Do Science Kardashians Get Citation Premium? Self-Fulfilling Effects of Social Media on Citations

Christian Lessmann and Ali Onder

No 10661, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

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 provide a brief discussion of policy implications in light of these findings.

Keywords: social media; expertise; Kardashian index; citations; Covid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay and nep-sog
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10661

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