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Politicized Scientists: Credibility Cost of Political Expression on Twitter

Eleonora Alabrese, Francesco Capozza and Prashant Garg

No 11254, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The study measures scientists’ polarization on social media and its impact on public perceptions of their credibility. Analyzing 98,000 scientists on Twitter from 2016 to 2022 reveals significant divergence in expressed political opinions. An experiment assesses the impact of online political expression on a representative sample of 1,700 U.S. respondents, who rated vignettes with synthetic academic profiles varying scientists’ political affiliations based on real tweets. Politically neutral scientists are viewed as the most credible. Strikingly, on both the ’left’ and ’right’ sides of politically neutral, there is a monotonic penalty for scientists displaying political affiliations: the stronger their posts, the less credible their profile and research are perceived, and the lower the public’s willingness to read their content. The penalty varies with respondents’ political leanings.

Keywords: Twitter; trust in science; ideological polarization; affective polarization; online experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 C93 D72 D83 D91 I23 Z10 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-pay, nep-pol, nep-soc and nep-sog
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