IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v127y2022i5d10.1007_s11192-022-04343-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are automated accounts driving scholarly communication on Twitter? a case study of dissemination of COVID-19 publications

Author

Listed:
  • Yingxin Estella Ye

    (Nanyang Technological University)

  • Jin-Cheon Na

    (Nanyang Technological University)

  • Poong Oh

    (Nanyang Technological University)

Abstract

From a network perspective, this study analyzes 659 users mentioning sampled COVID-19 articles 10 or more times on Twitter with a focus on their roles in facilitating the process of scholarly communication. Different from existing studies, we consider both the user types and the automation of accounts to profile influential users in the network of research dissemination. Our study found that similar to academic users, non-academic users can also be active players in communicating scientific publications. The results highlight the intensive interactions between human users and automated accounts, including bots and cyborgs, which accounted for 45% of connections among the top users. This study also demonstrates the important role of automated accounts in initiating and facilitating research dissemination. Specifically, (1) bot-assisted academic publishers showed the highest amplifier scores, which measures a user’s tendency of being the first to share information and reach out to others within their trusted networks, (2) 5.28% of the selected articles was first tweeted by automated research feeds, ranking the fourth among the 22 classified user groups, and (3) bot-assisted publishers and automated feeds of generic topics and news alerts were highly ranked in authority, a network measure to quantify the degree to which a user consumes important resources of relevant topics. In the conclusion section, we discuss future directions to improve the validity of Twitter metrics in assessing research impacts.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:5:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04343-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04343-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04343-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-022-04343-4?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 search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kim Holmberg & Julia Vainio, 2018. "Why do some research articles receive more online attention and higher altmetrics? Reasons for online success according to the authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(1), pages 435-447, July.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Sam Work & Vincent Larivière & Stefanie Haustein, 2017. "Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: A review of the literature," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(9), pages 2037-2062, September.
    5. Stuart Oldham & Ben Fulcher & Linden Parkes & Aurina Arnatkevic̆iūtė & Chao Suo & Alex Fornito, 2019. "Consistency and differences between centrality measures across distinct classes of networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-23, July.
    6. 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.
    7. Saeed-Ul Hassan & Mubashir Imran & Uzair Gillani & Naif Radi Aljohani & Timothy D. Bowman & Fereshteh Didegah, 2017. "Measuring social media activity of scientific literature: an exhaustive comparison of scopus and novel altmetrics big data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(2), pages 1037-1057, November.
    8. Anwar Said & Timothy D. Bowman & Rabeeh Ayaz Abbasi & Naif Radi Aljohani & Saeed-Ul Hassan & Raheel Nawaz, 2019. "Mining network-level properties of Twitter altmetrics data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(1), pages 217-235, July.
    9. Francois Schalkwyk & Jonathan Dudek & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "Communities of shared interests and cognitive bridges: the case of the anti-vaccination movement on Twitter," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1499-1516, November.
    10. 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. 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.
    2. 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).
    3. Lutz Bornmann & Robin Haunschild & Vanash M Patel, 2020. "Are papers addressing certain diseases perceived where these diseases are prevalent? The proposal to use Twitter data as social-spatial sensors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, November.
    4. 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.
    5. Yajie Wang & Alesia Zuccala, 2021. "Scholarly book publishers as publicity agents for SSH titles on Twitter," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 4817-4840, June.
    6. 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.
    7. Wang, Yajie & Hou, Haiyan & Hu, Zhigang, 2021. "‘To tweet or not to tweet?’ A study of the use of Twitter by scholarly book publishers in Social Sciences and Humanities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    8. Enrique Orduña-Malea & Cristina I. Font-Julián, 2022. "Are patents linked on Twitter? A case study of Google patents," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6339-6362, November.
    9. Francois Schalkwyk & Jonathan Dudek & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "Communities of shared interests and cognitive bridges: the case of the anti-vaccination movement on Twitter," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1499-1516, November.
    10. 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.
    11. Saeed-Ul Hassan & Naif R. Aljohani & Mudassir Shabbir & Umair Ali & Sehrish Iqbal & Raheem Sarwar & Eugenio Martínez-Cámara & Sebastián Ventura & Francisco Herrera, 2020. "Tweet Coupling: a social media methodology for clustering scientific publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 973-991, August.
    12. 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.
    13. Anwar Said & Timothy D. Bowman & Rabeeh Ayaz Abbasi & Naif Radi Aljohani & Saeed-Ul Hassan & Raheel Nawaz, 2019. "Mining network-level properties of Twitter altmetrics data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(1), pages 217-235, July.
    14. Saeed-Ul Hassan & Sehrish Iqbal & Naif R. Aljohani & Salem Alelyani & Alesia Zuccala, 2020. "Introducing the ‘alt-index’ for measuring the social visibility of scientific research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1407-1419, June.
    15. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas & Wencan Tian & Xianwen Wang & Paul Wouters, 2021. "How is science clicked on Twitter? Click metrics for Bitly short links to scientific publications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(7), pages 918-932, July.
    16. Daniel Torres-Salinas & Domingo Docampo & Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado & Nicolas Robinson-Garcia, 2024. "The many publics of science: using altmetrics to identify common communication channels by scientific field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 3705-3723, July.
    17. 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.
    18. Xi Zhang & Xianhai Wang & Hongke Zhao & Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos & Yongqiang Sun & Hui Xiong, 2019. "An effectiveness analysis of altmetrics indices for different levels of artificial intelligence publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1311-1344, June.
    19. Sergio Copiello, 2020. "Other than detecting impact in advance, alternative metrics could act as early warning signs of retractions: tentative findings of a study into the papers retracted by PLoS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2449-2469, December.
    20. Iraklis Varlamis & Dimitrios Michail & Foteini Glykou & Panagiotis Tsantilas, 2022. "A Survey on the Use of Graph Convolutional Networks for Combating Fake News," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-19, February.

    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:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:5:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04343-4. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.