Global Science Discussed in Local Social Media: WeChat and its Comparison with Web of Science

摘要

Communicating scientific research on social media has become increasingly popular in recent years. While most current studies focus on global science discussed in global platforms, global top research discussed in local social media platforms were seldom studied. Our research collects data from Nature WeChat Official Account, which is one of the most famous global scientific brands in China. Statistical results show that there is very weak negative correlation of usage counts of the same articles with different languages between WeChat and Web of Science(WoS). To better understand what Chinese social media users' interest about global science, the Top100 articles in both platforms are further explored. Our content analysis shows that the articles to highlight the surprising facts of the paper without professional terms in titles are more attractive for local social media users than WoS users. And the agenda settings by WeChat account also have obvious impact on social media users' attention.