PurposeThe paper reports on a research project exploring the change in the organizational context of communicators and communication units in higher education and research institutions (HERIs), the importance of informal processes within their daily work and the great diversity of expectations communicators have to tackle.Design/methodology/approachBased on a literature review, a mixed-methods study combining expert interviews with 54 German HERI heads of communication units, an online-survey and a document analysis of organizational characteristics was conducted. Findings were validated in four focus groups.FindingsThe study illuminates the impact of organizational and operational structures of HERIs on communicators and their boundary spanning activities. Due to varying expectations of stakeholders, communicators constantly have to switch roles. Members of HERIs' executive boards affect status and working conditions for communicators in the organization.Research limitations/implicationsInterviews with other HERI actors, especially members of the executive board, are proposed to get more thorough insights into the organizational context of HERIs and the mutual expectations of different internal stakeholders.Practical implicationsInsights from the project may help HERI actors to reflect their organizational context and to identify potentially contentious structures or processes.Originality/valueCommunicating science sometimes clashes with complex organizational and operational structures. Despite the “organizational turn” in HERI research, there is a lack of data on the relation between communicators, their communication units and the larger organizational context. The exploratory study addresses this gap.
This article proposes a typology for forms of presentations for external science communication. It incorporates theoretical concepts but remains applicable for science communication in practice. Empirical basis is a systematic screening and study of established forms as part of the research project “Science In Presentations”. The following differentiation criteria are used: the degree of multimodality, the degree of interactivity, the degree of event and entertainment orientation and the degree of performance. The typology is exemplified by four real case studies, for which respectively one criterion is especially pronounced: Science Vision (multimodality), Science Café (interactivity), Science Slam (event and entertainment orientation) and Christmas Lecture (performance).
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