Unlike my comments, which are colored by my perspective as a scientist, yours actually reflect how the SSW website (and the campaign I guess) is perceived by people who aren’t that into science.

As these are the very people the campaign is hoping to reach, hopefully someone will take note!

However, as you say in the comments there is some really interesting and responsive engagement going on too, so it’s not all c1995 ‘deficit model’ comms!

A bit more ranting in blog, if anyone is interested. ‘Bin the S word. It’s the veg in the pasta sauce. http://www.responsiblenanoforum.org/blog/

I am, however, thrilled to see Lord Drayson tapping into the Twitter community for feedback and to see the response he’s getting.

I do find it strange that in many ways the UK is leading the way in more integrated science engagement, and yet still seems to struggling to join the dots in some areas. If you look at responses to GM and BSE (amongst other “science” related crises), the influence of leading thinkers like Brian Wynne and Nick Pidgeon, the work of Kathy Sykes, and new approaches to incorporating public engagement into research strategies championed by people like Richard Jones, the country is ahead of the curve. In fact, the sophistication with which some parts of the UK government approach science in society is in marked contrast to the rather outmoded attitudes still prevalent in the US.

And yet… you have campaigns like Science: So what? that don’t seem to quite connect, and politicians that seem to struggle with concepts like “science-informed decision-making” (although this is not a problem unique to the UK sadly).

It seems there are some great opportunities here to do things differently – but more is needed to transform these opportunities into reality.

I took some time Googling information on the campaign before writing the piece, and all roads seemed to lead back to the website. What would be extremely helpful is if information was available somewhere on the larger campaign – or if it is already available, that it is easily findable

That said, the ratio of ‘inactives’ through to ‘creators’ in a user population can be very high; the latter often less than 1% of the former – Wikipedia is an example. (See Forrester’s Technographic Ladder for the academic background). Another example, the Science Museum web pages really do get millions of hits a year, but the level of ‘engagement’ isn’t anywhere near that level, and is very focused in some areas and not others (interestingly the SciM has a healthy Twitter following – as does SSW; it’s so easy to follow and interact using Twitter).

Web hits is often used as a kpi because its easy to track. But if it doesn’t map to the site’s purpose it’s very helpful. A morning spent phoning up the various sites and activities that SSW links to – and getting their feedback – would be time better spent perhaps.

Notice how this discussion is happening here and not on the Metablog……

For comparison, I checked the stats for 2020 Science on Wolfram Alpha – the daily visitors were over a factor of ten out (oops – revealing how select my readership is here!).

According to WA, http://bis.gov.uk only gets ~57,000 page views a day – ~1% of Science: So what?

I think it’s time BIS put some credible stats on the table for hits…

Readers are smarter than some people seem to think.

Yep

The Futurity blog http://futurity.org/ has the same problem. It is really a PR exercise for universities and readers are smart enough to spot that it isn’t run for them, but for the glory of the universities and individual scientists involved.

Anything that looks like PR seems to deter readers. So there is hope yet. Readers are smarter than some people seem to think.