Does an Author's Social Media Presence Affect Dissemination of Spine Literature?

Our study assesses the impact of an author's social media presence on citation rates and readership of spine literature.

The Altmetric database was queried for spine-related articles between 2016 and 2021; the top 100 by Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) were assessed. Public profile presence, number of followers, number of posts, and promotion of articles were assessed for Twitter/Instagram. Social media profiles were identified by searching for the author's name followed by "Twitter" or "Instagram" on Google.com or searching each platform. Descriptive statistics assessed social media use and attention metrics. Negative binomial regression assessed presence/promotion/number of followers/number of posts on Twitter/Instagram as predictors of Dimensions citation rates/AAS/Mendeley reader counts, while accounting for time passed since publication.

Twitter promotion was noted for 9.0% of articles and Instagram promotion for 1.0%. Mean number of Twitter and Instagram followers was 447.9 ± 1406.1(range: 0-9079) and 173.2 ± 1097.1(range: 0:10,700), respectively. Mean number of Twitter and Instagram posts was 411.6 ± 1210.5 and 18.4 ± 96.4, respectively. Dimensions citations ranged from 0-641, AAS from 79-2257, and Mendeley readers from 2-1854. Following negative binomial regression, Instagram presence was identified as a significant predictor of Mendeley readers (P = 0.043), number of Twitter posts was a significant predictor of AAS (P = 0.008). Additionally, Twitter presence was identified as a negative predictor of Mendeley readers (P = 0.005) and Twitter promotion was identified as a negative predictor of AAS (P = 0.003).

Activity on Twitter and Instagram may have variable associations with altmetrics of literature visibility and readership but with citation rates. Interestingly, presence/promotion on Twitter predicted less attention/readership, while Instagram presence predicted higher Mendeley readership.