Getting specialist research into the public conversation.

The situation

University research teams working in technically demanding fields, producing findings with genuine public relevance that were not reaching public audiences.

The problem

Specialist research does not arrive in media ready form. The significance is real, but it sits underneath methodology, caveats and terminology that a general audience will not push through.

Researchers are also, reasonably, wary. Most have watched careful work get flattened into a headline that overstates it. That wariness is not an obstacle to work around. It is a legitimate professional concern, and any approach that ignores it loses the researcher's cooperation and usually their accuracy check as well.

The approach

Working directly with research teams to find the version of the story that is both accurate and interesting, rather than trading one against the other. In practice that means spending time on the research before spending any time on the pitch.

Targeting outlets with genuine reach for the audience that actually mattered, rather than chasing volume. A single well placed broadcast segment routinely outperforms a dozen syndicated pickups that nobody reads.

Structured media monitoring and coverage reporting, so researchers and their institution could see what the effort produced in concrete terms rather than anecdote.

The outcome

A national campaign for the university's microplastics research reached public and industry audiences at the same time, which is harder than it sounds. The angle that interests a general audience is rarely the angle that interests a prospective commercial partner, and most campaigns quietly choose one and lose the other.

The project's industry partners were given prominent visibility, including an Indigenous owned company whose involvement went to the substance of what the research was for rather than sitting decoratively alongside it.

Structured monitoring and coverage reporting then gave the research teams a measurable view of their own public profile. That shifted the internal conversation from whether media engagement justified the time to which kinds of engagement justified it, which is a more useful question and one researchers can act on themselves.

In 2024 this work was recognised with an RMIT Research Service Award for Service Excellence, nominated by colleagues across the university.