 Thank you all for joining us today for a new session of the Getty webinar series. The Getty webinar series serves as a platform for the Getty network members to share experience and expertise in evidence synthesis and to learn about potential collaboration. My name is Zahra Said, I'm a research assistant at the Getty Secretariat and I will be moderating the session today. So before we begin, and if you are using the GoToWebinar for the first time, as you might have noticed, you are automatically muted. So if you would like to submit any comment or ask any question, please use the tab on the right. And if you would like to comment and address our presenter directly, you can use the raise your hand button and we can unmute you so that you can discuss directly with our presenter. Today's session is about rethinking communication, storytelling for stakeholder engagement in environmental evidence synthesis. And our presenter is Anna-Lou Sandin. Anna-Lou works with science communication at the Stockholm Environment Institute at an international non-profit research and policy organization that tackles environment and development challenges. She supports research projects with advice, planning and delivery of professional, tailored and strategic communication activities. Anna-Lou has a background in environmental science, resilience and sustainability. Anna-Lou loves working together with researchers to find the most efficient and fun ways to communicate science. Hello, Anna-Lou. Yes, hello. I hope you can hear me. Yes. Yes. That's great. Thank you, Sarah, so much. And thank you also to the GESI initiative for inviting me to talk at this webinar. I'm very happy to be here. Looking forward to a really interesting hour. I'm happy to have you with us as well. Thank you. Super. And thank you for the introduction. As you heard, I work at the Stockholm Environment Institute. I've been working here for the past five years or so with science communication and beyond my everyday work with supporting research projects with tailored communication. I also really enjoy giving trainings on how to craft and also deliver key messages and also to explore what actually works in science communication. So what is called the science of science communication. And that includes storytelling. And that's what's brought me here because as part of that work, me, together with two colleagues here at SCI, Caroline, Anne, Deshaune and Robert Wott, we were invited to write a commentary paper for stakeholder engagement special series. In the environmental evidence journal, back in 2018, and that was focusing on trying to to revamp science communication in systematic review processes, looking at storytelling, specifically in what way storytelling can contribute to an increased engagement among actors and end users. And wait, I'm just going to try and change the slide. There we go. So these I hope you can see them. These are my talking points of today. We're in the, at the end of the introduction now and then I'll talk a little bit about storytelling because I'm sure many of you work with science communication. And I'm very familiar with storytelling, but I think it's important to talk about it and explain a little bit the history of it and also some definitions and a kind of the paradox that is there is a debate around today of using narratives when communicating science. And then we will go over to talk about what's in our commentary paper, the proposed framework that we suggest can be used for systematic review processes and then I'll just conclude with some some takeaways that I wish you to bring with you after this webinar. And I think Sarah mentioned that you can easily contribute to the webinar and ask questions and give comments. Sarah, did you want to say something more about that? Yeah, there is a question panel tab. It appears to the attendees, they can either type in their question or any comment they have, I can read it out loud, or there's a raise your hand button option where they can press it and I can unmute them so that they can ask their question verbally and directly to you. That is great. So I will present, but people are very welcome to ask questions or come with comments during this time. And if you do as Sarah suggested that you raise your hand and you want to say something, please introduce yourself very briefly if you wish. But we will also at the end have a section where we can get to discuss the topic and ask more questions and I actually might have some questions for you. And we also have some a couple of polls embedded in the webinar throughout. So I would like to start off with what you could potentially call a story. It's a GIF that we, again, there we go. That might be very familiar to some of you depending on what science field you are working in. As you can see, it's a GIF moving image, and it's showing the global temperature change. This is actually slightly old. There are newer one of these with data up until 2019, but this is showing the average temperature change from 1850 to 2017. And what it's called, it's called the climate spiral. And it was developed by a climate scientist called Ed Hawkins in the UK, and it was tweeted out as a GIF just like this. And in a few days it had had 10,000 of retweets and a huge readership. And all it is, it is a spiral. Why is it so popular? And you're very welcome here to comment on this. If you think, what is it that draws your attention to it, please feel free to contribute. Keep an eye on the chat or on the question if someone gives any comments. But what it is, is that it's something different, right? It's something we're not used to. And brains, our brains are very good in detecting novelty. And it's also very immediate. It's familiar and immediate. It's the same shape of a clock. And it's a moving image. So actually your brain doesn't have to do much of the thinking. It's the eyes, your eyes that do the processing and understanding. And it's done automatically compared to if you were just looking at this data in static bar charts. So, and it also has a metaphorical perspective to it as well, that this is something you could say something that is spiraling out of control, which is what we see today with climate change, right? And without even knowing it in the beginning, Ed Hawkins, he produced something that made people connect with it in a much better way. So these static sharks and diagrams, you could call them that they are data or they are stories without a spirit or without a soul. And here he actually added a bit of soul to it and made it much more comprehensive or understandable among lay audiences. But what is actually storytelling? It's something we were telling stories before we could write or read. It's always been considered kind of an art form with a purpose to educate and inspire and communicate cultural traditions, history, values. And today we know it's an extremely powerful means of communicating messages and engaging with audiences. And the last decade or even further back, we have been seeing how storytelling have been booming in certain sectors such as the marketing sector. But we also see that in recent years there is an increase in using storytelling in different scientific fields such as the health science field or science education. However, I think it's important to note and remember that this is something that has been discussed and debated for several decades. Back in the, I think, 60s, 70s, there was this American scholar named Jerome Brunner. He was criticizing the Western society that the Western society was putting in so much effort in the scientific and logical way of approaching thinking and knowledge. And this quote, the choices we make in telling stories become so habitual that they finally become recipes for structuring experience itself for laying down roots into memory. It's from this scholar Brunner. He, you know, he expressed that narratives are what we use to understand the world around us and since then there's been so much research on this. And also brain science, brain research, showing how we are often thinking in a narrative way. And before we move on, I thought we should just, I will just go through some of the definitions or some of the terms that I'm using and that are being used. I sometimes use story and narrative interchangeably. But they are actually considered different things. So story is a structured account of events or of people. And he has these very familiar story elements, you can call them, the setting, there's a plot, there are characters, there's usually a protagonist and maybe an antagonist. And there's a sequence of events. So while a narrative is more the actual sequence of events, organized into a story so they can come in a certain order and they relate to each other. And if you changed order of these events, then you've changed the narrative but not necessarily the story itself. So it's kind of a representation of the story. And anecdotes, they are simply there to illustrate a point. They can be, it can be just a moment, something that happens, a lesson, something that is amusing, life changing or tragic. And that's actually that means that we're now up for the first poll. I think Sarah will will help me and we're quite a few attendees. So it would be great if you engage in the answer this poll. I think it comes up on your screen. It's on our right Sarah. Yes, I think these are already answering. Oh, great. So yeah, have you recently read results from a scientific study in a distinct narrative form that is this first poll, it would just be interesting. And there's no, we can wait a couple of more seconds and then we can close the fall and we can share the results. I think someone has added a comment right in the questions. Correct, Sarah. Yeah, we have a comment from Angelica. It says that it's easy to understand. Yeah, she's probably referring to the, to the stories. Yeah. Yeah, people are still voting a bit. Yeah. It's working. I also commented that she was talking about the spiral girl. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it has its reasons to that it is easy, you know, because of these things I was saying that it's kind of intuitive and the eyes do most of the understanding automatically. So thank you for that Angelica. So we close the poll now. Yeah. The results. 5050. 50% have recently had some results being a research results being described in a very distinct narrative form a 50% haven't. We could, we could remove that poll or is that me who does that? Maybe I'll wait for you to do it. What I am a comment I often get is that from researchers is that but actually what we are doing sometimes when we're writing scientific papers is that we are using a narrative structure. And I would agree that that is true to just a certain extent. You are following some kind of narrative structure with starting off with the background and having a result section and which are some common parts of a scientific paper usually from a based on a scientific study. And you have a conclusion recommendation conclusions part, but you are really missing these story elements to to make it more compelling. Then you're missing these important elements such as the climax the top bit the resolution. For example, but on the other hand before the interruption. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, but we have Tony then so that's and you would like to address a question to you. So I will unmute him now. Ah, if you would like. Yeah, do you want to read it out with July. Hi there. I just wanted to know the numbers involved in there pulling that we just had because it's a 5050 I don't know how many people are participating in this now so that we know. Of course, two out of four is 50. And it's not the same as when the number is high so how many of us are participating. Thank you, Tony. There was there's 15 attendees of this webinar. I was thinking that maybe you see. In total. And so that it's this poll is just more for fun to test you a little bit and see what has actually heard about storytelling being used in science communication. For that reason. Thank you. Thank you. I will make sure to mention that in the next poll. Okay. Yes, I'll move on. The last thing I was going to say there that, of course, scientific articles can can be very well written and could be more populous science or useless jargon and shorter sentences and clear language in in in some ways and maybe add some of those various elements. I think there's definitely potential for that. And that's something we could discuss later on as well. However, it's very important to to raise a bit of caution as well. Let me just go to the next slide. There we go. And there is a paradox of of using storytelling which I'm sure many of you are aware of. I know that there are huge benefits of using storytelling for science communication. Because of the brain science that is out there, the brains are brains have fantastic ability to adopt and remember narrative messages and actually there are many parts of the brain that are activated when you're listening to a story, more than when reading out reading facts listed facts that are listed in a in a scientific article, for example, and the hormone dopamine is being released in the brain. When we're listening or reading or taking in something that makes us emotionally charged, which stories usually do. And this actually helps us to remember better with the better accuracy. And then for people who have low numeric literacy, struggling with numbers, which there are many people out there, including myself. Then it's usually much, much easier to take in information through a story rather than data displayed in charts or diagrams. When we wish to inform and engage is really a great tool, but it's important to be aware of that not one really needs to be careful in the way we use storytelling. I'm sure no one has missed that we are in the age of fake news and disinformation. And we are seeing constantly how many populist leaders both political or other types of leaders, they're using narratives to sway their voters or their audiences. There is a debate, which the scientific organizations, even universities are starting to engage in around how storytelling can actually be dangerous. Especially when we have science communicators or science journalists or ordinary journalists starting to hype results from scientific studies or even mislead their readers or listeners with the way they present data. And there is really a big need to provide some kind of guidelines to help scientists and communicators to navigate or know that when their attempts to engage actually cross the border into this misinformation or the hyping of results. And on top of that, when we want people to actually take on lay people, non-scientists to take on a scientific or logical reasoning around evidence and research results, then narratives can actually be counterproductive. And we know that narrative messages, they can be persuasive and that's good. We want them to be persuasive because often in many scientific fields, we want our audiences to take in what we're telling them and act upon the research. So whatever the underlying factual claims, there is still this risk that the data or the results can easily become oversimplified or even worse, manipulative. We've seen that is in some very concrete examples are the discussions around vaccines, also the climate change. And it suggests that science communicators and scientists, they must find ways to confront the beliefs or the perceptions that sometimes is promoting this resistance to science-based communication and recommendations. And the scientists need to be aware of unintended consequences that might occur. And there's some really good papers that I could share on this afterwards, talking about intended and unintended consequences of science communication. However, researchers should not be deterred. I think it's still very important to encourage scientists to go beyond just informing stakeholders of research evidence and actually continue to seek to have an influence, but an influence that is positive and intended. And there are studies from the last two years where they often combine fields of psychology, neuroscience, niatology, and other types of fields such as climate change or health, where they're looking at what is triggering the positive kind of behavior that you're looking for. And there is one study by Maurice et al from 2019 that implies that we actually should consider presenting information in story structures that it's having a better effect in how the audience is receiving the information from the research. But as I said, I can share this afterwards. So now to go back to the paper that we wrote, we, as I mentioned earlier, in the recent years, we've seen this increase in using storytelling in different scientific fields, and we went out to look for some of those examples. And you see some of them presented in the table in front of you. And you see that it varies quite a lot how storytelling has been applied, everything from in the health sector, it has been used as a tool to highlight the benefits of using systematic reviews. To storytelling being a tool to gather perspectives from people locally on the experiences and knowledge about drought and its impacts and how to adapt. So there are some really exciting examples out there. And we were focusing on how to increase stakeholder engagement in these systematic review processes. And when we looked into that and we were looking specifically on the in the environmental field, and whether storytelling was a common communications method, we hardly found any examples. So we really think that it has yet to reach its potential and needs to be further explored. And this is our the framework that we are proposing could be potentially applied in a systematic review, which consists of two parts, really. One is in the beginning of the systematic review or map process, where we suggest the storytelling techniques can be applied right at the beginning when the research questions and research plan is being formulated. We call them here contextual narratives. And they would of course be developed in collaboration with the people that have a stake in in this research project. And these contextual narratives, we think that they can really help researchers or the review team to better understand people's perspectives and prior knowledge. And we believe that it's an approach that can increase engagement and interest and even ownership of the of the review process. And it's, it gives the space to the review team to identify if there's an agency of marginalized groups and individuals and potentially also help avoid misunderstandings and misperceptions. Secondly, as the second part, we propose that the review team could also create a so called final story, final storyline that relates to these contextual narratives gathered at the start of the process. So, in contrast to the format of the final reports, ways of communicating from an evidence synthesis, where usually information is plainly presented here, we hope to be able to generate a fuller experience among the stakeholders. When you're in bending or rounding it at the findings into a contextually contextually relevant story. I'm sorry, Anneli. We have a question from Crystal Perez. The question is, is the political equivalent to methods. Sorry, I'm thinking from the traditional approach to communicate the research. And so I am not a systematic review researcher, but the protocol is part of a systematic review process and it's something that you come up with in the beginning before you actually start the evidence synthesis together with the stakeholders. I hope that if there are any systematic review experts, or even Sarah, if you have any comments on the protocol, you're very welcome. I hear someone. Sarah, did you hear if someone had something to say? Or shall I move on? It became very quiet. Anneli, I wasn't able to listen to anything. I don't know what happened to the speakers. Ah, okay. Maybe people can tell us in the chat if they've had problems with the internet or with hearing what we're seeing. I hope not. This was from my laptop. I don't know what happened. I was just saying that maybe there are other people that are doing systematic reviews on a daily basis. They could tell us a little bit more what the protocol is. That was it, but I think. We have Tony Denso. He would like to. Yeah, I will unmute him. Hi again. Yes, I just want to know, where is the departure between this storytelling and narrative synthesis? Because to, okay, answer me that one, and if there's anything that probably I want to add. Is there any departure between this and narrative synthesis? Because from what you have the picture over here from the diagram. It means that the final part of narrative synthesis. And most of the systematic review that we do, even if it's a narrative synthesis, we have the plain language that communicates the evidence in the lay person's point of view. So where is the departure? Is this an extension of narrative synthesis or what? I'm a bit confused. Can you shed light on it? I assume that narrative synthesis is a type of systematic review or evidence synthesis. That's what you're referring to. Here we are talking about how to use storytelling, not only a narrative structure, but storytelling in the beginning of a systematic review and at the end. And if I, if I may continue, I will explain a little bit about the end of the systematic review and what we're proposing there. Okay, that's fine. Cool. Thanks. Yes, so at, let me see where I am. I don't miss anything. At the, at the end, we, as I said, we're proposing to, that you develop a final story, which are based on the, those contextual narratives that you gathered in the beginning that fed into the question formulation and to the protocol. And the aim is to make this story easier to digest even easier than the plain language that is used today for the stakeholders and other end users, and where you actually use these elements of a story in a much broader sense. This final story could also be a building a base for a range of different types of communication products. For example, you can adapt the story and use in a conference presentation, or you could use it as the storyline for a video or for a podcast. And I think it's important to mention the contextual narratives or the stories that you gather from stakeholders in the beginning that it might be really useful to get some help and use some proper methods. So we are in our paper, we're suggesting that you could even consult a storytelling professional depends on the, the context of course you can also give stakeholders storytelling templates or use story cards, story boards, for example. There's also this other excellent communication tool called the message box, which was developed by a science communication organization in the US called Compass, where, where, which is a tool that helps stakeholders to identify and formulate the relevant problem that is in need of investigation. So that I hope that made it a bit clearer that here we are not proposing using the narrative structure but actually use story elements and really ground the research results into a story that can be used in many different ways. Before I enter into my last few slides, I would like to just sum up a little bit the takeaways that I would like you to bring with you from this webinar. I believe there is, there is a recognition that we, we are already doing that in many ways. We're starting to think outside the box, even within the network such as the Center for Environmental Evidence and the Cochrane community that we need to innovate on the ways we, we communicate scientific results. And what we're really encouraging is new, innovative communication tools to be used by these research networks and storytelling could be one such tool that could complement the traditional portfolio of tools that are being used. I think through a story, the context is provided to the audience and complex scientific data is easier to understand and analyze by a lay audience. And in this paper, you know, we've argued for a more systematic and integrated use of such innovative tools such as storytelling from an early stage of systematic reviews or systematic maps to final stages when you are communicating to a wider audience. And on top of that, a very good benefit of that is that you can use the final story that you're developing in many different settings and purposes. Of course, we are very aware of and it's important to acknowledge that the effectiveness of using storytelling as an engagement method, as well as the different types of methods storytelling methods that are being used. They are determined by the type of review that you undertake the stakeholders that are involved and that is context specific. And we propose that further research should be done to understand storytelling as an effective means of science communication. I think what do I have? I have my second poll actually. Emily, before we can launch the poll, there's a question from Richard Morely asked some questions. The first one is that is there attention between patient stories where there's this only person's experience and what the evidence may suggest based on gathering more data. I have seen decisions made in research priority setting where on one person's personal story is very powerful and has influenced the outcome of priority setting. Perhaps disproportionately and can the stories trump evidence? Very good question, Richard. Thank you very much and please feel free to comment further because I know you're also into this field and very knowledgeable on the topic. This is the big debate that stories sometimes trump evidence and that's a problem and it's a shame when one person's personal story overtakes the science. So I definitely think it's a problem and a big tension and I really would suggest that we need many stories and we need collective stories and how they will look like I'm yet to explore. But we need more collective stories and that brings out the science in the way that it has a positive response. So that's my answer. Richard, if you want to add something or if someone else wants to add something to this, please feel free. I think we'll move on. We have another question actually from Tony Denzel. He's asking, is there any systematically synthesized evidence to support the case on the effectiveness of storytelling? That is a very good question. To my knowledge there isn't and I'm actually in a couple of slides I will bring up this in particular because we feel that there is a lack of exactly this synthesized evidence that actually shows how effective storytelling is. But I'll get back to that when I come to that slide. So maybe we can do the poll in the meantime. Richard said, I see Richard's comment there. Thank you. Let's do the poll, Sarah. Yes. So do you think using storytelling for systematic reviews can be useful? And of course this comes with a lot of reflections and things that I've been discussing already. I mean you can also answer this question thinking a little bit more broadly. If you think using storytelling in general for scientific communication, if that can be useful as well. So you can think more broadly if you prefer. That's okay. This is just for fun to see what you participants think about this. Now we have around 11, I think, participants voting in the poll. Yes. 91% have voted. So there's like one or two people who haven't put their vote. I can take the opportunity to mention that this webinar is being recorded so you can listen to it afterwards or if you had to leave early or you missed the beginning. You can always listen afterwards or share it with colleagues that you think would benefit from thinking a little bit outside the box regarding science communication or who other colleagues that might be interested. I think it will be available sometime from next week, right, Sarah. Yes, possibly in the upcoming two weeks. Maximum. I will try my best to finish it by next week. I will close the poll now and we can see the results. Everyone voted. That was a positive outcome I would say. Everyone thought it can be useful. I believe so too. If you're aware enough and you make sure to get the help you need to use storytelling methods and different types of performance of storytelling, then I think it can be really useful. So, I'm sorry for the interruption again but we have a question from Tony. I will unmute him. Hi again. Yes, I think my first question has not yet been answered. I don't know if it will be answered at the end. I sort of asked. Where is the departure from between this and narrative synthesis because from what you have discussed with us presented I see it is the end part of it. That is the after the results that this story telling becomes essential. So the rest you're using systematic review narrative synthesis approach, formulating your question and protocol and those 10. So where but have you mentioned that stakeholders engaging stakeholder that is okay but even narrative synthesis. I'm quantitative person, but my experience in narrative synthesis, even there. I'm not going to direct with stakeholders to get information from them to start to bury your theories and things. So I just want to know, is this an extension is a means of helping to communicate the evidence or it's an entity itself, and, and then after that, the results that this the last question we took we see the answers are just yes and no it doesn't give room for us to even to be able to tell what we think the margin of effectiveness, because now this is I think this is now evolving. As I add that you don't have any systematic reviews or systematically synthesize evidence to show how effective it is. So nobody can really give any yes and no is yes probably everybody will see yes because you don't know. Yes, so that is a big decision. So if you take it that yeah this is a we need more for me to show that this is really working and we don't have it yet. I can I comment. Yeah. So I would, I was going to get back to the effectiveness of using storytelling in science communication and for systematic reviews and and as to regard to the narrative synthesis and the work you do in this in the beginning of a systematic review. We are proposing is is not to change the way you do the, the, the start of the systematic review process, but to add on different types of storytelling methods to make the engagement even fuller and better. Okay. So we are today, most likely using different types of stakeholder engagement tools to get everyone on board and help formulate these research questions and the research plan, and the problem definition, etc. But we are proposing that you can refine that and use some of these storytelling methods where you're using story elements as part of it to gather deeper perspectives and due to the fact that storytelling is such a powerful means of communicating. And it's, you know, we are story animals. That's, that's the one of the expressions around storytelling we are thinking in stories. So that is what we're proposing but let me go to my, I think it's the next slide. The next steps because we have yet to to understand. And I totally agree the reason, as far to my knowledge, there isn't any evidence synthesis on the effectiveness of using different ways, different storytelling formats. And you're communicating research. And, and, you know, if you're using one type of storytelling, what are the characteristics of that type with that design. Or if you use storytelling in the protocol stage, what happens when you use it and what happens with the stakeholder engagement. We have some ideas of this and we have actually tried to, we've tried to get some funding to test this because we really would like to understand and empirically test how stakeholders are appreciating and engaging in different formats of storytelling. But yeah, if anyone has ideas about how if there is any work that have been done on this you're very, very happy to to share that but to my knowledge, it hasn't been thoroughly tested. And this year we're exploring whether we can actually test this framework that we are proposing in the commentary paper in a new project here at SEI on water sanitation and hygiene. And it's specifically taking looking at gender and social equality in interventions in wash. And here we were thinking we actually have a great opportunity to apply storytelling in the code design in the beginning of the systematic review that will be undertaken in this in this project. And then the review scope and developing the questions etc, as well as towards the end but we're just about to start that exploring how we could could do it, but we hope that we that I maybe can come back in a year's time or or more with more research on this but please if anyone has any comments on this and know of any good research out there, I can definitely share your research on storytelling being used as a science communication methods method in general not looking at systematic review, particularly, but more in general. There's some really good stuff out there. I can go to the next slide. Thank you very much. And thank you, the guest initiative for posting this webinar and thank you everyone for listening and engaging in with questions and comments. I hope it's been meaningful. And if you have more questions. I realized that we may be running out of time, but I hope I can be able to answer or point you to work that has been done by other scholars on this topic. Thank you, Emily for this very interesting. It was true very informative and interactive webinar session. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them we have some summary. I will unmute. Yeah. And please introduce. Introduce yourself. I just want to know if you want to share this slide from today. Thank you, summary. Yes, we will definitely. Yeah, there we go. And Sarah, will we be able to send out the slides to the ones that have attended to their email address. Yes, yes, we can do that. And we will for sure do that. And I will, I will make sure to add some links or some titles of papers and that I would recommend you to look at the on on the topic of storytelling. In one of the last slides or so. We also have a comment from Angelica. She says thank you so much. It was very interesting. Yeah, awesome. Thank you. Thank you for joining.