11 pages, Many academics ask ‘How can I use my research to influence policy?’. In this paper, we draw on our first-hand experience as social researchers for the British Government to advise how academics can create and communicate research with policymakers. Specifically, we describe methods of communicating research to policymakers in relation to research we undertook to listen to farmers about their priorities for a new agricultural policy for England following the exit of the UK from the European Union. The main purpose of this research was to ensure farmers’ voices were included in policy development and therefore communication of the research to policymakers was key. We reflect on the effectiveness of the communication methods we employed and summarise our learnings into four practical recommendations: (1) make research relevant to policymakers; (2) invest time to develop and maintain relationships with policymakers; (3) utilise ‘windows of opportunity’; and (4) adapt presentation and communication styles to the audience. We consider that employing these recommendations will help to improve how evidence is communicated between academia and government and therefore the influence of evidence in decision-making processes.
8 pages, Public perception about the reality of climate change has remained polarized and propagation of fake information on social media can be a potential cause. Homophily in communication, the tendency of people to communicate with others having similar beliefs, is understood to lead to the formation of echo chambers which reinforce individual beliefs and fuel further increase in polarization. Quite surprisingly, in an empirical analysis of the effect of homophily in communication on the level of polarization using evidence from Twitter conversations on the climate change topic during 2007–2017, we find that evolution of homophily over time negatively affects the evolution of polarization in the long run. Among various information about climate change to which people are exposed to, they are more likely to be influenced by information that have higher credibility. Therefore, we study a model of polarization of beliefs in social networks that accounts for credibility of propagating information in addition to homophily in communication. We find that polarization can not increase with increase in homophily in communication unless information propagating fake beliefs has minimal credibility. We therefore infer from the empirical results that anti-climate change tweets are largely not credible.
