Exploring research methods blogs in psychology: Who posts what about whom, with what effect

Abstract

During the methods crisis in psychology and other sciences, much discussion developed online, in forums such as blogs and other social media. Hence, this increasingly popular communication channel of scientific discussion itself needs exploration, to inform current controversies, record the historical moment, improve methods communication, and address equity issues. Who posts what about whom, with what effect? Does a particular generation or gender contribute most? Do blogs focus narrowly on methods, or do they cover a range of issues? How do they discuss individual researchers, and how do readers respond? What are some impacts? Web scraping and text analysis techniques provide a snapshot characterizing 41 current research methods blogs in psychology. Bloggers mostly represented psychology’s traditional leaderships’ demographic categories: primarily male, mid-to-late career, associated with American institutions, and with established citation counts. As methods blogs, their posts do mainly concern statistics, replication (particularly statistical power), and research findings. The few posts that mentioned individual researchers substantially focused on replication issues; they received more views, social media impact, comments, and citations. Male individual researchers were mentioned much more often than women. Further data can inform perspectives about these new channels of scientific communication, with the shared aim of improving scientific practices.