NASA Social Media and Websites Win Webby Awards
NASA's social media presence, the InSight mission social media accounts, NASA.gov and SolarSystem.NASA.gov will be honored at the 2019 Webby Awards - "the Oscars of the Internet."
NASA's social
media presence, which has grown from a few accounts more than a decade ago to
dozens of channels with millions of followers, was honored Tuesday with a pair
of Webbys and People's Voice awards as part of the 2019 Webby Awards."Social
media has become NASA's primary way of connecting with the public," said
Bettina Inclán, NASA's associate administrator for Communications. "It
lets us reach out directly to people and share the excitement of exploration
across all of NASA's programs. More importantly, it fosters conversation and
builds shared goals, which will be essential as the agency drives forward to
return astronauts to the Moon by 2024."There may be no
better example of that connection than NASA'sMars InSight mission, which
won a social media People's Voice Award for Education & Discovery. After
landing on Mars in November 2018, the mission generated more than one million
social media posts from members of the public. The hashtag #MarsLanding even
trended higher than #CyberMonday on the Monday after Thanksgiving, known as
Cyber Monday.Two other
agency digital properties received the People's Voice award in their
categories:NASA.gov,
the agency's primary website, won its 11th People's Voice award in Government
& Civil Innovation; and theSolar System Explorationsite
won its third People's Voice award in the Science category.NASA'sClimate Changewebsite was also nominated in the Green category, and the video"The Call of
Science"was nominated in the 360-degree Video category.The agency's
reach on social media extends beyond its own programs. When the Event Horizon
Telescope released the first image of a black hole on April 10, NASA's follow
up post on Instagram received 3.4 million likes and 33,500 comments. Social
media also lets NASA join conversations about pop culture, leading to online
interactions, such as those with singer Ariana Grande and Marvel Studios.The agency's
use of social media really took off in 2008, when Veronica McGregor, news
manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, began
tweeting in the voice of the Mars Phoenix Lander. Since then, the agency has
added channels across a variety of platforms. On Twitter, NASA has 66 million
followers, with 60 million on Facebook and 51 million on Instagram.This year's
Webbys are the second and third for NASA's overall social media presence,
having won both the Webby and People's Voice award in 2017.NASA's social
media presence and the NASA.gov website are managed by NASA's Office of
Communications. The Mars InSight Lander social media account, Climate Change, and
Solar System Exploration websites are managed by JPL, which also produced "The
Call of Science" video.Established in
1996, The Webby Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital
Arts and Sciences. This year there were more than 13,000 entries, and more than
3 million votes were cast for the People's Voice awards.To view all of
NASA's social media accounts, visit:https://www.nasa.gov/socialmediaFor more
information about the Webby Awards, visit:http://www.webbyawards.com