Three women astronauts use Instagram to blend science with personal stories, pop culture and fashion while challenging STEM stereotypes.<\/p>\n
Pink flight jackets, Taylor Swift references, and Astronaut Barbies don\u2019t look much like science outreach. A new study suggests they\u2019re part of how three women astronauts share science on Instagram. On the researchers\u2019 reading, the personal posts and pop-culture nods worked alongside the science, aimed at wider audiences while each woman built a recognizable personal brand.<\/p>\n
Graduate students Karen Shalev and Shannon Pappas carried out the study with Jocelyn Steinke, a professor in the Department of Communication<\/a> at the University of Connecticut<\/a>. The team studied the posts themselves rather than asking the astronauts what they intended.<\/p>\n \u201cOur major finding was that these three science influencers were strategic in the way they framed messages on Instagram,\u201d Steinke said.<\/p>\n Five months of astronaut posts<\/p>\n In June 2024, Virgin Galactic<\/a> announced a research flight planned for 2026 with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences<\/a>. Its all-women, international crew would continue research on how fluids behave in weightlessness<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kellie Gerardi, an American bioastronautics researcher, leads the crew. Shawna Pandya is a Canadian physician and aquanaut, and Norah Patten is an Irish aeronautical engineer.<\/p>\n At the time of the study, Gerardi had about 1.4 million followers, Patten about 99,000 and Pandya about 30,000. Gerardi accounted for most of the combined following.<\/p>\n A social media analytics company, Infegy<\/a>, supplied the public posts the three shared from June 24 to November 24, 2024. That came to 194 posts, and the researchers watched every video, listened to the audio, and read the captions, hashtags, and emojis.<\/p>\n They sorted what they found into six recurring subjects, seven ways of framing those subjects, and five tactics for catching a viewer\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n Women astronauts challenge stereotypes<\/p>\n One of the clearest examples came from Gerardi. A video opens with her pulling the badges off her navy flight jacket and putting them on a pink one. The on-screen caption reads, \u201cWhen my 6-year-old daughter asks why my flight jacket can\u2019t be pink.\u201d<\/p>\n In the next clip, her daughter, Delta, jumps up and points at the TV, where her mother is giving an interview in the pink jacket. The song lyrics over the clips include \u201cMama said that it was okay.\u201d In the caption, Gerardi thanked the institute for adding to the crew\u2019s jacket options and wrote about showing girls that femininity and fun don\u2019t undermine credibility.<\/p>\n The researchers grouped posts like this with others that challenge ideas about who belongs in science. Between them, the three women post as astronauts, doctors, mothers, daughters, and fans of fashion and music.<\/p>\n In an interview with Earth.com, Steinke was asked what a young woman considering a career in science should take from this. \u201cBy viewing posts about their career journeys, research activities, achievements, challenges, and personal lives, young women can find inspiration and insights to help them envision and navigate their own STEM pathways,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Pop culture framed the science<\/p>\n The posts often resembled other popular Instagram<\/a> content, and the researchers read that as deliberate. Gerardi called herself a \u201cbratstronaut,\u201d a nod to Charli XCX\u2019s album \u201cbrat.\u201d Patten posted<\/a> \u201cmove over Taylor Swift, Norah is back in town\u201d after Swift\u2019s recent shows in Ireland.<\/p>\n Pandya set clips of the crew to David Bowie\u2019s \u201cSpace Oddity,\u201d timed so the team is shown weightless just as Bowie sings about floating. The authors wrote, citing earlier work, that trending sounds like these make a post more likely to reach people\u2019s feeds<\/a> beyond its own followers.<\/p>\n The science often arrived inside the fun. Gerardi asked Delta to guess what a small stuffed octopus would do in weightlessness. Delta said its tentacles would float up and down, and the next clip, filmed in flight, showed the toy doing exactly that.<\/p>\n \u201cI was impressed by how creatively these science influencers told their stories, sharing not only their accomplishments as women in STEM but also their STEM journeys and personal life experiences in imaginative and compelling ways,\u201d Steinke told Earth.com.<\/p>\n Each astronaut built a brand<\/p>\n Plenty of posts had nothing to do with space. Gerardi wrote openly about pregnancy loss, IVF and infertility. Patten shared a photo of herself at 15 at the Kennedy Space Center, recalling \u201cthe excitement and awe I felt walking under the Saturn V.\u201d Pandya posted that her interest in space began with watching Roberta Bondar, Canada\u2019s first female astronaut.<\/p>\n The authors wrote that moments like these make the astronauts easier to relate to. Each woman also has her own style.<\/p>\n Gerardi, the most followed, takes the more influencer-focused approach, pairing outreach with sponsored events such as a New York Fashion Week runway walk with her daughter. She has also shown off an Astronaut Barbie<\/a>. <\/p>\n Pandya\u2019s posts are more scientist-focused, such as a narrated look inside the pool where the crew trains.<\/p>\n Earth.com also asked Steinke what doing this well would look like for someone just starting out as a science influencer. \u201cCommunicating science well on Instagram involves not only sharing scientific knowledge but also thinking about science from the audience\u2019s perspective,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The next steps, in her view, are deciding how to frame the message and images and then adding popular Instagram trends. She said that last step appears to be especially important for reaching younger audiences<\/a>.<\/p>\n What remains unknown<\/p>\n The researchers looked at three women\u2019s posts on one platform over five months. They couldn\u2019t tell whether every choice was planned or whether anyone helped run the accounts.<\/p>\n They also didn\u2019t look at how followers read the posts or which ones drew the most likes and comments. The authors wrote that their own perspectives shaped what they saw, and they didn\u2019t count how often each theme appeared.<\/p>\n For now, the record is what three astronauts chose to post, not what anyone watching took away from it.<\/p>\n The team suggests interviewing science influencers about their goals and comparing the answers with what shows up in their feeds. Researchers could also survey the people watching and study more platforms and more fields, to find out whether the pattern holds beyond three astronauts.<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal Journal of Science Communication<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n