Investigating dissemination of scientific information on Twitter: A study of topic networks in opioid publications

Abstract While previous research has mostly focused on the “number of mentions” scientific social media, current study applies “topic networks” to measure public attention Twitter. Topic networks are co-occurring author keywords in scholarly publications and hashtags tweets mentioning those publications. We investigate which topics opioid have received Additionally, we whether topic generated from tweeted by all accounts (bot nonbot accounts) differ accounts. Our analysis is based a set 2011 2019 associated with them. Results indicated that Twitter users used generic terms discuss publications, such as “Pain,” “Addiction,” “Analgesics,” “Abuse,” “Overdose,” “Disorders.” A considerable amount produced were identified automated media accounts, known bots. There was substantial overlap between accounts). This result indicates it might not be necessary exclude bot for generating they negligible impact results. provided some preliminary evidence network agenda-setting effect