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This practice insight highlights a science communication initiative involving young researchers from the Einstein Telescope Infrastructure Consortium (ETIC), part of the effort to build the Einstein Telescope (ET), a next-generation gravitational-wave observatory expected to become operational by the late 2030s. ETIC supports a feasibility study for Sos Enattos in Sardinia, Italy, as a potential host site, while also strengthening the network of laboratories contributing to ET's scientific and technological development. To address the growing interest in Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST), we developed the “ETIC STEM Engagement Platform”: an innovative tool designed strictly for internal use by the communication office, not intended for public access or as a direct outreach channel. The platform enables early-career scientists to independently and proactively share multimedia content with the communications office, emphasizing key aspects of their research activities. Most early-career researchers in the ETIC have enthusiastically contributed original and personal materials, including photos, videos, and detailed descriptions of their research, discoveries, and connections to the local environment. These largely unpublished and original resources have been compiled into a dedicated database and are leveraged by the communication office to develop innovative public engagement campaigns.

The climate crisis is no longer a crisis of knowledge, but a crisis of agency. Individuals wishing to act must overcome climate anxiety, feelings of powerlessness, and doubt associated with the complexity of the scientific realities of climate change. Rural communities offer much to learn about sustainable living and environmental solutions, but are rarely the site of many science communication initiatives due to inequities in funding, transit, and access to decision-makers. This practice insight explores how the act of performing in `We Built This City on Rock and Coal', an improvised theatre show about climate change in rural and remote communities in Ireland, supported performers to develop agency and transition towards taking pro-environmental actions in their own lives. Accessing environmental science expertise alongside space for emotional responses (both heavy and light-hearted) in specific contexts anchored by local knowledge helped practitioners create a platform for change and climate action.

Outreach on mental illness presents a unique challenge for science communication, in that it requires approaches to actively address associated stigma. A significant barrier to treatment and recovery, stigma shapes the lives of those diagnosed with mental illnesses alongside their clinical symptoms. Evidence suggests that active involvement of person(s) with lived experience (PwLE) may be a promising strategy to combat stigma. However, such interventions remain under-documented in low- and middle-income countries like India. To address this gap, we designed a series of innovative events, co-produced with PwLE. We engaged approximately 260 participants and displayed 191 creative artefacts. This article presents and reflects on our science communication practices to address mental illness stigma by integrating arts-based participation with principles from contact theory.

This report presents an analysis of the communication efforts of the XXXII International Astronomical Union General Assembly, the first held on the African continent. For the first time in its history, the conference provided a fully streamed, open access experience on YouTube, complemented by a robust, multi-platform social media outreach campaign. Through metrics analysis and survey results, our study evaluates the effectiveness of diverse digital initiatives in enhancing engagement on different social media platforms to democratise scientific discourse. These findings offer critical insights for future hybrid and virtual conferences, providing social media metrics, best practices analysis and evaluation for social media scientific global communication of large-scale scientific gatherings.

This paper analyses the communication activities conducted within the framework of research projects funded under Horizon 2020, with more than €1M in funding, and led by Portuguese or Polish institutions. A total of 221 initiatives (68 Poland-led and 153 Portugal-led) are examined. The primary finding is that the majority of projects do not engage in communication activities. Web presence is observed in 41.1% of Poland-led projects and 41.8% of Portugal-led projects. In turn, social media presence is more common among Portugal-led (44.4%) than among Poland-led (29%) initiatives. Outreach activities are not very prominent, with a frequency of 28.1% and 23.5%, respectively. These figures improve slightly to moderately when controlling for projects' end date. Binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to test the influence of funding on communication activities. The relationship is positive across the board and reveals a potential effect, although it is statistically significant only for Portugal-led projects. These findings invite us to reconsider `legal obligation' to communicate the project and its outcomes that has become the norm in most grant funding, and provide a more nuanced understanding of the differences between `developed' and `developing' science communication landscapes.

This article presents a practice insight into the role of archival exhibitions as instruments of science communication, focusing on the KHARINA Exhibition (Khazanah Arsip Riset dan Inovasi Nasional) organised by Indonesia's National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN). KHARINA consolidates archival collections from legacy institutions to narrate milestones in the nation's research and innovation history. A thematic content analysis of seven curated collections revealed three dominant patterns: (1) a strong emphasis on technological and administrative documentation, (2) evidence of both international and domestic collaboration, and (3) limited representation of social and human-interest narratives. These findings illustrate KHARINA's dual contribution: safeguarding national achievements in science and technology while also exposing inclusivity gaps that limit accessibility for non-specialist audiences. The article highlights lessons for science communication practice, particularly the importance of integrating community perspectives and participatory documentation to complement technical and policy records. The KHARINA case demonstrates how archival exhibitions in developing-country contexts can contribute to science communication, cultural diplomacy, and the construction of collective memory, while pointing to pathways for more inclusive and engaging curatorial strategies.

Audiovisual communication methods such as digital storytelling can reach wide audiences to realise greater societal research impact. Increasingly, researchers embrace (or are expected to embrace) these approaches but often lack relevant skills. This paper draws on Horizon Europe-funded research where digital stories were developed in 20 European regions. Findings from a survey completed by the researchers highlight skills- and engagement-based challenges and explore how capacity to develop digital stories was built. The paper focuses on the role of digital storytelling in science communication, and the challenges researchers face in developing these outputs, including in ensuring meaningful participant involvement and the authentic representation of participants' voices within the final narratives. We discuss how to better support researchers to embrace digital storytelling as a science communication method, with recommendations for effective research impact.

We present Science & Cinema, a science communication format combining a cinematic atmosphere with scientific expertise. Through examining sequences from various movies, the format encourages audiences to critically reflect on representations of scientific topics in popular culture. The findings from pre- and post-event questionnaires and a recorded focus group session reveal that the format appeals to a range of audience demographics, entertains, creates interest, and fosters understanding and reflection. The format makes the power of images in shaping perceptions explicit and potentially contributes to a better understanding of how meaning-making occurs when scientific topics are strongly present in societal discourses.

This article reflects on #OneDOST4U, a unifying communication handle adopted by the Republic of the Philippines’ Department of Science and Technology (DOST) across multiple media vehicles. The campaign sought to strengthen a single institutional identity while inviting participation and feedback from diverse audiences, such as researchers, educators, local governments, industry partners, and communities. Through focus group discussions with stakeholders from 11 agency projects, we explored how publics interpreted and engaged with the campaign. Using qualitative thematic analysis, we identified recurring themes of value-in-use, dialogic engagement, and communal identity. Findings illustrate how institutional branding tools operate as boundary objects: recognisable symbols that different groups interpret in context while contributing to a shared sense of meaning. For science communication practice, #OneDOST4Udemonstrates that unifying institutional campaigns are most effective when treated as participatory boundary objects—tools that allow diverse stakeholders to negotiate meaning, build trust, and co-create the public value of science.

“What might our lives in outer space look like in the future? And how will those lives be shaped by gender?” These were the questions that directed students in a science communication activity in the Vienna Museum of Science and Technology in 2024. This Practice Insight reflects on this project and demonstrates how an expansive focus on gender in the long-term engagement project allowed student participants to challenge and pluralize normative masculinities of outer space futures, instead envisaging cosmic lives that supported traditional women's crafts, or gender-inclusive third spaces and city design. Rather than framing “women” and “girls” as the only subject for gender-oriented activities, this project encouraged students and educators to recognize that gender is done many different ways by different groups in societies. The paper provides prompts to readers to support them implementing similar transformations in their own science communication practices.