Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication

This study aims to examine the demographics of participants engaged in scholarly communication on Twitter, which has been rebranded as X. Firstly, based on a dataset of tweets citing COVID-19 publications, it proposed a more precise classification system consisting of eleven user categories for indi...

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Main Authors: Ye, Estella Yingxin, Na, Jin-Cheon
Other Authors: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/180166
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author Ye, Estella Yingxin
Na, Jin-Cheon
author2 Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
author_facet Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Ye, Estella Yingxin
Na, Jin-Cheon
author_sort Ye, Estella Yingxin
collection NTU
description This study aims to examine the demographics of participants engaged in scholarly communication on Twitter, which has been rebranded as X. Firstly, based on a dataset of tweets citing COVID-19 publications, it proposed a more precise classification system consisting of eleven user categories for individuals who tweeted academic publication. Secondly, it explores the effectiveness of graph neural network models (GNNs) in combination with a transformer-based text classification model (specifically, BERT) to classify these newly defined user categories. The findings of this research highlight that GNNs can effectively interpret the social networks within scholarly communication, and complement text classification models in characterizing user types. The best-performing model achieved an accuracy rate of 84.05 percent in classifying user categories for a dataset of 10,048 labeled users. Subsequently, this model was employed to analyze 393,030 tweeters in our dataset. The analysis revealed that relevant scholarly discussion on Twitter was dominated by members from the general public (over 71 percent). Academic researchers and institutions constituted 12.48 percent, while health science professionals and institutions made up 7.35 percent of the contributors to relevant scholarly discussions on Twitter. Notably, academic publishers and research feed accounts exhibited aggressive tweeting behaviors and were responsible for the highest volume of tweets on average. This study also demonstrates the active involvement of various non-academic members, including commercial businesses, mass media outlets, public authorities, politicians, and civil society organizations, in Twitter scholarly communication.
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spelling ntu-10356/1801662024-09-23T01:08:06Z Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication Ye, Estella Yingxin Na, Jin-Cheon Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information Social Sciences Altmetrics Twitter This study aims to examine the demographics of participants engaged in scholarly communication on Twitter, which has been rebranded as X. Firstly, based on a dataset of tweets citing COVID-19 publications, it proposed a more precise classification system consisting of eleven user categories for individuals who tweeted academic publication. Secondly, it explores the effectiveness of graph neural network models (GNNs) in combination with a transformer-based text classification model (specifically, BERT) to classify these newly defined user categories. The findings of this research highlight that GNNs can effectively interpret the social networks within scholarly communication, and complement text classification models in characterizing user types. The best-performing model achieved an accuracy rate of 84.05 percent in classifying user categories for a dataset of 10,048 labeled users. Subsequently, this model was employed to analyze 393,030 tweeters in our dataset. The analysis revealed that relevant scholarly discussion on Twitter was dominated by members from the general public (over 71 percent). Academic researchers and institutions constituted 12.48 percent, while health science professionals and institutions made up 7.35 percent of the contributors to relevant scholarly discussions on Twitter. Notably, academic publishers and research feed accounts exhibited aggressive tweeting behaviors and were responsible for the highest volume of tweets on average. This study also demonstrates the active involvement of various non-academic members, including commercial businesses, mass media outlets, public authorities, politicians, and civil society organizations, in Twitter scholarly communication. 2024-09-23T01:08:06Z 2024-09-23T01:08:06Z 2024 Journal Article Ye, E. Y. & Na, J. (2024). Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 14(1). https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13278-024-01236-7 1869-5450 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/180166 10.1007/s13278-024-01236-7 2-s2.0-85188860433 1 14 en Social Network Analysis and Mining © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Altmetrics
Twitter
Ye, Estella Yingxin
Na, Jin-Cheon
Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication
title Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication
title_full Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication
title_fullStr Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication
title_full_unstemmed Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication
title_short Who is mentioning COVID-19 articles on twitter? Classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication
title_sort who is mentioning covid 19 articles on twitter classifying twitter users in the context of scholarly communication
topic Social Sciences
Altmetrics
Twitter
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/180166
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