The era of communication

The global risk

Once upon a time, information was a rare resource. Newspapers, TV anchors, and a few specialists told us what was happening. Manipulated? Often. But at the very least, it was curated.

Then came smartphones, social media, and the algorithmic machine of chaos. Suddenly, everyone became a broadcaster—from your uncle in the family WhatsApp group to youtubers who just discovered the word “hydrology” or the councilwoman who believes she understands something about hydraulics.

This new system is diffuse and disruptive; instead of clarity, it delivers noise. We have stopped listening to each other, while misinformation has escalated into a global risk category.

In Rio Grande do Sul, for example, following the historic floods, public debate also overflowed with far-fetched ideas about river dredging and opening new channels, as if every citizen secretly held a degree in water resources engineering.

Stories

Let’s be honest: data is not the problem. There are petabytes out there. Information? We have plenty of that too; books and articles are not lacking. The real bottleneck is communication.

Look at how wretched this communication failure is: a research group can spend years drilling an ice core in Antarctica, analyzing samples, publishing peer-reviewed results, and carefully showing that the climate is warming.

Meanwhile, your cousin can film the cold outside and post on Instagram: “Where is global warming now?”. Guess which one goes viral first.

That is why we can no longer “publish and pray.” We need to learn to tell stories, not just present facts. Facts alone do not travel. Narratives do.

The debate

There is a dangerous trap in this new world of communication: the invitation to debate with YouTubers, influencers, or even politicians who speak about science without any technical background. It seems like a good idea—“let’s confront them with rational arguments, let’s expose the flaws.” But that is exactly where the error lies.

Porta dos Fundos sketch, featuring an absurd debate between a scientist and someone’s cousin.

Placing a scientist side-by-side with someone who lives off creating conspiracy theories gives the impression that there are “two valid sides.” Even if the scientist crushes the opponent with facts, graphs, and logic, the influencer’s loyal audience will ignore everything and continue to believe them. Worse: the mere act of sharing the stage grants the influencer a legitimacy they did not previously have.

In practice, the result is that science enters the wrong game—the field of controversy and spectacle, where facts are not the primary currency.

Naomi Oreskes

Few voices have hammered this point as much as Naomi Oreskes, an eminent philosopher and historian of science. Her work shows, for instance, how industries like tobacco and fossil fuels hijacked public debate by exploiting scientists’ reluctance to engage with society.

Her warning is simple: science can no longer live in the ivory tower. Even more so in the modern times of social media. In a recent interview, she said something that hits deep:

Whenever budget is discussed, scientists prefer to buy another piece of equipment, pay more students, or upgrade a computer—anything but invest in communication.

For most, communication seems like someone else’s job, perhaps the University’s public relations department. But the truth is that no one is in a better position to explain science than the scientist themselves who produces it.

It is obvious that we need communicators, journalists, and designers. But we also need to take responsibility for telling the story of our own work. Otherwise, someone else will tell it for us—and, generally, poorly.

Naomi Oreskes in a recent interview: scientists don’t want to spend money on communication.

Layers

What, then, would better communication look like? First, thinking in different layers of audience.

• Managers and decision-makers do not need a Nature article in English. They need documents in plain language, with clear visuals and convincing data that guide interpretation.
• The general public cannot digest hydrological data tables. They need annotated graphs, diagrams, photos, and narratives that show both the “what” and the “why.”
• Young people also matter. If we don’t reach them with clarity today, tomorrow they will inherit the crazy conspiracies.

And here, technology can help us—ironically, the same technology that spreads misinformation. We can use tools like Illustrator, CorelDRAW, or Inkscape to post-process graphics, making them not just correct, but persuasive.

A raw graph, generated in R or Python, may contain objective information, but a carefully annotated graph can capture attention. We can enrich visuals with callouts, contextual photographs, or even simpler versions that work both in slides and reports.

Storytelling with Data

Here is a recommendation I consider mandatory reading: Storytelling with Data, by Cole Knaflic. This book is a true provocation. It shows how to transform data into information and, primarily, information into communication.

And it does so without resorting to advanced software: the author uses only Excel—which might sound like heresy to those who work with data using Python or R. But the gesture is intentional: to prove that efficient communication does not depend on sophisticated technology, but rather on clarity, simplicity, and purpose.

In the pre-internet era, a “neutral” graph was enough. Today, you must tell a story—or the graph will simply be ignored.