Twitter and citations

Ho Fai Chan, Ali Onder, Sascha Schweitzer and Benno Torgler

Economics Letters, 2023, vol. 231, issue C

Abstract: Social media, especially Twitter, plays an increasingly important role among researchers in showcasing and promoting their research. Does Twitter affect academic citations? Making use of Twitter activity about columns published on VoxEU, a renowned online platform for economists, we develop an instrumental variable strategy to show that Twitter activity about a research paper has a causal effect on the number of citations that this paper will receive. We find that the existence of at least one tweet, as opposed to none, increases citations by 16–25%. Doubling overall Twitter engagement boosts citations by up to 16%.

Keywords: Productivity; Social media; Twitter; Citations; Economists (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:231:y:2023:i:c:s0165176523002951

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111270

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