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“Hello, World!” Harnessing Social Media for the Rosetta Mission (page 30)
Emily Baldwin, Claudia Mignone, Daniel Scuka, Anne-Mareike Homfeld, Karin Ranero Celiusm Erica Rolfe, Maria Bennett, Andreas Schepers, Karen S. O’Flaherty, Markus Bauer, Mark McCaughrean

Keywords
Social media, engagement, science communication, space science, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Google+, SoundCloud

Summary

The European Space Agency’s comet-chasing Rosetta mission was launched in 2004, before social media became a popular tool for mainstream communication. As it reached its destination ten years later, new audiences were reached and inspired by this once-in-a-lifetime event by harnessing a range of outlets for communicating the key messages. These included traditional online platforms, such as news websites, blogs, and Livestream, as well as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Google+ and SoundCloud. In this article, we outline the role social media channels played in making Rosetta one of the European Space Agency’s biggest communication and public engagement successes.