Coding for broader impact: leveraging coding skills for stakeholder communication

Abstract

Sharing ecological research with stakeholders has broader impacts for conservation and sustainability outcomes. However, ecologists face major challenges to effective communication with stakeholders, including lack of reciprocal trust, unacknowledged incentives, differing goals, and scientific inaccessibility. These obstacles largely stem from professional training in ecology prioritizing effective communication among peers over the public. Here, we argue that coding skills honed for peer communication can be leveraged to overcome these challenges within a “coding for broader impact” framework that provides tasks to promote effective communication and culminates in individualized stakeholder reports. The reports explicitly incorporate stakeholder knowledge and are coded in conjunction with tasks for peer communication. We illustrate the framework through three case studies in which we shared data and information about backyard biodiversity, agricultural impacts, and tick-borne disease with homeowners, farmers, and land managers. A coding for broader impact framework allows a common analytical tool to become a public communication skill valuable to diverse stakeholder audiences.