How do Researchers Use Social Media for Science Communication?

Abstract

This study provides an overview of social media usage among researchers in Malaysia and examines factors affecting their use for science communication. The online questionnaire gathered the opinions of 425 researchers from over 20 science disciplines. The descriptive analysis highlighted usage preferences for 10 commonly used social media, while statistical analysis in particular MANOVA and correlation analysis, identified significant factors influencing researchers’ social media use. Up to 62% of respondents believe that social media is more effective in reaching the public, compared to other media. WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate are routinely used or perceived as beneficial to use. However, Twitter, Instagram, WordPress, and LinkedIn are seldom used because they are less preferred for science communication. Seniority, perceived importance, and perceived credibility are significantly correlated with both intention and actual use. Meanwhile, age and experience are significantly correlated with actual use, but not the intention. Researchers are likely to post and share more on social media if they believe that science communication is important or if they are credible enough to present a scientific consensus. This study offered important insights into the perceptions, concerns, and factors influencing their use for science communication. By determining the perceptions, concerns and motivators affecting researchers, the findings shed light on effective ways to promote researchers’ use of social media to communicate scientific knowledge.

Keywords

science communication technology-mediated communication COVID infodemic social media for public engagement technology adoption

Introduction

Social media is well known as a powerful tool for marketing (Faruk et al., 2021), education (Alalwan, 2022; Freberg & Kim, 2018), and entertainment purposes (Lischka, 2021). Collectively, it covers a wide spectrum of online platforms that allow user-generated content to be edited and shared in real-time through an interactive network, including social networking sites (SNS), blogs, microblogs, wikis, collaborative projects, forums, photo or video sharing sites, social bookmarking, social gaming and virtual realities (Aichner et al., 2021; Freberg & Kim, 2018). Regularly accessed by over 4.26 billion users worldwide (Statista, 2022), social media constantly feeds information and influences the minds of leaders, children, and anyone who uses it (Ferguson, 2021; Han et al., 2022; Melovic et al., 2020; Post & Ramirez, 2018; Tan & Jocz, 2017). Researchers, as science subject experts and social media users, can promote, educate and entertain non-expert laypeople about the benefits of science using social media. Since researchers are important stakeholders in science outreach and public engagement efforts, understanding how they use social media would boost their adoption of social media for sharing new and accurate information with the public.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, informative materials were published in print and online to educate laypeople about the science of air-borne disease, vaccination, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Never before this, the public and the sceptics ever discussed so extensively the efficacy of messenger RNA vaccines and PCR-based diagnostics (Dudley et al., 2021; Mheidly & Fares, 2020). Now, vaccination and PCR have become common topics for experts and laypeople alike. This is because more people were engaged, interested, and understood these through easy and accessible two-way conversations on social media.

Science communication triggers any AEIOU audience responses to science, using suitable platforms, skills, and processes. AEIOU refers to “Awareness, Enjoyment, Interest, Opinion-forming, and Understanding” (Burns et al., 2003). During the pre-social media era, scientific knowledge was communicated in a one-way direction with the assumption that the audience is uninformed, which is a knowledge deficit model (Simis et al., 2016). The goal back then was to tackle scientific illiteracy (Tan et al., 2006) in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. Now, the presence of social media has changed the way people communicate, enabling equal participation by the audience in scientific discussions and two-way exchange of ideas with researchers. Researchers can inform and inspire others - having social media as a tool at their disposal - besides using journals, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, lectures, and conferences. As communication has evolved from the knowledge deficit model to the participatory interactive model, it is crucial to understand researchers’ behaviour in adopting social media for science communication. Hence, this study is conducted to address the following research questions.

How do researchers in Malaysia choose and use social media for science communication?

How do researchers in Malaysia perceive social media's effectiveness as a tool for communicating scientific knowledge, compared to other media?

What factors influence the actual use and intentions of researchers who use social media to communicate scientific knowledge?

Hence, the objective of this study is to identify trends and behaviour of researchers in Malaysia who use social media to communicate scientific knowledge, and to examine factors perceived to affect researchers’ social media use intentions and actual use. This study also examines correlations between age, gender, experience, seniority, perceived importance, perceived credibility, behavioural intention, and actual use of social media (Bukar et al., 2022; Fontaine et al., 2019; Stellefson et al., 2020). The findings provide useful information for respective stakeholders to address the concerns of researchers in utilising social media for science communications, which may include recommendations to raise awareness through social media adoption campaigns or to enhance researchers’ capacity through training modules.

Literature Review

An increasing number of publications have been devoted to exploring the application of social media by different people for various purposes. These include the studies about Twitter shaping the focus of news agencies (O’Boyle & Pardun, 2021), Facebook influencing consumer decisions (Khan et al., 2021), WhatsApp sharing facts (and hoaxes) during a crisis (Bapaye & Bapaye, 2020; Moreno-Castro et al., 2020), and many more. Its accessibility, functionality, and ease of use enable any user to promote anything with minimal effort. Businesses are creating their online presence on social media - spurring the emergence of Facebook Commerce (Wang et al., 2022). They engage potential customers, investors, talents-to-hire, and other stakeholders. Non-government organisations are doing social marketing to create awareness about the social causes they are championing and trigger voluntary behaviour change in their target audience (Liao, 2020). Educators are integrating Instagram as a teaching tool to improve student's learning experiences while allowing students to share comments through a channel they perceive as interesting and fun (Carpenter et al., 2020; Coman et al., 2021).

Businesses, non-government organisations, and educators are pacing themselves with the latest trends, leveraging social media to the fullest. However, many researchers are lagging in social media adoption for science communication. Educators and researchers in educational institutions are adapting to social media for teaching (Vandeyar, 2020), especially after the pandemic. During the pandemic, they were unprepared and had to switch to online teaching immediately. Before the pandemic, educators and researchers had cautious opinions about “keeping balance in terms of the relevance of social media use and control” (Stathopoulou et al., 2019). They were hesitant and unclear about social media's relevance in education, with some concerned with educational instructions and others believing that the line between personal and academic use of social media was blurred (Tang & Hew, 2017). This indecision about social media's relevance in education is partly due to delayed or lack of use of specific, less academically oriented social media such as Instagram.

Researchers have heterogeneous preferences for posting their own research work on social media. According to Nature's study in 2014, out of 3,489 researchers, 63.6% use ResearchGate, 15.9% use Google Scholar, 15.6% use LinkedIn, 13.6% use Facebook, and 13.2% use Twitter regularly. Among these users, 35.5% (ResearchGate), 8.3% (Google Scholar), 21.9% (LinkedIn), 20.5% (Facebook), and 47.3% (Twitter) posted their work on the respective channels, where Twitter and ResearchGate are the two most popular channels for science communication (Van Noorden, 2014). Not all researchers actively share their work on social media. Furthermore, researchers show a higher preference for professional or academically oriented social media such as ResearchGate and Google Scholar. Nonetheless, the pandemic has escalated the perceived importance and urgency of the online dissemination of knowledge (Allchin, 2021).

Societal norms may dictate gender-based social roles and gender stereotypes, which trigger differences in social media interactions (Armstrong & Adamson, 2021; Maximova & Lukyanova, 2020; Wagner et al., 2019). Additionally, studies have found that users of different ages and genders have varying social media use behaviour (Anderson & Jiang, 2018; Schodt et al., 2021; Sharifian et al., 2021). Thematic analysis of 116 primary studies on social media suggests that a social media user feels obliged to respond to social interaction in the same manner with peers of similar rank or seniority (Waheed et al., 2017). Furthermore, researchers’ self-perception in their credibility to represent and convey scientific consensus may hinder their participation in public discussions. Therefore, this study will investigate how these factors influence social media use.

Methodology

E-mail invitations were sent to respondents residing in Malaysia and fulfilling the selection criteria to answer an online questionnaire using a single-use link. Email addresses were retrieved from publicly accessible staff directories. Respondents were selected based on their research experience and involvement in STEM-related research including lecturers and professors in universities. At least three reminders were sent to boost voluntary participation, ultimately capturing a sample size of 425 complete responses from government universities (332 responses) and private universities (93 responses).

The questionnaire captured demographic details and the usage frequency of 10 common social media platforms. Five-point Likert questions were adapted from previous studies (Ramadani et al., 2014; The Royal Society, 2006) and used to rate the perceived importance of science communication, perceived credibility in oneself to communicate scientific knowledge in public, and behavioural intention towards social media use. Actual social media use was measured as the number of engagements per week, then grouped into Likert ranked scales to synchronise the unit of measurement (see a sample questionnaire via https://www-surveymonkey-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/r/somescmy).

Descriptive analysis was conducted to compare the differences in use frequencies across different media (conventional versus digital), social media platforms, and use intentions (leisure versus science communication). Statistical analysis, particularly two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to find significant differences in behavioural intention and actual use for different genders and academic seniority. Meanwhile, Spearman's rank-order correlation was used to find correlations linking respondents’ age, research experience in years, perceived importance, perceived credibility, behavioural intention towards use, and actual use, at 1% and 5% level of significance two-tailed test.

Results

This study captured a representative sample of the researcher population from over 20 scientific disciplines in higher education institutions of Malaysia, in terms of age (range 24 to 71 with a mean of 41.66), gender (male, 41.2%; female, 58.8%) and ethnicity distribution (Malay, 65.4%; Chinese, 21.2%; Indian, 5.9%; other Malaysian, 2.4%; and non-Malaysian, 5.1%). Figure 1 illustrates the science disciplines of all respondents.

Figure 1.

Science disciplines represented by respondents in percentage (%).

Based on five-point Likert responses, up to 94% of respondents agreed that science communication is important for various reasons, such as contribution to national progress and public benefit, skill and career development, job requirements, and passion to communicate scientific knowledge. 91% of respondents also disagreed that science communication is not important. Respondents generally felt unanimous about the importance of science communication (mean score 3.93 to 4.29), benefiting the researcher, the public, and the nation. Figure 2 illustrates the responses received regarding the reasons for the perceived importance of science communication.

Figure 2.

Perceived importance of science communication (in decreasing order of mean Likert score).

Up to 62% of respondents also rated social media as more effective than other media. Effectiveness is described in the questionnaire as the ability to attain desired changes in public knowledge, attitudes, and practice of scientific discoveries or innovations. Although journals, printed, and broadcast media are rated as the mainstream and more recognised way to share information, social media received favourable attention as a more effective way of sharing knowledge and reaching the interested public (mean score 3.43 to 3.55). Figure 3 illustrates the responses regarding the perceived effectiveness of social media compared to other media.

Figure 3.

Perceived effectiveness of social media compared to other media (in decreasing order of mean Likert score).

Figure 4 compared the respondents’ social media use for leisure (in dark grey bars) and science communication (in grey bars) on 10 common social media platforms. Table 1 lists the use frequency of the most and least popular social media for leisure and science communication use. Generally, the respondents demonstrated different behaviour in the use of social media for leisure and science communication purposes.

Figure 4.

Social media preferences by researchers across different social media channels.

Table 1.

Social media use comparison for the most and least used social media.

Frequency of use	Social media	%answered for leisure use¹	Ranking	%answered for sc. comm. use¹	Ranking	% difference between leisure vs sc. comm.^a
Used at least once per day	WhatsApp	82.82*	1	34.12*	1	48.70
	Facebook	32.94	2	15.29	4	17.65
	YouTube	27.29	3	13.41	5	13.88
	Google Scholar	19.29	4	21.88	2	−2.59
	ResearchGate	10.59	7	16.00	3	−5.41
Never used	Twitter	44.00*	1	44.24*	1	−0.24
	WordPress	37.18	2	43.29	2	−6.11
	Instagram	31.29	3	36.00	3	−4.71
	LinkedIn	13.65	4	20.71	4	−7.06
Do not know how to use	WordPress	6.35*	1	4.94*	1	1.41
	Instagram	2.59	2	2.12	2	0.47
	Twitter	2.59	3	2.12	3	0.47
	LinkedIn	1.65	4	1.65	4	0.00
	Facebook	0.71	6	0.71	7	0.00
	Google Scholar	0.47	8	0.94	6	−0.47
	ResearchGate	0.00	10	0.24	10	−0.24
Choose not to use	Twitter	22.59*	1	25.18*	2	−2.59
	Instagram	15.53*	2	26.35*	1	−10.82
	WordPress	15.53	2	19.06	3	−3.53
	LinkedIn	14.59	4	18.82	4	−4.23
	ResearchGate	4.71	8	8.00*	9	−3.29
	Google Scholar	4.24	9	4.71*	10	−0.47*
	WhatsApp	1.41	10	9.65	8	−8.24

Percentage (%) of respondents answered the frequency of use stated for the specified social media channel.

*Significant observations across different channels

The findings indicate that WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube are preferred social media for leisure purposes, while Google Scholar and ResearchGate are more preferred for communicating scientific knowledge. Google Scholar and ResearchGate were more likely to be used for science communication because their functionality is optimised for the dissemination and curation of research findings. Respondents generally used social media more for leisure activities because they perceived social media as a tool for individual-centric communication and amusement, often not for public communication or promotion of research findings (DataReportal, 2022).

Twitter, WordPress, Instagram, and LinkedIn were the least used for both leisure and science communication purposes. Unlike WhatsApp, many respondents did not know how to use WordPress due to a lack of immediate need to use it, hence they never learnt about using WordPress. Many respondents also chose not to use Twitter or Instagram. Contrary to Twitter popularity in Western countries (Riesch et al., 2021), there are fewer researchers in Malaysia participating on Twitter and LinkedIn. The findings indicate that there could be differences in the preferences to use social media platforms because of geographical, cultural, or community-specific influences. In Malaysia, Twitter is less popular for researchers as a means of communicating scientific knowledge compared to Western countries.

Based on the two-way MANOVA test, there was no significant difference between gender for the behavioural intention towards use (BI) and actual use (AC) at 1% and 5% level of significance. In contrast, there was a statistically significant difference between academic seniority (rank of respondents such as Professor, Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer, and more) for BI and AC as shown in Table 2. For example, more senior in rank means a professor is more likely to share scientific knowledge on social media than a junior lecturer. It is notable to highlight that a senior-ranked researcher could be a professor who is young, and an experienced researcher could be a lecturer who is junior in rank. Therefore, there is a distinction made between seniority (using two-way MANOVA test), age and years of experience (using Spearman correlation), to identify any significant correlation.

Table 2.

Two-way MANOVA test for behavioural intention towards use and actual use.

Variable	Outcome	Wilks’ Lambda	F	Hypothesis df	Error df	Partial η2	Observed power	Sig.
Gender	Behavioural intention	.981	2.574	3	401	.019	.632	.054
	Actual use	.995	.490	4	400	.005	.167	.743
Seniority	Behavioural intention	.883	1.548	33	1182	.049	1.000	.025*
	Actual use	.820	1.859	44	1532	.049	1.000	.001**

**Correlation is significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).

*Correlation is significant at the .05 level (two-tailed).

Based on Spearman correlation analysis, there were significant and positive correlations between perceived importance, perceived credibility, behavioural intention towards use, and actual use, at 1% and 5% level of significance. Respondents who believe their science communication efforts via social media are important, or those who believe their credibility is substantive enough, have greater motivation and confidence to post, share and be publicly present on social media. Table 3 listed all variables of perceived credibility and perceived importance which are significantly correlated with behavioural intention towards use. Conversely, age and years of experience have no significant correlations with behavioural intention.

Table 3.

Spearman correlation for behavioural intention towards use.

Variable	Intention 1	Intention 2	Intention 3
In the next month, I intend to use social media more for …	communicating my research work effectively.	enhancing my research work visibility.	improving public interest in my research work.
Age (in years)	−.082 (.092)	−.099* (.042)	−.066 (.176)
Experience (in years)	−.064 (.187)	−.076 (.116)	−.024 (.628)
Perceived credibility	.447** (.000)	.420** (.000)	.476** (.000)
Important because it is part of my paid job	.192** (.000)	.222** (.000)	.205** (.000)
Important because it is my passion	.296** (.000)	.284** (.000)	.310** (.000)
Important for personal skill development	.225** (.000)	.247** (.000)	.244** (.000)
Important for career development & KPI	.239** (.000)	.256** (.000)	.252** (.000)
Important for the public benefit	.213** (.000)	.235** (.000)	.252** (.000)
Important for national progress	.217** (.000)	.211** (.000)	.251** (.000)

**Correlation is significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).

*Correlation is significant at the .05 level (two-tailed).

Researchers’ awareness of the importance of science communication is significantly correlated with social media use for sharing the latest scientific news from other sources. Table 4 lists all the significant correlations leading to different engagement forms of actual use. Perceived credibility and perceived importance derived from passion, job requirements, developmental needs, and KPIs are significantly correlated with the act of posting self-generated content and sharing content from others’ research (engagement 1, 2, and 3). Interestingly, age and years of experience significantly correlated with one specific type of engagement – the act of posting content about respondents’ research (engagement 1), while not significantly correlated with behavioural intention and other engagement types (engagement 2, 3, and 4). Having passion, perceived credibility, and civic consciousness to serve back for national progress significantly correlated with the act of sharing news about science in general (engagement 4).

Table 4.

Spearman correlation for social media engagement (actual use).

Variable	Engagement 1	Engagement 2	Engagement 3	Engagement 4
Variable	Post your research (self-generated content)	Post about science in general (self-generated content)	Share other people's research (content by others)	Share about science in general (content by others)
Age (in years)	.155** (.001)	.067 (.166)	.083 (.089)	.063 (.194)
Experience (in years)	.143** (.003)	.084 (.083)	.045 (.358)	.060 (.219)
Perceived credibility	.331** (.000)	.268** (.000)	.240** (.000)	.210** (.000)
Important because it is part of my paid job	.048 (.325)	.099* (.041)	.125** (.010)	.074 (.130)
Important because it is my passion	.136** (.005)	.154** (.001)	.138** (.004)	.107* (.027)
Important for personal skill development	.102* (.035)	.102* (.035)	.147** (.002)	.091 (.060)
Important for career development & KPI	.114* (.019)	.120* (.013)	.126** (.009)	.081 (.094)
Important for the public benefit	.015 (.751)	.032 (.509)	.060 (.217)	.047 (.335)
Important for national progress	−.012 (.807)	.039 (.428)	.079 (.102)	.094* (.051)

**Correlation is significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).

*Correlation is significant at the .05 level (two-tailed).

Previous studies on social media adoption have consistently shown that younger audiences are more engaged in social media (Pew Research Center, 2021). However, as shown in Table 4, the results suggested a positive correlation between respondents’ age, experience, and actual use. This means that one of the reasons experienced researchers use social media is to promote their research findings, compared with their younger counterparts. Besides, perceived credibility showed a significantly positive correlation with the actual use. A significant influence of researchers’ seniority and credibility on their acts to promote their research (engagement 1) makes logical sense, as summarised in Table 5. An experienced researcher would have more research publications and greater self-esteem, hence are more inclined to share their findings. Therefore, the significant effect of perceived credibility aligns with the significant effect of seniority. Overall, having perceived credibility, seniority, and passion to communicate scientific knowledge are the significant factors leading to behavioural intention and all forms of actual use (engagement 1, 2, 3, and 4) as summarised in Table 5.

Table 5.

Summary of significant correlations identified.

	Behavioural intention		Actual use
Variable		Post your research (self-generated content)	Post about science in general (self-generated content) Share other people's research (content by others)	Share about science in general (content by others)
Gender	-	-	-	-
Seniority	Significant	Significant	Significant	Significant
Age (in years)	-	Significant	-	-
Experience (in years)	-	Significant	-	-
Perceived credibility	Significant	Significant	Significant	Significant
Important because it is part of my paid job	Significant	-	Significant	-
Important because it is my passion	Significant	Significant	Significant	Significant
Important for personal skill development	Significant	Significant	Significant	-
Important for career development & KPI	Significant	Significant	Significant	-
Important for the public benefit	Significant	-	-	-
Important for national progress	Significant	-	-	Significant

Correlation is significant at the .05 level (two-tailed).

Discussion

This study covered the perceived importance of science communication and the researchers’ inclination towards social media as a tool for communicating scientific knowledge. As researchers are central contributors to any science communication initiatives, it is important to understand their preferences, motivations, and concerns when using social media as a science communication tool. The following section discusses key takeaways and recommendations based on significant factors to promote researchers’ social media use.

Know Your Audience, Know Your Goals, and Then Focus on Your Social Media Strategy

Before deciding on the social media platform and strategies to adopt, researchers must first know their targeted audience demographic and focus their efforts on the appropriate platforms. Researchers prioritise peer reviewed journal publications because these are well-recognised and established means of science communication to the targeted audience. Journal publications offer proof of publication originality and ownership, which are crucial for future academic career promotion, institution ranking, and research collaboration building (Rond & Miller, 2005). However, access to journals, as well as conferences and lectures are often limited to the academic community and not open to the public at large. Printed and broadcast media such as newspaper, TV and radio have filled this public accessibility gap by distributing scientific news and STEM-related articles to the public. The emergence of social media has changed the media status quo and the public appetite for news (Moe et al., 2015; Shearer & Matsa, 2018). Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are attracting more viewers than reputable news websites such as Reuters, BBC and CNN (Lim, 2016), showing how social media has grown to be the new mainstream site for information.

In this study, although social media cannot displace the role of journals and broadcast media, researchers understood the effectiveness of social media in engaging the public directly without any intermediary and the importance of communicating scientific knowledge in general. Among the different types of social media platforms, ResearchGate and Google Scholar are perceived as relevant to researchers because their user bases are primarily like-minded researchers and potential research collaborators. Alternatively, Facebook and LinkedIn are equally important and effective because they cater to a larger non-expert audience and create more visibility when communicating science news. Both types of social media have their advantages. Depending on the goals of a science awareness campaign, launching an awareness campaign on the appropriate social media platforms ensures that it reaches the right target audience and it garners a higher success rate of participation by fellow researchers.

Besides focusing on the right platform, researchers should focus on building their expertise and credibility to address scientific issues in public. This study shows that researchers’ seniority plus self-confidence in their credibility do influence their intention and actual use to a certain extent. Researchers should equip themselves with the latest knowledge, understand the scientific consensus among experts and be firm in debunking fake science with facts on social media (Al-Rawi, 2019; Allchin, 2021). COVID-19 vaccination is one of many topics that received overwhelming public attention and hostile scepticism about its efficacy (Gehrau et al., 2021). Experienced virologists and immunologists who felt their credibility is well-established, are more confident to speak against fake news in blogs and debates (Gobo & Sena, 2022) compared to their more junior counterparts. Although junior researchers may doubt their credibility to represent their institution or the scientific community in general, there is high public trust in medical professionals and information originates from researchers (Gehrau et al., 2021). Therefore, researchers should communicate more in relevant awareness campaigns because the public is positive and generally trusting about the facts presented by qualified researchers.

Never Too Senior or Never Perfect Enough to Start Science Communication via Social Media

Taking the first step in science communication is not easy. Some researchers do not prefer to communicate publicly because they see themselves as “outdated” or “out of their expertise or comfort zone”. According to Waheed et al. (2017), many social media user behaviour studies investigate the influences of age, gender, gratification, personality, social norm, and self-esteem.

This study presented two findings. Researchers who regard science communication as important are more likely to communicate scientific knowledge on social media. Additionally, age, experience, and perceived credibility positively influence researchers to post about their research. This study found significant correlations between intention and actual use with the perceived importance of science communication derived from researchers’ passion, sense of obligation, and pursuit of self-development as shown in Table 5. Every researcher believed in the civic responsibility to perform experiments ethically while being accountable for the research mandate and funding received. Through social media, researchers can share their new findings for the greater good, or their knowledge for the global public good (Reddy, 2021). When communicating scientific knowledge on social media, researchers may gain an online reputation, the gratification, a sense of social affiliation through communities, new networking, and the opportunity to voice an opinion in public.

Contrary to common belief, social media are not solely for the younger generation. Both gratification and reputation discussed above are not age and seniority-dependent. Hence, given the right motivation and conditions, senior and junior researchers alike would be more keen to communicate scientific knowledge on social media. Furthering efforts to build the credibility and confidence of junior researchers, social media can be used as a tool to connect with relevant subject experts and collectively form diverse communities of experts. Consensus, relevance, expertise, diversity, and integrity, in short, CREDI are elements to assess one's credibility in public (Oreskes, 2019). Junior researchers can boost the credibility of their social media messaging by incorporating CREDI elements and relating public issues to consensus by multiple recognised entities such as key opinion leaders, international scientific bodies, or government authorities.

Taking Small Steps in Training and Support Systems with a Team of Collaborators

Crafting the right message and aligning researchers’ expertise with the audience's needs requires time, effort, and special skills (Allchin, 2021). This study provided an overview of which social media are popularly used by researchers and which are less preferred by researchers. As short-term measures, researchers can start exploring social media they frequently use, such as WhatsApp and Facebook. They can follow trending discussions on ResearchGate and observe how peers or other competent researchers do science communication. Training modules for effective social media use can be developed with case studies based on popularly used social media. For example, a tutorial on Facebook content planning would be more appealing to researchers due to their familiarity with the platform, rather than a tutorial on Twitter messaging tactics. Established postgraduate courses for science communication (Australian National University, 2022; Imperial College London, 2022; International University of Malaya-Wales, 2022; The University of Edinburgh, 2022) also covered a broad topic regarding digital campaigning, social media strategies, and exposure to new popular platforms such as Tik Tok. The findings from this study are relevant to enriching such learning courses. For example, these courses could be continuously updated with current trending platforms, best practices, case studies, and social media content templates for researchers to kickstart their science communication journey in known or unexplored social media channels.

As long-term measures, a support community is crucial to sustaining science communication efforts on social media. A support community comprised of researchers (subject experts), writers, translators, coordinators, and social media campaign managers (technical experts). Dear Pandemic, a multidisciplinary social media project was founded by infectious disease public health researchers, and supported by 18 medically trained writers, four translators, and interns. This can be seen as a major feasibility challenge because a properly managed social media project takes time and resources away from researchers’ focus on research and publications (Albrecht et al., 2022). Therefore, a support community for any social media campaign helps busy researchers in brainstorming and executing social media campaigns. The majority, which is the junior researchers, can be involved in supporting communities to network and learn with like-minded researchers who are passionate to communicate scientific knowledge on social media. Hence, support communities provide peer encouragement for junior researchers to be confident when presenting their work to the world. The findings from this study highlight the importance of credibility and passion as enablers for junior researchers – especially when embarking on new social media channels that researchers are not familiar with.

Conclusion

Social media is one of the many tools that researchers could use to engage potential grant providers, sponsors, consumers, and research collaborators, to boost public interest in their findings, enhance the visibility of their team's work, to receive live feedback through two-way communications with the audience or followers, and to convince others in making informed opinions, actions and policies.

This study provided preliminary evidence from a researcher-centred perspective – how they perceive and use social media to communicate scientific knowledge. These insights help educators and campaign managers in strategising how best to engage and increase researchers’ participation in social media. Likewise, these insights benefit researchers themselves to know how their peers and other researchers communicate science via their preferred social media. Although many uncontrollable, external factors motivate and hinder researchers’ social media use, this study contributed insights into what influences researchers as social media users and key stakeholders in science communication.

The intervention comes at two levels, which include knowledge change and attitudinal change. Training on effective social media communication improves researchers’ skills and level of understanding, hence allowing them to explore the right social media to communicate science – not just those they are familiar with. When communicating scientific knowledge in public, researchers are well aware that “their opinions not only represent their own research but also science and academia in general” (Foell, 2021, p. 812). Researchers who actively communicate scientific knowledge reflect upon the representation they carry, hence recognition by others strengthens the researcher's perceived credibility. Credibility building and confidence boost require peer influence and recognition by others to continuously motivate researchers’ science communication efforts in the long run.

How researchers acknowledged the importance of science communication underline the fundamental importance of developing science communication strategies with identified motivators for researchers. The remaining challenge is to understand how external conditions may influence social media use by researchers and to compare social media use for science communication in different countries or cultures.

Limitation

This study did not present data from more recent social media such as Tik Tok or more sophisticated ones such as WeChat, which doubles as an electronic payment application. The opinions captured are representative of researchers in Malaysia as a whole, and not beyond Malaysia. Variables were measured solely based on respondents’ self-report of their use behaviour and may have response bias or recall bias. Factors can be further analysed using more advanced statistical methods, such as factor analysis and partial least squares path modelling.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Teck-Ee Keng

Author Biographies

Teck-Ee Keng is currently a PhD student at the Faculty of Accountancy and Management (FAM) at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Malaysia. He works on a number of projects related to the development of client's customised DNA/RNA/NGS solutions and start-up incubation initiatives, using QIAGEN's molecular technologies. His interests are innovation management, science communication, digital marketing, and technology adoption studies. He is currently an Associate Fellow of the ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology, an Affiliate of the Young Scientists Network, Academy of Science Malaysia (YSN-ASM), and a Tunku Scholar under the auspices of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Foundation (YTAR). He was a Co-Chair (2017-2018) of the Science Communication Working Group, YSN-ASM, an External Advisor to the Board of Studies (2022), Perdana University, and an Industry Adjunct Faculty Member (2018-2021), INTI International University & Colleges. From 2012 to 2017, he was part of the Global Shapers Community of World Economic Forum.

Ming-Yu Cheng is currently a Professor at the Faculty of Accountancy and Management (FAM), Director of the Institute of Management and Leadership Development (IMLD) and Chairperson of the Belt and Road Strategic Research Centre (BRSRC) at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Malaysia. She works on a number of projects related to economic development, particularly social capital, globalisation, human capital development and competitiveness studies. Her recent interests are in science & technology and industry linkages, STEM education and socio-economic aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as well as the Belt and Road Initiative. She was a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Washington State University, USA, Research Fellow at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore and Visiting Professor at National Taiwan University, Taiwan. In 2011, she was selected to join the Young Global Leader Forum (YGL Forum) of World Economic Forum.

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