The changing nature of social media and research impact : A comparative analysis of impact case studies in UK Higher Education

Carrigan, Mark and Jordan, Katy and Wyman, Ignacio (2026) The changing nature of social media and research impact : A comparative analysis of impact case studies in UK Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education. ISSN 0307-5079 (In Press)

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Abstract

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a national auditing exercise within UK higher education which periodically evaluates the research outputs of universities within the system. In the last two cycles, this has included case studies which aim to document the societal impact of research taking place within universities. In a previous paper, we analysed the role attributed to social media in the REF 2014 in these case studies, finding a significant tendency to draw on social media in claiming and documenting research impact. In this paper, we return to the REF in 2021 to explore how these trends have developed since our initial study. We find a substantial increase in references to social media within impact case studies, distributed unevenly across disciplinary groupings in a manner which highlights broader transformations in the landscape of our analysis. Our analysis draws attention to the broader interface between higher education and social platforms in which these practices of research evaluation (identifying, reporting, comparing, etc.) are embedded. We suggest that metrics in particular constitute a nexus through which this interface can be explored, enabling us to highlight political and practical challenges in a way that is empirically grounded yet conceptually rich.