Outcomes of the Event Horizon Telescope First Black Hole Image Campaign By Lars Lindberg Christensen (ESO), Oana Sandu (ESO), Mariya Lyubenova (ESO), Katharina Königstein (Radboud University), Eduardo Ros (MPIfR), Masaaki Hiramatsu (NAOJ), Marcin Monko (ERC) & Calum Turner (ESO) 1 Table of Contents Summary 2 The Preparation of the Campaign 3 Brussels Press Conference 6 Washington DC Press Conference 8 Santiago Press Conference 10 Tokyo Press Conference 11 Taipei Press Conference 14 Shanghai Press Conference 15 Mexico Press Conference 16 European Satellite Events 16 Press Coverage 17 The Social Media Impact 19 Memes 22 ERC media monitoring 26 Social media 28 ESO Products 28 Side Stories 29 1. The Hawaiian perspective: Pōwehi 30 2. China’s largest stock photo provider draws fire over use of black hole image 30 3. Katie Bouman 31 4. Political Connections 33 5. Candy, Cereal and Software 35 6. Photo-op stand becomes a tourist destination 36 7. “Rebound University” 37 Other results 37 Appendix A: Pros and Cons 40 A few selected Pros 40 A few selected Cons 40 2 The_Image as it was called during the preparations. Summary1 On 10 April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration announced the first-ever image of a black hole in the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). A coordinated campaign for the promotion of this high-profile science story had been in preparation between all the involved institutions since November 2018, with weekly video conferences (sometimes several a week). Six coordinated press conferences began at 15:00 CEST/13:00 UTC and the image was made public at 13:07 UTC: 1. Belgium (Brussels, English) 2. USA (Washington, D.C., English) 3. Chile (Santiago, Spanish) 4. Japan (Tokyo, Japanese) 5. Taipei (Mandarin)ray 6. Shanghai (Mandarin) News of this result was covered in most major media around the world and went viral on social media. This led to unprecedented coverage, and the numbers are still increasing. According to news chief Ray Villard at STScI, the EHT image made 3500 online articles with 4.5 billion potential readers. The Hawaiian ​ ​ Bennet Group reports similar a number for a narrower subset of the storyline: “Aggregate Readership: ​ 4,673,590,910 for reflecting media results directly attributable to Bennet Group's collaboration with JCMT ​ and SMA”. 1 This overview uses content from Peter Kurczynski (NSF)’s summary: https://perimeter.teamwork.com/files/3835517 ​ and from Eduardo Ros. 3 Several of us made the “taxi-driver test”: asking random laypeople about black holes (for instance in taxis), which led to an almost 100% coverage in the awareness of the story among random people in the ​ developed world (N = ~100). ​ ​ ​ As a result, most people on the planet now know that humans have taken a picture of a black hole. ​ ​ This has led to a significant boost for EHT, for astronomy, for science and for international ​ peaceful collaboration. In Europe, science was put on the agenda in Brussels, which was a great relief for ​ politicians and news consumers in general. To quote Astrophysicist and author Ethan Siegel2: “The story of the Event Horizon Telescope is a remarkable example of high-risk, high-reward science. During the 2009 decadal review, their ambitious proposal declared that there would be an image of a black hole by the end of the 2010s. A decade later, we actually have it. That’s an incredible achievement. It relied on computational advances, the construction and integration of a slew of radio telescope facilities, and the cooperation of the international community. Atomic clocks, new computers, correlators that could link up different observatories, and many other new technologies needed to be inserted into every one of the stations. You needed to get permission. And funding. And testing time. And, beyond that, permission to observe on all the different telescopes simultaneously. But all of this happened, and wow, did it ever pay off. We are now living in the era of black hole astronomy, and the event horizon is there for us to image and understand. This is just the beginning. Never has so much been gained by observing a region where nothing, not even light, can escape.” The Preparation of the Campaign Since November 2018 a group of more than 30 communicators and communication-savvy scientists, were brought together in weekly videocons by the EHT Outreach Working Group led by Mislav Balokovic. A Teamwork site was set up to allow the group to collaborate. The scientists in the group took a leading role in the communications work, and the excitement was very high due to the potential of the result. The main focus was on data security (containing the image and the result), and the production of content. ESO’s Calum Turner took the lead on writing up a joint press release with space for “localised” content and quotes, and this was jointly edited by the 50–100 participating communicators over the course of several weeks. Collating and integrating these comments was an unprecedented effort, and allowed everyone in the collaboration to share their inputs, concerns and views. Most of the press releases published, notably NSF, ESO and the EHT collaboration, respected the agreed format, but not all. While this approach allowed a broad range of opinions to come together, it dramatically increased the coordination workload and would have benefitted from a predefined approval structure. However, the level of coordination allowed for a broad collaborative approach, leading to many translations (including into Hawaiian, the first such case) and a common pool of impressive visuals, such as a Japanese comic. A set ​ ​ of in-depth factsheets about the EHT and the history of the science leading up to the result were never finalised and were unfortunately not published. 2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/04/11/10-deep-lessons-from- ​ our-first-image-of-a-black-holes-event-horizon/#be8191e55e64 4 It was agreed to send out the media advisory on 1 April, despite some differing opinions among EHT partners about the form and timing of this communication. In the end, the 10 days advance notice gave journalists enough time to prepare, and created a sense of suspense in the media with lots of rumours and interest which in itself provided additional visibility to EHT partners. 5 The complexity of the campaign is illustrated with a MindMap. 6 Brussels Press Conference The Brussels press conference was held at EC's Berlaymont Building. Over 60 journalists attended the press conference in Brussels, while some 120 registered to follow it online. The YouTube live feed reached a peak of some 200 000 viewers. After the press conference, ERC President Jean-Pierre Bourguignon and Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt opened an EHT exhibition in the Berlaymont building in Brussels. The ERC liaised between the EHT project and the European Commissioner for Research and Innovation and the Commission’s Spokesperson’s Service to meet and reconcile all partners’ interests and deliver a successful communication campaign in Europe. The Brussels live feed on YouTube had ~200,000 viewers at the peak. 7 Moedas being surrounded by journalists. The ERC has never had this kind of success. The press conference in Brussels was broadcast live by the European Commission audio-visual service. The press conference YouTube stream has by now been seen ​ ​ by 3.1 million, has had 13.6 million impressions, 72 thousand shares, 62.9 thousand interactions, 59 thousand likes, 2.3 thousand comments. After one day, it entered the top three of most viewed videos on EUTube account. It was the top video for all black hole videos on YouTube on the day of the announcement. In terms of engagement, it was the most successful EUTube video ever. More than 500 entities embedded the live stream on their websites: Le Monde, Euronews, Bloomberg, Sky, El Confidencial, Evening Standard, Agenzia Ansa, Science Alert, Le Soir, La Libre, CNET Magazine, Wired IT, T-online DE, Sputnik News; Observador PT; Quotidiano, Independent, BBC News. 8 At least 92 TV channels, including BBC News, Sky News, Deutsche Welle, TVS Slovenia, produced 648 TV reports using live satellite broadcast from the press conference or the audio-visual material prepared in advanced by the ERC and Commission’s AV service, and distributed on the day of the announcement. Washington DC Press Conference The Washington DC press conference was held at the National Press Club. There were 56 reporters in the room (roughly the same as in Brussels). According to NSF, 0.75 million saw the live webcast + 2 million impressions on Facebook Live. This is a total of 1.25 million. The YouTube stream has by now accumulated 1.1 million views. The US press conference panellists. Credit: www.news.cn. 9 Afterwards the presenters went to the US Congress House Committee on Space, Science & Technology to present the result. Shep Doeleman presents in the Evening party at National Air & Space Museum. 10 Santiago Press Conference 11 The Santiago stream had 150,000 live viewers and around 35-40 journalists in the audience. The JAO ALMA Instagram channel doubled from 25,000 to 53,000 followers. Tokyo Press Conference The Tokyo Press Conference was held at Kioi Conference. 61 journalists and 14 TV cameras attended the ​ ​ event. Mareki Honma and Kazuhiro Hada, both NAOJ Mizusawa VLBI Observatory, were the speakers during the press conference moderated by Hitoshi Yamaoka, Head of NAOJ PR office. Accompanying researchers were: ● Fumie Tazaki, Tomoaki Oyama, Tomohisa Kawashima, Hiroshi Nagai (NAOJ) ● Shiro Ikeda (Institute of Statistical Mathematics), ● Kenji Toma (Tohoku University) ● Motoki Kino (Kogakuin University/NAOJ) ● Masato Sasada (Hiroshima University) ● Hiroki Okino (The University of Tokyo) ● ShuichiroTsuda (SOKENDAI) ● Yuzhu Cui (SOKENDAI) The NAOJ livestream on YouTube & niconico had ~85,000 views.