IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v12y2018i3p960-971.html

Investigating the quality of interactions and public engagement around scientific papers on Twitter

Author

Listed:
  • Didegah, Fereshteh
  • Mejlgaard, Niels
  • Sørensen, Mads P.

Abstract

This study explores science communication on Twitter by investigating a sample of tweets referring to academic papers in five different scientific fields. The specifications of science communicators on Twitter, the characteristics of those who initiate actions (by tweeting), the extent and quality of reactions (retweeting), individual and group interactions, and the distribution of tweets across types of engagement in the process of science communication (i.e., dissemination, consultation, and evaluation) were explored. A broad array of actors is involved in the communication of science on Twitter, with individual citizens and individual researchers playing an important role. In principle, this is promising for creating direct interaction, which can be difficult through more traditional mass media. The vast majority of communication activities regarding academic papers is undigested dissemination with almost no sign of debate, contestation, or collective reflection. Another general finding of this study is that bot accounts play a major role in the science communication landscape on Twitter.

Suggested Citation

  • Didegah, Fereshteh & Mejlgaard, Niels & Sørensen, Mads P., 2018. "Investigating the quality of interactions and public engagement around scientific papers on Twitter," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 960-971.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:12:y:2018:i:3:p:960-971
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2018.08.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157717302572
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2018.08.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Houqiang Yu, 2017. "Context of altmetrics data matters: an investigation of count type and user category," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 267-283, April.
    2. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan van Eck, 2012. "A new methodology for constructing a publication‐level classification system of science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2378-2392, December.
    3. Stefanie Haustein & Timothy D. Bowman & Kim Holmberg & Andrew Tsou & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Vincent Larivière, 2016. "Tweets as impact indicators: Examining the implications of automated “bot” accounts on Twitter," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(1), pages 232-238, January.
    4. Kim Holmberg & Mike Thelwall, 2014. "Disciplinary differences in Twitter scholarly communication," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1027-1042, November.
    5. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck, 2012. "A new methodology for constructing a publication-level classification system of science," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2378-2392, December.
    6. Adam Marcus & Ivan Oransky, 2011. "The paper is not sacred," Nature, Nature, vol. 480(7378), pages 449-450, December.
    7. Julia Vainio & Kim Holmberg, 2017. "Highly tweeted science articles: who tweets them? An analysis of Twitter user profile descriptions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 345-366, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas & Paul Wouters, 2022. "User engagement with scholarly tweets of scientific papers: a large-scale and cross-disciplinary analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4523-4546, August.
    2. Yu, Houqiang & Xiao, Tingting & Xu, Shenmeng & Wang, Yuefen, 2019. "Who posts scientific tweets? An investigation into the productivity, locations, and identities of scientific tweeters," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 841-855.
    3. Lin Zhang & Zhenyu Gou & Zhichao Fang & Gunnar Sivertsen & Ying Huang, 2023. "Who tweets scientific publications? A large‐scale study of tweeting audiences in all areas of research," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(13), pages 1485-1497, December.
    4. Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado & Daniel Torres-Salinas & Nicolas Robinson-Garcia, 2021. "Identifying and characterizing social media communities: a socio-semantic network approach to altmetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 9267-9289, November.
    5. repec:plo:pone00:0242550 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Shenmeng Xu & Houqiang Yu & Bradley M. Hemminger & Xie Dong, 2018. "Who, what, why? An exploration of JoVE scientific video publications in tweets," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 845-856, November.
    7. Yingxin Estella Ye & Jin-Cheon Na & Poong Oh, 2022. "Are automated accounts driving scholarly communication on Twitter? a case study of dissemination of COVID-19 publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2151-2172, May.
    8. Yu, Houqiang & Xu, Shenmeng & Xiao, Tingting, 2018. "Is there Lingua Franca in informal scientific communication? Evidence from language distribution of scientific tweets," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 605-617.
    9. Cao, Renmeng & Geng, Yu & Xu, Xiaoke & Wang, Xianwen, 2022. "How does duplicate tweeting boost social media exposure to scholarly articles?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).
    10. Hou, Jianhua & Wang, Yuanyuan & Zhang, Yang & Wang, Dongyi, 2022. "How do scholars and non-scholars participate in dataset dissemination on Twitter," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).
    11. Yingxin Estella Ye & Jin-Cheon Na & Meky Liu, 2025. "Examining scholarly communication on X (Twitter): insights from participants tweeting COVID-19 and ChatGPT publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(2), pages 1045-1076, February.
    12. Yanto Chandra, 2018. "Mapping the evolution of entrepreneurship as a field of research (1990–2013): A scientometric analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(1), pages 1-24, January.
    13. Nadine Desrochers & Adèle Paul‐Hus & Jen Pecoskie, 2017. "Five decades of gratitude: A meta‐synthesis of acknowledgments research," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(12), pages 2821-2833, December.
    14. María Pinto & Rosaura Fernández-Pascual & David Caballero-Mariscal & Dora Sales, 2020. "Information literacy trends in higher education (2006–2019): visualizing the emerging field of mobile information literacy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1479-1510, August.
    15. K. J. Wang & J. Widagdo & Y. S. Lin & H. L. Yang & S. L. Hsiao, 2016. "A service innovation framework for start-up firms by integrating service experience engineering approach and capability maturity model," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 10(4), pages 867-916, December.
    16. repec:plo:pone00:0170296 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2018. "Are leaders really leading? Journals that are first in Web of Science subject categories in the context of their groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 111-130, April.
    18. Yongjun Zhu & Erjia Yan, 2015. "Dynamic subfield analysis of disciplines: an examination of the trading impact and knowledge diffusion patterns of computer science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(1), pages 335-359, July.
    19. Ignacio Rodríguez-Rodríguez & José-Víctor Rodríguez & Niloofar Shirvanizadeh & Andrés Ortiz & Domingo-Javier Pardo-Quiles, 2021. "Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data and the Internet of Things to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scientometric Review Using Text Mining," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-29, August.
    20. Jarrahi, Mohammad Hossein & Karami, Amir & Conway, Patrick & Memariani, Ali & Lutz, Christoph, 2026. "Navigating the muddy waters of bias in artificial intelligence research: Understanding divergent meanings and conceptions," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    21. Diego Chavarro & Puay Tang & Ismael Rafols, 2014. "Interdisciplinarity and research on local issues: evidence from a developing country," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 195-209.
    22. Yaxue Ma & Zhichao Ba & Yuxiang Zhao & Jin Mao & Gang Li, 2021. "Understanding and predicting the dissemination of scientific papers on social media: a two-step simultaneous equation modeling–artificial neural network approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(8), pages 7051-7085, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:12:y:2018:i:3:p:960-971. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.