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Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts

The inauguration of President Trump in the United States led to the active restriction of science communication from federal agencies, resulting in the creation of many unofficial “alt” Twitter accounts to maintain communication. Alt accounts had many followers (e.g., 15 accounts had > 100,000) a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wilson, Matthew J., Perkin, Elizabeth K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8570174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34760391
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12407
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author Wilson, Matthew J.
Perkin, Elizabeth K.
author_facet Wilson, Matthew J.
Perkin, Elizabeth K.
author_sort Wilson, Matthew J.
collection PubMed
description The inauguration of President Trump in the United States led to the active restriction of science communication from federal agencies, resulting in the creation of many unofficial “alt” Twitter accounts to maintain communication. Alt accounts had many followers (e.g., 15 accounts had > 100,000) and received a large amount of media attention, making them ideal for better understanding how differences in messaging can affect public engagement with science on microblogging platforms. We analyzed tweets produced by alt and corresponding official agency accounts to compare the two groups and determine if specific features of a tweet made them more likely to be retweeted or liked to help the average scientist potentially reach a broader audience on Twitter. We found adding links, images, hashtags, and mentions, as well as expressing angry and annoying sentiments all increased retweets and likes. Evidence-based terms such as “peer-review” had high retweet rates but linking directly to peer-reviewed publications decreased attention compared to popular science websites. Word choice and attention did not reflect official or alt account types, indicating topic is more important than source. The number of tweets generated and attention received by alt accounts has decreased since their creation, demonstrating the importance of timeliness in science communication on social media. Together our results show potential pathways for scientists to increase efficacy in Twitter communications.
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spelling pubmed-85701742021-11-09 Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts Wilson, Matthew J. Perkin, Elizabeth K. PeerJ Conservation Biology The inauguration of President Trump in the United States led to the active restriction of science communication from federal agencies, resulting in the creation of many unofficial “alt” Twitter accounts to maintain communication. Alt accounts had many followers (e.g., 15 accounts had > 100,000) and received a large amount of media attention, making them ideal for better understanding how differences in messaging can affect public engagement with science on microblogging platforms. We analyzed tweets produced by alt and corresponding official agency accounts to compare the two groups and determine if specific features of a tweet made them more likely to be retweeted or liked to help the average scientist potentially reach a broader audience on Twitter. We found adding links, images, hashtags, and mentions, as well as expressing angry and annoying sentiments all increased retweets and likes. Evidence-based terms such as “peer-review” had high retweet rates but linking directly to peer-reviewed publications decreased attention compared to popular science websites. Word choice and attention did not reflect official or alt account types, indicating topic is more important than source. The number of tweets generated and attention received by alt accounts has decreased since their creation, demonstrating the importance of timeliness in science communication on social media. Together our results show potential pathways for scientists to increase efficacy in Twitter communications. PeerJ Inc. 2021-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8570174/ /pubmed/34760391 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12407 Text en ©2021 Wilson and Perkin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Conservation Biology
Wilson, Matthew J.
Perkin, Elizabeth K.
Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
title Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
title_full Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
title_fullStr Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
title_full_unstemmed Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
title_short Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
title_sort going rogue: what scientists can learn about twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
topic Conservation Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8570174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34760391
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12407
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