The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
What Do Retweets Indicate? Results from User Survey and Meta-Review of Research
Open accessAbstract
Arguably one of the most important features of Twitter is the support for “retweets” or messages re-posted verbatim by a user that were originated by someone else. Despite the fact that retweets are routinely studied and reported, many important questions remain about user motivation for their use and their significance. In this paper we answer the question of what users indicate when they retweet. We do so in a comprehensive fashion, by employing a user survey, a study of user profiles, and a meta-review of over 100 research publications from three related major conferences. Our findings indicate that retweeting indicates not only interest in a message, but also trust in the message and the originator, and agreement with the message contents. However, the findings are significantly weaker for journalists, some of whom beg to differ declaring so in their own user profiles. On the other hand, the inclusion of hashtags strengthens the signal of agreement, especially when the hashtags are related to politics. While in the past there have been additional claims in the literature about possible reasons for retweeting, many of them are not supported, especially given the technical changes introduced recently by Twitter.
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“While Mentions and Replies can have both negative and positive connotations, Retweets are traditionally considered as a form of social endorsement [26, 17]: Users tend to retweet and thus endorse content they agree with.”
From Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events (2019) · cites this paper as [26]
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Cites
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Items 101–163 of 163
Evkoski, B., Novak, P. K., & Ljubešić, N. (2023) · Applied Network Science · doi:10.1007/s41109-023-00561-8 · Cited by 3
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Social Media Influencers and Politics
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Drecker, P. (2025) · Politics and Governance · doi:10.17645/pag.10004 · Cited by 4
“In addition to the tweet’s substantive content, the account from which the tweet originated must be considered credible and trustworthy (Metaxas et al., 2015).”
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“The meta-study by Metaxas et al. (2021, 658) con fi rmed that retweeting not only indicates ‘ interest in a message, but also trust in the message and the originator, and agreement with the message contents.”
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“Prior work supports this interpretation, with Metaxas et al. [20] remarking (emphasis ours): Our findings show that retweeting indicates, not only interest in a message, but also trust in the message and the originator, and agreement with the message contents.”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Metaxas, P., Mustafaraj, E., Wong, K., Zeng, L., O'Keefe, M., & Finn, S.
- Affiliations
- Wellesley College (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
- Published
- 2021-08-03
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 658-661
- ISSN
- 2162-3449 (ISSN-L)
- 2334-0770
- OpenAlex
- W2399902206
- Cited by
- 162
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 15
- FWCI
- 28.38
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (publishedVersion)
- AAAI Publications (The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1117693)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Social Sciences › Communication › Media and Digital Communication
- Keywords
- retweets, Twitter, user motivation, hashtags, political hashtags, journalists, user profiles
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