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Relationship between persuasive metadiscoursal devices in research article abstracts and their attention on social media.

ABSTRACT: Research article abstracts often convince readers that the article is worth reading. Therefore, they rely not only on the quality of arguments or novelty of findings to persuade readers but also linguistic markers in the form of metadiscourse to assert a position on an issue, increase readability of a text, engage readers, and avoid objection to the writer's interpretations, thereby enhancing the credibility of the text. Given that research article abstracts are often published online and their newsworthiness would affect whether they would be ultimately read, Altmetric.com, which emerged in 2010, can help quantify the popularity of research article abstracts by counting views on social media and other platforms such as news and policy documents. Yet a study on how metadiscoursal devices are used to persuade readers, and how they are correlated with Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) provided by Altmetric.com, merits attention. In our study, we examined 241 abstracts from 50 top journals in 12 disciplines with the highest AAS from 2014-2018 and performed a quantitative analysis of the interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers exhibited in the abstracts. Overall, we found a positive correlation between the use of metadiscourse and AAS. Furthermore, we noticed that each discipline used distinct metadiscourse markers in abstracts with high AAS, which contributed to its respective discipline-specific conventions. It has been previously shown that the use of an array of interactive and interactional metadiscourse renders the abstract more worthy of attention. Being knowledgeable of rhetorical choices in relation to metadiscoursal devices will enable writers to construct more persuasive abstracts by making informed judgments about the appropriate use of metadiscourse to draw the attention of readers in their respective disciplines.

SUBMITTER: Ngai CS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7153898 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Relationship between persuasive metadiscoursal devices in research article abstracts and their attention on social media.

Ngai Cindy Sing-Bik CS Singh Rita Gill RG

PloS one 20200413 4

Research article abstracts often convince readers that the article is worth reading. Therefore, they rely not only on the quality of arguments or novelty of findings to persuade readers but also linguistic markers in the form of metadiscourse to assert a position on an issue, increase readability of a text, engage readers, and avoid objection to the writer's interpretations, thereby enhancing the credibility of the text. Given that research article abstracts are often published online and their ...[more]

PMID: 32282846

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Project description:The number of retracted articles has grown fast. However, the extent to which researchers and the public are made adequately aware of these retractions and how the media and social media respond to them remains unknown. Here, we aimed to evaluate the media and social media attention received by retracted articles and assess also the attention they receive post-retraction versus pre-retraction. We downloaded all records of retracted literature maintained by the Retraction Watch Database and originally published between January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2015. For all 3,008 retracted articles with a separate DOI for the original and its retraction, we downloaded the respective Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) (from Altmetric) and citation count (from Crossref), for the original article and its retraction notice on June 6, 2018. We also compared the AAS of a random sample of 572 retracted full journal articles available on PubMed to that of unretracted full articles matched from the same issue and journal. 1,687 (56.1%) of retracted research articles received some amount of Altmetric attention, and 165 (5.5%) were even considered popular (AAS>20). 31 (1.0%) of 2,953 with a record on Crossref received >100 citations by June 6, 2018. Popular articles received substantially more attention than their retraction, even after adjusting for attention received post-retraction (Median difference, 29; 95% CI, 17-61). Unreliable results were the most frequent reason for retraction of popular articles (32; 19%), while fake peer review was the most common reason (421; 15%) for the retraction of other articles. In comparison to matched articles, retracted articles tended to receive more Altmetric attention (23/31 matched groups; P-value, 0.01), even after adjusting for attention received post-retraction. Our findings reveal that retracted articles may receive high attention from media and social media and that for popular articles, pre-retraction attention far outweighs post-retraction attention.

Dataset Information

Relationship between persuasive metadiscoursal devices in research article abstracts and their attention on social media.

Publications

Relationship between persuasive metadiscoursal devices in research article abstracts and their attention on social media.

Similar Datasets

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