“We wanted to be as open and transparent as possible, with the caveat that if we weren't careful this project had the potential to be like a runaway freight train.” Oxford University’s Head of Strategic Communications, Alex Buxton, on what it’s been like to tell the biggest story in the world right now.
This week’s guest on the Research Comms podcast is Alex Buxton, Head of Strategic Communications at the University of Oxford. In our conversation we discuss what it was like to be parachuted into his role just after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and to do so at a time when the University was involved in one of the biggest news stories of our times - the race to develop a vaccine to combat the disease.
The below interview has been edited and condensed for the sake of brevity and space. To hear the full interview check out the podcast!
You started your role at Oxford just after the beginning of the pandemic. What was that like?
It's all a blur. I did quite literally parachute in. My wife and I were on the last flight out of Saudi Arabia just before the lockdown in March 2020. At the time I was offered the Oxford role I was Senior Communications Advisor at King Abdullah’s University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. I told my boss that I had been offered this fantastic opportunity over at the University of Oxford, and said “I think if I'm going to take it I need to go right away”. He said I should go.
That night my wife and I packed our bags, rescheduled our flights and within twenty four hours we were checking into rented accommodation in Oxford.
I worked my last few weeks of my notice period for KAUST while in Oxford remotely, and then started as Head of Strategic Communications for Oxford, also remotely.
I recently watched the BBC Panorama documentary on the race to make the vaccine at Oxford. From a science communication point of view, what was it like trying to work out how best to tell the story?
With the BBC panorama documentary, we worked closely with Fergus Walsh and the BBC crew since April. One of the first things we did with the project was to embed six documentary teams in the project for the duration.
We were lucky to be able to partner with such amazing media outlets, and we were very lucky with the faculty as well. Professor Andrew Pollard, Professor Sarah Gilbert, Professor Adrian Hill, Professor Theresa Lam, hopefully you'll have seen and heard some of their names throughout the course of the year. At the April point we had just announced that the first human trials were set to begin in Oxford.
That was one of the first significant milestones of the project, and I think everybody will remember that time. The word that's constantly banded around is ‘unprecedented’, but I should imagine there has never been so much focus on a handful of groups around the world who are undertaking scientific research. And there was a requirement for those scientists to come out and speak to the public.
Have you listened to these other episodes of the Research Comms podcast?
What were some of the challenges you faced trying to communicate a story of this magnitude?
This has been a really interesting research communications project for a number of reasons. One reason is the nexus between academia, business, industry and government. We've been closely partnered with Astra Zeneca, the global drug manufacturer, and we've been closely partnered with the government, which has been a huge investor into the research. They’ve invested over eighty million pounds to date, I believe. So it's been a case of aligning different business objectives and different communications objectives, within those different organisations.
In a small media team we were fielding between 200 and 300 media inquiries a week, which is a high level. In order to fulfil the University's mission and vision, and our responsibility to public health we wanted to be as open and transparent as possible, with the caveat that if we weren't careful this project had the potential to be like a runaway freight train.
Academic freedom of speech is a fantastic thing.
For those listeners who might not be familiar with it, academics the world over regardless of where they work for the most part have the freedom to communicate their research whenever and however they like, whether it be through the media or public engagement.
They are often encouraged to do so in collaboration with research communicators and professionals. In light of that we deliberately kept the spokespeople as the primary communicators for the project to convey information as clearly and accurately and and timely as possible.
How have you managed in trying to prevent the spread of misinformation about the vaccine? For example the fake news story that emerged about the supposed death of one of the trial participants?
The fake news around the trial participant death was one of the first major reputational concerns that came up. We were already working closely with Fergus Welsh, the BBC's medical correspondent, who was very well cited on the work and had been fully briefed.
We've done that with a range of high-profile journalists which has been another significant boon from 2020. We’ve managed to build great relationships with key journalists globally and particularly in the UK. And the other thing we did was partner with the government. They have various disinformation units that we've been fortunate enough to be able to make use of.
Vaccine hesitancy was actually at the back of our minds from about the summer of 2020, as were the concerns around the speed at which this vaccine was made. We convened public health experts from around the University to seek their guidance. We're also very fortunate at Oxford to have the Oxford Internet Institute, who do large pieces of work on how to combat disinformation online and how it impacts public trust.
So I set up a working group where we could share best practices and learn from those academics, and share it with other communications professionals across the University, whether they be in the Medical Sciences Division, or in other departments that would come into contact with those types of things or be able to contribute to that external narrative.
Research Comms is presented by Peter Barker, director of Orinoco Communications, a digital communications and content creation agency that specialises in helping to communicate research. Find out how we’ve helped research organisations like yours by taking a look at past projects…
LINKS
BBC Panorama Documentary:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qdzd/panorama-the-race-for-a-vaccine
BBC World Service Documentary:
How to make a vaccine in record time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddDiyIKUP0M&ab_channel=UniversityofOxford
Oxford vaccine efficacy announcement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHJ_RqeXXy0&ab_channel=UniversityofOxford
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