March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach

Abstract

March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach – gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products – to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping “play-by-play” narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.

Integrative approaches to dispersing science: A case study of March Mammal Madness

“…As researchers and educators, 21st Century scholars are increasingly expected to effectively disperse knowledge beyond our academic disciplines and institutional classrooms (Habibi & Salim, 2021;Hinde et al, 2021;Hotez, 2020) in parallel with expanding expectations of researchintensive institutions (Crow & Dabars, 2015). Depending on the activities, audience, and purpose, dispersing scholarly research can involve science communication ("SciComm"), knowledge translation, public engagement with science, public outreach, and/or informal science education (Curran et al, 2011;Esmail et al, 2020;Raban & Gordon, 2021).…”

“…To the extent that we intentionally anchor our academic portfolios to these aspects of ourselves as individuals embedded within our communities and societies, we can intentionally build and guide our research programs, curricular offerings, professional service, and public outreach in light of our personal vision and professional mission. Further, we can embrace strategies and tactics that harmoniously reflect our individual attributes, especially temperament and positionality, while developing and expanding our visualization, story-telling, and other communication skill sets (Botsis et al, 2020;Cooke et al, 2017;Hinde et al, 2021;Keller & Limaye, 2020). Tactics for dispersing our science can expand beyond the restricted audiences of conventional academia to "broadcast" approaches with the potential to reach wide public audiences (Figure 1).…”

“…Scholars have to select among myriad platforms to reach disparate audiences of variable motivations and craft effective messages to stimulate engagement and F I G U R E 1 A conceptual model for intentionally developing a professional portfolio of scholarly activities that derives from philosophical foundations. Through reflexive consideration of individual values and perspectives, the scholar can develop a personal vision and mission for their career path, selecting strategies and tactics in service to their goals and in harmony with their true selves facilitate learning Hinde et al, 2021;Ocobock & Hawley, 2020). Classroom visits, K-12 field trips, public presentations, and media interviews have been important, in person components of public translation of science for decades.…”

“…Here we present one public engagement platform, March Mammal Madness (MMM) (Hinde et al, 2021), to highlight elements of public translation of science that we have found particularly effective, rewarding, and community-building that may be useful for others engaged in public outreach. A thorough description of the mechanics, history, and impact of the tournament has been reported elsewhere (Hinde et al, 2021), but here a subset of contributors are excited to contribute for this special Hackademics issue of the American Journal of Human Biology with more topical focus.…”

“…Here we present one public engagement platform, March Mammal Madness (MMM) (Hinde et al, 2021), to highlight elements of public translation of science that we have found particularly effective, rewarding, and community-building that may be useful for others engaged in public outreach. A thorough description of the mechanics, history, and impact of the tournament has been reported elsewhere (Hinde et al, 2021), but here a subset of contributors are excited to contribute for this special Hackademics issue of the American Journal of Human Biology with more topical focus. Importantly, MMM has not only allowed us to publicly translate the science of our academic subfields, but we have been able to navigate our approach to the tournament specifically, and our professional activities more broadly, in accordance with our deeper philosophies and values.…”