We are in 2020. Around the world, the Covid-19 epidemic is slowly gaining ground. But the virus raises many questions. While some scientists chain TV shows to respond to journalists, others favor Twitter. For more than two years, such school teachers, doctors, epidemiologists and emergency physicians use the platform to explain, decipher or popularize. Threads, diagrams and hashtags… Mixing the codes of scientific communication with those of social networks, this generation of 2.0 researchers has forged a real community over the months.
As soon as the first cases appeared in China, scientists around the world began working on the virus. And the search is going fast, very fast. To share their progress, experts start posting their work on Twitter. The planet then discovers “the preprints” (preprint in English). “The researchers did not have to wait to be published in a scientific journal, they were able to share their discoveries and their advances with their peers almost instantly, which undoubtedly accelerated the research”, explains Antonin Assié, co-founder of Odace, a company specializing in social networks.
Twitter, scientific accelerator
Thanks to Twitter, many experts have started working with researchers specializing in other fields or located on the other side of the globe. Like Matthieu Mulot, doctor in biology, whose the Twitter account is followed by nearly 6,000 people : “I worked and created links with researchers whom I had never met, with whom I had no reason to connect,” explains the specialist who also runs a YouTube channel, Le Biostatisticien. Thanks to the platform, he came into contact with five other colleagues. All six co-authored a study on the ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of Covid-19, which they provided after-sales service on Twitter. “After the publication, I was invited by Karine Lacombe to explain to medical students at the Sorbonne how to communicate about science on social networks. I would never have done it without Twitter”.
And in some cases, this visibility has led to major advances. In the spring of 2020, a group of American engineers, specialists in aerosols, multiplied the tweets to warn that the transmission of the virus was mainly done by mini-droplets floating in the air. The goal ? Convince the World Health Organization but also their colleagues, initially very reluctant on this theory. Yet it is one of the most important characteristics in understanding the spread of the virus.
For doctor Franck Clarot, alias@the DOC (77,200 subscribers), Twitter has also enabled public authorities to make decisions more quickly: “Science has advanced minute by minute on social networks, and not congress by congress as was the case before. Exchanges between scientists were very rapid, but this is also the case with politicians. It allowed them to adapt their decisions on a daily basis, ”explains this radiologist and forensic doctor in Rouen.
Lesggy 2.0 Macs
The popularity of these researchers quickly exceeded the scientific sphere. Some experts saw their number of followers explode, explains Antonin Assié: “You have to remember that we were in full confinement, the use of social networks exploded and, with it, the popularity of several scientific and medical profiles. There was a real demand from the public to be informed, to understand in order to be able to accept the restrictive measures, ”explains the specialist.
To respond to the anxiety of the population and the flood of questions – sometimes unanswered – some specialists slipped into the shoes of popularizers, Mac Lesggy style in E = M6. This is the case of Dr. Frank Clarot, who moreover prefers the term universalization to that of popularization. Like this thread developed on June 27, 2021, on the importance of vaccination to fight against the coronavirus epidemic, in particular against the Delta variant.
“Before, on Twitter, we saw either experts who made complicated remarks, or people who simplified to the extreme. During the epidemic, you had to be between the two, to explain in simple words a complicated situation, concepts which are usually only dealt with in specialized journals by specialized people, ”decrypts Frank Clarot, who had less than 15,000 subscribers before the outbreak.
For Nathan Peiffer-Smadja, infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital and co-author of the study on hydroxychloroquine with Matthieu Mulot, certain clarifications were absolutely essential: “On the case of hydroxychloroquine, we said everything and did not whatever. The threads on Twitter played a very important role, reliable and rigorous information was needed, to explain to the public why it was not used, why it was not effective, “explains the doctor, which totals 60,000 subscribers.
On the other side of the coin for the scientists, with the visibility also came the trolls and the hostile attacks. Because accounts linked to conspiracy and anti-vaccine spheres have also multiplied. “During the epidemic, a large part of our time was devoted to dismantling fake news”, recognizes Franck Clarot. For the radiologist, it was above all a question of convincing people “located in the gray zone”. “Some were convinced that the vaccine was dangerous or that the virus was a conspiracy. For them, there was not much we could do. But for another part, between the two, they had to not switch.
A time from which Matthieu Mulot and Nathan Peiffer-Smadja keep some sequels. After the publication of their study, the two researchers received hundreds of hate messages, insults and death threats: “There was real cyberbullying, it went very far, it was delusional”, explains the biologist, who confirms that legal proceedings are underway.
A community to recreate
And moderation may not improve in the coming months. A few weeks after his arrival at the head of Twitter, Elon Musk, separated from half of its 7,500 employees, including a large part of the moderators, and reinstated en masse banned accounts. This week, the billionaire took a further step by ending his policy against disinformation on the Covid-19. This is enough to worry scientists already confronted with misinformation and hateful content.
Some of them have already called on their subscribers to follow them on other platforms, including Mastodon, which has been very popular in recent weeks. However, there is no question for the experts to completely leave the firm with the blue bird for the new littlecomer. For Matthieu Mulot, the “server” operation of this new social network raises questions. “It works by instances. Each of them sets its rules, accepts or not members, excludes others. It gives closed chat bubbles. In other words, I would keep my network but I would lose part of my audience,” says the biologist. “Twitter is a social platform, affinity but not community, we are not closed to the circles we frequent”, completes Antonin Assié.
For scientists who have spent months building their community, it’s hard to imagine starting from scratch, explains Nathan Peiffer-Smadja: “I have a certain audience on Twitter, it’s been a long process, we’d have to start all over again. from A to Z “. Okay, we’re not visionaries, but we may not be signing Twitter’s death certificate right away.