It can’t be easy managing UKRI’s communications.
The nation’s research funder has an almost endless amount of things it could talk about on any given day. A new research project over here, a new international partnership over there, a new piece of guidance, a bit of spotlighting something good a university has been up to, a bit of apologising for something that has gone wrong, it is an almost endless list of topics trying to reach an almost endlessly big audience thirsty for funding, advice, and a little bit of insight.
The recent news about funding challenges at STFC have not been wonderfully communicated but this isn’t entirely UKRI’s fault. Yes, as their Chief Executive Ian Chapman has stated they might have done more to bring people with them on their changes, but ultimately UKRI was forced to respond to news that had leaked and thereby removing their control of the narrative.
Sometimes organisations communicate things badly and people are rightly upset about it. In the case of UKRI the more interesting story, aside from the policy changes, is what the episode tells us about research communications.
Politics, policy, process and priorities in that order
In recent years governments have explicitly lashed their plans for a better economy to the mast of research. Boris Johnson’s get Brexit done manifesto made a virtue of doubling research spending, Rishi Sunak took the UK back into Horizon Europe despite the instincts of his party on Europe, and Keir Starmer has maintained the momentum on record research settlements. Research is not just about breakthroughs and growth it is a deeply political project which comes with a set of choices.
This political focus means debates about research are about both the quality of new proposals, ideas, and approaches, but they are also about engaging with a political agenda. When former science secretary Michelle Donelan libelled some academics as harbouring extremist sympathies it plainly wasn’t a debate about Research England’s sub-committee but a political project about the “politicisation of the public sector” as the Policy Exchange note that inspired this tirade put it. The debate about REF is both about what can be measured in culture and whether as a political idea research is about individuals or collectives, and to what extent.
The error that we can often make is to suggest that politics should be kept out of research and instead the aim should be to communicate ideas as clearly as possible. A position of a kind of studied neutrality. This is a nice idea but it can never work. The public, through tax, are ultimately the funders of research and whether they are world leading researchers or casual observers of news they are entitled to an opinion on how their money is spent. This means even if they aren’t subject experts their views on whether too much is spent on research, whether it is spent in the right way, whether it should be spent at home or abroad, on arts or science, in London or elsewhere, or any other number of things, are valid and therefore form part of the wider political discourse. Once the public are in the arena politicians will do things to try and win their votes. The communication challenge is to inform this debate. Avoiding politics is to remove key context on how decisions are made and why.
Political communications for everyone
This means that national funders of research need more, not less, political communications. Funders, universities, and everyone involved in research, cannot maintain consent for record funding settlements and big decisions that impact the entire country through explaining the process of research policy making without describing the political project that underpins it. Ian Chapman’s latest letter, House of Commons appearance, and follow up press conference, have been a good example of explaining the project is to grow the economy, the mechanism is the three buckets, the fallout will be that some people will miss out on funding, the upside is it means more focus. The order has to be selling the idea, then the process, and then the consequences.
The second big implication of the era of political research communications is that ownership of the narrative is much harder and much more important. In a less politically contested world it is easier to delineate between issues that impact researchers, issues that the public care about, and briefings to send politicians. As we’ve seen in something like the debate on REF the pressure for policy change is a mix of outside observers, academics in the system, hints from politicians that it’s quite expensive, and Research England’s own commissioned work. As actors become more diffuse and the debate widens message discipline on core issues, considerations, and owning the terms of the debate, becomes more important.
All policy making is inherently political and the aim isn’t, or should not be, to narrow the range of acceptable views on an issue but to build a public consensus on what is and is not worth listening to.
A new dawn has broken, has it not?
For better or worse this era also means a much more personal approach. The big changes made by the likes of UKRI require institutions to then explain it to their teams who then have limited ability to influence the direction of research policy more generally. In a world where information is everywhere all the time at once trust is increasingly reliant on individual relationships as a means of furthering policy projects. It is not enough to tell people the idea but for people to trust that you are working in their best interests.
There are echoes here for institutions. Increasingly, the sector feels fraught, information is diffuse, and change is more necessary and feels harder. The lesson is that good communication is not only about explaining what is happening but why it is happening, the consequences, and the trade offs, delivered by people that others can engage with.
It has been a difficult week for research but it won’t be the only one. This is the moment that the scale of change came to the fore and the difficulties of communicating it. It is also the moment, whether through misfortune or design, the benefits of a bolder approach to research communications became visible.