X (Twitter) in the university context: Functions, forms and disciplinary variations of research tweets

Abstract

Research dissemination has recently undergone a profound transformation with the advent of numerous new digital genres. Some researchers now present and promote their research through academic tweets, conference tweets, and tweetorials, but little is known about how universities, in turn, communicate about this research on X (or Twitter). Our aim is to investigate the functions and forms of University Research Tweets (URTs) and to explore potential differences in the way research is reported in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) versus Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM). The corpus contains two hundred URTs published by high-ranking Anglophone universities in SSH and in STEMM. After carrying out a content analysis (identification of topics, purposes, moves, attachments, visuals and reader reactions) across the two sets of tweets, we analyse the linguistic and multimodal resources used to express stance and engagement in the tweets, principally relying on Hyland’s framework (2005) and Luzón’s (2023b) adaptation of the model. Results reveal that URTs share a number of organisational, semiotic and linguistic features to promote research within a limited space. Some disciplinary differences are also pointed out. STEMM URTs are for instance more likely to contain traditional moves such as ‘rationale’ or ‘methods’, and adopt stance positions to underline authorial authority and highlight the importance of the research. SSH URTs try harder to engage with the reader through “orientation” and “action” moves, proximity-creating and attention-seeking resources. The article ends with a discussion of these differences and future avenues of research.

Keywords

• University research tweets
• disciplinary differences
• dissemination of research
• stance
• engagement