Science communication for the press: the hybrid model of Agência Bori texts based on five essential questions

Abstract

Nine out of ten Brazilians cannot name an institution that does research in the country or a Brazilian scientist (CGEE, 2019) – which reveals the need for strategies to connect the press and science in Brazil. Agência Bori is part of this field, an initiative that disseminates Brazilian scientific studies to journalists across the country and explains them through a hybrid text, which is placed between a press release and a news text. In this article, we present the construction of the Agência Bori hybrid model of science communication text based on five essential questions: What is the main finding of the research? How was the search done? How do the results change people’s lives? How do the results change what was already known in the area of knowledge? What happens now in the face of the results/conclusions? Preliminary experiences of monitoring the repercussion of studies disseminated to the press show that the model is well accepted in the journalistic environment.

Keywords
Science journalism; Science communication; Textual model; Journalism; Public understanding of science

Resumo

Nove em cada dez brasileiros não sabem dizer o nome de uma instituição que faça pesquisa no país ou de um cientista brasileiro (CGEE, 2019) – o que escancara a necessidade de estratégias para conectar a imprensa e a ciência no Brasil. É nesse campo que se insere a Agência Bori, iniciativa que dissemina estudos científicos brasileiros para jornalistas de todo o país e os explica por meio de texto híbrido, que se coloca entre um press release e um texto noticioso. No presente artigo, apresentamos a construção do modelo híbrido de texto de divulgação científica da Agência Bori com base em cinco perguntas essenciais: Qual principal achado da pesquisa? Como a pesquisa foi feita? Como os resultados mudam a vida das pessoas? Como os resultados mudam o que já se sabia na área do conhecimento? O que acontece agora diante dos resultados/conclusões? Experiências preliminares de monitoramento da repercussão dos estudos disseminados para a imprensa mostram que o modelo tem boa aceitação no meio jornalístico.

Palavras-chave
Jornalismo científico; Divulgação científica; Modelo textual; Jornalismo; Percepção social da ciência

Resumen

Nueve en cada diez brasileños no saben decir el nombre de una institución que produzca investigaciones en el país o, de igual manera, nombrar a un científico brasileño (CGEE, 2019) – lo que revela la necesidad de estrategias para conectar la prensa a la ciencia en Brasil. La Agencia Bori actúa para revertir esta invisibilidad con iniciativas de divulgación de los estudios científicos brasileños para periodistas de todo el país, produciendo contenidos explicativos por medio de un modelo textual híbrido, que se queda entre un comunicado de prensa y un texto informativo y se apropia así de elementos de asesoría de prensa y del periodismo. En este artículo presentamos la construcción del modelo híbrido de texto de divulgación científica de la Agencia Bori basado en cinco cuestiones clave: ¿Cuál es el principal resultado de la investigación? ¿Cómo se llevó a cabo la investigación científica? ¿Cómo los resultados cambian la vida de las personas? ¿Cómo los resultados cambian lo que ya se sabía en el área del conocimiento? ¿Qué ocurre ahora ante los resultados/conclusiones? Experiencias preliminares de verificación de la repercusión de los estudios divulgados para la prensa muestran que el modelo tiene buena aceptación en el medio periodístico.

Palabras clave
Periodismo científico; Divulgación científica; Modelo textual; Periodismo; Percepción social de la ciencia

Introduction: Science in the press to reach society

The intensification of science communication was perhaps the most interesting of all the impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The need to confront the worldwide dissemination of a new virus has put science and scientific research at the frontpage of the news in unprecedented ways, giving voice to scientists from various fields of knowledge. This scenario may transform the social communication and perception of science in the coming years.

The Agência Bori, a project for disseminating science to the press created by us, has closely followed this process¹. Launched in February 2020, two weeks before the first case of COVID-19 in Brazil², Bori began disseminating Brazilian science to journalists precisely at a time when the media was focused on scientific production and scientists from Brazil. To bring science to press is important and necessary: Brazil produces approximately 2% of all the world’s science, which ranked it 14th in the world in science production in 2021, according to the Scimago Journal & Country Rankings³. There were more than 100 thousand studies by Brazilians published in 2021, a number close to the scientific production of South Korea (13th in the world with 102 thousand articles published in 2020) and three times greater than the academic production of South Africa (32nd in the world with 33 thousand scientific studies published in the same period).

Despite this intense national scientific production, nine out of ten Brazilians cannot tell the name of an institution that does research in the country or the name of a scientist, according to the latest national survey of public perception of science and technology (CGEE, 2019). The need for strategic communication to connect the press and science in Brazil is evident – and it is in this field that the Agência Bori is inserted.

As it is aimed at journalists with the objective of guiding them with national science, Bori’s main interlocutors are the press professionals themselves, who end up using the agency’s material in their own work. The second public are the general population, which ends up being informed through the agency. Thus, this immediate social situation, with diverse interlocutors, ultimately shapes the very structure of enunciation (BAKHTIN, 2010 [1929]) and communicative functions. Addressing this diverse reader requires taking on the role of informer and, in the case of journalists, convincing this interlocutor to take on the role of informer himself. For this reason, we have created a unique textual model for science communication, which appropriates elements of press/marketing and journalism to explain Brazilian scientific research.

This hybrid text model about Brazilian research disseminated at Bori, which mixes press release and informative genre formats (MARQUES DE MELO, 2009, p. 35), was named “explanatory texts”. Each Bori text explains to the interlocutor five essential questions of the scientific research: i) main results of the research; ii) how the research was done; iii) how the research advances the scientific knowledge that already existed in the area; iv) how it changes people’s lives; and v) what happens from now on.

In this article, we present a case study of the journey of construction of the hybrid science dissemination text of the Agência Bori created based on the five essential questions, where we show a case of science outreach at the Agência Bori and discuss possible impacts of the proposed format on the communication of Brazilian science. As a data collection methodology, we used testimonial and documentary information, based on participant observation of the researchers, founders and/or Bori’s collaborators.

The context of the Agência Bori’s creation

The Agência Bori project emerged with the mission of promoting a change in the scientific culture of the country based on Vogt’s vision (2003), bringing science closer to the population through journalism⁴. We map, select, anticipate, and explain, through texts, the quality science produced in the country to the national press registered on the platform (“journalists from the Bori community”). Thus, it establishes direct contact between journalists and scientists – who are prepared by our team to meet the press to discuss their research. This is the flagship of the initiative⁵.

The work of the Agência Bori is even more important because there is, in Brazil, a strong demand for the professionalization of science communication, with trained professionals who know how to conduct truly scientific discussions and show the social dimension that science has (DENTILLO, 2011). This professionalization does not happen overnight: “it is necessary to foster this culture within the academy and create a minimally adequate support infrastructure, so that those who are interested in working with this are able to do so with a minimum of success”⁶ (ESCOBAR, 2018, n.p.). The role of journalism in connecting science to society is strengthened even more in research institutions and universities that are still poorly structured for science communication.

It is worth noticing that, despite facilitating contact between scientists and journalists, Bori is not structured as a press office. Thus, it does not answer the press directly based on the profile and needs of each communication vehicle, nor does it perform specific work of identifying subjects for specific vehicles, as defined, for example, by the Unicamp Press Relations Manual (UNICAMP, s/d). It is a kind of showcase of national science explained and facilitated, an unprecedented initiative in the country that, precisely because of this, has created a differentiated model of explanatory text.

This type of service was an important demand in the country a few years ago. As Massarani and Peters (2016) write in an article dealing with scientists’ relationships with the press, “the strong agreement with items that affirm the important role of scientific publications for research communication point to an important factor: the availability of these publications to journalists” (MASSARANI; PETERS, 2016, p.1171). The authors go on:

Journalists who work in the mainstream media do not necessarily have easy access to the articles: most researchers working in Brazilian universities and research institutions have had, in the last decade, access to the main international journals through the so-called “Portal da Capes”, a development agency linked to the Ministry of Education - but this is not the case for journalists. Journals like Science, Nature and JAMA have a very good system for distributing their articles worldwide to journalists, including Brazilians

(MASSARANI; PETERS, 2016, p. 1172).

The main system mentioned by the authors is EurekAlert!⁷, a non-profit press release distribution platform operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as a resource for journalists and the public. The service hosts press releases produced by universities, publishers, science centers, government agencies, corporations, and other organizations involved in all fields of scientific research.

Oliveira, Massarani and Amorim (2014) analyzed the influence of EurekAlert! in the agenda of two major Brazilian newspapers. The result is that the newspapers mostly feature research conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom, which represents “a partial and geographically limited view of the world of science that does not necessarily meet our social and economic needs” (OLIVEIRA; MASSARANI; AMORIM, 2014, p. 12).

In the same way, Schipman (2014) analyzes the important role that global press releases from services like EurekAlert! play in science communication. According to him, journals with low visibility end up on the margins of dissemination. “There are good stories that reporters may never find because they are published in a journal that reporters don’t read regularly. A press release can therefore raise the profile of articles in these journals, making it more likely that relevant research will be published in mainstream media” (SHIPMAN, 2014, p. 2).

Moreover, by boosting the visibility of national science in society, the dissemination of scientific research to the press can be an efficient strategy to strengthen the organizational image of universities in a scenario described by Marcinkowski and colleagues (2013) as one of increasing academic competition. The authors point out that crises of legitimacy of science have affected universities in several European countries and lead these institutions to invest in their visibility through the press. Although Brazilian universities are in a slightly different context, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCTI) budget cuts for investment in science, which have occurred systematically since 2014, underscore the urgency for universities to create mechanisms to bring visibility to the science that is done in their laboratories⁸.

Massarani and Peters (2016) also highlight the electronic library SciELO⁹ as an initiative with great potential for science communication – as long as it is suitable to the demands of the press. Since its emergency, the Agência Bori established a partnership with SciELO to map the scientific production of journals edited in Brazil prior to their publication and thus anticipate scientific studies for the press under journalistic embargo¹⁰.

SciELO itself has created an initiative to disseminate scientific articles through press releases that are defined as “a summarized text about a scientific article” that can be “used to promote the main elements of a study in the media and are produced by the authors of the articles themselves, by editors or editorial staff, and by journalists” with “accessible language without jargon, technical terms, abbreviations and acronyms” (SciELO, 2014, n.p.) The press releases are published after the publication of the papers (academic article or thematic issue) in the journals of SciELO Network’s national or thematic collections.

It turns out that the anticipation of scientific papers explained to the press, making them available before their publication under journalistic embargo, is a demand of the press itself. Novelty is one of the main criteria that drives the work of the media – also, of course, in science journalism. In a survey conducted in 2019 with 140 journalists from 12 states and the Federal District during the development of the Agência Bori, it was observed that 70% of the respondents would like to receive scientific research up to 15 days before its publication, precisely to have time to elaborate the journalistic content about the material (RIGHETTI et al., 2021).

It is also worth noting that 60% of the Brazilian journalists interviewed in the survey do up to three reports per week (i.e., one new report every working day and a half) and most have no specific training in science. At the time of the survey, one in four interviewed Brazilian journalists revealed that they used the EurekAlert! platform as their main source to find stories about scientific research (RIGHETTI et al., 2021, p.11). This reinforces this platform as an important resource for science communication, as pointed by previous research (MASSARANI; PETERS, 2016) – which often leads to the prioritization of foreign scientific agendas, as highlighted by Oliveira, Massarani and Amorim (2014).

The science disseminated by the Agência Bori

In its first year of operation, from February 2020 to February 2021, Bori anticipated to the registered press¹¹ 147 scientific papers accompanied by explanatory text (in a hybrid model, as mentioned above, that mixes press release and informative genre formats)¹². There were papers on the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the consequences of global warming for coral reefs, the effects of cinnamon consumption on diabetes control, and a new proposal to weigh galaxy clusters or the identification of new fish species and a rare fossil in the Brazilian Northeast. All the published studies have had some repercussion in the national press.

This amount of work was equally distributed in three major sets of themes: i) research in Health; ii) research in Applied Social Sciences; and iii) research in other science fields such as Environment, Humanities, and Exact Sciences, as shown in Table 1:

Table 1
Examples of research titles disseminated at Bori and their repercussion in the press (March 2020 to April 2021)

	Original title of the scientific article	What an institutional press release title might look like	Title of Bori's explanatory text	Examples of actual headlines from research reports
Health	The case of eculizumab: judicialization and purchases by the Ministry of Health	UERJ's research accounts the public cost of the judicialization of a single drug to the Ministry of Health	Survey shows public spending of R$ 2.4 billion via judicialization with a single drug	A single drug cost SUS R$ 2.44 billion in 11 years, reveals study ("Folha de S.Paulo")
Applied Social Sciences	New Emergency Aid: estimates of the effects on income	FGV-SP research estimates the effect of the end of the emergency aid	New emergency aid: more than 40% of workers will not be able to have their income losses compensated	Emergency aid does not compensate income loss for 43% of beneficiaries ("Exame")
Other areas	Trophic interactions will expand geographically, but be less intense as oceans warm	UFRN researchers show effect of ocean warming on corals in article in global impact journal	As the ocean warms, coral reefs along the Brazilian coast may be overrun by algae	Ocean warming may change coral reefs, study shows ("Agência Brasil")

• Source: authors elaboration.

As can be seen in Table 1, the research is disseminated by Bori starting with a headline that is halfway between a press release, which highlights institutional features, and a news title. In the first case, besides the main theme, aspects of the institution are highlighted. A. Galiego (2013) writes, the main role of the press office is that of disclosure (of research, events, institutional information) dealing directly with reporters. It is up to the press secretary to suggest newsworthy topics to the media. In the second case, the focus is on the main information in an objective way, with emphasis on numbers (when applicable), without even mentioning the institution in the title.

Being “halfway” between a press release and a news text, we have given Bori’s explanatory text the name of “hybrid model”, in the genetic sense that defines an organism formed by the crossing of two different varieties. The textual marks of Bori’s text model are explored below.

The textual hallmarks of Bori’s hybrid text model

This report constitutes a case study on Bori’s dissemination, based on documentary and testimonial information, since the researchers are in charge of the Agency’s coordination. To better understand what kind of textual production we were developing at the Agência Bori, we looked into Discourse and Language Studies, specifically on the concepts of enunciation, genre, discourse type and sphere of discourse (BAKHTIN, 2003 [1979]; MAINGUENEAU, 2008). Based on Bakhtin (2003 [1979], p. 279), we understand that there is a close relationship between the spheres of discourse and enunciations, as “each sphere of language use elaborates its relatively stable types of enunciations”.

Journalism, for instance, organizes discursive genres to fulfill certain social functions (MELO; ASSIS, 2016). As linguistic expressions of certain communicational situations (BAKHTIN, 2003 [1979]), genre has a stable element related to its identity, which, according to Bakhtin, unfolds in thematic content, composition, and verbal style. It would group together a series of discursive formats – which, in Marques de Melo and Assis’ (2016) understanding, would be flexible and changeable forms of expression over time. From this structural elasticity, genres would be able to adapt to changes in social life and society (BAKHTIN, 2003 [1979]).

In our view, Bori’s explanatory text can be considered a hybrid case that blends elements of genres belonging to three spheres of discourse: science communication, journalism, and institutional marketing. From science communication, we bring the very definition of a text produced based on a scientific text (article, report, book) – a secondary genre in relation to a primary one (MAINGUENEAU, 2008). The science communication discourse is considered a new discursive formulation (ZAMBONI, 2001), because it uses scientific discourse while adding other elements (metaphors, paraphrases, source analysis, data) to make itself understandable to another discursive community besides scholars, which would be that of journalists and lay people interested in science.

Since Bori’s text is formatted to be used by journalists in their reporting production process, we configured it from logics of journalistic discourse. Based on Marques de Melo’s (2009 apud MELO; ASSIS, 2016) classification, we can say that it belongs predominantly to the universe of the informative journalistic genre, with news and report format. In this sense, the text carries “normatizations that establish structural parameters for each form, which include textual aspects and, also, procedures and particularities related to the modus operandi of each unit” (MARQUES DE MELO; ASSIS, 2016, p.50). Short, informative and objective sentences, without jargon or unexplained academic concepts appear as relevant textual marks of our informational product.

In addition, the very structure of textual organization of Bori’s model refers to the inverted pyramid of journalism, which brings the information considered most important already in the opening paragraph of the text, while it allocates secondary information that complements the news in subsequent paragraphs (FONTCUBERTA, 1993; GRADIM, 2000). This format also allows communication vehicles to reproduce our texts in full if they do not have the staff to produce reports, a reality in the context of Brazilian small cities. As Ana Estela de Sousa Pinto writes in her book on daily journalism, strongly inspired by Folha de S.Paulo’s experience: “In the inverted pyramid, the text begins with what is most relevant and ends with what is least important. The idea is that if the reader does not want to read to the end, they will have obtained what is fundamental at the beginning” (PINTO, 2012, p.200). For her, practicing this type of text concerns the hierarchy of information.

Finally, we also go through the universe of press office/institutional marketing as we promote the news consumption of studies produced in universities and research centers. It is worth remembering, here, the warning of Marques de Melo and Assis (2016) to look at journalistic practices (the processes and behind the scenes) to have a correct reading of journalistic formats, before focusing only on the analysis of the texts. In our case, the fact that we assume the function of “bridge” between journalists and scientists/institutions – even though we are not a press office – makes us use some textual construction techniques of the institutional communication sphere.

The text of the Agência Bori is close to the structure of the press release described by Duarte (2009), because it places itself in the sphere of informing, guiding and subsidizing the work of journalists of science coverage from the angle of news, of novelty. Like the releases from other institutions, our text has a bias of origin and, therefore, “tells only half a story, presents only one angle, one point of view” (DUARTE, 2009, p.289), of the research group that conducted the disseminated study. Thus, we differentiate ourselves from journalistic products by not bringing controversy and other voices to interpret the results of the study, a typical process of journalistic investigation.

It also carries textual marks of institutional marketing, citing universities, spokesperson researchers, and research groups responsible for the studies. In addition, we also have a fact sheet, at the end of the text, with the contacts of the study’s spokesperson and the press office – which can be considered a textual mark belonging to this universe. The availability of sources increases the chances of the press using the releases (DUARTE, 2009), and is one of the criteria for selecting the study for dissemination, since we want to provide the journalist with the possibility of interviewing scientists.

On the other hand, we understand that these institutional marketing elements are not predominant in Bori’s hybrid text model. The very way of inserting the names of research institutions and researchers in the text is marked by the informative criteria of journalistic discourse: we quote the institution in the first paragraph, informing “who did” the research, and we bring the name of the spokesperson as a direct quotation. Other textual guidelines such as not using adjectives or phrases without informative content also serve this purpose of moving away from the promotional text commonly used by some research institutions.

Thus, we agree with Shipman (2014) when he states that a press release can be both a public communication tool of science and an institutional marketing tool, because it gives journalists access to scientific results produced in research institutions, encouraging them to make their coverage based on these data, while these same institutions gain prestige in the media sphere. We conceived the hybrid model of science communication of the Agência Bori in this duplicity. In the following, we demonstrate its textual structure.

The explanatory texts in Bori’s hybrid model

The definition of Bori’s hybrid text model, which serves as the basis for all the explanatory texts about Brazilian research we disseminate to the press, is based on the principle that the interlocutor is primarily the journalist in our community - who must be convinced that the research portrayed can become a story in his vehicle. Thus, we have defined that the text should be objective, informative, attractive, with simplified language and short sentences, and, at the same time, have convincing elements of a press release. In addition, we also have defined that Bori’s explanatory texts would have a maximum of six paragraphs.

The distinguishing feature of Bori’s texts was the identification of five fundamental questions, which are answered in all press release production:

• P1. What is the main finding of the research?

• P2. How was the research done?

• P3. How do results change people’s lives?

• P4. How do the results change what was already known in the area of knowledge?

• P5. What happens now in the face of the results/conclusions?

This can be seen below in Table 2, exemplified with the study by Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) researchers published on December 17, 2020 in the journal Biological Conservation and anticipated to the press under the title “Carnaval de Salvador affects marine life, says study” (Title of the article: “Land-based noise pollution impairs reef esh behavior: A case study with a Brazilian carnival”)¹³:

Table 2
Example of Bori’s textual production answering five key questions

Questions	Paragraphs from Bori's hybrid explanatory text	Aspects answered in the essential questions
What is the main finding of the research?	In addition to having an effect on people, the music emitted by the Salvador carnival may negatively affect the behavior of marine animals when propagating into the ocean. This is what an unprecedented study done by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), published in the journal "Biological Conservation” on Thursday (17), shows about the impact of acoustic emissions on the aquatic environment.	What: Music emitted by trios eletricos in Salvador can negatively affect the behavior of marine animals by propagating into the oceanWho: UFRN and UFBAWhen: December 17, 2020Where: Journal of Biological ConservationWhy: To assess impact of acoustic emissions on the aquatic environment
How was the research done?	The researchers measured acoustic intensity during the 2018 Salvador carnival (Barra-Ondina circuit) on the beach and underwater on the reef closest to the carnival party. The behavior of the Damselfish, an abundant species in the region, was analyzed in the face of acoustic stress and a false predator. They quantified the abundance of the fish in the area and their feeding rate on a reef near the carnival circuit and on a reef further away, where there was no noise. These experiments were conducted before, during, and after the carnival.	They quantified the abundance of the fish in the area and their feeding rate on a reef near the carnival circuit and on a reef further away, where there was no noise.
How do the results change what was already known in the area of knowledge?	The increased acoustic intensity underwater, the scientists noted, led the Damselfish to feed less and be less alert to predation. "The extremely loud music from the trios eletricos is actually a form of noise pollution in the marine environment," concludes researcher Antoine Leduc, one of the study's authors.	The extremely loud music of the trios eletricos is a form of noise pollution in the marine environment.
How do results change people's lives?	For Antoine, the study shows the importance of considering terrestrial sources of acoustic emissions in order to plan the management and conservation of coastal marine environments. Furthermore, he questions "whether the acoustic intensity emitted at carnival is healthy for people, since even fish suffer negative impacts from these acoustic emissions."	One must also consider terrestrial sources of acoustic emissions in order to plan the management and conservation of coastal marine environments.
What happens now in the face of the results/conclusions?	The researcher ponders, however, that it is not yet known precisely what the long-term consequences of this noise pollution are for the species. "Further studies will need to be done to assess how this source of pollution affects other species and how far offshore the acoustic effects of carnival impact the marine environment."	Long-term consequences of noise pollution need to be assessed.

• Source: authors elaboration.

It can be observed that the first paragr

aph answers the traditional journalistic headline questions following also the SciELO (2014) definitions for press releases: i) Who (conducted the research)? ii) What (is new)? iii) Where (was the research done/was the work published)? iv) When (did the discovery occur/was the result published)? and v) Why (is the result innovative)? It is not always possible to answer all the questions in the first paragraph of Bori’s hybrid explanatory texts, but the expectation is to answer most of them.

The next paragraph deals with research methodology, information that is highly valued in scholarly communication, but not always present in science journalism texts. The following paragraphs deal with the impacts of the research results on people’s lives and on the previous knowledge in the field (not necessarily in this order). Finally, we have defined that all Bori’s hybrid explanatory texts are concluded with future research perspectives and, in some cases, uncertainties – aspects more common in news reports and less present in press releases.

It is also worth noting that all explanatory texts by Bori would necessarily have quotes from the author/spokesperson of the disseminated research commenting on the results of the study –preferably at the end of the text. You can see from Table 2 that the quotation marks of the spokesperson scientist appear on the 3rd paragraph of the text. Here, there is more resemblance with the journalistic format than a press release – which reaffirms Bori’s hybrid proposal.

The flow of information between paragraphs in the Agência Bori’s text, as described above, is illustrated in Figure 1:

Figure 1
Flowchart of the structure of the hybrid explanatory text of the Agência Bori

Finally, it is worth noting that, at Bori, the hybrid explanatory text about the mentioned ecology research was published in the “Environment” category – one of the editorials created by Bori to identify to journalists the coverage area of each research. The textual pattern structured by the five essential questions, however, is maintained in texts from categories in all fields of knowledge, such as “Medicine and Health” or “Economics and Administration”.

Final considerations

In this text, we present a case report of the Agência Bori, specialized in anticipating explanatory materials for the press, with the objective of discussing the hybrid text model of science communication built to provide journalists with scientific information. By mixing elements of press release and news text, this format brings the relevance of the inverted pyramid and the novelty news to attract journalists, interested, briefly, in the disseminated research results and their impact on people’s lives.

Preliminary experiences of monitoring the impact of our productions have shown that the model has good acceptance with journalists and communication vehicles registered at Bori – all press releases were somehow used in the media. More systematic and in-depth analyses will follow to understand and even quantify the extent of the impact of our disseminations.

We believe that the model can serve as inspiration both for university press officers who want to intensify or even start to disseminate press releases about research carried out in the institution, and for publishers who want to innovate in their format and attract more public interest to journals. After all, journalistic formats still have their usefulness in the media, because they can synthesize the essentials of the story to be told, regardless of the medium used.

Finally, we envision that the adoption of this model by these press offices of different research institutions in Brazil can bring an impact on the visibility of scientific production in the national press – and, consequently, in people’s lives. After all, arousing the interest of journalists for the research results generated in these institutions is a first step towards consolidating them as perennial information sources for small and large communication vehicles.

This movement can lead to the construction of an ecosystem of initiatives that strengthen and bring science closer to journalism and, consequently, to the Brazilian population – which can lead to the strengthening of our scientific culture. As we have discussed in this paper, increasing the dialogue of science with society is, after all, a matter of survival for Brazilian science itself. And Brazilian science badly needs to survive.

• 1
  The agency is named "Bori" in honor of the Brazilian scientist Carolina Bori (1924-2004), a researcher in the field of experimental psychology and the first female president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC).
• 2
  The first case of COVID-19 was identified on February 26, 2020, two weeks after Bori's launch on February 12, 2020.
• 3
  See https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?year=2021. Accessed on: 9 nov. 2022.
• 4
  The project had initial support from Fapesp and, since 2019, from the Serrapilheira Institute. In 2020, Agência Bori was also selected for the Google News Initiative Startup Lab for 20-week training, mentoring, and financial support, and in 2021 it also started receiving support from Instituto Ibirapitanga and, in 2022, of Instituto Clima e Sociedade (iCS).
• 5
  At Bori we also offer registered journalists contacts of scientists to be used as sources. By September 2021, there were more than 500 researchers serving as sources for the press at Bori's list – with cell phone and email. We also organize courses and thematic awareness-raising immersions for the press to discuss and bring scientific evidence to factual coverage, such as the release of the IPCC report (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) or news coverage on COVID-19 vaccines. In this article, however, we will work specifically on the explanatory texts that provide the basis for the anticipation of scientific research to the press.
• 6
  All the references written in Portuguese or other languages have been freely translated to English.
• 7
  See https://www.eurekalert.org/. Accessed on: 8 oct. 2021.
• 8
  MCTI's budget reached R$9.5 billion in 2013 and since then has suffered declines annually (FOLHA, 2019). The budget forecast for 2022 is less than 1 billion reais.
• 9
  See https://www.scielo.br/. Accessed on: 8 oct. 2021.
• 10
  Scientific articles from journals outside SciELO are also disseminated by Bori, but in this case, the authors send their papers directly to the agency.
• 11
  By February 2021, more than 1,400 journalists registered from all over the country were accessing the Agência Bori daily.
• 12
  We call "spokesperson scientist" all the researchers who are responsible, at Bori, for being available to the press during the dissemination period of the research (in most cases, this is the main author of the study). In Bori's first year, half of them had a female spokesperson.
• 13
  See https://abori.com.br/ambiente/carnaval-de-salvador-afeta-vida-marinha-diz-estudo/. Accessed on: 8 Oct. 2021).

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Edited by

Editor: Maria Ataide Malcher

Editorial assistant: Weverton Raiol

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 Dec 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  13 Dec 2021
• Accepted
  04 Nov 2022