'Twitter changed science,' Nature features Twitter's successes in research and science communication
As a communication tool between academics and the general public who have little contact in real life, or as a medium through which conspiracy theories and pseudoscience are spread, Twitter has had a variety of influences on science. The scientific journal Nature has summarized the relationship between Twitter and science.
Twitter changed science — what happens now it's in turmoil?
Just leave
https://jrhawley.ca/2022/12/10/just-leave
A 2014 survey by Nature found that 13% of the researchers surveyed regularly used Twitter, although this may have been biased because the survey focused on English-speaking countries. matter.
Although Twitter is used by a small percentage of researchers, it has had a significant impact on scientific communication. A study by Rodrigo Costas Komesana, an information scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, found that about a third of all scientific literature was tweeted. The number of tweeted papers has been on the rise, doubling from 2012 to 2018, and by April 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic raged. Half of the COVID-19-related papers were mentioned at least once on Twitter.
While tweeted papers may not necessarily have been read, many scientists believe that 'Twitter has become an essential tool for collaborative research and new discoveries, with research papers, presentations at conferences, and the broader reach of academia.' It has become a source of information for real-time conversations on topics.”
Johann Unger, a linguist at Lancaster University in the UK, said that Twitter has made papers circulate faster in the scientific community, and that unnecessary information is shared in private messages through Twitter. I also said that there is We also feel that the tweet length limit has encouraged scholars to keep their comments concise.
On the other hand, a Twitter study published in 2018 by a research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that fake news tweets spread faster than true tweets. It has also been found that fake news tends to evoke emotions such as fear and disgust.
It turns out that ordinary people, not Twitter bots, spread fake news - GIGAZINE
The double-edged sword nature of Twitter has become even more pronounced during the pandemic. On the positive side, many researchers have gained a large following on Twitter through professional discussions about COVID-19, and have been able to connect with experts who are also rushing to understand the pandemic. .
``Twitter has been a really powerful tool for rapid scientific action in some of the areas we're working on,'' said Karl Bergstrom, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington. I was. In fact, one of Bergstrom's key early collaborators in modeling COVID-19 was an ice hockey statistician. Without Twitter, biologists and sports scientists might not have met.
On the other hand, COVID-19 researchers often experienced insults, taunts and death threats during the pandemic. According to Bergstrom, some researchers on Twitter oversimplified the information and posted analyzes that aroused a sense of crisis, and also spread obvious false information. . In addition, people with similar opinions, such as those who believe in the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 is fictional, have followed each other and solidified.
Overall, Bergstrom believes that 'the positives of Twitter outweigh the negatives.' Amid the pandemic, Twitter provided the public with transparency about the science of dealing with uncertainties in real time. It's also true that some people jump on unscientific messages on Twitter, but Bergstrom doesn't think it's Twitter's fault.
by Kris Tsujikawa
Some feel that the relationship between scientists and Twitter has changed over time. James Hawley, a computational biologist at Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, experienced two major changes on Twitter. First, more scientists are joining the discussion on Twitter.
Just like having a one-on-one discussion versus speaking to a large audience, the dynamics of discussion changed as more scientists joined Twitter. Specifically, while discussions have become more active than ever before, it has become difficult to find discussions that delve deeper into niche fields, and we are busy dealing with the opinions and misunderstandings of those who lack understanding. became.
The second is how Twitter decides what content to display. Twitter's policy of prioritizing engagement at the expense of intelligent communication has led to a flood of irrelevant tweets and advertisements, making it difficult to find valuable information among mixed tweets. It got harder and harder.
Ultimately, Mr. Hawley chose to leave Twitter. In addition, Mr. Bergstrom, who responded to Nature's interview, tweeted that CEO Elon Musk said, ``My pronoun (the way to express gender) is litigation / Fauci,'' and is the frontline of the pandemic countermeasures in the United States. I locked my Twitter account after slandering Mr. Anthony Fauci , who has been in charge.
My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
In Mastodon, Bergstrom said, ``I can't study evolutionary biology under the roof of the Discovery Institute (a think tank known for its conservative views, such as denying climate change), and if I get results that are inconvenient for me, I can't study evolutionary biology. No meaningful and productive scientific collaboration can take place on a platform run by right-wing trolls who deny and simply want to please their audiences.'
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