Online Engagement with Retracted Articles: Who, When, and How?

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Dambanemuya, Henry K., Abhari, Rod, Vincent, Nicholas, Horvát, Emőke-Ágnes
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866910310241140736
author Dambanemuya, Henry K.
Abhari, Rod
Vincent, Nicholas
Horvát, Emőke-Ágnes
author_facet Dambanemuya, Henry K.
Abhari, Rod
Vincent, Nicholas
Horvát, Emőke-Ágnes
contents Retracted research discussed on social media can spread misinformation. Yet we lack an understanding of how retracted articles are mentioned by academic and non-academic users. This is especially relevant on Twitter due to the platform's prominent role in science communication. Here, we analyze the pre- and post-retraction differences in Twitter attention and engagement metrics for over 3,800 retracted English-language articles alongside comparable non-retracted articles. We subset these findings according to five user types detected by our supervised learning classifier: members of the public, academics, bots, science practitioners, and science communicators. We find that retracted articles receive greater user attention (tweet count) and engagement (likes, retweets, and replies) than non-retracted articles, especially among members of the public and bots, with the majority of user engagement happening before retraction. Our results highlight the prominent role of non-experts in discussions of retracted research and suggest an opportunity for social media platforms to contribute towards early detection of problematic scientific research online.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2203_04228
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online Engagement with Retracted Articles: Who, When, and How?
Dambanemuya, Henry K.
Abhari, Rod
Vincent, Nicholas
Horvát, Emőke-Ágnes
Social and Information Networks
K.4.0
Retracted research discussed on social media can spread misinformation. Yet we lack an understanding of how retracted articles are mentioned by academic and non-academic users. This is especially relevant on Twitter due to the platform's prominent role in science communication. Here, we analyze the pre- and post-retraction differences in Twitter attention and engagement metrics for over 3,800 retracted English-language articles alongside comparable non-retracted articles. We subset these findings according to five user types detected by our supervised learning classifier: members of the public, academics, bots, science practitioners, and science communicators. We find that retracted articles receive greater user attention (tweet count) and engagement (likes, retweets, and replies) than non-retracted articles, especially among members of the public and bots, with the majority of user engagement happening before retraction. Our results highlight the prominent role of non-experts in discussions of retracted research and suggest an opportunity for social media platforms to contribute towards early detection of problematic scientific research online.
title Online Engagement with Retracted Articles: Who, When, and How?
topic Social and Information Networks
K.4.0
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.04228