What you tweet is what we get?

Pfaffenberger, Fabian

doi:10.1007/s11616-017-0400-2

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 26 publications

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“…The first obstacle limits the generalization of findings because the users of social media sites do not necessarily represent the whole group of interest (Hargittai, 2018: 11). Furthermore, the processes behind the communication are not always transparent since automatically produced message content and strategic communication by organizations may mix with messages from individuals (Pfaffenberger, 2018: 64; Woolley, 2016). The second obstacle adds to this on the level of research methodology because the “question of how smaller collections relate to the entirety of activities of the platform is quite unclear” (Gerlitz and Rieder, 2013).…”

Section: Methods and Operationalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does really no one care? Analyzing the public engagement of communication scientists on Twitter

Jünger

Fähnrich

2019

New Media & Society

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Recent publications question the public visibility of communication science as a discipline and its relevance for the broader society. To address this issue, we analyze the public engagement of communication scientists by using the example of their Twitter activity. We theoretically distinguish eight types of engagement and explore their empirical prevalence. The results show that a large share of communication is between peers, fulfilling social networking functions. Nevertheless, more than a quarter of the tweets are on political and social topics. In this way, communication scientists bring society into their scholarly community and thus act as bridge builders. They also reach diverse publics outside of science, such as followers from the field of economics. Our study thus highlights the diversity of connections between science and society and can offer a starting point to further research other fields of public engagement and the impact of the discipline on the public discourse.

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