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Communications agreement

Communication is central to how EAR engages in research & innovation and builds trust internally and externally. We develop shared understanding, invite participation, surface needs, coordinate action, and develop capacity in public so that the people involved can shape what is learned and what happens next.

Make inquiry, activity, and knowledge understandable

EAR communications need to provide enough context for people to understand what they’re encountering and how they might use it.

Depending on the communication, that may include:

  • the condition, question, decision, need, or opportunity being addressed
  • what EAR or its participants are doing in relation to it
  • who produced the communication and in what capacity
  • whether it reflects an individual perspective, a Program, a Service, Steering, or EAR as an organization
  • what is known, proposed, disputed, uncertain, or still developing
  • which other people, projects, findings, or ecosystem developments are directly relevant
  • what the communication is intended to clarify, invite, or support

Every post or conversation won’t need to explain all of this. The amount of context should fit the form and the potential consequences of misunderstanding.

Context allows knowledge to travel beyond the people who produced it. It also lets people follow how questions and interpretations develop, compare perspectives from different parts of the ecosystem, and understand where their own knowledge may be relevant.

EAR’s communications should also help separate activities add up to a clearer account of the ecosystem. Narrative coordination can show how research, community experience, technical development, governance, economic conditions, and other areas affect one another without presenting them as one uniform story.

Invite participation

EAR communications should make clear what kind of attention, relationship, or response is being invited.

Participation can remain light. Someone may read, watch, or listen and bring useful knowledge into their own work. They may ask a question, share a post, or join a public discussion.

Other communications may invite deeper involvement, including:

  • contributing experience, evidence, interpretation, or criticism
  • responding to a research question or developing finding
  • joining an event, inquiry, or working conversation
  • collaborating with a Program
  • requesting support from a Service
  • proposing related work
  • offering skills, relationships, funding, or other resources taking on a defined volunteer, operational, facilitation, or stewardship role

The invitation should fit the purpose and stage of the activity. It should also be clear enough for someone to understand what responding would involve.

Participation doesn’t always lead inward toward EAR. EAR participants also participate in the ecosystem by responding to other people’s work, contributing knowledge, asking questions, amplifying useful activity, and joining conversations already underway.

Build collective capacity

EAR communications should strengthen the ability of people and groups to investigate shared conditions, develop knowledge, and act together.

Public communication contributes by:

  • circulating research, practical learning, and developing interpretations
  • making needs, offers, and resource asks visible
  • connecting people working on related questions
  • helping Programs and Services find participants and collaborators
  • supporting fundraising and resource development
  • documenting methods and lessons that others can use
  • making tools, infrastructure, and support easier to discover

Capacity also develops through the cooperation behind public communication.

Participants can help one another clarify ideas, edit writing, prepare for interviews, host conversations, create visual explanations, use unfamiliar media, and understand the wider context around what they want to communicate. Editorial and peer support should be available without becoming mandatory.

Ground EAR in Community

EAR’s communications should be polyvocal first and formally organizational where the communication calls for it.

Participants bring different experiences, responsibilities, relationships, and views of the ecosystem. Those differences are part of EAR’s learning process. People should be able to discuss EAR’s activities through their own accounts and in their own voices while making their relationship to the work clear.

Formal EAR communications have a narrower role. They carry organizational information, shared decisions, commitments, invitations, and context that belongs to EAR as a whole.

EAR’s content strategy should draw from conversations, needs, conflicts, questions, and developments across the ecosystem as much as it draws from activity inside EAR. This keeps communications grounded in relationship and makes public listening part of the research process.

EAR should also model cooperative action in public. That includes showing uncertainty, acknowledging different perspectives, making authorship visible, inviting contribution, and allowing people to see how understanding and action develop over time.

Update types and cadence

Update Type Content Cadance
Biweekly steering update Internal Meeting notes Every 2 weeks, synced to steering meetings
Organizational updates Internal Higher level updates about the overall activities of the organization Every 6 weeks
Organizational updates External Higher level updates about the overall activities of the organization Every 6 weeks, 1-2 weeks after internal

Internal updates inform public comms:

  • The biweekly steering update may have specific todos or line items that may call for/be opportunities for public engagement, either through the EAR accounts or participant accounts
  • Internal organizational updates can be seen as drafts for public communications. This means the internal updates can double as feedback mechanisms for what we publish publicly.
  • We can set a lag time for feedback in the cadence for internal comment before external publishing, which means that external comms have been vetted twice before going public (once while being written for EAR internal, second by EAR internal participants.)

How the EAR social media profiles and feeds are staffed, accessed, and paced is TBD. The Strategic Communications circle is responsible for evolving the practices and policies around how official assets are used.

External updates

We set a lag time for feedback in the cadence for internal comment before external publishing, which means that external comms have been vetted twice before going public (once while being written for EAR internal, second by EAR internal participants).

Beyond this, we can establish guidelines, process, etc for other kinds of public comms, but otherwise we want to keep official EAR comms to a minimum other than to amplify voices in the community as opportunities and needs arise.

Communications advice

For advice on handling communications, internal and external, see the external communications guide.