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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Citations
Cites
Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter
Boyd, D., Golder, S., & Lotan, G. (2010) · 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences · doi:10.1109/hicss.2010.412 · Cited by 2,051
The Arab Spring and Social Media Audiences
Bruns, A., Highfield, T., & Burgess, J. (2013) · American Behavioral Scientist · doi:10.1177/0002764213479374 · Cited by 283 · cited 2×
“Twitter is credited for its role in political events such as monitoring elections, aiding the so-called “Arab Spring” (Bruns, Highfield, and Burgess 2013), and for drawing attention to news stories that were initially largely ignored by traditional news media such as the Wendy Davis filibuster1 and the Michael Brown s…”
Background
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Bots increase exposure to negative and inflammatory content in online social systems
Stella, M., Ferrara, E., & De Domenico, M. (2018) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1803470115 · Cited by 492
“The group 1 (group 2) co-occurrence network includes 8,451 (7,107) unique hashtags and 29,694 (23,644) links.”
InfluentialScientists on Twitter: Preaching to the choir or singing from the rooftops?
Côté, I. M., & Darling, E. S. (2018) · FACETS · doi:10.1139/facets-2018-0002 · Cited by 195
“Twitter users retweet posts when they find them interesting (hence the posts were at least read, if not understood) and when they deem the source credible (Metaxas et al. 2015).”
BackgroundBrady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Burkart, D., Jost, J. T., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2019) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/xge0000532 · Cited by 188
“Users often share messages on social media that represent beliefs, opinions, and values they endorse as well as authors they trust (Metaxas et al., 2015).”
BackgroundPausing to consider why a headline is true or false can help reduce the sharing of false news
Fazio, L. (2020) · Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review · doi:10.37016/mr-2020-009 · Cited by 187
“People can have many motivations to share information on social media – e.g., to inform, to entertain, or to signal their group membership (Brady, Wills, Jost, Tucker, & Van Bavel, 2017; Metaxas et al., 2015).”
BackgroundDetecting and Characterizing Eating-Disorder Communities on Social Media
Wang, T., Brede, M., Ianni, A., & Mentzakis, E. (2017) · ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) · doi:10.1145/3018661.3018706 · Cited by 120
“Users’ re-tweets are also used in this analysis, as the content users re-tweeted can indicate their interests as well [33].”
Method
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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