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Tweeting Spacecraft: Communicating Space Science in the Age of Web 2.0 (pages 30-33)
Janet Vertesi

Key Words
Twitter, Web 2.0, Microblogging

Summary

Since 2008 NASA spacecraft have been using the microblogging service, Twitter, to communicate science topics and results to a long list of public followers. In its ability to reach hundreds of thousands of individual users, Twitter offers many benefits for the public communication of astronomy. But to use social media services responsibly requires several competing tensions outlined here to be balanced: specifically, with respect to agency1 and intimacy, and scientific expertise.