Attacking science on social media: How user comments affect perceived trustworthiness and credibility
Open accessAbstract
The science on controversial topics is often heatedly discussed on social media, a potential problem for social-media-based science communicators. Therefore, two exploratory studies were performed to investigate the effects of science-critical user comments attacking Facebook posts containing scientific claims. The claims were about one of four controversial topics (homeopathy, genetically modified organisms, refugee crime, and childhood vaccinations). The user comments attacked the claims based on the thematic complexity, the employed research methods, the expertise, or the motivations of the researchers. The results reveal that prior attitudes determine judgments about the user comments, the attacked claims, and the source of the claim. After controlling for attitude, people agree most with thematic complexity comments, but the comments differ in their effect on perceived claim credibility only when the comments are made by experts. In addition, comments attacking researchers’ motivations were more effective in lowering perceived integrity while scientists’ perceived expertise remained unaffected.
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Prior experiences with and attitudes towards the trustee are essential antecedents of trust in information found on social media.
“People's prior experiences with and attitudes towards the trustee infuence their perceptions of that trustee and have been shown to be essential antecedents of trust in information found on social media [5,31,32,40,122].”
From What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review (2023) · cites this paper as [31]
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What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review
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- Authors
- Gierth, L., & Bromme, R.
- Affiliations
- University of Münster (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Gierth, Lukas
- Venue
- Public Understanding of Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2019-12-05
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 230-247
- ISSN
- 0963-6625 (ISSN-L)
- 1361-6609
- PMC
- PMC7323766
- OpenAlex
- W2994520499
- Cited by
- 71
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 6
- FWCI
- 10.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Public Understanding of Science (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Keywords
- science communication, social media, online comments, perceived credibility, trustworthiness, homeopathy, genetically modified organisms, childhood immunization, Facebook, researcher expertise, researcher integrity, prior attitudes
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