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NASA's Confusing Policy on Social Media Accounts

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 25, 2013
Filed under

Keith’s note: NASA has lots of Twitter accounts and websites – more than any other Federal agency – by far. But as NASA PAO AA David Weaver recently said at a NASA Advisory Council EPO Subcommittee (and I paraphrase) “clearly quantity does not always equal quality”. Virtually every NASA project, program, center – and mission – has at least one (sometimes more) Twitter account and website. In the case of Mars Science Laboratory NASA pays to maintain 3 (or 4 depending on how you count) websites for MSL – and they do not seem to think this is wasteful.
But what about the New Horizons mission to Pluto?

If you go to the JHUAPL New Horizons website they link to @NewHorizons2015 as the official mission Twitter account. If you go to NASA’s Social Media accounts page they also link to the @NewHorizons2015 as the official mission Twitter account. Curiously, the other official New Horizons page at NASA doesn’t link to anything – including the JHUAPL New Horizons website. Meanwhile, despite being cited as a the official mission Twitter account, if you go to the @NewHorizons2015 home page the description claims that this Twitter account is the “private Twitter feed” of the mission’s principal investigator. Apparently, there is no official NASA Twitter feed for New Horizons. Or there is. No one seems to be sure.
NASA loves Twitter so much that there are even two official (and very popular) NASA Twitter accounts that the agency maintains for Voyager 1 and 2: @NASAVoyager and @NASAVoyager2 – two spacecraft that were launched in the 1970s.
But curiously, a $700 million spacecraft currently heading for Pluto (and beyond) doesn’t warrant an official NASA Twitter account? Where is the official NASA policy on things like this? I’ll save you the effort: there is none – and whatever fragmentary policies are in place at NASA are routinely ignored. And no one at NASA seems to be inclined to fix this situation. The NAC Education and Public Outreach Committee has beat their collective heads against the wall on this issue for years. The best that NASA can do is admit that they have a point. And then the agency complains when its Education and Outreach and web development budgets get cut. Go figure.
At the recent NAC EPO subcommittee meeting David Weaver tried to put a positive spin on the cuts by saying that they forced NASA to deal with things that they hadn’t really been forced to confront before. Maybe more cuts are in order since this issue of strategic and efficient use of Internet resources clearly does not have NASA’s full and undivided attention yet.
Why Does NASA Maintain Three (Four) Different MSL Websites?
NASA’s Inability To Speak With One Voice Online, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

13 responses to “NASA's Confusing Policy on Social Media Accounts”

  1. Tyler Hayes says:
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    Outsider to how government works here, so I’m curious: does there need to be a policy? Why aren’t people already just creating these accounts of their own volition?

    I guess what I’m really pondering is: is there something else NASA can do to encourage these accounts be made without creating a policy that enforces it? Mostly I’m thinking about something more intrinsic, though it doesn’t necessarily need to be a gentler touch

    • kcowing says:
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      The government requires policies for all aspects of its operations wherein official information is released – OMB and OPM in particular.

      • Tyler Hayes says:
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        Makes sense. Thanks.

        Any thoughts on whether that’s right or wrong in today’s landscape (mostly regarding the Web)? Could/should the government change that?

        • kcowing says:
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          I assume you live in the real world which makes a lot of this internal government behavior seem nutty. That’s probably because you are using logic and common sense 😉

  2. Steve Whitfield says:
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    I’m getting old, I admit it, but I think there’s entirely too much time and worry being expended in the name of social media, and it’s no longer just the kids and the specialists by any means. Before Twitter, MySpace, etc., people managed to fill their days and, even be short on time, without spending an hour or more each day sending:

    mssgs that wr oftn completly indesifrabl.
    (OMG! Did I rly typ tht?!)

    We already have a generation and a half to whom spelling and grammar are forever lost, and it seems to be spreading into other age groups. On the bright side — how shallow life would be if we couldn’t use our phones to send photographs and videos of every embarrassing moment around us to everyone in our phone books and all of our “Friends.”

    Anthropologists, and professionals from other disciplines, have put forth convincing reasoning that the opposable thumb was a key factor in our evolution. But now an ever-increasing number of humans obliviously stand in the middle of everywhere typing atrophied blurbs on tiny keyboards and are therefore in the process of eroding those very same thumbs away, back to pre-civilization levels. Evolution marches on, but ever more under human influence, and not necessarily forward.

    This is just my outdated opinion, of course, but I think maybe the use of social media has crossed the lines from novel communication to hobby to obsession. If we have someone such as Keith — who had made sensible and profitable use of social media in the past — questioning its implementation policies and methods by a government agency (and others), then just maybe social media isn’t actually ready for prime time.

    • Tyler Hayes says:
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      Valid feelings. But I think you jump the reasoning a bit too far bit with:

      But now an ever-increasing number of humans obliviously stand in the middle of everywhere typing atrophied blurbs on tiny keyboards and are therefore in the process of eroding those very same thumbs away, back to pre-civilization levels.

      Unless there is scientific research behind this, it may be a bit too bold. That said, I’m no evolutionary biologist and won’t pretend to know how to correct this line of thinking or what the future holds in store for humans.

      Overall I too see many specific examples of both good and bad behavior as a result of constant technological evolution — people running into each other because they’re stuck in their phones, people tweeting the Arab Spring. I don’t let the bad get to me because overall I see nothing but progress.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        I don’t let the bad get to me because overall I see nothing but progress.

        A good attitude, as long as we remember that one man’s progress can be another man’s interruption.

        My post was facetious overall, and our race’s thumbs are probably quite safe, but the “obliviously” part is serious. I see people texting or talking at the head of check-out line while the customers behind them are waiting and getting mad. I see people texting while crossing an intersection on a busy street. I see a lot of inconsiderate and often outright dangerous behavior that came in on the heels of social media.

        Even sitting safely at home, the use of social media has introduced a whole new set of problems and dangers — to us and our families as well as our computers. Like many of the newer things in our society, I wonder if we are not perhaps far too casual about social media, not giving due consideration to the bad possibilities. I don’t challenge it because it’s new, but rather because most of the world seems to have jumped into it head first without any training or thinking. To properly protect your family and yourself you have to know the rules of the game, not just what you can get out of it.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      I read your comments a couple of times to be sure you aren’t simply parodying Grandpa Simpson (you aren’t, are you? :-))

      I’ve wondered about this issue myself, thinking that we led meaningful lives and were productive before we were all so connected. But my own texting habits with my friends provides a different perspective. I am 64 years old for pete’s sake and texting constantly with half a dozen close friends. At first I resisted texting, but now appreciate being connected with close friends with who I can squirt a quick note, get a reaction, ask a question. This includes my wife, of course.

      The thing about texting is the lack of preamble. My correspondents know me and we all have history so contrary to what seems logical it’s not a distancing adventure at all, but an exercise building on close relationships.

      I look forward to whatever technology brings me. So far it has opened many doors and taught me a great deal about myself while allowing me to be connected in unexpected ways to close friends.

      I hate email, though.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        A curious contrast, Michael. My email program is also my prime contact database, my task scheduler (for everything), my medical history, and much more. I literally live by it and have done so for many years.

        My rant above is overstated, of course, but it’s something that’s been running through my mind for years and I finally got a chance to say it out loud.

        I guess, like any other form of communication, in the end it comes down to personal etiquette. I think what I really object to is that social media (in my mind) burst onto the scene without any “rules of conduct” to shape people’s behavior, and since it has become so ubiquitous, professional, social and outright childish communications coexist, too often at the lower level of courtesy and professionalism, because the game was introduced to the world without any rules.

        Because I don’t text I’m no doubt considered a social outcast and a dinosaur, but that doesn’t bother me. I have a cell phone that sits on the charger on my desk until I happen to go out. I don’t eat, sleep, and go to the can with it like the current generation, yet there are people out there, of all ages, who expect me to, simply because they do. On more than one occasion I’ve had someone get upset with me for not having done something or been somewhere that I knew nothing about. In each case it was, “well, I texted you!” That’s not communicating. (Is “texted” even a word?)

        I respect other people’s desire to interact through the various social media, but I reject the ideas of those people who expect me to do the same simply because they do (including my grandson), but they’re all around us.

        Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times, and the intimate integration of cell phone and brain cells will not be as intense in the future. 10 years ago I threatened to start a business selling plastic third arms to teen-agers to hold their cell phones to their heads without losing a hand. Then I saw a kid walking down the street wearing a sweat band on his head in July — yep, it was holding his cell phone to his ear.

        I’ve never watched the Simpsons, so I can’t say whether Grandpa and I are of like mind. What I do know is that there’s a fine line between people using their technology and the technology using the people. The true purpose of a cell phone seems to be to further propagate cell phone communication, thereby creating more cell phones. By that logic the damned things are alive and we are their slaves. Silly but true.

    • Wendy Yang says:
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      Hi. Reader younger than NASA Watch here. Just an assurance that not everyone in our age group use 1337 speak and is glued to our smartphones constantly. In fact, 1337 speak is shunned. All hope is not lost (yet)!

  3. DTARS says:
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    Years back I use to hunt some of the NASA sites for info I grow very frustrated.
    I found that a good place to get educated about space is NASA watch. But key to learning here is to not be afraid to ask questions. Also another way to learn is to speak up knowing your thoughts will be corrected.
    Wouldn’t it be cool if people learned to use the net in a way that it was like a big classroom where informed learned people could share their knowledge, intelligents and wisdom and in return those less informed can express their ideas which help those that can do make better decisions.

    lol there I go dreaming again lol

    Joe Q Pubic

  4. Geoffrey Landis says:
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    Twitter accounts are free, so I can’t see a real problem with having two or three acounts, unless somebody is doing nothing all day but tooting out twitter tweets

  5. Gin Lensing says:
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    Having something that makes me happy and teaches me something pop up on Facebook or in my email from NASA–tax dollars well spent. A young person sees something that HITS them and gives them a positive view of science; that moment is critical.