Explaining technical climate and weather information while maintaining scientific accuracy is difficult. Yet it is a crucial part of Met Services work that is needed to prepare the public of an extreme event and allow people to make informed decisions.
Helping to overcome this challenge for the Met Services of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu is a specialised training on using both traditional, and social media. The training is jointly delivered by Pacific Science Solutions (PSS), Bureau of Meteorology, Pacific Community (SPC), Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), and media experts Dr. Jan Sinclair and Mrs Samantha Amjadali.
A key component of the Climate and Oceans Support Programme for the Pacific (COSPPac) project, the training aims to support and develop the capacity of Pacific National Met Services so they are able to communicate important information clearly, in language people can understand, while maintaining scientific accuracy.
“Climate and ocean science are critical to the lives and livelihoods of Pacific people. However, there are challenges in communicating scientific information to key stakeholders. For scientists and technical experts who are producing this critical information, understanding how to communicate effectively with their audiences is a valuable skill that needs to be developed, particularly in the Pacific region,” says SPREP’s Director of Climate Change Resilience, Ms Tagaloa Cooper Halo.
The changing nature of media in modern society over the last decade has caused a dramatic shift from traditional to conventional mediums of communication with the introduction of social media. As more people in the Pacific and the world become instantly connected via technology and the internet, excellence in communications is becoming an increasingly identified priority across various areas.
The training for meteorologists this week is focused on helping met services produce more user friendly products and services, such as climate and ocean outlooks. It will also look at building the capacity of met officers to enhance their confidence and ability to respond to interviews for television and radio, and strengthening Pacific met services’ social media presence and engagement.
Mock radio interviews with Solomon Islands Met Officer Mr Alick Haruhiru, and SPREP Communications Outreach Support Officer Ms Angelica Salele
In addition, the training will looked at key media platforms and tools, such as the use of hashtags to boost the reach of social media posts, as well as how to write interesting and easy to understand press releases. Participants are also being introduced and shown key social media platforms, and provided with tips for running multiple but succinct social media accounts that have consistent messaging and posts for different types of followers.
This initiative was made possible with the kind support of the Government of Australia through the COSPPac project which is jointly implemented by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Pacific Community (SPC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), in partnership with fourteen Pacific island countries aiming to "enhance the capacity of Pacific islands to manage and mitigate the impacts of climate variability and tidal events" whereby science communication is a cross-cutting activity.
The training is being held in Suva, Fiji, from Monday 11th of June to Friday 15th. For more information please contact [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] - #COSPPAC