On March 9th 2021 the COVCOM team hosted a 90minute workshop at the Trust Me! Conference by Linnaus University. The workshop consisted of four presentations followed by a discussion with the audience. Workshop title and description were as follows:

 

‘COVCOM – Fighting a pandemic through translating science’ – when coming across with the message means life or death.

Henriette Thune, Jo Røislien, Marie Therese Shortt, Siv Hilde Berg, Daniel Lungu
SHARE – Centre for Resilience in Healthcare, University of Stavanger, Norway

The idea of this workshop is to discuss challenges and advantages in initiating an inter-disciplinary project about effective science communication in the middle of a pandemic, when concepts such as trust, thruthfulness and credibility implicitly are at stake. The emergency CFP came from the Norwegian Research Council early March 2020, funding was confirmed end June and three postdocs started fall 2020. The ‘Trust Me!’ conference is an excellent opportunity for us to discuss work in progress with competent researchers and experts within fields differing from most of our backgrounds. We will give four short introductions: Jo Røislien: ‘COVCOM – Fighting a pandemic through translating science’, Henriette Thune & Marie Therese Shortt: ‘Health, Risk, Science, Media – the situated positions of the researcher and the communicator in meaning production’, Siv Hilde Berg: ‘Tailoring the health risk communication message by using the mental models approach’ and Daniel Adrian Lungu: ‘How to perform randomized controlled trials on the effect of targeted health communication?’, followed by discussion with the workshop participants.

 

Keywords: Science communication, qualitative, creative, RCT (randomized controlled trial), COVID-19

 

Short bio of the presenters: Project manager and WP2 lead Jo Røislien is professor of medical statistics, an award-winning science communicator who has written, hosted and produced several science TV series (NRK, Discovery Channel), short and feature films. WP1 lead Henriette Thune is dean of research at the Faculty of Health Sciences with a PhD on how meaning is produced through aesthetic representations. Her focus is on qualitative methodology in the cross-section between health and humanities. Postdoctor Marie Therese Shortt is a multimedia designer & lecturer, with PhD in visualising cross-cultural communication. Postdoctor Siv Hilde Berg is a psychologist and safety scientist with a PhD in health and medicine. Postdoctor Daniel Adrian Lungu is a health management researcher focused on improving the performance of healthcare organisations.