Twitter and citations

Ali Onder; Sascha Schweitzer; Benno Torgler; Ho Fai Chan

doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111270

Twitter and citations

Ali Onder^*, Sascha Schweitzer, Benno Torgler, Ho Fai Chan

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Accounting, Economics and Finance

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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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%.

Original language	English
Journal	Economics Letters
Early online date	28 Jul 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111270
Publication status	Early online - 28 Jul 2023

Keywords

Productivity
Social Media
citations
economists

Access to Document

10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111270

Manuscript_Rev1Accepted author manuscript (Post-print), 227 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Twitter and citations",

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%.",

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AU - Onder, Ali

AU - Schweitzer, Sascha

AU - Torgler, Benno

AU - Chan, Ho Fai

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N2 - 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%.

AB - 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%.

KW - Productivity

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KW - citations

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DO - 10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111270

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