Overview: Communications Tactics

"Hitting “publish” on this, my first blog post on Knowledge4Policy (K4P), is a special moment for me. I’ve helped create a few online communities for the European Commission (I launched my first in February 2002, so I just missed that particular anniversary), but K4P may be the most important."

COVID-19 pandemic is shining a light on the roles that evidence and expertise can play in policy ... Epidemiological data ... reviews of evidence ... assessments of social ... impacts, and more... all competing for policy attention ... can lead to competing narratives... a sense of confusion...policy is necessarily political and evidence does not…

a conservative leader in Australia and a progressive prime minister in New Zealand are ... converging toward an extraordinary goal: completely eliminating the virus from their island nations... succeeding with throwback democracy... partisanship recedes, experts lead, and quiet coordination matters more than firing up the base...the public initial…

Our scientists are publishing sophisticated data visualisations for policymakers to use. But are policymakers using them? ... I interview Annie White and Nil Tuzcu of Harvard’s Growth Lab about their use of data visualisations for policymaking... summarise the resulting guidance we’re giving Knowledge4Policy publishers.

does researchers’ presence on Twitter influence citations to their papers?... although the relationship between tweets and citations is poor, actively participating on Twitter is a powerful way of promoting and disseminating academic outputs... an author needs three times more followers to gain only one mention more... to be or not to be on Twitte…

More Americans have confidence in scientists, but there are political divides over the role of scientific experts in policy issues... six-in-ten Americans say scientists should play an active role in policy debates about scientific issues... but Americans are divided along party lines in terms of how they view the value and objectivity of scientis…

our team of researchers and policy analysts work together to analyze new data and create a platform for local stakeholders to make more informed decisions.... We arm local policy-makers with customized and data-driven insights so they can craft tailored, hyperlocal solutions.

we’ve conflated data with truth. And this has dangerous implications for our ability to understand, explain, and improve the things we care about... data is not a perfect representation of reality: It’s a fundamentally human construct... subject to biases, limitations, and other imperfections... Data doesn’t say anything. Humans say things.... Dat…

Sweden plans to cut its emissions to net zero. A new digital visualization shows exactly what it’s doing to reach that goal—and is designed to help policymakers move faster to fill in gaps in the current plan and make sure it actually succeeds. It’s also fully open to the public, so anyone can hold the government accountable... A typical governmen…

Systematic mapping assesses the nature of an evidence base, answering how much evidence exists on a particular topic... an interactive database of studies and their meta-data, along with visualisations of this database... an R-based tool called EviAtlas, an Open Access ... Open Source ... tool for producing interactive, attractive tables and figur…

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