Press releases as an indicator of qualified social attention of science: the construction of  a database and its analytical potential

Authors

  • Germana Barata Laboratório de Inclusão na Comunicação e na Ciência, Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brasil. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6064-6952
  • Monique Oliveira Laboratório de Inclusão na Comunicação e na Ciência, Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brasil. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7642-0971
  • Thaís Peixoto Laboratório de Inclusão na Comunicação e na Ciência, Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brasil.
  • Carlos Caetano de Almeida Automação e Sistemas para Agricultura 4.0 do Departamento de Recursos Naturais e Proteção Ambiental da Universidade Federal de São Carlos, UFSCar, Araras, SP, Brasil https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3215-5731
  • Alysson Fernandes Mazoni Departamento de Política Científica e Tecnológica, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade de Campinas, Campinas, Brasil https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5265-6894
  • Rodrigo Costas Comesana Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), University of Leiden, Países Baixos PhD Library and Information Science https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7465-6462
  • Juan Pablo Alperin School of Publishing, Simon Fraser University, Canada https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9344-7439

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18617/liinc.v20i1.7046

Keywords:

Science News Agencies, Press Releases, Open Access, Indicator of Social Attention, Natural Language Processing

Abstract

In the last decade, altmetrics has opened space for indicators of attention and social impact of science and for revamping scientometrics. However, the centrality of traditional indicators in scientific production persists. There is a demand for data sources that may provide additional context and that can form the basis for indicators that can meaningfully speak to the interface between science and society. The present work demonstrates the potential of a structured database of press releases to serve as the basis for indicators of social attention in science that can be better contextualized and understood. To this end, press releases from three science news agencies were collected: Eurekalert! (USA), AlphaGalileo (United Kingdom) and Agência BORI (Brazil). These agencies make press releases about scientific articles available on their websites; however, important information such as article title, content, publication date, URL, DOI, are not made available in a structured form. Web scraping techniques were used to collect, organize and analyze this information. The use of web scraping, combined with MySQL database storage proved to be effective for collecting and managing information from these agencies' web pages, enabling comprehensive and contextualized analyses to be carried out. While press releases are not the only way to qualify and understand the social attention of science, the construction of the database and tests carried out have demonstrated that it can be a relevant source for this understanding.

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Published

22/08/2024

Issue

Vol. 20 No. 1 (2024): Critical Metrics: Representativeness, Access, and Democratization of Data

Section

Metrias críticas: representatividade, acesso e democratização dos dados

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Germana Barata , Monique Oliveira, Thaís Peixoto, Carlos Caetano de Almeida, Alysson Fernandes Mazoni, Rodrigo Costas Comesana, Juan Pablo Alperin

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

BARATA, Germana; OLIVEIRA, Monique; PEIXOTO , Thaís; DE ALMEIDA, Carlos Caetano; MAZONI, Alysson Fernandes; COMESANA, Rodrigo Costas; ALPERIN, Juan Pablo. Press releases as an indicator of qualified social attention of science: the construction of  a database and its analytical potential. Liinc em Revista, [S. l.], v. 20, n. 1, p. e7046, 2024. DOI: 10.18617/liinc.v20i1.7046. Disponível em: https://revista.ibict.br/liinc/article/view/7046. Acesso em: 9 may. 2025.