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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Autores principales:	Matthew J. Wilson, Elizabeth K. Perkin
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	PeerJ Inc. 2021
Materias:	Text sentiment Social media Mixed models Targeted outreach Web 2.0 Medicine R
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/f35ec1700f8e418a9d9b2575889e9a8e
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:f35ec1700f8e418a9d9b2575889e9a8e
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:f35ec1700f8e418a9d9b2575889e9a8e2021-11-04T15:05:29ZGoing rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts10.7717/peerj.124072167-8359https://doaj.org/article/f35ec1700f8e418a9d9b2575889e9a8e2021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://peerj.com/articles/12407.pdfhttps://peerj.com/articles/12407/https://doaj.org/toc/2167-8359The 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.Matthew J. WilsonElizabeth K. PerkinPeerJ Inc.articleText sentimentSocial mediaMixed modelsTargeted outreachWeb 2.0MedicineRENPeerJ, Vol 9, p e12407 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Text sentiment Social media Mixed models Targeted outreach Web 2.0 Medicine R
spellingShingle	Text sentiment Social media Mixed models Targeted outreach Web 2.0 Medicine R Matthew J. Wilson Elizabeth K. Perkin Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
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.
format	article
author	Matthew J. Wilson Elizabeth K. Perkin
author_facet	Matthew J. Wilson Elizabeth K. Perkin
author_sort	Matthew J. Wilson
title	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_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_sort	going rogue: what scientists can learn about twitter communication from “alt” government accounts
publisher	PeerJ Inc.
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/f35ec1700f8e418a9d9b2575889e9a8e
work_keys_str_mv	AT matthewjwilson goingroguewhatscientistscanlearnabouttwittercommunicationfromaltgovernmentaccounts AT elizabethkperkin goingroguewhatscientistscanlearnabouttwittercommunicationfromaltgovernmentaccounts
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Going rogue: what scientists can learn about Twitter communication from “alt” government accounts

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