Information Pathways in Online Science Communication: The Role of Platform Actors and News Media

2026-03-17

AI Summary

This study investigates how scientific information is disseminated across social and news media by different actors, with a particular focus on the differential propagation of consensus versus counter-consensus viewpoints. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, the research integrates 1.24 million tweets and 211,000 news articles, employing large-scale text mining, cross-platform provenance tracing, and network analysis to systematically identify coordinated amplification networks for the first time. The findings reveal that individuals with medical or scientific backgrounds predominantly shape scientific discourse; however, certain counter-consensus experts exert disproportionate influence through tightly coordinated networks. Moreover, mainstream media and pseudoscientific sources exhibit marked divergence in their citation of scientific literature, and news coverage generally lags behind the rapid diffusion driven by social media superspreaders.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Misinformation & Fake News
• Natural Language Processing: Fact-Checking / Misinformation Detection (NLP Focus)
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Influence propagation, information diffusion, and the prediction on networks
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Content-based information diffusion
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance

Abstract

Online discussions of science involve complex interactions among experts, news media, and social media users as they interpret and disseminate scientific findings. While prior work has examined these actors in isolation, their interplay in shaping science communication remains poorly understood. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, we analyze 1.24M tweets and 211k news articles that reference pandemic-related scientific papers. We find that the most influential Twitter accounts in this discourse are predominantly individuals with medical or research credentials. However, we also identify a coordinated network that disproportionately amplifies a small set of prominent credentialed experts who advance contrarian, anti-consensus positions on vaccines, lockdowns, and related topics. The papers promoted by these influential actors substantially overlap with those covered by news media, but with key differences: pro-consensus experts primarily engage with studies featured by mainstream and medical outlets, whereas contrarian experts align more closely with papers promoted by low-quality, pseudoscientific, or conspiratorial sources. Notably, news outlets tend to report on scientific studies after they have been highlighted by social media superspreaders. Together, these findings reveal multi-level pathways of information flow and coordinated amplification structures that shape science communication across social media and news, offering new insights into the dynamics of the broader information ecosystem.

Problem

• science communication
• information pathways
• social media
• news media
• expert influence

Innovation

• information pathways
• coordinated amplification
• science communication
• social media superspreaders
• news media agenda-setting