to address and it's something that is always asked. And so every single hazard has a different level of potential activities that can create a disaster. Nice and thanks. We just need to start wrapping up. I think there's one final question is just the key to agree from that is we all seem to be confident in communicating and certainty to the public. And communicating about that scientifically and certainly doesn't mean we don't know what we're talking about. There also means we can still do things to mitigate against disasters. So just finally before we do close the webinar. Is there a way to communicate these certainties, all these unknowns in a way about, we're in a home scientific integrity, and also won't provoke this most mistrust or confusion in the public. Yeah, I, this happens with just about every hurricane, and you see the meteorologists on Twitter just kind of like melt down over various like little technical differences that they're seeing in models or whatnot. Do you think that we need to be really conscious that when we are posting on Twitter, anybody can see that, and that there is a lot of room for misinterpretation right if you're posting every single model run of a hurricane that is about to make impact with a community. So you have to be careful with how you're doing that and you have to do that responsibly just posting a picture of a model like hitting Miami and saying, Oh wow, with no context is going to cause harm more than it is good right and so I do think it's great that we can use as a place for researchers from across many different disciplines to come together, like outside of a conference and to be able to negotiate and talk through these, you know, in specific issues within our fields. But we do have to do that in a way that is responsible and there definitely are points in it back and forth exchange where you need to say okay we're moving this offline we're moving this to the DMs this isn't kind of for public consumption. Yeah, absolutely that question that's kind of outlined there really underpins probably one of our biggest challenges is communicating uncertainty and in any any kind of geo hazard. Because people want uncertainty to be you know what is the probability, can I, is this 70% chance is this a 20% chance, and the reality is we will never be able to put that number on something like this. And so, make it, making sure people know what uncertainty actually is versus probability of something occurring is really, really key. So, saying we don't know or it's, it is under debate is, is fine, but as long as you know we will be sure what we are doing to try and reduce that uncertainty is really really key. As I'm just trying to think of anything else regarding that it's, it's not our, you know, it isn't our, our faults necessarily if something happens that we didn't predict, because we can't communicate that through social media. Sometimes that's something we hit you know, an event will change over time, something will happen quite suddenly, or without warning, and a few days prior we've maybe said something that might indicate that wouldn't have happened. So always thinking kind of ahead as to you know that event tree, what could potentially come about, we're never going to know the exact outcomes, but if we at least consider there might be a range of potential outcomes then we can say safeguard ourselves and also the public from receiving this information. So, what is making sure is that the people are aware of the difference between scientific uncertainty, and, and said to us a non expert might interpret it as not so making sure you're careful with your data, as much as it's exciting to talk about differences between models. And how we interpret that will be different how a member of the public might interpret that. And then again it comes down to just the honesty of what we know. With that, I'm going to have to close the webinar with actually overtime. So, I just want to thank the attendees for joining us today. Our speakers, so Mitchell and for joining us. And yes, thank you very much. Thank you.