Plainly informed: News for the district of Ansbach in plain language

Plainly informed: News for the district of Ansbach in plain language

[Einfach informiert: Nachrichten für den Landkreis Ansbach in einfacher Sprache]

Principal Investigators: Lisa Birnbaum, Anne Hümmer

Staff: Lisa Birnbaum, Anne Hümmer, Martin Hummel

Period: 2022
Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Abstract:

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research announces the annual university competition to promote young scientists. The motto for 2022 was “co-investigation welcome” (Mitforschen erwünscht). Out of 270 submissions, the project “Plainly Informed” (Einfach informiert) is one of the 15 winning teams!

The university competition is organized annually by Science in Dialogue (“Wissenschaft im Dialog”, WiD) in cooperation with the German Association of University Communication and the German Rectors’ Conference and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) as part of the Year of Science.

The project “Plainly informed”

According to recent studies, almost one in ten adults cannot read and write well. In order to be able to participate in society and to be well informed, plain language is a support for these people. Plain language means writing without foreign words, clearly, and understandably. To this end, in the citizen science project “Plainly informed” the academic researchers work together with volunteers to develop a newspaper which is also entitled “Plainly informed”. It aims at providing local news in plain language. Regarding the research part of the project, citizen scientists and academic researchers developed a questionnaire in plain language. The data were analyzed together and presented to the public.

The cooperation partners are the district of Ansbach, the local newspaper Fränkische Landeszeitung, and the online news portal fraenkischer.de.