#twinkletweet: The use of hashtags by

astrophysicists on TwitterBowman, T.D.*, Peters, I., Haustein, S., &

Holmberg, K.

Understanding Twitter: The Basics

• 2006 – Twitter reports 200 million active users creating 400 million tweets each day (Wickre, 2013).

• Pew found that 18% of online adults use Twitter and that all age groups are showing an increase in usage. (Brenner & Smith, 2013)

• 1,372 faculty members from higher education and surveyed and 35% respondents reported using Twitter(Faculty Focus, 2010)

• Veletsianos and Kimmons (2012) argue that current Twitter research gives us little information on:

• Faculty experiences and participation in SNS

• Faculty find to be valuable in SNS

• The barriers and issues faculty face when adopting these SNS

Scholarly Activity/ Altmetrics

• In today's world scholars gather information from more sources than just traditional journals, meetings , and peers.

(Thelwall, 2012)

• Altmetric measurements are increasingly advocated and used as early indicators of article impact and usefulness. (Thelwall, et al.,

2013)

• Researchers have shown that mentions on social media and citations were not identical in terms of impact. (Haustein et al., in press;

Thelwall, et al., 2013)

• There are disciplinary differences in the tweeting behaviors of scholars.

• Little is known about the extent to which social media are used in scholarly communication.

Twitter Affordances: @, #,

• Scholars can make use of affordances in Twitter to add context and meaning to their communications.

• The three widely known and often used affordances in Twitter are:

•@ symbol – used to direct messages at user(s) and/or to reply to user(s)

• # hashtag – used to contextualize or categorize the message

• retweet – used to resend another's tweet

• Research on hashtags has shown that they are found in a relatively large portion of Twitter messages.

In-Depth Analysis: Research Questions

• R1: Which hashtags are popular among astrophysicists?

• R2: Is the use of hashtags dependent on the tweeting behavior of astrophysicists?

• R3: To what extent do astrophysicists use hashtags during tweeting?

• R4: Do communities evolve around hashtags (reflected by strong hashtag sharing behavior)?

Data was Collected from 37 Astrophysicists on Twitter• 37 Astrophysicists were identified in two previous studies

(Holmberg, 2013, in press; Holmberg & Thelwall, 2013, in press).

• Up to 3,200 tweets were download for each astrophysicist • The entire set of tweets made by 25 astrophysicists were collected

• The most recent 3,200 tweets were collected for the remaining 12

• 68,232 of a possible total of 289,368 tweets were analyzed to determine #hashtag use

Preliminary In-depth Analysis of 37 AstrophysicistsNum of Total Tweets 68,232Num of Tweets w/Hashtags 15,983Num of Unique Hashtags 4,301Num of Hashtags Used Only Once 3,050% of Top Ten Hashtags Used 19.3%% of Tweets w/Hashtags Using Unique Hashtags

43.7%

On average, 23.42% of tweets tweeted by astrophysicists contain at least one hashtag

Top Ten Hashtags HASHTAG NUM OF

OCCURRENCESNUM OF USERS

BREAKDOWN

#fb 546 14 507, 12, 9, 5, <3

#stfc 410 6 321, 49, 37, 1..

#AstroFact 349 2 348, 1

#jwst 33917 173, 63, 45, 13, 10,

<10

#math 332 5 324, 4, 3, 1.

#twinkletweet 284 1 284

#nasa 2578 169, 26, 13, 10,

<10

#scipolicy 216 3 208, 6, 2

#aas218 194 5 140, 48, 3, 2, 1

#hubble 164 4 142, 11, 8, 1

What we found

• R1: Which hashtags are popular among astrophysicists?We identified the Top 10 Hashtags in this sample

• R2: Is the use of hashtags dependent on the tweeting behavior of astrophysicists?

Regular Twitter users tended to add hashtags to their tweets more often than infrequent users.

• R3: To what extent do astrophysicists use hashtags during tweeting?

On average, approximatley 23% of tweets contained at least one hashtag

• R4: Do communities evolve around hashtags (reflected by strong hashtag sharing behavior)?

Our results suggest that the astrophysicist community is not sharing hashtags; we found a high number of unique hashtags used only once suggesting quite the opposite

#astropixie

"Astronomers can engage in conversations with membersof the public, from any part of the world, socioeconomic scale, age, or gender. This type of open access to scientists has not been previously available, and I have personally found it to be more rewarding than anything." (Bauer,

2012, p. 4)

So What?

• Scholars are using Twitter but we aren't quite sure how and why they are using it

• Altmetrics is a concept that has gained traction, but it can be argued that scholars are not quite sure what value altmetrics provides.

• Affordances exist in Twitter that allow people to frame and contextualize their tweets

• In-depth analyses of affordances in Twitter at this time with this sample of astrophysicists yields useful insight

Thank YouAny Questions?

Haustein, S., Bowman, T.D., Holmberg, K., Larivière, V., & Peters, I., (submitted). Astrophysicists on Twitter: An in-depth analysis of tweeting and scientific publication behavior. Aslib Proceedings