Non-Partisan Science Communication on Capitol Hill

By Sheeva Azma

Ever wondered how to communicate science in our politically polarized times? I definitely have. That’s why I was so grateful for the “Nonpartisan Science Communication in a Polarized World” talk at the 2024 AAAS Conference. Because I’m a member of the National Association for Science Writers, I got a press pass to attend as a journalist, for free. Fancy!

Keep reading for the recap. By the way, you can check out the full list of 2024 AAAS annual meeting recap blogs here, or all of my writing about various AAAS seminars and meetings I’ve attended here.

Kicking off the session, I was not prepared to hear this fact: expertise is useless when communicating in a partisan environment. That’s according to Shenandoah Sowash of the US Government Accountability Office. The GAO is an “independent, nonpartisan government agency within the legislative branch that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States,” according to Wikipedia.

Sowash manages the Science and Technology Communications Team at GAO. She is focused on nonpartisan science policy: “GAO is purely objective, which is complicated for any number of reasons,” she said.

Sowash focused the conversation on talking to staffers on Capitol Hill. She first reminded the audience that the average Capitol Hill staffer is 25 years old, doesn’t have a lot of time, and juggles many different issues. (I like to think of Capitol Hill as a startup, with the same type of grind culture, but with policy wonks instead of tech geeks.) She is interested in what motivates nonpartisan decisionmaking.

Mark Kuykendall works for Sowash at GAO in the Science Technology Assessment, and Analytics Team. The GAO falls under the legislative branch, he stated, and is often thought of as a “Congressional watchdog” overseeing federal agencies and programs. This work is nonpartisan and seeks to give Congress the best information possible for policymakers, including science and technology information. “We inform and persuade through data and research,” he said.

“Are you ready to become comms experts in two minutes?” Sowash asked. Then she offered a litany of advice, which I have tried to summarize here:

• Think about your message before you communicate. The message depends on the audience and the goal.
• Facts persuade scientists, but for the most part,, not non-scientists.
• “Congress needs to know what to do and how to legislate in a way that is both short-term and long-term.” Sowash gave the example of AI; if Congress doesn’t have AI policy experts, they will have to get that information from the private industry. GAO advises “through data and facts, without alienation,” Congress to legislate, not just today, but decades from now.
• Get specific about who you are talking to. “The whole world is not your audience,” Sowash says. If there are four staffers on Capitol Hill who want to know about a topic, those four people, and only those four people, are the intended audience.
• The “general public” does not exist as a concept for Sowash; instead, she likes to think about tiny slivers of people: “publics.” Judges, journalists, policymakers are slivers of people, or publics.
• Raising awareness should not be a political or strategic goal. A political or strategic goal should be connected to action, and raising awareness is an “anti-action” in some ways since its end goal is simply to inform without calling for action.
• Use personas to figure out who your audience is. At Fancy Comma, we’ve previously blogged about personas for marketing, and actually, the same principles apply in policymaking. Developing personas can involve figuring out your audience’s motivation to act in alignment with your goals, and often, your scientific knowledge.

The session participants next participated in an activity. They thought about an audience they’d like to communicate with in a nonpartisan way, such as city council or county official, a funding body, think tank, trade association, industry person, or something along those lines. Then, their task was to come up with reasons their audience would be interested in what they had to say about science.

Sowash concluded by relating an acronym: WIIFM. It stands for “What’s in it for me?” and is a great way to try to walk in the shoes of your audience. Why would your audience care about your research topic? It’s not because of interest, but because there’s something in it for the audience or, if the audience is a lawmaker, their constituents.

Kuykendall gave an example of WIIFM for a Capitol Hill staffer working on the Science committee: they’d be able to speak fluently on a topic without spending too much time prepping. You can use the WIIFM to ask staffers to take actions in alignment with your goals: for example, reading a one-pager about a science issue of interest to Congress that aligns with your personal research.

The WIIFM acronym was probably the biggest takeaway for me from a legislative advocacy perspective, but it was also cool learning about the GAO and what exactly they do in the legislative branch. Overall, I found this session to provide very specific communications skills unique to Congress that I can use – probably the most Congress-focused session of all of the sessions I have attended, second only to the session on “Lifting the Veil on Congressional Science Policy” (which I recapped here).

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