Analyzing the Discourses of Science Statistics in the Public Sphere: A Qualitative Study of Quantitative Data

The transmission of scientific data from academia to the public sphere has become increasingly complicated with the accessibility of information online and the rise of social issues connected to scientific research findings. There exists an opportunity to explore statistical data representations in the public sphere on Twitter to understand the function of science statistics and whether they assist in conveying accurate information. Gathering statistics from seminal scientific research articles relating to health science, vaccines, and climate change, the current study explores how statistics are represented by public actors, and to compare those representations between each set of statistics. This discourse analysis investigates the following: the effectiveness of statistics as they are used in different spheres of knowledge; any differences in the use of statistics in the three associated arguments; and any connections between the discussion of implications in the original research articles and how the statistics are interpreted online.