Social media is increasingly the place where chemists engage in knowledge sharing, public discussions, and debates. However, at first glance, it may be difficult not only to examine how strong are the relationships between users but also if there is anything to gain from engaging in the twitter chemistry community. Furthermore, despite being an easy application to access, Twitter can easily reproduce existing power structures within academia. Therefore, it is essential that we not only understand the structure of the chemistry Twitter community but also whether its development has allowed for the expression and dissemination of marginalized voices. Social network analysis is a technique that explicitly takes social structure into account and allows us to investigate intra- and inter-group behavior. Based on a network analysis of over 6,000 chemistry twitter users we were able not only identify “who is following who?” but also highlight the structure of the network’s relationships, and identify users whose position is particularly dominant. Once we established the basic network structure, we then proceeded to analyze whether there were important sub-communities based on field, location, language or topics of interest. The analysis allowed us to identify not only community clusters but also users that acted as broadcasters of information between groups. Finally, an analysis of influential users was conducted to identify whether their characteristics reflected the current hierarchical structures of academia, or whether Twitter allowed marginalized voices to thrive and empowered them to become central figures within the chemistry Twitter community. This presentation will discuss the results and implications on how to use Twitter to identify and empower marginalized voices within chemistry, as well as its potential to create collaborations and support to chemists at various stages of their careers.

Mapping the chemistry Twitter community: A reproduction of academic power structures or an opportunity to empower marginalized voices?

2019 Spring National Meeting

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