How do you communicate scientific evidence accurately while ensuring it remains meaningful across cultural contexts where trust is shaped by history, lived experience, and social relationships? This talk explores that question through journalism practice in African contexts, drawing on reporting on health inequities, vaccine hesitancy, climate impacts, social justice, and access to medicines, with a focus on how stories take shape before, during, and after publication.
My field experience shows that scientific claims are interpreted through social and cultural frames that influence how people understand and use information. When these influences are not considered early in the reporting process, journalism can unintentionally widen the distance between science and audiences. When they are integrated from the start, complexity can be communicated without being lost or simplified.
At the centre of this presentation is the idea that journalism is not only a bridge between science and the public but part of the environment where trust in science is formed. Decisions made before writing begins, including how questions are framed, who is selected as a source, and which contexts are prioritized, already shape how knowledge is understood. Careful listening, humility, and attention to lived realities are therefore not add-ons to science communication but foundational to how scientific stories are constructed and received.
Speaker
Ridwan Karim Dini-OsmanNews Presenter and Senior Reporter at Excellence in Broadcasting (EIB) Network, Ghana