Part 1: The Mission

The first step in any science or risk communication venture is deciding on your mission. What are you setting out to accomplish and how are you going to know when your mission is complete? In this section we will start by describing the different purposes of science and risk communication. Next, we will combine a discussion of goal setting with program evaluation, because learning how to evaluate a communication program is critical for being able to set effective and achievable communication goals. After that we will turn our thought to the audience – how to identify the people you need to ‘speak’ to and how audience characteristics can influence your communication effort. Then we will finish with a discussion of ethical considerations for communication, as well as potential communication barriers and how they can be overcome.