Do Social Media Science Stars Get Citation Premium?

Christian Lessmann and Ali Onder
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Christian Lessmann: Dresden University of Technology

No 2023-09, Working Papers in Economics & Finance from University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group

Abstract: We analyze whether the social media popularity of scientists affects the number of academic citations. We use the COVID-19 global pandemic as a quasi-natural experiment exogenously increasing public attention and the demand for expertise. Using social media stars’ and their coauthors’ publications on COVID-related topics prior to the break out of the pandemic, we find that the social media star status added 1.10 citations following the breakout of COVID-19 per year per article, corresponding to 80% of the pre-COVID citation gap between stars and their coauthors. We find no significant treatment effect based on scientists’ Kardashian indexes.

Keywords: Social Media; Expertise; Kardashian index; Citations; Covid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12
Date: 2023-12-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay and nep-sog
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