Reporting on space in the time of Chandrayaan-3 {and Twitter, Reddit and UFOs}

Desciption

Indian newsrooms often don’t have specialised science journalists and those that do usually cover the whole gamut of topics. In this context, reporting on space presents specific challenges: on a tight deadline to write on an unfamiliar topic, about an unknown environment where even regular words like day and sunrise may not quite tell it, and which segue very easily into conspiracy theories.

This is exacerbated by the spectating on social media like Twitter and Reddit of events like the Chandrayaan-3 landing. To vet profiles, doctored photos from official comments, and even contextualise and fact-check official comments becomes difficult for strained newsrooms in real-time.

YouTube popularisers with millions of subscribers emphasise aspects in their video headlines which can be misleading but have a tremendous reach. Graphics, which may be an apt way to tell certain science explainers may also not be available to all.

The discussants will look at what are the best practices whereby journalists can be retooled to write about the science behind the event, go beyond quotes and where they can go for context or the actual record.