Introducing the Four Public Expert Archetypes

What researchers who have impact in public really do instead of doing just science communications.

Credit: Ryan Vaarsi

In my previous, misspent career as a science communicator, I eventually stopped focusing on communicating science.

Why? Because whenever I paid attention to those researchers actually having impact with policymakers, CEOs, the public...i.e., anyone who wasn't a researcher—I quickly saw they were never just "communicating research."

Even if they had a new paper out—the classic research communication scenario—these impactful researcher never just talked about the paper's new findings and then made some vague recommendations for change.

Instead, they were advocating—like James Hansen or Naomi Oreskes or Jon Foley—for ideas, solutions, or changes in policy and behavior, with sharp recommendations aimed at specific audiences and names named of whoever stood in the way.

Or advising—like Angela Duckworth or Emily Oster or Ethan Mollick—everyone from consumers to policymakers, civil society and corporations, on everything from healthy parenting choices to how to incorporate AI into strategic business planning.

Or explaining current events—like Shawn Willsey or Claudia Sahm or Noah Smith, explaining everything from why volcanos in Iceland are erupting now to why housing prices are driving economic inequality.

Sure, all of these modes require competence at communicating research and its processes into information non-specialists can understand. And all of these researchers are more than competent as research communicators—or what I'll call "translators."

But translation of research to non-researchers is just table stakes for these and other effective public experts.

Translation has its place. It occasionally generates large value for the rest of us. But advocacy, advising and explaining reliably do, in large part because those modes help non-researchers recognize and use the value of expertise far more quickly than they do with just translation.

So, while translation (and the best practices of science communications that support it) might be a good starting point for researchers interested in public impact, we need a much more sophisticated framework to help improve those experts ready to become consistently effective and impactful in public.

The Deep, Distinct Patterns Researchers in Public Follow

The good news: Advocating, advising and explaining give us that framework. They give researchers the right pathways for improving their public impact.

That's because these three modes of public engagement (along with translating) aren’t just activities. They’re deep and distinct patterns that researchers follow time and again when they connect their expertise directly with the world.

In fact, you'll see many individual researchers gravitate toward one of these patterns in their public engagement:

• Emily Oster, for example, is a supremely persuasive advisor for parents and parents-to-be.

• Jonathan Haidt, who recently launched his new book and campaign arguing that childhoods be smartphone-free, is a forceful advocate for his research-based positions.

• Tressie McMillian Cottom, who has a regular column in The New York Times where she writes about everything from folk economics to the multi-layered codings of Beyonce's country album, is an exceptionally effective explainer of mystified cultural phenomena.

When researchers become effective public experts, it's in large part because they're especially comfortable in one of these patterns and develop the skillsets the patterns require.

Shawn Willsey, a public expert I've written about before (he's the geologist with the popular YouTube channel of explainer videos on volcanoes and other seismic activity around the world), is a fantastic explainer.

Would he be an equally effective advocate? Not immediately.

That's because each of these patterns/roles also require distinct skills, behaviors, habits of language, values, and superpowers.

They also have uniquely optimal situations and opportunities—not to mention unique and distinct Achilles heels.

It's not that researchers can't inhabit or combine two or three of the modes. Of course they can. (We see them do this a lot, often confusingly, on social media.)

But over and over, researchers I work or talk with identify with one of these patterns/roles over the others.

One pattern just feels right to them. It makes sense of what they've been trying to do as experts in public—and it explains why they're uncomfortable when asked by their organizations or institutions to inhabit another one of the patterns.

You can learn another pattern. But it's usually easier to get great at the one you’re pulled towards. And easier to build trust for your expertise through it.

Why Everyone Responds to These Archetypes

Another way of saying all this: These patterns/roles—the Advocate, the Advisor, the Explainer, and the Translator—are archetypes of researchers being experts in public.

Archetypes are foundational pathways of being and creating meaning in the world. The meaning an archetype creates is both personal and communal: It creates an identity for the individual and fills a need or set of needs for the community.

Jung and others have thought archetypes are innate—"innate universal pre-conscious psychic dispositions." OK.

But you don't have to be a Jungian for archetypes to work for you. For instance, try this lighter way of holding the archetype concept, courtesy of my colleague David Chapin: "Archetypes are self-reinforcing patterns."

Self-reinforcing for the expert who follows them, and for the culture around them.

When you inhabit an archetype, and especially when you articulate one, everyone quickly understands what you're talking about and what it brings to them.

That's because archetypes are all about value—in this instance, the particular value an expert is bringing to the community in their particular role.

The reason why Shawn Willsey's YouTube channel has +100K followers is because of his value as an explainer to this audience. Oster, Haidt, Cottom et al. have our attention because they generate similar value.

Value isn't a word you'll see much in science communications. Communicating science is considered by science to automatically be valuable to everyone.

What if that isn't true? Because, outside of the research community, value is relational. It exists not in the abstract but in the exchange between expert and community. The community decides if the information on offer is valuable.

And one of the fundamental shifts researchers must make to become effective public experts is to thinking in terms of what they can generate from their expertise that's of value to their target audiences and communities.

Which Archetype Are You?

In coming weeks here I'll go deeper into each archetype. In summary, though, they are:

The Translator (or The Bridge). They explain to non-experts new research and how it fits into the larger body of science. This is as close to pure science communication as a public expert gets.

• Their identity is wrapped up in being a researcher/scientist, speaking for the body of research, advocating for it as a public good—but not in going beyond it.

• Their highest value? Their confidence that translating the state of science on any given question can improve the decision-making and quality of life for many people.

  • Real-life examples include Ken Caldeira, Katelyn Jetelina, Eric Topol and the IPCC.

The Explainer. They explain and interpret current events in light of research and evidence. They differ from The Translator largely in their focus--their lens is trained on explaining current events and potential solutions for big challenges, not on explicating new research.

• Translation is more straightforward. You're taking one narrative and giving it meaning in a different context. It starts and ends with the text.

• Explanation starts and ends with the question, the problem, the challenge. It marshals evidence to answer the question, solve the problem, rise to the challenge—but it is never limited to just the evidence. It’s the intersection of the state of the research, your expertise/insight and the challenge. You want to give the audience a new way of seeing the challenge—you want them to see it as you the expert see it.

• There are two kinds of Explainers: Disciplinary Explainers (who apply their expertise in a field to explain a discrete set of phenomena), and Big Idea Explainers, who use a big idea or framing that purports to be the explanation for seemingly disparate or mysterious phenomena.

• Among their values: Making discourse and decision-making more rational and evidence-based, and giving people knowledge that demystifies life and its challenges.

  • Real-life examples of the Disciplinary Explainer include Brad DeLong, Claudia Sahm, Noah Smith and Adam Tooze (economists explaining economic phenomena) and, of course, Shawn Willsey.

  • Real-life examples of the Big Idea Explainer are researchers such as Angela Duckworth ("grit") or Adam Grant ("thinking again").

  • As we'll see in coming editions, the Big Idea Explainer often becomes an Advisor in private.

The Advisor. The Advisor uses new research or bodies of research to help people do their jobs, fulfill their roles and live their lives better.

• These researchers apply research and their expertise for the challenges faced by and needs of specific audiences—especially clear communities of practice or interest that are looking to improve their performance in some way.

• The Advisor is in frequent communication this audience, and steeped in both research relevant to that audience and the dynamics of the audience's cohort or sector.

• The core of an Advisor's work is to take positions on significant questions facing the cohort/sector—but they're advising on options as conditions and goals change, not advocating for a position.

• Real-life examples include Angela Duckworth, Adam Grant, Ethan Mollick and Emily Oster.

The Advocate. The Advocate's mission is--based on conclusions from the evidence and their expertise—to convince the world to change or improve...usually before it's too late.

• Advocates have superpowers that intensify their persuasiveness--skilled and thorough argumentation, persistence in making their case, and a taste for debate, which they run towards rather than shy away from.

• They are comfortable being known for their advocacy as much (or more) as their research.

• They're also are generally creative marketers of their own ideas, frequently publishing content and aggressively exploring and expounding their positions through a variety of platforms as well as cultivating like minded audiences.

• Real-life examples include Hansen, Foley, Michael Mann and Vijaya Ramachandran.

The Power of Using Public Expert Archetypes

Once you start thinking in public expert archetypes, you suddenly have not just a pathway for improvement as a public expert, but a name for those many instances of friction and misalignment that you’ve felt in public that might not have made sense to you before other than “I’m not very good at this advocacy thing.” For instance, if your goal is helping to create some sort of change in the world but your archetype is Translator, you’re probably going to always feel frustrated at your relative inability to be a good Advocate (at least in relation to other Advocates as well as your own ability to translate). But now you have choices. You can work at becoming a better Advocate. You can also choose to support change through translation—for example, by creating a wiki that answers questions about the science regarding the challenge you’re focused on.

Similarly, in organizations, it’s often fruitful to align archetypes and roles within an organization—e.g., put an Advisor in the Advisor role, an Advocate in the Advocate role. You should never force a Translator or even an Explainer to suddenly be an Advocate (especially in real-time) if they haven’t practiced it a lot in low-stakes settings. In addition, research organizations seeking public impact should create a strategic mix of archetypes to cover all of their messaging and communications needs—e.g., Advocates and Advisors and Explainers. Not doing so is tantamount to assuming your experts can just jump into any of these archetypes once a call for an interview or a roundtable or a webinar comes in and perform all of them flawlessly. (I assume you understand how ridiculous that assumption is, as well as how common.)

One archetype isn't better or more valuable than the others. But inhabiting any of them, I'm seeing again and again, is far more valuable for the public expert—and for their public—than just "communicating science" and hoping for the best.