Researchers‘ age, gender and professional status as indicators of the Twitter perception in science dissemination

Abstract

The objective of this study is to evaluate the level of satisfaction and interest that researchers from Spanish universities present through social networks like Twitter. To do so, we examined the data obtained through an online survey from over 600 researchers proactive in science dissemination from 20 Spanish universities (2016). In regard to the data analysis, Kruskal-Wallis independence test was used. According to the results, two out of three researchers (65.4%) perceived benefits after the science communication campaign and a large majority (84.7%) did not perceive any damage. In relation to social networks, three out of four researchers (74.6%) think that it is an important instrument to improve scientific communication, although less than half (41.4%) have an active open profile in social networks such as Twitter. In addition, female researchers perceive social networks to be more important than male researchers consider them to be, and those who have an active profile in social media networks value them even greater.