2024:Program/Leveraging academic engagement: Insights from the UK’s Residency for Climate
Session title: Leveraging academic engagement: Insights from the UK’s Residency for Climate
- Session type: Lightning talk
- Track: Partnerships
- Language: en
Wikipedia is a powerful platform for bridging the communications gap between academia and the public, particularly on urgent global issues like climate change. Academics are subject matter experts, but they frequently overlook the potential of Wikipedia as a public communications tool.
Since 2022, Wikimedia UK has partnered with the University of Exeter’s GSI to leverage their research community to improve climate change-related articles on Wikipedia.|
Wikimedian in Residence at the Global Systems Institute, Tatjana Baleta, will shed light on this project’s progress, as well as the challenges and strategies for effectively involving academic audiences in this endeavour.
Description
[edit | edit source]- How does your session relate to the event theme, Collaboration of the Open?
The central topic of my session is how to collaborate with academic research audiences. With their subject matter knowledge and expertise, researchers could be an excellent audience to enage to improve content on Wikipedia. They have access to research locked away behind paywalls and they understand and can explain complex concepts that are difficult to grasp for lay audiences due to technical jargon. However, they often don't trust Wikipedia, don't understand its value, don't have the time to edit etc. These hurdles must be overcome in order to gain academic buy-in to participate in a Wikipedia project. Leveraging research audiences on topics like climate change can add value to Wikipedia's content on the topic, as well as being a public good that contributes to a more informed society. This session will share with the Wikimedia community my own learnings in engaging an academic research audience to inspire and provide the insights needed so that others may be empowered to work with other academic research audiences on Wikimedia projects.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
[edit | edit source]Speakers
[edit | edit source]- Tatjana Baleta
- Tatjana Baleta is the Wikimedian in Residence for Climate at the Global Systems Institute. She works with the research and student community at the University of Exeter and beyond to update and improve cliamte change information on Wikimedia platforms, countering mis- and disinformation in the process. Tatjana is a conservationist and environmental science communicator with 8 yrs international experience working with academia and the non-profit sector.