Content analysis of scholarly discussions of psychological academic articles on Facebook
| Published date | 12 June 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-02-2016-0058 |
| Date | 12 June 2017 |
| Pages | 337-353 |
| Author | Jin-Cheon Na,Yingxin Estella Ye |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Content analysis of scholarly
discussions of psychological
academic articles on Facebook
Jin-Cheon Na and Yingxin Estella Ye
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive understanding of scholarly discussions
of academic publications on the social web and to further discuss the validity of altmetrics as a research
impact assessment tool for academic articles.
Design/methodology/approach –Facebook posts citing psychological journal papers were collected for
both quantitative and qualitative analyses. A content analysis approach was adopted to investigate topic
preferences and motivations for scholarly discussions among academic and non-academic Facebook users.
Findings –Non-academic users were more actively engaged in scholarly discussions on Facebook than
academic users. Among 1,711 Facebook users in the sample, 71.4 percent of them belonged to non-academic
users, while 28.6 percent were from an academic background. The Facebook users cited psychological articles
with various motivations: discussion and evaluation toward articles (20.4 percent), application to real life
practices (16.5 percent), self-promotion (6.4 percent), and data source exchange (6.0 percent). However, nearly
half of the posts (50.1 percent) were simply sharing articles without additional user comments. These results
implicate that Facebook metric (a count of mentions of a research article on Facebook), as an important source
of altmetrics, better reflects the attitudes or perceptions of the general public instead of academia.
Originality/value –This study contributes to the literature by enriching the understanding of Facebook
metric as an academic and non-academic impact assessment tool for scientific publication. Through the
content analysis of Facebook posts, it also draws insights into the ways in which non-academic audiences are
engaging with scholarly outputs.
Keywords Facebook, Psychology, Content analysis, Altmetrics, Scholarly communication
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Altmetrics are a type of scientometrics that measure the impact of scholarship on the social
web based on how an individual research study is obtained, read, discussed, shared, and
recommended on online platforms among a variety of audiences (Fenner, 2014; Das
and Mishra, 2014; Priemet al., 2010). They are regarded as alternative metrics ona new level
(Weller, 2015) and gobeyond citations (Kwok, 2013). First, theymake up for the deficiency of
traditional impact assessments because they can always handlethe most recent publications
(Piwowar, 2013a; Piwowar, 2013b; Brigham, 2014). As opposed to traditional assessments,
altmetrics track the impact of articles instead of journals (Galligan, 2012). Hence, aggregated
altmetrics are able to reflect the achievements of researchers (Mounce, 2013). In addition,
they have expanded the targets of measurements to research products in various formats
not limited to written works (Galliganand Dyas-Correia, 2013; Piwowar,2013a), e.g., software
and data sets.
However, debates are also taking place regarding the validity and reliability of
altmetrics. One argument is that metrics based on the social web are much easier to
manipulate compared to traditional bibliometrics because of self-promotion or
commercialization of engagement actions such as “like”and “share”on social media
platforms (Priem and Hemminger, 2010). Another concern is the quality of data sources.
Altmetrics are thought to be biased because only limited data can be accessed. For instance,
not all articles have identification numbers, such as DOIs, that can be tracked on the
Online Information Review
Vol. 41 No. 3, 2017
pp. 337-353
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-02-2016-0058
Received 21 February 2016
Revised 5 December 2016
Accepted 16 March 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
337
Content
analysis of
scholarly
discussions
Internet, and only publicly shared comments on the social web can be extracted for analysis
(Liu and Adie, 2013). Besides that, the existence of spam posts on the Internet may lead to
exaggerated altmetric scores (Brigham, 2014; Bornmann, 2014).
There is considerable scholarship concerning the validity of altmetrics, e.g., studies that
concentrate on the correlation between altmetrics and commonly used bibliometrics by
statisticalanalysis (Thelwall,Haustein, Larivière and Sugimoto,2013), surveys and interviews
that investigate the perceptionsof scholars or their motivationsfor academic communications
on the social web (Puschmann and Mahrt, 2012; Walker, 2006; Kjellberg, 2010),
and cross-disciplinary analysis of the coverage of altmetrics (Zahedi et al., 2014; Shuai et al.,
2012; Mohammadiand Thelwall, 2014; Hammarfelt, 2014). However, to gain a comprehensive
understanding of altmetrics,it is also necessary to investigate the behaviorsor processes that
determine how scientific publications are mentioned and shared on different platforms.
Especially there are increasing demands on researchers to engage with the public and
generate non-academic impact, such as social, economic, and cultural impact, for their
research. For instance, the Research Excellence Framework in the UK and the Standard
Evaluation Protocols in the Netherlands are national evaluation systems in which social
impact assessment has been applied (Bornmann, 2013; Oliver, 2014). It therefore becomes
more important to understand how non-academic audiences are engaging with scholarly
outputs. So the main research objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive
understanding of scholarly discussions of academic publications on the social web and to
further discuss the validity of altmetrics as a research impact assessment tool for academic
articles. By analyzing the mentions of psychological academic articles on the social web,
it explores various motivations for academic communications on social media platforms and
the ways in which academic articles are discussed among different categories of users.
Facebook is an important source of altmetrics, which is one of the most popular social
networking sites, with 1.71 billion monthly active users as reported in the second quarter of
2016 while 66 percent were daily users (Lupton, 2014). It is used by a wide variety of people
from different backgrounds, including scholars and the general public. In addition,
Facebook has enabled various types of actions, such as likes, shares, and comments, which
can be tracked and used as indicators of popularity (Holmberg, 2015). Twitter is similar to
Facebook as a social media platform for the public, but there are various differences between
them. Especially, Twitter is meant for real-time conversation with short 140-character
messages, while Facebook is more for an ongoing conversation and social relationship
(Sung and de Zúñiga, 2014). Therefore, the usage of Facebook for academic communications
becomes unique compared to other altmetrics platforms that especially serve for academia
only, such as Mendeleyand research weblogs. However, the valueof Facebook as a source of
altmetrics has not beeninvestigated extensively in previous studies. This studyconcentrates
on the discussions of psychological academic articles on Facebook. The field of psychology
was selected because it covers a wide range of disciplines and topics as one of the most
popular subjects on the social web (Mohammadi and Thelwall, 2014).
This study is expected to enrich the understanding of Facebook metric as a research
impact assessment tool for scientific publication, and also draws insights into the ways in
which non-academic audiences are engaging with scholarly outputs. In addition, as research
spending increases, it is ever more important for funding agencies and universities to ensure
that public funding is utilized effectively and transformed into desirable outcomes. So the
study also provides useful information for funding agencies, university administrators,
policymakers, and government officials who are in charge of the assessment of the academic
and social impact of research, the distribution of research funding, and policy formulation.
This paper is organized as follows: the next section will introduce related works, followed by
the research methodology used. Research findings will then be presented and discussed, and the
paper will conclude with discussions on the validity of altmetrics and the limitations of the study.
338
OIR
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