Dissemination and public engagement
Some scholars argue that the humanities do not have the same degree of public engagement and outreach as do scientific and engineering disciplines, and therefore humanists need to be forceful in explaining and disseminating their work to the wider public. Social media, open research, virtual reality and augmented reality, and mobile apps can be used to make research outputs more comprehensible and accessible. However, humanists also advise the cautious adoption of these technologies, as they can become “eye-catching” for certain groups of people, such as funders or donors, while appealing less to the wider community. Mark Hedges of King’s College London recounts the following from an interviewee concerning a technological initiative: “They didn’t use it not because it was designed in a really bad way, because it wasn’t, but because they don’t have such habits. At some point we started revising, ‘What are the habits of people, and what are their needs?’” (Hedges et al., 2019) (11).
These technologies are also relatively new, and are therefore susceptible to failures, which hinder dissemination and community outreach efforts (Hedges et al., 2019).