Research Comms Podcast: Interview with Dr Susanna Harris
“I think it’s my responsibility to use those three letters after my name, use that follower count, use my learning, training and communication skills to talk about things that are really important." Dr Susanna Harris on using her reach to create positive change.
This week’s guest is Dr Susanna L Harris, a former microbiologist turned science communicator. Susanna has been developing a large, engaged community of followers on social media ever since she started PhD Balance, an organisation that she set up in 2018 to address the needs of graduate students who are experiencing problems with their mental health.
The below interview has been edited and condensed for the sake of space. To hear everything that Susanna had to say in the interview please check out the podcast!
How did you end up getting into science communication on social media?
I knew that I wanted to do some sort of science communication for a long time. I got to train on science communication events, with mostly middle school kids and elementary grade school kids, early on in my PhD. Then I found that this is way more inspiring to me than my actual PhD research. It was a really cool opportunity because they taught us how to take our research and make it interactive and engaging. It really challenged my idea of what useful communication was.
Communication has to be a two-way thing, and I think it's easy to forget that just putting out information isn't enough, you have to be speaking to somebody who wants to listen. I really enjoyed the challenge of figuring out how to engage with somebody by working out why they’d want to have the conversation that I want to have. With kids, it's as simple as noting something like what kind of shoes they're wearing; if they're wearing tennis shoes that have a superhero on them, and you want to talk about microbes, you can ask them, “Does anyone know how powerful Superman is in real life?” And they're, like,“No” and you can say “Well, that's the same with microbes, because we totally underestimate them.”
How did you continue your scicomm journey from there?
I realised I wanted to do some stuff in science communication but I was midway through a PhD, so I started something called PhD Balance, which was an instagram page originally, and because of that I realised that I needed to be on social media more. At that time I had a couple hundred followers on Instagram, most of whom I went to high school with. On Twitter, I had probably less than fifty. Then I just started being active on there to self-promote PhD Balance and then I realised that this was a cool way to connect with scientists and share science and use what I’d learned from that in-person training and translate that to the online world.
Have you listened to these other episodes of the Research Comms podcast?
Who is your target audience on social media?
I don’t do a tonne of actual science communication. I enjoy it but I actually really like to help other scientists think about their science communication. It’s funny to me, actually, that some of the most entertaining stuff that I’ve done is working with scientists who have been doing research for five, ten, twenty years, and saying, ‘Okay, you have two minutes to make your science exciting to a five-year-old.’
And to see it click into place is really cool because scientists will always say, ‘Well, I can't explain this to you in two minutes.’ and I'm like, ‘You can't explain it to me in two years!’ They’ve probably been studying their subject for decades, if you include school as a kid. So the question becomes, how can we find something that the other person is going to get excited about?
You mentioned PhD balance, which is an enterprise that you set up a couple of years ago. What is it and how did it come about?
I was in a science communication conference and we were talking about sharing what was important to us. And I also happened to see this paper from Nature Biotechnology that said that about forty percent of graduate students were dealing with signs or symptoms of anxiety or depression.
I mean, I knew a lot of people struggled, but I had no idea that it was so high. Even on the low end of what studies have found it's twenty-five percent, which means that if I turned to one in four people, they would understand how much I had struggled, from a point of understanding it themselves. Not just from being empathetic people, but rather they would probably turn to me and say, ‘Yeah I had some really similar things happen.’
I read that paper and I was thinking about how and why it's important to share, and I thought maybe some of the reason that these numbers haven't been focused on enough is because we're not putting faces to it, we're not actually telling the story, and that's how people connect, whether it's science communication, or talking about mental health.
So I started an Instagram page, originally called PhDepression, because I was a PhD student with depression. I was hoping for maybe a couple people to share their story, maybe a few hundred of us would be in this supportive, online Instagrammy family thing. And then it just totally took off.
We hear a lot about the negative side of social media, about how it can be anxiety inducing. Do you ever feel that there's a tension between the fact that you now feel compelled to spend large amounts of time on social media while trying to shine a light on mental health issues?
At one point in my life, social media engagement could have actually really hurt my career. But now if my social media disappeared then aspects of my career would substantially change. So there is that compulsion to engage, be active, put out a certain image.
I was lucky though, early on, to get to watch and emulate other folk on Instagram and on Twitter who I looked up to and whose voices I appreciated. A lot of them really tried to talk about issues that they felt were important, and generally keep a positive tone. But most importantly they were all very genuine, and so that was nice because I've kind of gotten to be myself on my own platforms.
It's actually sort of surprising, based on social media metrics, that I have gotten to the following that I have. Because I'm not a one or two-dimensional person to follow, which can get very confusing for a lot of people. It can be like, ‘Hey I thought I followed you for science, why are you talking about mental health? Why are you showing me dog pictures?’ Although if you complain about dog pictures I don't know how to help you!
I think we can actually look at social media in a positive way, in terms of the fact that it is one of the few social engagements that we get to curate for ourselves. But I am a big fan of muting and blocking and saying, ‘Hey, this is my space, this is my experience’ and if it is negatively affecting my life I don't want to do that.
Twitter can be especially tough, Instagram's a softer place and you have more control. Once something gets out of your hands on Twitter it's gone. And I've had some pretty tough interactions, but because I've surrounded myself with such amazing people, it always evens out on the positive side.
You’re unapologetically political at times, which in the scientific community can be a slightly contentious area, because science is supposed to be this objective bubble, untainted by politics and other issues. Obviously, that's wishful thinking in most respects, but do you ever find that there’s pushback from other scientists?
For sure. I think there there's no such opinion that doesn't exist on Twitter. Even now when I've said that I'm doing this marketing job that I really love, and I get to work with scientists, I've had people say ‘Scientists should stay in the lab, we need more scientists!’
I definitely think my platforms have changed in tone a little bit since I defended my PhD in March/April, I was one of the first round of folks who defended their thesis virtually. Since then my tone got a little bit darker, and a little bit more, I don't know if aggressive is the right word, but we'll go with it.
After I graduated I was totally burnt out, I’m starting to feel a bit more like, ‘Hey, let’s talk about science!’ but also we've just seen so many issues, social justice issues, environmental issues, political issues, and huge issues with universities.
I’m really fortunate to have a large following. And because not everyone has that for so many reasons, I think it is my responsibility to use those three letters after my name, use that follower count, use my learning, training and communication skills to talk about things that are really important.
We're all going to be embarrassed when we look back at our social media in five years. But I'd rather look back and be like, ‘Wow. That was a lot,’ versus looking back and thinking the world was crumbling, and all you talked about was how cool earthworms are. Not to say that that shouldn’t be something that people do if that's what they want to do.
But for me, speaking out about these things is so important, I think if I looked back and saw that I wasn't using these opportunities that would be pretty disappointing.
Research Comms is presented by Peter Barker, director of Orinoco Communications, a digital communications and content creation agency that specialises in helping to communicate research. Find out how we’ve helped research organisations like yours by taking a look at past projects…
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