Coronavirus in the Swedish media
– full report now published

Researchers belong to the professional groups that most Swedes trust, when they comment on the coronavirus in the media. This is one of the findings of VA’s study to understand how people in Sweden have been receiving and interpreting information about the pandemic, and how this is linked to the way it is being communicated in the media. A summary of the full report is now available in English.

Social media researcher named Sweden’s best science communicator

Michael Bossetta, a researcher in media and communication studies at Lund University, has been named Sweden’s best science communicator. He beat six other researchers to win the title at the final of the Researchers’ Grand Prix on 25 November in Stockholm. Second place went to malaria researcher Sofia Hernandez from Umeå University and in third place came Louise Karlsson from Halmstad University, who is researching the primary risk factors for stress-related ill health.

Forthcoming activities

The results of the 2021/22 VA Barometer, VA’s annual survey into the Swedish public’s general attitudes towards science and researchers, were announced on 14 December. The English version of the VA Barometer will be published in January.

VA’s recent activities

Experiments, stand-up comedy, guided lab tours, classroom visits and answering all sorts of questions about research and what life might be like in the future, were some of the activities undertaken by researchers in Sweden as part of European Researchers’ Night. Known as ForskarFredag, the science festival ran from 20 to 25 September, engaging 350 researchers and around 27,000 participants across the whole of Sweden. Read more.

Over the past 4.5 years, VA, along with eight European partners has been testing different co-creation and engagement methodologies to involve the public and other stakeholders in the research process as part of the EU ORION Open Science project. The project has now officially ended, leaving behind an impressive collection of resources that package the learnings gained throughout the project and make them openly and freely available for anyone to reuse. Read more.

A reality TV experiment, augmented reality app, smartphone game and citizen deliberation forum. These are just a few of the stakeholder engagement initiatives highlighted in a new paper on “Involving society in science” published in EMBO reports in November. Written by partners in the EU ORION Open Science project, the paper uses a range of inspiring projects and initiatives to illustrate different levels of stakeholder engagement in research and discuss the benefits and challenges of these approaches. Read more.

December saw the launch of Sweden’s national citizen science portal, medborgarforskning.se. At a conference on citizen science run by VA on 8 December, the new portal was highlighted, alongside discussions about the growth of citizen science in Sweden and its future potential. A number of presentations were given in English and are available to watch online. Read more.

The new EU-Citizen.Science online platform for anyone interested in citizen science has now been launched. It gathers best practice resources from the community for initiating, planning and executing citizen science projects, and showcases a wide range of citizen science projects to learn from, collaborate with, or participate in. Read more.

Pratavaccin, VA’s web portal to help counter myths against Covid vaccination, is now available in Arabic and Somali, in addition to Swedish and English. The portal is designed to help ordinary people address myths and misconceptions about the vaccines using evidence-based advice and support. Read more.

VA’s recent publications and resources available in English

VA Barometer 2020/2021: An annual survey into the Swedish public’s general attitudes towards science and researchers.

VA information folder 2022: Information about VA and its members.

VA’s definition guides to science communication, citizen science, open science and responsible research and innovation

VA in social media