Can I Trust and Share it? Enhancing Scientific Content in Social Media Posts with Additional Information

Recent advances on the web have made social media a significant platform for disseminating scientific information. However, posts referencing peer-reviewed research often lack sufficient context for non-experts to assess their credibility. In this study, we investigate how different strategies for enriching social media posts referencing scientific publications affect users’ trust perceptions and sharing behavior. We developed a web-based platform that simulates a social media feed containing posts with links to scientific publications and conducted a user study (N=160), comparing four conditions: a baseline with original posts, and three enriched variants containing (1) metadata from the publication (title, abstract, authors), (2) a direct quote from the publication, and (3) an AI-generated summary of the publication. Our results show that enriched posts were shared more frequently than baseline posts, though trustworthiness ratings did not significantly differ. Furthermore, the AI-generated summaries were perceived as the most understandable form of enrichment. Interaction data showed that users were more likely to engage with the enriched content than with posts containing only links to the publications.