NASA plans downscale of social media presence

NASA has shared that it will be shutting down many of its social accounts in favor of a more streamlined strategy with fewer accounts. The move has stirred controversy, with some thinking the change will make finding engaging content easier, while others are concerned that some NASA information won’t get shared at all.

NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens announced the change Tuesday. Stevens’ position has been more forward-facing than in previous months due to the recent leadership vacuum with no confirmed administrator. Prior to being at NASA, Stevens was the press secretary for Senator Ted Cruz.

The change will consolidate the nearly 700 social media accounts Stevens states NASA currently operates down to just 300 across 15 platforms. The agency also reportedly added two platforms but did not share what those platforms are; one could potentially be President Trump’s Truth Social.

It may seem insane that even 300 accounts is too many for a single agency to manage, but many of those accounts are for NASA’s various field centers, missions, staff (including astronauts), and major programs, which are then duplicated over multiple sites. So the numbers can start to add up.

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And some inside baseball for you all, when you start covering NASA programs, you learn that NASA has a massive team of public affairs officer, both civil servants and contractors, that cover every inch of the agency. There is almost always at least one, sometimes multiple, individuals covering every part of NASA programs, offices, officials, and centers.

Stevens shared a short list of some of the accounts NASA was keeping in an X post Tuesday. These included all of NASA’s field centers, including Goddard, which could be closed in the President’s budget request; all of the agency’s mission directorates; a Spanish version of the main NASA feed; and some popular missions like the Hubble Telescope, Webb Telescope, and the yet-to-be-launched Nancy Roman Telescope.

A list of consolidated accounts was not shared, but some NASA accounts made updates that their feeds would be archived and where they will be moving to. For example, the NASA Ground Systems X account will now share its updates through the NASA Kennedy and Artemis accounts; NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies will now be through NASA Goddard and NASA Earth, and an account focused on Johnson Space Center interns will be absorbed by the official NASA Interns account.

Likely, the hundreds of accounts “consolidated” will be accounts that are no longer active, as their missions have changed, been canceled, or not had anyone available to post to social channels.

This idea of a consolidation of NASA social channels was previously brought up by former NASA Administrator nominee Jared Isaacman during his Senate committee hearing. He used it as a way to potentially save costs, streamline the communication process, and hopefully make it easier for the general public to engage with NASA.

Isaacman praised and defended the change on X as reactions came in.

A potential downside of the removal of less mainstream accounts is the potential reduction in content NASA will share publicly. There are only so many working hours in the day, and you can only post so many times to social media before followers view the account as spam. So, some content that potentially had a home will no longer have one.

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell took to X to express his concern over the “hardcore” space content that NASA will likely no longer be sharing. While the masses of the general public will likely never see or understand some of that information, it serves as a great resource for media to reshare insights from the information with the public.

While the change has seemingly already gone into effect for some accounts, others have given later dates for when their accounts will cease to share new content. NASA’s official site of social platforms has yet to show the changes, still sharing many soon-to-be deactivated accounts.