Geonews: Timely Geoscience Educational YouTube Videos about Recent Geologic Events

. Geologic events like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis hurt nearby people and stimulate the curiosity of people farther away, thus providing opportunities to engage the public to be more interested to learn about Earth processes. Geoscientists are increasingly using social media such as Twitter to explain to the public what caused these events and videos provide an especially vivid way to reach this audience. However, it is still unclear how to create, evaluate and disseminate videos on timely natural 10 events to communicate geosciences. To address this challenge and opportunity, we analyzed the impact of 33 short geoscience educational (GeoEd) videos that we created and posted on YouTube between 2018 and 2020. These include 12 videos on timely geologic events (Geonews videos) and 21 videos that are not specially about timely geologic topics (General GeoEd videos), all of which were similarly advertised and have similar lengths. By comparing the performance of the Geonews and General GeoEd videos, we 15 conclude: 1) The YouTube audience is consistently interested in Geonews videos but some General GeoEd videos are more popular; 2) Geonews videos may trigger more meaningful dialogues than General GeoEd videos, especially for local audiences; and 3) The ‘golden period’ of Geonews videos engaging YouTube audiences is within 3 weeks after posting. 4) The Geonews audience tends to be younger and more diverse than the General GeoEd video audience. 5) Creating Geonews videos can be a promising strategy for 20 geoscientists to engage public audiences on YouTube-like social media. discussing the science behind such events soon after they occur on message-based social media, such as Twitter, can engage the public who want to learn more (Rosenbaum and Culshaw, 2003; Drake et al., 2013; Shiffman, 2017; Takahashi et al., 2015; Lacassin et al., 2020). However, few studies have tested if the same strategy can also be successfully applied to videos posted on YouTube (Schafer, 2012). This work explores 2 questions: First, would videos posted on 30 YouTube about Earth events and processes also stimulate the public to be more interested in these? Second, are YouTube users more interested in timely events-based geoscience educational videos (herein referred as to ‘GeoEd videos’) relative to videos that are unrelated to recent events in the news? year and years performance. Second, we fact that our design of General GeoEd videos are never similar to traditional lecture-type. Although the reason is unclear, the evidence shows that, compared to General GeoEd videos, the view percentage of Geonews videos are more negatively correlated to video length.


Introduction
Effectively communicating science to the public is challenging (Allum et al., 2008;Dyer, 2018) but news about natural hazard events like earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions attracts people's attention and create opportunities for two-ways dialogues about geosciences (Falk and Dierking, 2010;Tong, 2013; 25 Illingworth et al., 2018). Some research suggests that discussing the science behind such events soon after they occur on message-based social media, such as Twitter, can engage the public who want to learn more (Rosenbaum and Culshaw, 2003;Drake et al., 2013;Shiffman, 2017;Takahashi et al., 2015;Lacassin et al., 2020). However, few studies have tested if the same strategy can also be successfully applied to videos posted on YouTube (Schafer, 2012). This work explores 2 questions: First, would videos posted on 30 YouTube about Earth events and processes also stimulate the public to be more interested in these? Second, are YouTube users more interested in timely events-based geoscience educational videos (herein referred as to 'GeoEd videos') relative to videos that are unrelated to recent events in the news? https://doi.org/10.5194/gc -38 Preprint. Discussion started: 16 November 2021 2021. CC BY 4.0 License.
Social science provides the fundamental theories of how to effectively communicate geoscience to the public (Nisbet et al., 2010;Illingworth et al., 2015). With more and more evidence against the early one-35 way expert-to-public knowledge-transfer model (known as 'information deficit model'), researchers increasingly suggest that it is important to value 'lay local' knowledge to stimulate dialogues and better communicate science to the public (Irwin and Michael, 2003;Allum et al., 2008;Illingworth et al., 2015;Stewart and Lewis, 2017;Illingworth, 2017). Also, although meta-analysis on overall public knowledge and attitude about science shows a weak positive relationship, results varied for different subjects (Allum et 40 al., 2008). Geoscience has three unique features regarding communicating with public. First, understanding how complex Earth systems operate is complicated because many Earth processes cannot be directly observed: They occur deep in the Earth and/or over unimaginably long timescales (Singer et al., 2012;Willis et al., 2021;Mosher and Keane, 2021). Dealing with geoscientific information can easily cause a high cognitive load (Arthur, 2018). Therefore, communicating geoscience to the public should strive to 45 reduce cognitive load. Secondly, different geoscience aspects are more relevant to some places than others (King, 2008), for example Californians are more interested in earthquakes than hurricanes and Floridians are more interested in hurricanes than earthquakes. Different places also have different communities sharing local cultures and beliefs (Michael, 2009), so that taking advantage of local context and geological events is especially important for public engagement (Takahashi et al., 2015;Semken et al., 2017). Thirdly, 50 geoscience topics often concern dynamic and complex systems, involving much uncertainty and chaos (Manduca and Kastens, 2012;Stillings, 2012). This makes visual storytelling, multimedia and two-ways conversations (between the public and experts) even more important (Nisbet et al., 2010;Mosher et al., 2014;Urban and Falvo, 2016;Mosher and Keane, 2021). Lastly, explaining Earth science concepts also requires understanding different components of an Earth system and how these interact (Bobek and 55 Tversky, 2016). The challenge of explaining this complexity encourages more geoscientists to explore using social media for communicating geosciences to the public. We need to learn more about how to best use different types of social media to communicate geoscience issues to them (Schäfer, 2012;Dunn, 2013;Illingworth et al., 2018).
Videos have special advantages for communicating geoscience to the public and beginning students 60 compared to words alone or words and static figures combined (Nisbet et al., 2010;Wiggen and McDonnell, 2017;Littrell et al., 2020). Most difficulties of communicating geoscience mentioned above can be overcome with videos and animations (Wijnker et al., 2019;Ploetzner et al., 2020) and by integrating psychological designs into repeatable educational units (Goldberg et al., 2019;Greussing et al., 2020;Mayer, 2021). Moreover, research has shown that YouTube videos can involve large numbers of Therefore, it is valuable to understand if and how timely, short videos about geologic events in the news 70 posted on YouTube can reach the public and trigger meaningful dialogue.
In this study, we analyzed the performance of 33 GeoEd videos (all less than 6 mins with elaborated editing) that we posted on YouTube in 2018 and 2020, paying attention to who was interested in these and for how long as well as what dialogue occurred in the comments. These include 12 timely videos about natural events in the news ('Geonews videos') and 21 GeoEd videos about processes that are not time-75 sensitive because they are not about something that just happened ('General GeoEd videos'). Geonews videos are mostly published about 2 weeks after the event occurred. General GeoEd videos aims to explain some geological concepts or phenomenon and do not utilize timely events to engage the audiences; These are created with less urgency and take longer to make. By comparing the performance of Geonews and General GeoEd videos, we explore the advantages and limitations of the Geonews format. Using data from 80 YouTube Analytics and Comments, we can evaluate audience engagement with these two types of videos that we made and posted in 2018 and 2020 (2019 was excluded because no Geonews videos were posted in 2019).
This study (1) introduces how we design Geonews videos; (2) compares the performance and audience features of Geonews and General GeoEd videos on YouTube; and (3) explores how and why Geonews 85 videos engages a different group of viewers. Our results indicate that using Geonews-like videos to explain what, where, and why geologic events happen is a useful strategy for engaging diverse YouTube users.

Geologic Events and Geoscientific Outreach
Using geologic events to interest and teach people has been long discussed (Vitek and Berta, 1982). Most research about communicating natural hazards to the public focuses on preparing for potential disasters, 90 emphasizing what people should do during a geologic disaster and how to be resilient afterwards (Rosenbaum and Culshaw, 2003;Forster and Freeborough, 2006;Ickert and Stewart, 2016;Kelly and Ronan, 2018). With the development of the internet, computers and smartphones, social media is increasingly acknowledged as a key tool for the communication and education activities of emergency agencies. More and more geoscientists highlight the importance and effectiveness of using these new tools 95 to reach and teach the public and beginning students after a natural hazard event happens (Bartel and Bohon, 2019;Lacassin, et al., 2020). Most studies document effective and ineffective uses of social media in crises, focusing on topics such as fast communication, accuracy, credibility, uncertainty, and communicating broadly (Freberg et al., 2013). Using social media as disaster resilience communication tools in addition to traditional engagement and education activities is well studied (Dufty, 2011;Veil et al., 100 2011;Freberg and Palenchar, 2013;Lundgren and McMakin, 2013).
The need to enhance public perception of geology and natural hazards, educate them about the Earth, and recruit geoscience students continues to increase (Rosenbaum and Culshaw, 2003). As a result, geoscientists increasingly apply an event-based method in a cultural context to discuss geologic events and natural hazards on social media (Fallou and Bossu, 2019). There are several popular social media platforms 105 that are available but probably the most studied and used is Twitter. Considering the need to respond as fast as possible to disasters, this is understandable. Twitter messages are short and very interactive. Twitter allows geoscientists to provide useful information almost immediately after an event (Hicks, 2019). Writing text and posting "point-and-click" photos and camera-recordings of an event is easier and faster than creating GeoEd videos which must provide context, consider educational effects, and require more time.

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Researchers have used a case-based and descriptive way to study the effects of using Twitter to communicate to the public about geologic events, showing that Twitter can gain the attention and inform the public quickly (Rosenbaum and Culshaw, 2003;Lomax et al., 2015). These studies find that such events allow geoscientists to communicate pertinent scientific information to the public but many aspects are not well explained by Twitter and similar social media (Mossoux et al., 2016;Lacassin et al., 2020).

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The need for jargon-free explanation with coordinated graphical elements is not met with these social media platforms. These shortcomings can be overcome by making short videos that provide context and visual clues with embedded educational designs and input from more than one person (including experts).
Such videos, if available soon after the event, can powerfully complement "on the spot" Twitter and similar social media posts. Well-crafted, short videos about a newsworthy event can be engaging and can possibly 120 better manage cognitive load of the public than can texts, pictures, or unedited videos without educational considerations. In addition, videos can be embedded into websites and other social media like Facebook and Twitter (Moloney and Unger, 2014).
Edited videos play an increasingly important role in informal education and are popular worldwide (Thomson et al., 2014;Welbourne and Grant, 2015;Wijnker et al., 2019;Vega and Robb, 2019). YouTube 125 is the main platform for these and has about two billion users every month (Welbourne and Grant, 2015;YouTube, 2021). This audience uses YouTube videos for much more than entertainment; about half of YouTube adult use is for learning (Smith et al. 2018;Allgaier, 2020). YouTube videos can help communicate Earth science to the public because this is not easy (Dyer, 2018). Earth science concepts have many elements that are unfamiliar: They occur in strange lands or under the sea, and involve words and 130 concepts that are abstract, complex, and confusing (Greussing et al., 2020;Stern et al., 2020). Well-crafted GeoEd videos are especially effective for revealing the meaning of unfamiliar words to the public and explaining abstract and complex geoscience concepts to them (e.g. Banchero et al., 2021;Schmidt-McCormack et al., 2017;Akinbadewa and Sofowora, 2020;Stern et al., 2017 andTayne et al, 2021;Wang et al., submitted). However, despite evidence of the power of this approach, there is little known 135 about the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing YouTube videos about recent geologic events to reach and teach (Nisbet et al., 2010;Binder, 2012;Schäfer, 2012;Akahashi et al., 2015). Few have studied the potential of using videos on the internet to explain recent geological events and natural hazards as a way to engage the much larger group of people who do not directly suffer from the event. Also, it is unclear if https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2021-38 Preprint. Discussion started: 16 November 2021 c Author(s) 2021. CC BY 4.0 License. those who are impacted by an event or know someone directly impacted are better engaged by Geonews-140 like videos about it.

Geonews Videos
All UTD Geonews videos are about 3 to 5 mins long and created by geoscience students in the Geoscience  Geonews video within about 2 weeks after we begin work.
From our experience, Geonews videos are easier to make than General GeoEd videos for three reasons: (1) The design is more standardized.
(2) Because the event just happened, a lot of relevant information (especially visual materials) is easy to find. It is easier to find relevant materials by keyword search, and easier to find experts to consult.

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(3) Because the video concerns a single event, it is easier to pull together a story and write the narrative.

Methods and Materials
To better understand how focusing on timely natural hazard elements affects audience engagement with 180 short videos, we compared Geonews videos with other short GeoEd videos we made that have a different focus (General GeoEd videos). We use General GeoEd videos as a control to study the effects of Geonews videos. By comparing the performance of Geonews and General GeoEd videos that we created and posted on YouTube in 2018 and 2020, we isolate the effects of timely reporting on natural hazards in engaging the audience. We exclude 2019 GeoEd videos because no Geonews videos were made that year (UTD GSS 185 activities depend heavily on UTD student interest and availability). The two types of videos were posted in the same years, eliminating engagement differences caused by continuously growing numbers of subscribers to the UTD GSS channel and our improving video-making skills. In 2018 and 2020, a total of 33 short GeoEd videos were posted on YouTube, including 12 Geonews videos (Table 2A) and 21 General GeoEd videos (Table 2B). In 2018, we posted 4 Geonews and 6 General GeoEd videos, increasing to 8

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Geonews and 14 General GeoEd videos in 2020. The topics were chosen based on educational need, event impact, and UTD GSS team interest and availability. Some General GeoEd videos were made as undergraduate class projects. All the videos were reviewed and directed by Prof. Stern and other content experts to ensure accuracy.
All videos followed a similar video-making philosophy and workflow to ensure quality, artistic skills, 195 project duration and dissemination strategies. The average length of the 12 Geonews videos is 3min 41sec (std. dev. = 1min 18sec) and that of the 21 General GeoEd videos is 3min 55sec (std. dev. = 1min 13sec).
The range of lengths of Geonews and General GeoEd videos are also similar (from ~2min 30secs to ~5min). Both Geonews and General GeoEd videos were disseminated similarly. These similarities ensure the differences in audience response mostly reflect differences in timeliness: for Geonews videos, a focus 200 on something that just happened, whereas for General GeoEd videos, there was no such focus.
We examined six factors available from YouTube statistics and comments to assess the nature of the audience and its engagement for the two groups of videos (

Results
To analyze the six selected metrics, we first summarized the number of views of individual Geonews and General GeoEd videos ( compared the average views of both groups in the first 15 weeks after their release (Fig. 2B). Next, we 230 compared the average viewed percentage of Geonews videos and General GeoEd videos over their lifetimes (Fig. 2C). Third, we summarized the differences of viewer age and gender for each group (Fig. 3 A and B). The ratio of like/dislike is reported in the text below. Lastly, we compared comments for both groups of videos (Fig. 4). These metrics are as of Oct. 3, 2021.
There are totally about 50,000 views of 12 Geonews video and ~110,000 views of 21 General GeoEd respectively. There are three General GeoEd videos with 15,000 to 25,000 views respectively, which strongly influences the group mean and standard deviation (Table 2 and Fig. 2A). This difference is remarkable! In addition to analyzing views, we compared the average length of views of both groups on YouTube (Fig.   260 2C). The average percentage viewed of Geonews video is 62±4%, which is slightly longer and more stable than that of General GeoEd videos (mean=58±8%). The maximum average percentage viewed of individual Geonews and General GeoEd videos is 68% and 76.5% respectively, and the minima are 57% and 48%. The median average percentage viewed of Geonews videos is 61%, slightly higher than that of General GeoEd videos (55%).

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Furthermore, to better understand the features of YouTube audiences of Geonews and General GeoEd videos, we studied viewer age and gender metrics ( Fig. 3A and 3B  Lastly, we summarized the comments (N=222) of Geonews and General GeoEd videos into 5 classes (Fig.   4): Meaningful dialogue, positive feedback, negative emotions, distrust, and other comments. From the past research of public understanding of science as well as learning engagement (Irwin and Michael, 2003;Michael, 2009;Dunn, 2013;Carmichael et al., 2018;Dubovi and Tabak, 295 2020), meaningful dialogue can involve personal experiences and observations (e.g. I live here and see.., I felt three quakes at home now I know why.., etc.), actively sharing relevant information, requesting more information (e.g. references or more videos on relevant topics), giving advice for improvement (e.g. comments on video or audio quality; correcting pronunciations or clarify some terms), arguing about science, requesting to reuse videos for educational purposes. Positive feedback includes gratitude and 300 applause for the video design. (Allum, 2008;Dubovi and Tabak, 2020 'Are there volcanoes in Texas?' has 37 comments.). We found that more meaningful dialogues happened in response to Geonews videos than to General GeoEd videos (Fig. 4). Also, people who leave their comments under Geonews videos tend to share more about their personal experience and feelings, share

Discussion
To understand if and how timely natural hazard videos are useful for engaging YouTube viewers to learn more about Earth processes and communicate with geoscientists, we analyzed and compared six metrics of Geonews and General GeoEd videos that we made and posted in 2018 and 2020. The results show that Geonews videos more consistently gain views compared to General GeoEd videos, which are much more 320 variably attractive to the YouTube audience (Fig 2 and 3). In addition, Geonews videos have a slightly higher ratio of like/dislike than General GeoEd videos. These results indicate that the YouTube audience is interested in Geonews and the way it explains Earth processes. Geonews videos attracted audience more steadily than General GeoEd videos, but some General GeoEd topics can be much more popular than Geonews videos. These data also indicate that Geonews videos may be useful in engaging younger and 325 more diverse YouTube audiences than General GeoEd video, however, the potential of growth of views of the popular General GeoEd videos in the long-term is much higher than the Geonews videos (Fig 3).
One result that is very clear is that most views of Geonews videos happen in the first few weeks after the event ( Figure 2B). About 82% of total views of Geonews videos occur within the first 3 weeks after release on YouTube, remarkably different from General GeoEd videos (12% of "lifetime" views in first 3 weeks).

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There is a big drop of views in Geonews videos after the initial 3 weeks; viewers are less likely to watch them after the 'golden period'. This may be related to audience interest but also can be influenced by the design of search engine or recommendation algorithm of YouTube. This needs further work to confirm.
Regardless of the reasons, our data shows that Geonews videos engage the YouTube audiences less after the first three weeks. At present, our team needs about 2 weeks (4-18 days; mean = 13.5 days) to create a 335 Geonews video (Table 2A). No significant relationship between release speed and views is found (R = 0.12, with R 2 =0.015), indicating release speed is not the most important factor for Geonews video popularity. In spite of this, considering the timely nature of Geonews videos, faster release is recommended. This will be difficult to accomplish in an academic institution because of other obligations and little funding but could be accomplished with additional funding or at a government agency, scientific 340 society, or private news organization.
The data shows that Geonews videos reach younger and more diverse audiences, at least in terms of gender, than do General GeoEd videos (Fig. 3). An important demographic group that Geonews engaged better are YouTube users in the 25 to 44 years age old range. The more balanced gender and age distribution that Geonews videos attract reflects its potential to reach a younger and more diverse audience. It is hard to 345 determine why higher percentage of younger and female users were reached by Geonews videos than the General GeoEd videos. We suspect it may be relevant to how different ages of people access to news.
Younger generations may use YouTube as their major source to watch news. To find the answer, further research is required.
In addition, our analysis of comments shows that meaningful dialogue occurred more often with Geonews 350 videos (63%) than with General GeoEd videos (52%) (Fig. 4). More comments on Geonews videos explore feelings, thoughts and knowledge about the event, indicating deeper engagement (Dunn, 2013;Carmichael et al., 2018;Dubovi and Tabak, 2020;Dubovi and Tabak, 2020). From the analysis of comments, we tentatively conclude that people living in the region affected by the event are most engaged. A possible explain for this may be related to the difference between the "Publics-in-

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General" and "Publics-in-Particular" (Michael, 2009) as well as the high level of their 'lay local' knowledge (Allum et al., 2008). Research has found that when the public tries to understand science, they also regard themselves as one of these "publics" (Irwin and Michael, 2003;Lacchia et al., 2020). and qualitative ways to assess YouTube video design elements, the results provide useful insights into the engagement potential of natural hazard events in the news as an important element of GeoEd videos.
Furthermore, we know that both Geonews and General GeoEd videos are used in some classrooms from anecdotal feedback from K-12 teachers in STAT CAST and mini-CAST meetings as well as from YouTube 380 comments and comments from colleagues. We did not conduct a formal survey to explore the reasons why they used the videos in their classrooms but it may be because the videos provide supplementary and timely information for especially undergraduate geoscience classes. We are unable to distinguish views in formal education from public views. This creates an uncertainty, that is, the extent to which both groups of videos are viewed in the classroom by geoscience classes and at home by geoscientists vs. by the general public.

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Furthermore, many General GeoEd videos are designed for students and teaching purposes, whereas Geonews videos are designed with non-geoscientists in mind (mostly for science outreach and improving public understanding of geosciences). We do not know how to resolve this uncertainty via YouTube analysis, surveying in comments rarely gave good responses.
Another limitation concerns the emotional impact of Geonews videos. Timely information about hazards 390 may trigger fear, anger, distrust and other negative attitudes and feelings. This is seen in about 2% of the YouTube comments. Video makers may need to use more time to reply to comments and share more information in an effort to respond to negative comments (Takahashi et al., 2015;Jones, 2020;Lacassin et al., 2020). It may be useful to share some resilience knowledge (Van Loon et al., 2020) or hazard simulation games (e.g. Kerlow et al., 2020;Hawthorn et al., 2021) that can better prepare them in a casual 395 environment.
We are very encouraged by these results. Geonews videos are easier to create than General GeoEd videos.
Greater ease of creation reflects more standardized video design that takes advantage of plentiful visual materials and scientific information available online and digests these for the public and beginning students. The scope of Geonews videos is easily defined and restricted, therefore, the narrative is easier to 400 create and review. The richness of freely available online visual materials about the events also ease the production process. In contrast, because General GeoEd videos are about a very broad range of topics, creating these follows no standardized design and there is no incentive for keeping them short and posting them quickly, these narratives take longer to research and write with more discussion items that need to be considered. As a result, the production time for General GeoEd videos is invariably longer than for

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Geonews videos (typically not in days or weeks).

Implications about Universal Video Design
An interesting question is the optimum length of Geonews videos; It seems shorter Geonews videos have higher viewer percentage than longer ones. We tested for both video groups if there is any relationship between various parameters including gender, age, video length, lifetime views, and average percentage 410 viewed. The results reveal a possible relationship between video length and average percentage viewed, with a strong negative relationship between video length and percentage viewed for Geonews videos (R = -.72 with R 2 =~0.5, N=12) ( Figure 5). In contrast, the correlation coefficient of General GeoEd videos is also negative but much weaker (R = -.32 with R 2 =~0.1, N=21). Tao et al (2014) 's work shows that General GeoEd type videos (esp. lecture videos) also follows the rule that shorter videos (less than 6 minutes, 415 especially less than 3 minutes) have a larger watch percentage. (However, the evidence for Geonews videos does match their suggestion: 'shorter videos are more engaging'. This mismatch can reflect the fact that our design of General GeoEd videos are never similar to traditional lecture-type. Although the reason is unclear, the evidence shows that, compared to General GeoEd videos, the view percentage of Geonews videos are more negatively correlated to video length.

Conclusions
Timely videos about Earth events in the news are especially useful for engaging the public and show 425 promise for reaching younger and more diverse audiences. Although Geonews videos might have less total views than some popular General GeoEd videos, Geonews videos are especially good at starting meaningful dialogue and engage YouTube audiences for several weeks after the event happens. Moreover, considering the production efficiency compared to other GeoEd videos, engaging audiences with Geonews videos on YouTube is a very promising strategy. Lastly, our promising findings about Geonews videos may 430 encourage other types of timely event-based educational videos as well. Results of this research suggests that short, timely videos about natural hazards and events especially engage people connected with the event where it occurs, motivating them to learn and discuss about the geoscience behind these events.
Geoscientists can create YouTube Geonews videos to partially fulfill their needs of delivering scientific information, but taking time to reply to YouTube comments could also be important for meaningfully 435 communicating topical geoscience to the public (just like some scientists do with Twitter, e.g. Lacassin et al., 2020).