What Makes You Tick? Using Machine Learning to Study Social Media Engagement

The first paper I wrote for my PhD just got published! I started my PhD with the goal of critically examining the process and outcomes of social media science communication. Despite the flurry of activities in this domain and the huge amount of resources poured into digital public engagement activities, nobody (and I mean nobody) has ever paused to think, are we making any real change? Is the public more engaged with science and more scientifically literate than say, 10 years ago when Facebook and Twitter weren't the media giants they are today? Given my engineering background, I decided to use the method I know best to approach the problem.