TY - JOUR
T1 - Can social media combat gender inequalities in academia?
T2 - Measuring the prevalence of the Matilda effect in communication
AU - SONG, Celine
AU - Wang, Xiaohui
AU - LI, Guanrong
N1 - This study was supported by InnoHK initiative, The Government of the HKSAR, Laboratory for AI-Powered Financial Technologies, and the Initiation Grant for Faculty Niche Research Areas (RC-FNRA-IG/21-22/COMF/01) of Hong Kong Baptist University.
Publisher Copyright:
# The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association.
PY - 2024/1
Y1 - 2024/1
N2 - This study sought to investigate whether scholarly impact and academic influence differ between men and women in the field of communication and the extent to which the gender gap has persisted on social media platforms, an arena increasingly used for research dissemination. Data were collected from 10,736 articles, published in prominent communication journals between 2012 and 2022, using a combination of three sources: OpenAlex, Altmetric, and Twitter. The gender of 6,827 first authors was identified using ChatGPT, with an accuracy of 0.94. The findings confirmed the presence of the Matilda effect, indicating a bias toward male scholars in terms of research performance, academic mobility, and online popularity. Furthermore, the study revealed uneven gains between male and female scholars in their use of social media for research dissemination. These results have implications for how science communities can effectively promote research on social media.
AB - This study sought to investigate whether scholarly impact and academic influence differ between men and women in the field of communication and the extent to which the gender gap has persisted on social media platforms, an arena increasingly used for research dissemination. Data were collected from 10,736 articles, published in prominent communication journals between 2012 and 2022, using a combination of three sources: OpenAlex, Altmetric, and Twitter. The gender of 6,827 first authors was identified using ChatGPT, with an accuracy of 0.94. The findings confirmed the presence of the Matilda effect, indicating a bias toward male scholars in terms of research performance, academic mobility, and online popularity. Furthermore, the study revealed uneven gains between male and female scholars in their use of social media for research dissemination. These results have implications for how science communities can effectively promote research on social media.
KW - Matilda effect
KW - Twitter
KW - communication
KW - gender inequality
KW - social media
UR - https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/29/1/zmad050/7596748?login=true
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85184855651&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/jcmc/zmad050
DO - 10.1093/jcmc/zmad050
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1083-6101
VL - 29
JO - Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
JF - Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
IS - 1
M1 - zmad050
ER -