NASA's IGTV and key lessons for audience management

Abstract

Social media have risen in popularity as a useful tool for science communication. Increasingly social media have been considered a useful tool for public engagement under the notion of dialogic communication. Although, research evidence that scientific institutions and universities mostly use social media to communicate achievements, research projects, and publications. However, this commonly used strategy tends to develop unilateral dissemination, which, in return, causes the audience’s lack of interest and even negative engagement with the scientific content on social media. For this reason, this study explored through qualitative content analysis the audience´s engagement with NASA content on Instagram’s IGTV (now known as Instagram Video). To find common ground in science communication for social media´s meaningful interactions in science-society, we interpreted data through the theoretical lens of science communication for public engagement dialogic models. Moreover, to suggest practice-based guidelines for audience interactions, we used online strategic communication to propose key practices for managing audience interaction through social listening strategies. Results evidence that NASA´s science communication strategy focused on developing highquality content around its work by using IGTV. Data evidence numerous video views, positive and negative audience comments, and user interactions. However, NASA missed the opportunity to take advantage of audiences' interest since it failed to respond to user comments. Therefore, deficit-model practices were reproduced by not dialoguing with its followers. Based on these findings, this study aims to contribute with guidelines for communication researchers and practitioners that will improve public engagement strategies in social media that focus on attending to audiences' needs and interactions.