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The work was supported by the~Volkswagen Foundation [99685]

Analysis of institutional authors

Alvarez-Peralta, MiguelCorresponding Author
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Meta-analysis of political communication research on Twitter: Methodological trends

Publicated to:Cogent Social Sciences. 9 (1): 2209371- - 2023-12-31 9(1), DOI: 10.1080/23311886.2023.2209371

Authors: Alvarez-Peralta, Miguel; Rojas-Andres, Raul; Diefenbacher, Svenne

Affiliations

Ulm Univ, Dept Social Psychol, Ulm, Germany - Author
Univ Castilla La Mancha, Dept Journalism, Mancha, Cuenca, Spain - Author
Univ Castilla La Mancha, Fac Commun, Mancha, Cuenca, Spain - Author
Univ Castilla La Mancha, UCLM, Fac Comunicac, Dept Journalism, Off 2.09 Pza Libertad Expres S-N, Cuenca 16071, Spain - Author

Abstract

This meta-analysis examines the methodological tendencies of scientific research about political communication on Twitter published in journals based on Spanish-speaking countries between 2019 and 2021. It covers all the journals indexed in the JCR and the two first quartiles of Scopus index, producing a universe of 1.233 articles, of which 51 addressed political communication on Twitter. The focus is set on the following methodological parameters: sample types and construction, time periods, geographical areas, methodologies, multimedia analysis, general research themes and approaches, and software resources. The aim is to provide a map of recent research in the Spanish-speaking scientific community and to identify widespread methodological trends. A significant trend of software dependency was identified, i.e. published research often consists of the mere application of a certain software to a certain dataset, without enough discussion on the possible biases introduced by the software and the sampling methods.

Keywords
Meta researchMeta-studyMethodologyPolitical communicationsSampling biasTwitter

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Cogent Social Sciences due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2023, it was in position 103/267, thus managing to position itself as a Q2 (Segundo Cuartil), in the category Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary. Notably, the journal is positioned en el Cuartil Q2 para la agencia Scopus (SJR) en la categoría Social Sciences (Miscellaneous).

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from World Citations provided by WoS (ESI, Clarivate), it yields a value for the citation normalization relative to the expected citation rate of: 2.11. This indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: ESI Nov 14, 2024)

This information is reinforced by other indicators of the same type, which, although dynamic over time and dependent on the set of average global citations at the time of their calculation, consistently position the work at some point among the top 50% most cited in its field:

  • Field Citation Ratio (FCR) from Dimensions: 7.69 (source consulted: Dimensions May 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-05-23, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 4
  • Scopus: 3
  • OpenCitations: 3
Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-05-23:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 24.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 23 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 2.85.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 3 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
Leadership analysis of institutional authors

This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: Germany.

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (Álvarez Peralta, Miguel) .

the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been Álvarez Peralta, Miguel.