Science communication on X (formerly Twitter): A picture is worth a thousand characters?

Abstract

X (formerly Twitter), a microblogging social media platform, is being used by scientists and researchers to disseminate their research findings and promote the visibility of their work to the public. Tweets can be posted with text messages, images, hyperlinks, or a combination of these features. Importantly, for the majority of users, the text must be limited to 280 characters. In this perspective, this study aimed to observe if adding an image is able to increase outreach for scientific communication on X. Therefore, the characteristics of tweets posted with the hashtag #SciComm (short for science communication) for a period of one year (28 May 2020 to 28 May 2021) were analyzed with the X analytics tool Symplur Signals. The conducted analysis revealed that when a science communication (#SciComm-containing) tweet is accompanied by an image added by the user, there is on average a 529% increase in the number of retweets, and adding a hyperlink is similarly effective in increasing the number of retweets. However, combining both an image and hyperlink in the same tweet did not yield an additive effect. Hence, for increased visibility, researchers may consider adding images or hyperlinks (e.g., to research publications or popular science articles) while communicating science to the public on X.