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Science Communication with Cat Videos

two kittens are sitting opposite each other; one kitten is putting its paw on the forehead of the other

Let’s ditch the word ‘dissemination’ right in the beginning and use words that are more common for us. Not that ‘dissemination’ is not in everyday use in research. It’s actually so ubiquitous in academia that it appears to be normal. Weeeell, let’s not forget that there are many people outside our academic bubble, who are also interested in our research but do not share our vocabulary.

My approach is to use cats in text and in videos. Right now I am trying my hand at some science communication with cats. I want to reach a broad public with sociolinguistics and dialectology, which I am pretty passionate about. Now my book has just been published, and I have started thinking about how I can make use of all the material that I have gathered and all the work I have put into it.

With the free version of the app Canva, I have created some videos for Instagram making total use of the cutesy cat angle. I am going with the approach of “less is more” and “use examples” and “use images”. And this is what I have managed to do: Ta da! My video on catspeak =^.^=

Catspeak

Now the Instagram videos are too large for this blog, so I reduced the file size with VLC media player. I managed to do that, but now I need to go one step further, namely to make the window of the video smaller for the post, like thumbnail-type previews.

I’d love to display all the videos I have created but they seem so huge in the post so I am not doing that right now. I am taking the easy way out of this and share the link to my Instagram reels: https://www.instagram.com/meow.factor/reels/


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Edith Podhovnik (June 5, 2023). Science Communication with Cat Videos. Meow Factor. Retrieved October 13, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/rdrq


Edith Podhovnik

a linguist researching language #purrieties and #meowlogism-s •alumna of SwanseaUni • loves cats • writes about cats

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