Science and social media
We live in a world where up to 50% of the population surfs the Internet, and more than 2,700 million are active on social media (1). Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn shape the way we perceive and interact with our reality. It is no surprise, then, that they also influence our opinion on very different fields, from politics, to sports, the economy, the entertainment industry or, even, science. In 2012 up to 60% of Americans seeking information about scientific issues listed the web as their primary source (2). Likewise, each year the online presence of researchers, scientific publications, and institutions grows more and more. The influence of social media in our way of understanding, performing, and communicating science is a topic of utmost interest.
Traditionally, science has been limited to minor and narrow channels of communication, hard-to-access for the public. The results of research were revealed through specialized journals and conferences until, finally, some of them made it into textbooks(3). And when other media, like radio, TV, or newspapers, echoed these publications, they usually did so in a manner only accessible to those with high levels of education (2). However, in the last few years, and thanks to the spread of the internet and social media, the dissemination of scientific works has changed a lot, becoming widely accessible. Open Access magazines are a great example of the elimination of barriers in science. This kind of publication allows for free access to science articles, making them available to anyone with an interest and an internet connection (3).
On the web, besides raw scientific papers and information, we can find a huge array of popular science blogs which aim to make this information not only available but digestible to the reader. It is also common to see publications of this sort on Facebook and Twitter. This kind of format also allows for an active discussion, creating an interactive conversation between the scientist and his or her readers (4).
We are most certainly facing a change in the way we distribute and share science; maybe even a paradigm shift. Can we still measure the impact of a paper by the number of citations it gets? Is the h-index fair when it comes to evaluating researchers’ quality nowadays? Are traditional bibliometrics enough? In this atmosphere of change many others have asked these same questions, and an answer has sprung: almetrics (from alternative metrics). Almetrics is a diverse group of metrics that aims to measure the impact of the scientific article, creating a special emphasis on its impact on social media (5). As it is a very new field, there’s some controversy on how well they perform. In their own manifesto, Priem et al. recognized that “researchers must ask if altmetrics really reflect impact, or just empty buzz” (6).
Despite that we might still have some doubts regarding altmetrics, each passing day it is more obvious that we need to reconsider traditional bibliometrics. And even though there’s still a lot to be done, and the new metrics must be tuned and adjusted, there’s already works that show the efficacy of such measurements. In 2016, Yu et al. showed the validity of the Research Gate (a popular platform for researchers) index when it comes to measuring the individual activity of a researcher. The ResearchGate index collects a total of 4 metrics, combining both traditional bibliometrics and modern altmetrics: impact points, number of publications, number of downloads, and total number of profile views (5).
Even some magazines recognize the rise of altmetrics. PLOS ONE, for example, includes 4 indicators in all its articles: the number of times that article has been saved in both Mendeley or CiteULike (two web pages that allow saving and sharing references), number of citations, number of views, and number of times it has been shared in Facebook or Twitter. Similarly, ScienceDirect includes inside its ‘Article Metrics’ the number of times the article has been shared, liked or commented, and the number of tweets, amidst other, more conventional metrics. On the editorial Springer’s website, some articles are similar, showing however many Shares, with a link to the web page Altmetric, where there’s an in-depth analysis of the presence of the paper in social media.
In addition to sharing an article in more generalized social media platform like Twitter or Facebook, there’s a wide range of webs and platforms with professional orientation. These tools make collaboration, the spread of ideas and projects, and obtaining job opportunities easier. Researchers can create their professional profiles in webs that go from Google Scholar to the before-mentioned ResearchGate, or even LinkedIn. And it has been noted that an active role in social media, be it as a content creator or just as an active member in a previous discussion, can improve networking and help with both professional and research careers (3).
The boom of social media also brings new fields of study, especially for the social sciences (7). But the new fields shouldn’t only derive and focus on the huge amount of data that we can easily harvest on social media; we must also study their potential use.
Social media offers a lot of new opportunities in science, from new ways of communicating the products of years of work, to new fields and tools for research. But, similar to what happens with altmetrics, the newness of this platforms rises controversy about their use. Many scientists and students don’t have enough information to face the challenges that this new “world” can bring forward. A great part of the community doesn’t even use social media because they don’t know enough about the way it works or how to use it professionally. This lack of training or precise instructions for the use of these new technologies can even lead to negative outcomes. Some Health Science students admit to sharing clinical pictures without the patient’s consent (8). This type of behavior speaks volumes about the students’ ignorance of the correct use of social media. Even worse, this kind of actions can severely damage the privacy of the patient and destroy the confidence they have in doctors and students. The need to introduce social media in the educational programs becomes even clearer, so that both researchers and students feel more confident with their use and learn how to use them properly (3,8).
But we shouldn’t only promote the use of social media by the science community just because of the individual and personal opportunities it might offer. We know that people who surf the web regularly have a more positive image of science, and it is more likely that they will answer in surveys that they support basic research even though it might not have immediate positive effects on society (2). The way scientists use social media has an impact. A positive popular opinion is of utmost interest for the community, since it can translate to more funding opportunities (9). Making scientific ideas more accessible and being transparent about research is key to building this positive image.
There have been campaigns that focused on improving researchers’ image and destroying some of the stereotypes often associated with researchers. Some examples include #iamscience and #womeninscience , or the “This is What a Scientist Looks Like” project.
Not all that glitters is gold, and social media can be as fundamental to building a negative impression of science as it is to a positive one. Regarding scandals in science, there have been plenty throughout the years, but perhaps the most interesting is the STAP cells one, by Obokata et al. (10), as it happened in 2014, a year in which social media already had an important role in our society. There are some papers that consider the impact of this fraud on the internet. The first suspicions were, in fact, raised on Twitter, and the activity following the process was faster on this social media than in traditional media like newspapers. And perhaps we can link this with how this article was retracted way faster than any other fraudulent scientific work before it (it only took 5 months, while other older, fraudulent papers took years to remove) (11). Another study found that the number of tweets with positive or negative terms related to STAP cells changed with time. The response was generally neutral, but when the news appeared, tweets tended to get more negative. This proves that the response on social media toward scientific activity is under the same sensationalism we can find in other fields, such as politics, sports, or the entertainment industry (9).
There are many ways in which social media and science interact. Portals such as LinkedIn and ResearchGate can make professional progress easier; blogs and publications on Twitter or Facebook help make scientific ideas more available, improving the progress of authors, research groups and science; and these tools can even influence popular opinion on science. All these aspects are equally important for both the individual scientist and the community. However, because of their newness, there’s a lack of knowledge about their proper use. Institutions should take care of this problem and offer help and instructions to their students and workers. Likewise, today more than ever, scientists should step out of their “ivory tower” and play all in their hand to communicate with the rest of society. Is essential for the future of science that we adapt, and make responsible and active use of the new tools social media offers.
Bibliography
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5. Yu M-C, Wu Y-CJ, Alhalabi W, Kao H-Y, Wu W-H. ResearchGate: An effective altmetric indicator for active researchers? Comput Hum Behav. 2016; 55(Part B): 1001–6.
6. Priem J, Taraborelli D, Groth P, Neylon C. Altmetrics: a manifesto [Internet]. Altmetrics; 2010 [actualizado el 28 de septiembre de 2011; acceso 13 de diciembre de 2017]. Disponible en: http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/
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9. Gayle A, Shimaoka M. Public Response to Scientific Misconduct: Assessing Changes in Public Sentiment Toward the Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) Cell Case via Twitter. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2017; 3(2): e21.
10. Obokata H, Wakayama T, Sasai Y, Kojima K, Vacanti MP, Niwa H, et al. Stimulus-triggered fate conversion of somatic cells into pluripotency. Nature. 2014 Jan 30; 505(7485): 641–7.
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