利用社交媒体识别学科新兴主题研究

Identification of Emerging Topics in Science Using Social Media

识别新兴主题是把握学科前沿发展趋势的关键,内涵丰富而类型多样的社交媒体为感知学科即时动态提供了新的途径。首先,探讨了利用社交媒体数据识别学科新兴主题的机制;其次,提出基于替代计量学的监测指标:关注热度与关注强度,提出以两者的回归直线为基准的新兴主题识别方法;最后,以情报学领域为对象开展实证分析。研究发现关注强度指标对于即时性新兴主题具有较高敏感性,而且基于两种指标组合的识别方法能够较好地识别具有增长潜力的学科新兴主题,说明通过社交媒体发现学科新兴趋势是一种可行且有效的方法。

Social media produces meaningful and various types of data, and is a new way to sense and recognize sci- entific dynamics, for which it is crucial to discern emerging topics in scientific frontiers. First, the basic mechanism, namely, distinguishing the emerging topics in science based on social media data, is discussed. Second, based on Altmetrics theory, two indexes, namely, popularity and intensity indexes, are proposed. Moreover, a particular method was proposed for finding emerging topics through a screening benchmark influenced by a regression line related to the two indexes mentioned above. Finally, an empirical analysis, focusing on the scientific field of intelligence, was employed. Moreover, it was found that the provenance intensity index is very sensitive with regard to instantaneously emerging topics, and a topic-discerning solution is proposed based on a portfolio of the two indexes that has the ca- pability to discover emerging scientific trends along with their growth potential. The proposed method is a feasible and effective way to discover emerging scientific topics through social media.