Hello everyone. I’m Dr. Chrissy Cook, your rotating host and co-chair of the SECAC committee. Welcome to this episode of Growing Up Comm, from the ICA Podcast Network. In this podcast, we talk about topics primarily relevant for students and early career scholars. Today we have the pleasure of having Dr. Robby Ratan with us. Robby is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University as well as the director of the SPARTIE Lab. His work focuses on the researching the effects of human-technology interaction and how media technologies influence meaningful outcomes across societal contexts. Today we will talk about an excellent communication topic, talking. We will specifically discuss talking to the media.
Robby, would you like to introduce yourself?
Hi, thanks, Chrissy. I'm Robby Ratan, and I go by Rabindra Ratan in my publications.
Let's start off basic, really obvious questions. What has been your experience talking to the media? What kind of topics have you covered?
Oh, I'll talk to them about whatever they'll listen to. It's usually about my research-related topics. I remember my first few interviews with journalists. I was just over the moon that someone cared. But I would say my experience is general, especially early days when I was still an assistant professor. It was really exciting because people would find my name through a publication here or there. They would want to delve deep. The more recent Metaverse stuff there, it's very surface level. I found that when you can go further in-depth with a journalist or a podcaster, it at least, as the interviewee, makes you feel like you're making more of a difference. Of course, when you eventually see what they make, there's a good chance that they don't take everything you say. I've learned to assuage that disappointment by reminding myself that I am not the center of anyone's universe, but it's still nice to have a couple of quotes in an article or sound bites or whatever it is.
No, that's fair. I think that's similar to the experiences that I've had. For listeners who are unfamiliar with Robby and I's work, both of us have worked in similar spaces or sort of adjacent spaces and a lot of my work is also in toxicity and often in gaming. Also when I talk to journalists, it ends up being very surface level. They have very specific questions often about very specific games. For example, I get a lot of questions about League of Legends specifically. Very popular worldwide game. One of my bigger publications is on League, but what's funny is most of them don't know about that publication. Most of them actually hear about me, because I'm on my friend’s Twitch stream, who's a professional eSports caster. So actually, they don't find out that I've actually published on it. They're just like, oh, this person has a doctorate. And she knows a game, let us speak.
So these are journalists who are scrolling through Twitch streams?
Exactly.
Interesting. My first interview, I think, was with Kotaku. That's a games oriented outlet. So that was my first connection to a genuine publication. I've been very excited to do a couple public media, Canadian public media and Wall Street Journal, interviews, Washington Post, but I think, fundamentally, if you want to do. I remember I've had the most amazing mentors in my career. So I really wanted to follow in their footsteps, people like Dmitri Williams, who was testifying to Congress on issues of video game violence. Before him, people like Jeremy Bailenson, who's the pioneer of virtual reality studies. Clifford Nass, also a pioneer of human-computer interaction. These mentors had a lot of media attention. And I thought, wow, I will never reach that level. And I probably never will, but, I learned that it's all about getting found. So if I can't do that just naturally, I try to put myself out there through things like the podcast, but the podcast isn't that great, either. I mean, everyone's got a podcast. It's like a blog. We're moving toward TikTok. And this is the best advice I can give any social scientist in any field, any scientist, is The Conversation.
I've never even heard of it. What is The Conversation?
Oh my goodness. So The Conversation is this, somewhat academic. I don't want to call it quasi-academic because it is full of articles written by real scientists, but translating their research into a publicly accessible consumable piece. So I've written a few pieces for them. Whereas I think across all of my publications, I'm lucky to have 2000 citations in the last, I don't know, 12,15 years, which is not the peak. I got over 200,000 views on one article in The Conversation in a week, once on gaming gender differences written with Cindy Shen and Dmitri Williams. It's amazing the reach you have. So I realized that if I want to have reach as a scholar and make an impact. The podcast is great. I'm going a little bit deeper. But if I write articles for The Conversation about my research topics, you’re verified as an expert. And then news outlets find you.
Two questions immediately come to mind when you say that. The first thing is, does The Conversation have to find you or do you submit to The Conversation?
You can propose an article, but if you've just published an article, so nowadays, if I publish something that I think has public appeal. It’s relevant to the conversation of The Conversation about the topic. Is it games and gender? Is it the Metaverse, etc. Even if I haven't published on it, but if I have something to say, like with the Metaverse about a relevant topic that does relate to a history of publication or research, and that area, propose to them.
The second question is, now you and I both deal with very popular media topics. I deal with trolls, which is all over the place right now. How about the people who are working on these cognitive psychology-Esque really fundamental questions? Are there ways that they can engage with the media using tools like The Conversation? Or do you have other suggestions for people working on more, either niche or maybe more fundamental science-y, academic-y type topics?
That is a great question. I think I would take a step back and consider what are the broader impacts of your work? Even though it's not a funding agency, if you write to NSF, you write a grant proposal. It's not just about intellectual merit, you also need a broader impact be that involving students from different backgrounds in your research, or spreading the word about some topic or promoting the evolution of some community or education in some realm outside of your institution. Some people even have historically looked down on public scholarship approach to our profession and I guess in some ways like I can see that argument, like our research or scientific scholarly endeavor should not be mired in the politics of the day or the need to hit the news beat. On the other hand, the opposite extreme is that you're doing research in a silo of experts who are niche in your field, and no one outside of that field reads or listens to what you're saying, and then you don't really have much of an impact. So what's it all for anyway, except to build our ivory tower a little bit higher and higher. I'm not judgmental personally about either extreme. I could understand why some people would have an attitude that is aligned with either extreme. I would never say to a serious communication researcher that I'm a Metaverse researcher. I would never call myself that. But certainly, I am an avatar researcher. I study the way that the psychological experience of mediated self-representations influences the use experience and the outcomes of those media experiences. But I would never say that to a journalist. So I would think okay, where avatars being used as in games, or social media platforms, etc, and look into something that people are doing. Everybody engages with media, so maybe that's a good angle, like, who is this affecting every day?
Absolutely. I found myself throughout my comparatively short career at this stage, doing something similar as in when I'm talking to family, friends, or the media. I'll say something like I study trolls or I study jerks on the internet. When I'm talking to funding agencies or talking to scholars, I'll say I studied the creative misuse of communication technology. You get those buzzwords, and you sorta work with them in different ways. Because if I come to a place, especially where I'm living in Taiwan now, it’s not everybody knows the word troll. So I had to come up with a different way to describe it in a way that would translate cross-culturally. But thankfully, that's also helped me in terms of translating it to grant agencies or translating it to people who may not have the same perspective.
Is there a simple synonym for troll that was common in the Netherlands or there in Taiwan that you can…?
Nope. So in Taiwan, we're discovering they use tons of different words for it. And it's behavior specific in the Chinese language. But coming back to talking to media, specifically more generally, I think what you said makes sense where you have to find the right words, depending on your audience, you have to do some perspective taking to connect with the media, or the academics depending…
Absolutely. And it's a challenge. It really is.
So segueing from that challenge, have you made any glorious errors that you'd like to share in your experience of talking to media? Are there things that you have learned that are in an ixnay? When it comes to talking to the media as a scholar?
Okay. So when I've decided I've wanted to speak publicly about a topic I've written op-eds. Let's say you've gotten a few studies under your belt. And it could go to The Conversation. I thought it was a cool topic. And they said, No, we have someone doing this already. I had been interviewed by this Wired journalist, Cecilia in the past, and I think I asked her for some advice about where I could send it and Wired has this place, you can send op-eds too. I didn't realize this, all the major outlets, take op-ed proposals. We submitted it, and they gave us a couple rounds, and they liked it. So we got to publish at Wired, that was my first time and a major news outlet. I keep the spreadsheet of the articles that have been published links to them and the journalist contact information. So that's a pro tip is keep those relationships alive. And it's on you. Because they're probably not gonna do it. You're one of many. Last one is I started my podcast and I knew nothing about podcasting. All I knew is that I like to podcast, the Prof G Show, which has nothing to do with communication. And he's a finance professor at NYU. And so I reached out to him. He came on my podcast, which was so cool. His episode is still the most listened to on the weekly average, because he's famous. He's got hundreds of thousands of followers in his little niche of the world, which is much larger than mine. So what's the lesson learned there? Reach out to people who will draw an audience. Don't be shy. Write a brief funny note in handwriting, if possible, and ask. I asked him a lot about podcasting in our interview, because I just wanted to know how to do it, and I felt like I knew him. I had this parasocial relationship with him. I would go on runs, and he would be in my ear for an hour at a time. I was geeked out to have him there.
Oh, that's super cool. It's always fun to meet celebrities. I got to meet Felicia Day one time and tell her about my research.
No way.
I actually almost didn't do my PhD. So my funding fell through at the last possible second, when I was studying for my masters in Cambridge. And I went to London Comic Con and Felicia Day was one of the guests at London Comic Con. I told her that I wanted to study online trolls and trolls in gaming. And she said really keep going, we really need more of that research. And about two months later, I got accepted in a fully funded PhD program.
Wow, Felicia Day, your academic spiritual advisor.
Exactly, it's a strange one, but I'll take it. So we've been talking a lot about different ways to reach out to the media, and the different kinds of draws that you can get from the media. But like you said, this is going to be a much more comfortable experience for some people than it's going to be for others. Are there anything that people can do to prepare or train for these kinds of media experiences? Are there resources that you know about?
It's very important to approach those instances of social anxiety with as much confidence as you can portray. You don't have to feel it, but you have to pretend that you feel it. Pretend it's kinda like, the animal is more afraid of you than you are of it. Another piece of advice to newer scholars and students to train for these media conversations, just if you are the one being interviewed, is to think of it as talking to your grandparents or your friend's grandparents because if you are so deep in your subject, you are just staring at those trees with a magnifying glass. And these conversations are usually about the forest. The better you can do at taking a step back and interpreting what you're saying for a public audience in a way that relates to the big picture and connects to topics that people already know about, that will facilitate the conversation and increase the likelihood that what you say will be included.
I think, as a scholar, at least for me, I feel a huge amount of responsibility to get it right. Now some of that is just being a scientist and knowing that if you put out bad information, then the world has bad information. It's a very simple, very basic level, but very important. But another aspect of this is the idea of if I screw it up, I am going to be thrown into a dumpster fire on Twitter. I will experience the social death of ostracism only. That would almost be a relief at that point because I will be getting DMs up the wazoo of people screaming at me that I did a thing wrong. So what I wanted to ask you was this idea of cancel culture and this idea of, you're not allowed to make mistakes. How does this play into talking to the media as a scholar? And this is a very broad question. Have you had any experiences with this?
I can tell you my personal attitude about it, which I think relates both to communication with the public as well as reviewer. If you can be confident that the decisions you've made, if you hold yourself to that ethical standard, in your research, if you're at least following a consistent set of rules that you feel are relevant, and applicable to your scholarship, and your publications, your research. You follow the same rules when you're speaking to the public. You want to be impartial about political issues, if you can help it. So how do you deal with the pressure? You just don't look at it. You just pretend that it's not there. It's hard at first. That first interview, you put so much time and effort into it. But as you get rolling, you realize this is self-deprecating. But people really don't listen to this stuff. I just think people don't care, you're probably not gonna get famous, I'm probably not going to get famous. None of us will ever be canceled. Because we won't have enough to cancel. Maybe you will, Chrissy and I hope you do. When it comes to the public, it's very unlikely that you will reach a level of notoriety where it actually matters if you mess up during an interview with the evening news. It's not going to sink your academic career. It's not going to sink your ability to engage in outreach activities cause the news cycle moves so fast. Nobody remembers or pays attention. So I would say I really see my outreach activities as an opportunity to change the current conversation to influence the moment, influence policy making or game design or personal habits, trolling, toxic behaviors, etc in the moment, but it is not your legacy. Your legacy is in those pubs.Those pubs will be on Google Scholar for 25 people to read in the next 200 years, or whatever it is. But that is your legacy. It might be narrow, but it is so much more important to the generation of knowledge the body of our contribution to science and humanity. So if you look at it that way, then be really careful. Don't make any mistakes in your research with ethics. But when you're speaking to the public, it doesn't matter as much in the long run. It matters right now. So look at it that way and be in the moment and be present in that moment. But then don't let it weigh you down. Don't let it stress you out.
Let us end on that point of academic mindfulness. I want to take the time to thank Robby for joining me today. Thank you to our valuable listeners for hopefully enjoying another episode of Growing Up Comm, and I hope that you'll all tune in for the next one. Until then, stay cool, stay comm.
You are too cool, Chrissy. Thank you for having me.
This episode of the Growing Up Comm podcast series is a production of the International Communication Association Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Christian Elliott and Lacie Yao. Our executive producer is DeVante Brown. The theme music is by Will Van De Crommert. And if you'd like to hear more about the participants in this episode, please check the show notes in the episode description. Thanks for listening.
