Introduction
Join the Media in the Digital Age Interest Group for the next event in the group's seminar series.
About the event
'Politicized Scientists: Credibility Cost of Political Expression on Twitter', Eleonora Alabrese, Assistant Profressor, Department of Economics, University of Bath.
As social media is increasingly popular, we examine the reputational costs of its increased centrality among academics. Analyzing Twitter posts of 98,000 scientists (2016–22) reveals substantial and varied political discourse. We assess the impact of such online political expression with online experiments on a representative sample of 4,000 U.S. respondents and 135 journalists who rate vignettes of synthetic academic profiles with varied political affiliations. Politically neutral scientists are viewed as the most credible. Strikingly, on both the 'left' and 'right' sides of politically neutral, there is a monotonic penalty for scientists displaying political affiliations: the stronger their posts, the less credible their profile and research are perceived, and the lower the public’s willingness to read their content, especially among oppositely aligned respondents. Two surveys show scientists' awareness of this penalty, a consensus on avoiding political expression outside their expertise, and their perceived individual gains.
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