Date of publication
Jun 24, 2026
Category:
Practice Insight
International Astronomical Union General Assembly 2024: a case study on social media outreach and open access in large-scale scientific conferences
by
Andrea Girolamodibari
,
Dr Vanessa Moss
This report presents an analysis of the communication efforts of the XXXII International Astronomical Union General Assembly, the first held on the African continent. For the first time in its history, the conference provided a fully streamed, open access experience on YouTube, complemented by a robust, multi-platform social media outreach campaign. Through metrics analysis and survey results, our study evaluates the effectiveness of diverse digital initiatives in enhancing engagement on different social media platforms to democratise scientific discourse. These findings offer critical insights for future hybrid and virtual conferences, providing social media metrics, best practices analysis and evaluation for social media scientific global communication of large-scale scientific gatherings.