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

Jakob Jünger · Birte Fähnrich

94 citations0/0 files storedNew Media & Society

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Academic Publishing and Open Access Media Studies and Communication Public Relations and Crisis Communication

Abstract

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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2007The Honest Broker 1973Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities.1990The Dominant View of Popularization: Conceptual Problems, Political Uses 2017Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: A review of the literature 2010Scientometrics 2.0: New metrics of scholarly impact on the social Web 2018Potential Biases in Big Data: Omitted Voices on Social Media 2016Scientists’ Prioritization of Communication Objectives for Public Engagement 2016Science Communication

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