Technology Category
Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social ScienceData Mining & Knowledge Management: Graph Mining, Social Network Analysis & CommunityNatural Language Processing: Discourse, Pragmatics & Argument Mining
Are there stars in Bluesky after the return of Donald Trump to the White House?
🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates the impact of the scholarly community’s migration from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky on academic communication and altmetrics, particularly following structural platform shifts after the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Drawing on cross-platform altmetrics data for 14,497 multidisciplinary and Library and Information Science (LIS) journal articles published between January 2024 and March 2025, we employ time-series analysis, cross-platform comparative statistics, and disciplinary clustering. Our findings reveal: (1) pronounced geographic stratification of Bluesky adoption across European and North American LIS journals; (2) a sharp rise in Bluesky mentions for top-tier journals—including *Nature* and *Science*—beginning November 2024; and (3) Bluesky engagement surpassing X for two LIS journals, with narrowing participation gaps across most journals. This work identifies Bluesky’s inflection point as an emergent scholarly communication platform and advances altmetrics theory and empirical grounding by expanding platform diversity beyond legacy social media.
Technology Category
Application Category
📝 Abstract
This study examines the shift in the scientific community from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky, its impact on scientific communication, and consequently on social metrics (altmetrics). We analysed 14,497 publications from multidisciplinary and Library and Information Science (LIS) journals between January 2024 and March 2025. The results reveal a notable increase in Bluesky activity for multidisciplinary journals in November 2024, likely influenced by political and platform changes, with mentions multiplying for journals like Nature and Science. In LIS, the adoption of Bluesky is different and shows marked variation between European and United States journals. Although Bluesky remains a minority platform compared to X over the whole period, when focusing on user engagement after the United States elections, we see a much more even distribution between the two platforms. In two LIS journals, Bluesky even surpasses X, while in most others, the difference in user engagement was no longer as pronounced, marking a significant change from previous patterns in altmetrics.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Examines shift from X to Bluesky in scientific communication
Analyzes impact of platform change on altmetrics
Compares Bluesky adoption in US vs European journals
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Analyzed multidisciplinary and LIS journal data
Tracked Bluesky activity post-political changes
Compared user engagement between Bluesky and X
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