Work

Twitter and citations

Year: 2023

Type: article

Abstract: Social media, especially Twitter, plays an increasingly important role among researchers in showcasing and promoting their research. Does Twitter affect academic citations? Making use of Twitter activity about columns published on VoxEU, a renowned online platform for economists, we develop an instrumental variable strategy to show that Twitter activity about a research paper has a causal effect on the number of citations that this paper will receive. We find that the existence of at least one tweet, as opposed to none, increases citations by 16–25%. Doubling overall Twitter engagement boosts citations by up to 16%.

Source: Economics Letters

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111270

Authors: Ho Fai Chan, Ali Sina Önder, Sascha Schweitzer, Benno Torgler

Institutions: Queensland University of Technology, University of Portsmouth, University of Bayreuth, Reutlingen University

Language: English

Topic: scientometrics and bibliometrics research

Subfield: Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,690

OpenAlex ID: W4385296500

FWCI: 2.435

Cites: 5

Cited by: 13

Related to: 10