Do Retweets Undermine Twitter Mentions of Journal Articles As Indicators of Research Significance?

This study aims to investigate whether the prevalence of retweets challenges the validity of Twitter mentions (tweet counts and tweeter counts) as indicators of research significance. The study first examines whether the tweeting of research papers signifies either the wisdom of crowd effect or herd-like behavior for a dataset of COVID-19 papers from The Lancet. The study then uses the Modality, Agency, Interactivity, and Navigability (MAIN) model to examine the nature of the influence involved in retweeting. The Mann-Whitney U test and multiple linear regression were used. Findings show that there was extensive evidence of herd-like behaviour, rather than the wisdom of crowd effect, in tweeting research papers, challenging the validity of Twitter mentions as indicators of research significance. Credibility heuristic cues of the original tweeters were associated with their retweet rates, suggesting that retweets are more likely influenced by perceptions of the original tweeter’s credibility rather than the quality of research papers.