In November, Vince Knight decided he had had enough of Twitter. After more than 10 years on the social-media platform, Knight – a mathematician at Cardiff University, UK – was worried about the management of the site under its new owner, entrepreneur Elon Musk, who began to lay off a number of employees shortly after acquiring it. . “Twitter is going haywire,” wrote Knight on stage; he then jumped ship to Mastodon, a competing service. He says he didn’t want to support Musk’s Twitter anymore.
The past few weeks have been quite the tumult on Twitter. After Musk fired employees, the site went down for a while as the remaining engineers struggled to stay on top of things. Musk also said he wants to take the platform in a new direction, encouraging previously banned accounts to return. Other reports, including one by researchers at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, say abuse is increasing on the platform (see go.nature.com/3vcgpfw).
On December 11, Musk wrote on Twitter that “his name accuses/Fauci” in an apparent attempt to ridicule sexist and misogynist movements and mock the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, who has faced harassment and death threats for his work in advising the US government’s response to COVID-19.
Musk’s erratic and confrontational management of Twitter has troubled many users, including analysts like Knight. For hundreds of thousands of scientists, Twitter is a sounding board, a megaphone and a common room: a place to broadcast research findings, academic debates and socialize with people they might not normally meet.
Should I join Mastodon? A scientific guide to a Twitter competitor
Should I join Mastodon? A scientific guide to a Twitter competitor
“I would never have known so many scientists without it,” says Oded Rechavi, who works on transgenerational inheritance at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “It increases democracy in science and gives you more opportunities, no matter where you are.”
Since the site’s inception in 2006, Twitter executives have often stated that their purpose is nothing more than a ‘public town square’ of communication; now it has almost 250 million daily users. On that scale, abuse, ignorance and bots have always existed, but for many researchers, the advantages of fast, widespread communication with each other and an engaged public have outweighed these problems.
The threat of Twitter changing dramatically under its new management, or perhaps disappearing altogether, has raised concerns and questions for analysts. How has this social media platform helped science, and to what extent has it hurt it? If it disappears, would researchers want to recreate it elsewhere?
Twitter’s influence on science
No one knows how many researchers have touched Twitter, but this August, Rodrigo Costas Comesana, an information scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and his colleagues released a data set of half a million Twitter users who might be researchers. (The team used software to try to compare Twitter accounts to those of authors on scientific papers.) In a similar, smaller 2020 study, Costas and others estimated that about 1% of authors of papers in the Web of Science had profiles on. Read also : YouTube Music wants you to discover other renditions of your favorite songs. Twitter, has a section that varies by country2. A 2014 Nature study found that 13% of researchers used Twitter on a regular basis, although respondents were English-speaking and there would be some self-selection bias (see Nature 512, 126-129; 2014).
How Musk’s acquisition could change Twitter: what analysts think
How Musk’s acquisition could change Twitter: what analysts think
Although many researchers are not on Twitter, the platform has a great role in scientific communication, according to many studies. “In general, about a third of all scientific articles are submitted,” says Costas, pointing to the 2020 study3 that analyzed 12 million papers from 2012-18; by 2018, the titrated share had more than doubled from 2012 levels, to around 40%. And during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, more than half of all journal articles on CCIDID-19 published until April 2021 were mentioned at least once on Twitter4.
All this tweeting does not necessarily lead to engagement, however: a pre-epidemic study by Costas and his team analyzed one and a half million professional articles posted on Twitter until September 2019. They found that half of these articles did not attract a search engine, while 22% received one or two clicks5.
But for many scientists, Twitter has become an important tool for collaboration and discovery – a source of real-time communication around research papers, conference talks and broad academic topics. Papers now circulate in the scientific community quickly thanks to Twitter, says Johann Unger, a linguist at Lancaster University, UK, who says some information is also shared in private direct messages through the site. And its limit on the length of a tweet — currently 28 characters — has pushed students to keep their comments private, he adds.
Social choice softened hierarchies, throwing people into the conversation regardless of geography, seniority or skill. “Academia is characterized by a lot of security,” says Daniel Quintana, a psychologist at the University of Oslo, who wrote an e-book about how scientists can use Twitter (https://t4scientists.com). “Twitter provides an amazing way to get your work out there.”
It also gave a powerful voice to people who might otherwise have been discriminated against, and helped market the network to those who don’t see people like them in their departments, says Sigourney Bonner, co-founder of the #BlackinCancer community and. PhD student at Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Institute. “I never met a black woman with a PhD until I started mine,” she says. Movements associated with hashtags – from #IAmAScientistBecause to #BlackInTheIvory – often saw Twitter act as a meeting place to discuss important problems in academia, such as racism, sexism, harassment and bullying.
Sigourney Bonner, who founded the #BlackinCancer community. Credit: Cancer Research UK
Due to its status as a popular public discussion network and its open data, Twitter has become a research center for social scientists on global events – in particular, how information spreads on the network. A natural search of the Scopus database of scientific articles, for this article, found more than 41,000 articles and conference papers that mention Twitter in the title, abstract or keywords. This number has increased from one in 2006 to 4,800 in 2022.
In a study shared from 2018, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge studied Twitter and found that fake news on the site spread faster than true stories – perhaps because, they reported, fake news had more. news’ rather than real news6. Fake news also tended to evoke emotions such as fear, disgust and surprise.
And in a 2018 study of hate speech on Twitter, Manoel Horta Ribeiro, now a PhD student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, and his colleagues found that users whose tweets contained hate speech wrote more often than those who did not. ‘who do not use such language, and were repeated more often than their less hot counterparts7.
How Facebook, Twitter and other data troves are changing social science
How Facebook, Twitter and other data troves are changing social science
These studies and others point to the conundrums that Twitter poses to scientists and other users. Like other platforms that are heavily funded by advertising, Twitter aims primarily to maintain people’s engagement and attention. Similarly, the discovery of the Twitter algorithm (which focuses more on the discussion or sharing of messages than people’s times) “prioritizes the quality of content”, says Renée DiResta, who studies social networks and fakes at the Stanford Internet Observatory in California. “People who may not have the knowledge of school, but who have the knowledge to speak on a particular issue, can take the public’s opinion,” he says.
The idea of Twitter as a great democratizer is also often inconsistent with reality, DiResta adds. Accounts with large, established followings have a larger reach than “average scientists on the platform”, he says.
And while Twitter’s algorithms promote humor, fun and entertainment, they can also encourage tweets, conflicting arguments and controversial statements that lead to abuse. Real criticism can quickly turn ugly, and users can easily invade other people’s conversations, with the crowd sometimes encouraged to insult and insult each other.
Twitter has always struggled to keep up with the rapid changes in online communication. It’s a problem that looks set to get worse now that Musk has cut back on the company’s workforce and its security systems.
Pandemic Twitter
This twofold nature of Twitter has never been more clear than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many students built a large following through their expert analysis of SARS-CoV-2, and made successful connections as scientists raced to understand the epidemic. To see also : Ego Ella May makes music that heals the soul. “Twitter was a really powerful way to do fast science in some of the areas we were working in,” says Carl Bergstrom, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. For example, one of his most important collaborators in trying to understand and track COVID-19 through Twitter was a professional hockey player, Bergstrom says.
At the same time, famous researchers of CCIDID-19 have been insulted, harassed and sometimes, like a study done in 2021, threatened with death – often through Twitter (see Nature 598, 250-253; 2021). Meanwhile, some researchers on the site simplified the information, posted alarm surveys or shared disinformation, Bergstrom adds. And although Twitter claimed to be popular as a community center – where everyone gathers to see the same messages – in practice, the epidemic has shown how divided users are to follow more those who share the same opinion, argues the information expert Oliver Johnson at the University of Bristol, UK. For example, those who believed that COVID-19 was a myth followed some who agreed, he says, while others who argued that the way to deal with this epidemic was to block the path to “zero COVID” were in their minds. real bubble.
Information scientist Oliver Johnson, found a Twitter following of more than 40,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Chrystal Cherniwchan
Bergstrom thinks the positives of Twitter outweigh the negatives. During the pandemic, it exposed the public to the unreliability of real-time scientific advances, he says. And if some listeners wanted to jump to messages of scientific truth that weren’t there, it wasn’t Twitter’s fault, he adds.
“I don’t think we’ve done a good job of talking in school science classes about how to do science, and explaining to people how to do social science,” he says. “When you see science in design, it looks different.”
Days after Bergstrom spoke to Nature, however, he locked his account after Musk’s sarcastic tweet about Fauci. “You can’t have a healthy and productive scientific interaction on a platform run by [a] right-wing troll who rejects science when the results don’t suit him and just to make his audience happy,” he wrote on Mastodon.
Evolutionary biologist Carl Bergstrom, who left Twitter in December 2022. Credit: Kris Tsujikawa
Public square, private land
Aside from Musk’s perspective, his move to Twitter has troubled many scientists — especially because he fired many people working on content moderation. Scientists noted, in particular, Twitter’s announcement on November 23 that it would stop implementing its CCID-19 policy. To see also : Food waste is a climate threat that hurts agriculture, say Democratic lawmakers. And since then there have been reports that hate speech on the platform is on the rise, including in areas such as climate science.
“We’ve been having conversations about Twitter becoming a safer place for our organization to exist, because of the changes that are going on,” says Bonner. “At this point in time, I don’t know.”
Anthropologist Stefanie Haustein at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who has studied Twitter’s impact on scientific communication, says these changes show why it’s over for scientists to embrace the private, for-profit communication platform. “We are in the hands of players who have a great desire that is not great for communication with experts,” he says.
Researchers who leave the platform may try to find a similar social media replacement, says Rechavi. “I suspect that if Twitter stops being a place for scientists to be, then it will be replaced by something else,” he says. “I can’t imagine going back to being removed from the rest of the world of science.”
But Bonner says he doesn’t think there’s another place like Twitter. Dynamics on Instagram, where #BlackinCancer has a foothold, is very different, with less discussion and less reading of articles. And on Mastodon, the open-source alternative to Twitter that Bergstrom and Knight collaborated on, users can send long messages, but the platform’s powers deliberately make it difficult to find or interact with messages from users they don’t follow directly, causing communities to expand. abandoned and divided. (User numbers are still small compared to Twitter, which was estimated at 2.5 million in early December.)
“Social networks are only ever successful if they have enough people, and if they have the right people,” says Haustein. “It takes millions of people to move from one place to another.” Even if it happens, he says, you have to rebuild the networks and structures that existed on Twitter – which is proving difficult because of the way that control of Mastodon is distributed on the servers, making it difficult for those who were on Twitter to connect again. .
Still, Quintana is optimistic: “Even though I may have ten times as many followers on Twitter, the things I posted are getting the same amount of engagement on Mastodon,” he says.
For many, the tweet about Fauci was the last straw. After that, a new wave of scientists decided to leave Twitter. But others are encouraging their colleagues to stay. Rechavi emphasizes that Twitter has played an important role in the search: “I hope it will survive,” he says.
And, although the worst aspects of the platform are becoming more common, say the researchers who spoke to Nature for this article, there is still a need for trained scientists to provide their expertise and point people to the best sources of evidence. In response to Bergstrom’s appearance, Trish Greenhalgh, a health expert at the University of Oxford, UK, said that people like him are still needed, and that he feels obliged to continue: “We can and must pray and send reasonable. scientific tweets. I live.”
In the 2022 phase of our program, Harvard University is the leader, with 78 scientists affiliated with the institution that is included in the ranking. The top scientist cited is Eric S. Lander from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, United States with 792,604 citations.
What is the real purpose of Twitter?
The main purpose of Twitter is to connect its users and allow them to share their thoughts with their followers and others through the use of hashtags. It can be a source of news, entertainment and a marketing tool for businesses.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Twitter?
What are the benefits of using Twitter?
Build character and awareness However, your audience would find your Tweets and content valuable and insightful, even sharing with their followers.
Which social media platform is best for research?
1. The best social media sites if you want to build your search network
- Twitter. The most popular network for students is Twitter. …
- Facebook Groups. …
- LinkedIn. …
- Academic Networks/Websites. …
- Personal Education Website. …
- Twitter. …
- LinkedIn. …
- Personal Website.
Are social media sites helpful for research? Not only can you spread your message online, but also use media sites as a tool in your research. This concept has helped researchers to conduct their studies and research in an inexpensive way while being monitored online.
What is social media platform in research?
Social media research is the process of analyzing social media data to perform quantitative (and sometimes qualitative) research in order to understand how audiences interact with topics, by using data extraction tools and techniques.
Is Twitter bigger than TikTok?
Interestingly, despite some of the negative news against TikTok, it is a platform that boasts over 1 billion monthly active users compared to Twitter’s 330 million. So as a fun experiment, we tested what people think about TikTok users vs. Twitter.
Is TikTok the biggest platform? Don’t be. As of November 2021, TikTok is the seventh largest social media network with over a billion active users. The app’s owner, Bytedance, has been rated the world’s most valuable startup. Tiktok sees over 50 million daily users in the United States alone but that only represents 50% of all Tiktok users.
Who has more users TikTok or Twitter?
Monthly Active Users – TikTok officially has over 1 billion monthly active users. For reference â active users of other social platforms: Facebook â 2.9B, YouTube â 2.2B, Instagram â 1.4B, TikTok â 1.0B, Snapchat â 500M, Pinterest â 480M, Twitter â 300M.
Is Instagram bigger than TikTok?
TikTok vs Instagram: How TikTok Users Differ from Instagram Users. TikTok has one billion monthly active users worldwide, compared to Instagram, which has two billion monthly users.
What app is bigger than TikTok?
Instagram Leads With Most Power Users This was 10 percentage points higher than TikTok, which saw the second most power users at 29 percent of its installations.
Who is No 1 scientist ever?
Albert Einstein is one of the most famous scientists in the world. He was once an exceptional individual who may have been the only scientist in the world to become such a household name. His theories of relativity, gravity and his understanding of molecules defined new scientific methods.
Who is the father of science? Albert Einstein called Galileo the “father of modern science.†Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa, Italy but lived in Florence, Italy for most of his childhood.
