“The principles I work to are the three V’s: voices, visuals and video. Any time we are given a story, those are the first things we’ll think about” Athena Dinar on compelling communications from Antarctica.
Athena Dinar is Deputy Head of Communications at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) where she’s spent over two decades conveying the captivating magic of Antarctica and the vital research scientists carry out there.
In this episode of Research Comms, Athena speaks with us about the shifting narratives surrounding the climate crisis and how digital media has transformed the communications landscape, as well as unpacking BAS’s endeavours to reduce its own carbon footprint while striving towards solutions to preserve the southernmost continent, as well as the wider world.
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The following excerpt from the interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What is it that enchants you most about Antarctica?
I remember when I saw my first iceberg. I was on our ship at the time, the RRS James Clark Ross, and we were stuck in sea ice. I felt it was a very magical place: a place that we need to understand better, a place that made me feel very small and insignificant on this planet of ours.
When you think about Antarctica, it’s 58 times the size of Great Britain. It's huge, it’s got miles of ice in places, and it just intrigues me. I love icebergs — who doesn't? The other thing I love is how throughout the 24 hours of daylight in an Antarctic summer, the sun changes the colour of the ice.
You go from everything from blue to grey to orange to yellow to pink. And I think my favourite colour is in the middle of the night, a pink sky reflected off the ice is something you're mesmerised by. So it's a place that's just beguiling, and I'd say it's now in my blood.
Have you listened to these other episodes of the Research Comms podcast?
It’s certainly a captivating place, which must help with engaging people. Are there any unique challenges you face in communicating about Antarctica?
There are several challenges. Everybody is interested in Antarctica, but there's still so much to find out about the continent. It's this thing of discovery. We probably know more about the moon and the space environment than we do about Antarctica.
In terms of the challenges of promoting it, access is tricky for all the obvious reasons. Going forward, as we try to reach net zero and start to look at how people fly around the world, we'll need to look at that quite seriously because the best way to communicate the magic of Antarctica and what we do there is to take people there.
That's why I've been there. I've accompanied media crews and it really changes people once they've had that unique firsthand experience. They are then totally on your side, which is great.
But over the years there has been a bit of climate change fatigue. With COP26 recently, it's come back into the headlines and there is now this sense of urgency. I suppose the challenge is that if we tell stories that are negative stories, such as “this is happening to the ice and this isn't good”, that can result in a feeling of apathy.
Some journalists have said to me, “well, we know this, so what's the next step?” As an organisation, the British Antarctic Survey’s job is to do research and provide the best evidence on what's happening to policymakers and society, regardless of which way it shows things.
There is hope. There are some good news stories coming out of the continent as well, especially around things like conservation, whale recovery, around places like South Georgia. There are these unique discovery stories where you find that life on the seabed can survive in the most hostile environments, more hostile than we thought.
I think the challenge now is how can we keep our science relevant and at the forefront of policymakers as they start to think about tackling the ‘climate crisis’.
How we view the ‘climate crisis’ has shifted massively in the last few decades. How has BAS had to adapt its communication strategies to this change?
That's an interesting question because it's changed enormously and it's evolved in two different ways. First of all, climate change wasn't a term that was really mentioned when I first started at BAS in 2000. I've been on an evolutionary journey of communicating that in Antarctica we were witnessing changes to the ice, to warming oceans, and warming atmosphere among others.
In parallel, I've seen a massive shift in the media. We've had this digital revolution. Back in 2000, I was faxing press releases and any paper would be picked up by all of the nationals. It was quite an empty marketplace which meant it was quite easy to promote things.
Fast forward 20 years to today, and climate change is very much something that people accept is happening, which is great, but it’s become a crowded space because there are a lot of organisations who are publishing work about climate change.
The media landscape has also evolved and we've got many more titles who all want very different things. As a comms practitioner, if you're trying to target policymakers, in the early days I would have said we want to get into the nationals, we want to get on Radio 4. Now, I might say we want to be in Carbon Brief or have a blog on The Conversation.
It’s much noisier, and lots of organisations have got media savvy and have got big comms teams, so we're all competing against one another for the same amount of air time and space.
How do you protect yourself against changes such as the recent uncertainty around channels like Twitter?
You don't put your eggs in one basket. You think very carefully about who you're trying to reach, and then you have your targeted campaign or narrative aimed at them through different channels.
With BAS, only 5% of our Twitter followers are active, which is very small, but the platform is massively influential because we have ministers, key media and a lot of different people following us.
We're actually now putting a lot more effort into Instagram. We think it's important to reach young people, and Instagram offers you the opportunity to reach new people. Twitter doesn't do that: you're at the mercy of whoever's going to share your content. With Instagram, the algorithm means that if you put some good content and people seem to like it, they'll share it with more people.
We're also dabbling in Tik Tok, which was the most visited website of 2022. Whether you like it or not, there are a lot of people using it and getting their news and content from it. Having looked at the Antarctic space on Tik Tok, there's a lot of inaccuracies. So we're trying to put a little bit of authoritative content in that space.
You can't just open an account: you've got to feed it, and it's hungry. We have to look quite carefully at what we share and how. The principles that I'm working to are the three ‘V's’: voices, visuals and video. Firstly, you need to have an authentic voice. Secondly, don't give me anything without a picture: people like pictures of people. Thirdly, video is king content.
Any time we are given a story, those are the first things: who's the voice? What are they going to say that is interesting, relevant, and what video can we share with that?
Can you tell me about the new science strategy BAS have just launched?
The new science strategy is Polar Science for a Sustainable Planet and this updates a strategy that we created about ten years ago. So our new strategy has five different themes, which I would say are more relevant to the pressing issues about the environment that we have today. It's not just around climate change, it's about biodiversity conservation as well.
Our work encompasses everything from space weather and its impact on satellite communications, all the way down to the core of Antarctica, the earth and the oceans and all the other icy places on earth. We cover a really wide remit.
For us, the new strategy is about how we are going to continue to monitor these places and help answer these questions by giving policymakers the best information without being part of the problem. We have a ship, we run our stations on diesel. So how can we do our science in a much smarter way?
We've gone from two ships to one. We’ve started to use robots a lot more now, and people aren’t zooming all around the world as they once were. We have to be a part of that. How can we do better science? How can we make it relevant and how can we be part of the solution rather than just finding the problems?
One final thing, what’s your book recommendation?
There's a book I read about five years ago called Quiet by Susan Cain. What it exhibited to me was that you can lead from the side, but you can also lead quietly. And that really taught me that I need to be a better listener and to not underestimate the quiet people in the room, because often when they speak, they will say something which is the most important piece of information you'll take away from that meeting.
So it changed my way of thinking about my colleagues and who you should really listen to to get the best advice about how to do your work or to tackle problems.
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…
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