TY - UNPB
T1 - Politicized Scientists
T2 - Credibility Cost of Political Expression on Twitter
AU - Alabrese, Eleonora
AU - Capozza, Francesco
AU - Garg, Prashant
PY - 2024/12/2
Y1 - 2024/12/2
N2 - As social media is increasingly popular, we examine the reputational costs of its increased centrality among academics. Analyzing posts of 98,000 scientists on Twitter (2016–2022) reveals substantial and varied political discourse. We assess the impact of such online political expression with online experiments on a representative sample of 3,700 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. A survey of 128 scientists shows awareness of this penalty and a consensus on avoiding political expression outside their expertise.
AB - As social media is increasingly popular, we examine the reputational costs of its increased centrality among academics. Analyzing posts of 98,000 scientists on Twitter (2016–2022) reveals substantial and varied political discourse. We assess the impact of such online political expression with online experiments on a representative sample of 3,700 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. A survey of 128 scientists shows awareness of this penalty and a consensus on avoiding political expression outside their expertise.
KW - Social Media
KW - Scientists’ Credibility
KW - Polarization
KW - Online Experiment
M3 - Working paper
T3 - CAGE working paper no. 735
BT - Politicized Scientists
ER -