I came across an article in Nature with a great title, “The future of science communication is not an article like this,” and slightly confusing content: audiences have moved to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, so “more researchers and science communicators […] need to be on these platforms.”
I have two thoughts here
First, it’s 2026, and having a big revelation that the audience is now on TikTok and Instagram is a little late (my 17-year-old son is on Instagram for one reason only: so I have somewhere to send him reels he’ll never watch).
Second, the article completely ignores that scientists and experts should, first of all, create new knowledge, do research, and do everything else we always assumed they were supposed to do 😅.
And the huge shifts happening right now in platforms, formats, and how people consume information (plus the whole AI revolution) aren't just a challenge for scientists and experts.
It’s an institutional challenge. It’s a challenge for universities, think tanks, research companies, NGOs, cultural institutions — anywhere expertise is the main product.
The whole challenge comes down to simple questions: who films, edits, answers the comments, and takes the hit when a video goes wrong? Who is going to produce all of this?
How the role of the communications manager is changing
Communications work in expert organizations has been drifting for a while, and the drift is speeding up. We’re moving from being communicators — people who write texts, build strategies, run channels — towards being producers.
Look at job descriptions for communications roles: they’ve been looking for generalists for a long time now, because someone has to do all of this!
Here’s an analogy I keep coming back to: TikTok houses, or content houses.
What is it?
The romantic version is that they’re places where creators live and create together. In reality, they’re production centers: they work with “creators,” make content, promote it, handle feedback, monetization, and so on.
Every “creator” is surrounded by people who make their appearance possible.
And if we’re pushing scientists and experts into new formats and new platforms, and asking them to take part in media production and in promoting the organization and its messages, then let’s build a production infrastructure around our experts.
Let’s build content houses. Without the actual house, and if possible, without the dancing and the lip-syncing.
This isn’t a challenge for scientists or experts, but for the organizations standing behind their slouched shoulders
“Go to TikTok” is great advice. But everything that has to happen before and after it is a challenge for the organization behind the expert. And inspiring articles like the one in Nature don’t talk about that.
If an organization wants its experts on new platforms, in new formats, closer to their audiences, if it wants engaging mechanics and nice numbers in its annual reports, it has to invest in at least three things:
Infrastructure
Services and platforms that make life easier for the people responsible for communications, and make distribution work. Planning, production, post-production, publishing, automation, promotion. All of this takes effort and investment. Although, of course, you can always do it all in CapCut on the PR assistant’s old iPhone.People
You have to invest in training. Experts need support to write better, speak better, and better understand the context their information product will live in. Communicators need support to run and develop the infrastructure and to be ready for new platforms and formats.
You have to invest in new positions, because neither Jerad, a young university graduate with shining eyes, nor experienced Florence can do everything alone. (OK, as practice shows, they can’t do it long enough for it to count as humane and effective.)Processes
You have to invest time and effort in processes. For example, we can start by bringing in the colleagues responsible for communications at the planning stage of a research project. So that the communication plan, and the effort, time, knowledge, and money it needs, are built into the project as an essential part of the work, and not, as usual, as an add-on to a finished product.
So, who should pay the piper?
Building an organization’s expert communications means helping its people be heard. And that has to show up as effort: a constant, deliberate effort by the organization to build the conditions and infrastructure around its scientists and experts, so their knowledge can reach its audiences without burning out the people behind it.
And after all, when it works, it’s the organization that gets to dance: the right clients, the funding, the partnerships, the recognition, the authority, and so on and so forth.
I write about comms and engagement for expert institutions and knowledge-driven organizations. I write for people who make knowledge reach others: communicators, program managers, researchers, and experts, often working in small teams, within imperfect structures, with limited resources.
Thanks for reading!
See you next week!