Attitudes and practices of educational researchers towards the use of social media to disseminate science

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the use of digital platforms in higher education and science. This tendency has impacted how knowledge is produced, accessed and disseminated, considering the Internet and social media strategies. This study seeks to investigate the attitudes and practices of educational researchers when it comes to sharing science on social media. An online survey (N = 487) was used to measure participants’ motivations for using or not social media, frequency of use, attitudes and practices for sharing scientific research and sociodemographic characteristics. Overall, findings reveal that there is high support for the use of social media for academic purposes. Most researchers prefer to publish full results over partial results. The researcher’s perception of the importance of social media is greater than the actual use of them. Finally, we identify some of the main reasons that facilitate or limit the academic use of social media, thus contributing a contextualised reflection on such use.