1.
#twinkletweet: The use of
hashtags by astrophysicists
on Twitter
Bowman, T.D.*, Peters, I., Haustein, S., & Holmberg, K.

2.
Understanding Twitter: The Basics
• 2006 – Twitter reports 200 million active users creating 400 million tweets
each day (Wickre, 2013).
• Pew found that 18% of online adults use Twitter and that all age groups are
showing an increase in usage. (Brenner & Smith, 2013)
• 1,372 faculty members from higher education and surveyed and 35%
respondents reported using Twitter(Faculty Focus, 2010)
• Veletsianos and Kimmons (2012) argue that current Twitter research gives us
little information on:
•
•
•
Faculty experiences and participation in SNS
Faculty find to be valuable in SNS
The barriers and issues faculty face when adopting these SNS

3.
Scholarly Activity/ Altmetrics
• In today's world scholars gather information from more sources than just
traditional journals, meetings , and peers. (Thelwall, 2012)
• Altmetric measurements are increasingly advocated and used as early
indicators of article impact and usefulness. (Thelwall, et al., 2013)
• Researchers have shown that mentions on social media and citations were
not identical in terms of impact. (Haustein et al., in press; Thelwall, et al., 2013)
• There are disciplinary differences in the tweeting behaviors of scholars.
• Little is known about the extent to which social media are used in scholarly
communication.

4.
Twitter Affordances: @, #,
• Scholars can make use of affordances in Twitter to add context and meaning
to their communications.
• The three widely known and often used affordances in Twitter are:
• @ symbol – used to direct messages at user(s) and/or to reply to user(s)
• # hashtag – used to contextualize or categorize the message
•
retweet – used to resend another's tweet
• Research on hashtags has shown that they
are found in a relatively large portion of
Twitter messages.

5.
In-Depth Analysis: Research Questions
• R1: Which hashtags are popular among astrophysicists?
• R2: Is the use of hashtags dependent on the tweeting behavior
of astrophysicists?
• R3: To what extent do astrophysicists use hashtags during
tweeting?
• R4: Do communities evolve around hashtags (reflected by strong
hashtag sharing behavior)?

6.
Data was Collected from 37 Astrophysicists on Twitter
• 37 Astrophysicists were identified in two previous studies
(Holmberg, 2013, in press;
Holmberg & Thelwall, 2013, in press).
• Up to 3,200 tweets were download for each astrophysicist
•
•
The entire set of tweets made by 25 astrophysicists were collected
The most recent 3,200 tweets were collected for the remaining 12
• 68,232 of a possible total of 289,368 tweets were analyzed to
determine #hashtag use

7.
Preliminary In-depth Analysis of 37 Astrophysicists
Num of Total Tweets
Num of Tweets w/Hashtags
Num of Unique Hashtags
Num of Hashtags Used Only Once
% of Top Ten Hashtags Used
% of Tweets w/Hashtags Using Unique Hashtags
68,232
15,983
4,301
3,050
19.3%
43.7%
On average, 23.42% of tweets tweeted by astrophysicists
contain at least one hashtag

8.
Top Ten Hashtags
HASHTAG
#fb
#stfc
#AstroFact
#jwst
#math
#twinkletweet
#nasa
#scipolicy
#aas218
#hubble
NUM OF
OCCURRENCES
546
410
349
339
332
284
257
216
194
164
NUM OF
USERS
14
6
2
17
5
1
8
3
5
4
BREAKDOWN
507, 12, 9, 5, <3
321, 49, 37, 1..
348, 1
173, 63, 45, 13, 10, <10
324, 4, 3, 1.
284
169, 26, 13, 10, <10
208, 6, 2
140, 48, 3, 2, 1
142, 11, 8, 1

9.
What we found
•
R1: Which hashtags are popular among astrophysicists?
We identified the Top 10 Hashtags in this sample
•
R2: Is the use of hashtags dependent on the tweeting behavior of astrophysicists?
Regular Twitter users tended to add hashtags to their tweets
more often than infrequent users.
•
R3: To what extent do astrophysicists use hashtags during tweeting?
On average, approximatley 23% of tweets contained at least one
hashtag
•
R4: Do communities evolve around hashtags (reflected by strong hashtag sharing behavior)?
Our results suggest that the astrophysicist community is not
sharing hashtags; we found a high number of unique hashtags
used only once suggesting quite the opposite

10.
#astropixie
"Astronomers can engage in
conversations with members
of the public, from any part of the
world, socioeconomic scale, age, or
gender. This type of open access to
scientists has not been previously
available, and I have personally found it
to be more rewarding than anything."
(Bauer, 2012, p. 4)

11.
So What?
• Scholars are using Twitter but we aren't quite sure how and why they are
using it
• Altmetrics is a concept that has gained traction, but it can be argued that
scholars are not quite sure what value altmetrics provides.
• Affordances exist in Twitter that allow people to frame and contextualize
their tweets
• In-depth analyses of affordances in Twitter at this time with this sample of
astrophysicists yields useful insight

12.
Haustein, S., Bowman, T.D., Holmberg, K., Larivière, V., & Peters, I., (submitted).
Astrophysicists on Twitter: An in-depth analysis of tweeting and scientific publication
behavior. Aslib Proceedings
Thank You
Any Questions?