Does scientific evidence sell?
- Examining the dissemination of evidence on social media, we analyzed the discourse around eight visible scientists in the context of COVID-19. Using manual (N = 1,406) and automated coding (N = 42,640) on an account-based tracked Twitter/X dataset capturing scientists’ activities and eliciting reactions over six 2-week periods, we found that visible scientists’ tweets included more scientific evidence. However, public reactions contained more anecdotal evidence. Findings indicate that evidence can be a message characteristic leading to greater tweet dissemination. Implications for scientists, including explicitly incorporating scientific evidence in their communication and examining evidence in science communication research, are discussed.
| Author details: | Kaija Biermann, Bianca Nowak, Lea-Marie Braun, Monika Taddicken, Nicole C. Krämer, Stefan StieglitzORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/10755470241249468 |
| ISSN: | 1075-5470 |
| ISSN: | 1552-8545 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Science communication |
| Subtitle (English): | combining manual and automated content analysis to investigate scientists’ and laypeople’s evidence practices on social media |
| Publisher: | Sage |
| Place of publishing: | Thousand Oaks, Calif. |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first publication: | 2024/06/07 |
| Publication year: | 2024 |
| Release date: | 2024/07/04 |
| Tag: | COVID-19; computational methods; evidence; public engagement; social media |
| Volume: | 0 |
| Number of pages: | 34 |
| Organizational units: | Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Fachgruppe Betriebswirtschaftslehre |
| DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Publishing method: | Open Access / Hybrid Open-Access |
| License (German): |  CC-BY-NC - Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell 4.0 International |
