Science communication only reaches certain segments of society. Various underserved audiences are detached from it and feel left out, which is a challenge for democratic societies that build on informed participation in deliberative processes. While only recently researchers and practitioners have addressed the question on the detailed composition of the not reached groups, even less is known about the emotional impact on underserved audiences: feelings and emotions can play an important role in how science communication is received, and “feeling left out” can be an important aspect of exclusion. In this exploratory study, we provide insights from interviews and focus groups with three different underserved audiences in Germany. We found that on the one hand, material exclusion factors such as available infrastructure or financial means as well as specifically attributable factors such as language skills, are influencing the audience composition of science communication. On the other hand, emotional exclusion factors such as fear, habitual distance, and self- as well as outside-perception also play an important role. Therefore, simply addressing material aspects can only be part of establishing more inclusive science communication practices. Rather, being aware of emotions and feelings can serve as a point of leverage for science communication in reaching out to underserved audiences.

In a world decisively influenced by scientific developments science communication grows ever more important to enable informed decision making and participation of citizens in society and political discourse. However, science communication, being it public talks, or participatory projects, often reaches only certain parts of society. While this problem is increasingly recognized, only some empirical results and practical recommendations on success-factors for promoting diversity and inclusiveness in science communication exist so far. If at all, many projects and reports focus on very specific areas with only a few aggregated and overarching best practices and guidelines. This article contributes to filling this gap and presents a set of practical recommendations on reaching and engaging underserved audiences of science communication activities. The proposed guidelines have been developed from the experiences and empirical evidence from the research and practice project "Science for All" in Germany, and are based on a review of existing guidelines and recommendations. They are corroborated by interviews with practitioners, scientists, and underrepresented groups. The seven recommendations include listening to underserved audiences, reducing the distance, illustrating the relevance of science for daily life, going where the people are, cooperating with stakeholders, and multipliers, as well as the problem of too much openness, and one-time activities. The guidelines are primarily addressed at practitioners in the field of science communication and meant to encourage and support a first step toward more diverse and inclusive science communication. However, they are limited wherever the roots of exclusion lay at the societal and political level and are open for discussion. While inclusive science communication alone cannot fix discrimination and inequality in society, a continuous self-reflection and improvement of the communication of science organizations, including the improvement of inclusion and diversity within the organization themselves, is an important contribution to a more equitable society.

Addressing global sustainability challenges such as climate change in democratic societies requires thorough political and societal debates. Science and environmental communication is needed to inform these debates. However, not all parts of society are equally reached by traditional science communication. In particular young people, especially without academic background, are often left out. The cooperation of science communicators with influencers on the video platform YouTube can be a way to convey scientific information and raise awareness for environmental issues with new young audiences. This case study looks at three videos from the campaign #EarthOvershootDay on YouTube by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) Germany and the educational initiative MESH Collective. The focus of the analysis lies on the established success factors of communication through influencers—specifically authenticity, comprehensibility and storytelling—and how they play out in detail in the three exemplary videos. Besides the analysis of the videos, the study is corroborated by interviews with the producers and a comment analysis in order to include the perspective of the viewers. Our analysis confirms previous findings on science communication with influencers and illustrates the practical implementation of these findings. It shows that authenticity is a central aspect which is not disturbed through the presentation of scientific content. The storytelling approaches are tailored to the respective influencer and their style. The language and structure of the videos are simple and comprehensible, scientific arguments focus on selected aspects and are tied to examples from everyday life. The comments by the users support these findings with the majority of comments addressing the three aspects of our analysis being positive. However, evidence for an in-depth engagement with the scientific contents could not be found in the comments. The stated goal of the campaign to reach educationally disadvantaged young people was only reached to a limited degree according to the assessment of the producers. Additionally, the views of two of the three videos remained below the average for the respective channel. Taken together this indicates that cooperation with influencers might not be an “all-purpose tool” guaranteeing success for science communication.

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Addressing global sustainability challenges such as climate change or environmental protection requires thorough political and societal debates and following decisions in democratic societies. Science and environmental communication is needed to inform these debates. However, not all parts of society are equally reached by science and environmental communication, in particular young people without academic background are often left out. The cooperation with influencers on the video platform YouTube can be a way to convey scientific information and raise awareness for environmental issues with this target group. This case study looks at three videos from the YouTube campaign #EarthOvershootDay by the WWF Germany and Mesh Collective. The focus of the analysis lies on the success factors of science communication on YouTube with influencers – specifically the role of authenticity, comprehensibility and storytelling –, how they align with previous findings and how they play out in detail in the three exemplary videos. Besides the analysis of the videos, the study is corroborated by interviews with the producers and a comment analysis for the perspective of the viewers. Our analysis confirms previous findings on science communication with influencers and illustrates the aspects in their concrete implementation. It shows that authenticity is a central aspect for the presentation of scientific content by influencers – including topic choice, presentation style, language and interaction with the communities. The storytelling approaches need to be tailored to the respective influencer and their style. The language and structure of the videos are simple and comprehensible, the included scientific arguments focus on selected aspects and are tied to examples from everyday life. The comments by the users corroborate these findings with the majority of comments addressing the three aspects of our analysis being positive. However, an in-depth involvement with the scientific contents could not be found. These findings corroborate previous studies on the benefits of communicating science in cooperation with influencers and illustrate on the basis of the concrete examples which aspects are relevant. Thereby, this study can also serve as guidance for shaping practical science and environmental communication.