reSEArch-EU - European University of the Seas

Introduction

Science in the City is Malta’s Science and Arts Festival, organised within the remit of European Researchers’ Night. The theme chosen for 2023 is Changemakers. The event included four festivals: the
Pre-festival, Street Festival, Performance Festival and Virtual Festival. The organisers of this event have
an active Facebook page on which they hold a number of campaigns to create awareness about various
issues. One such campaign is the “Did you know?” campaign.

Description of activity

Dr. Fiona Sammut and Audrey Zammit prepared a plan for four posts to be included in the “Did you know?” campaign. The aim was to have these published in the summer months prior to the main event. The content selected for the posts were:

1. EMODnet / Atlas of the Seas (Open Data)
2. FAIR data principles
3. Launch of UM’s Data Repository (drUM)
4. Citizen Science

The four posts were drafted and sent to the Science in the City organising team. However, due to the large volume of content that they had to post, related to the festival logistics, only one post was actually
published prior to the event. This was referred to in a tweet by the European Atlas of the Seas, which was in turn retweeted by EMODnet from where it was further shared. The second post (which was Post 3 in the plan) was published on 27th October 2023.

Audience

The Science in the City, Malta Facebook page is targeted at the local population. It has 18,000 followers
and 17,000 likes. The European Atlas of the Seas Twitter page (@EuropeAtlasSeas) has 2785 followers,
while the EMODnet Twitter page (@EMODnet) has 6212 followers.

Outcomes

Both Facebook posts garnered about 15 interactions each. These include both Likes and Shares. The
Tweets had a better organic reach, with the original Tweet from @EuropeAtlasSeas being viewed 760
times. Of course, the fact that only two posts made it to the public was a disappointment, though there is
the possibility of the remaining posts being published in the near future.