This study investigates the types of humor embedded in funny scientific posts on social media and their effects on engagement. We mapped the landscape of such posts on Twitter and Instagram through content analysis of their message attributes. Regression analyses were then conducted to examine how different humor types, communicative functions, and visual attributes were associated with liking, retweeting, and commenting. On Twitter, wordplay and satire were found to be positively related to posts’ engagement levels, while anthropomorphic humor was negatively associated with the presence of comments. On Instagram, humor had no relation to engagement.

这项研究调查了社交媒体上有趣的科学帖子中嵌入的幽默类型及其对参与度的影响。我们通过对其消息属性的内容分析来绘制 Twitter 和 Instagram 上此类帖子的格局。然后进行回归分析以检查不同的幽默类型、交流功能和视觉属性如何与喜欢、转发和评论相关联。在 Twitter 上，文字游戏和讽刺与帖子的参与度呈正相关，而拟人化幽默与评论的存在呈负相关。在 Instagram 上，幽默与参与度无关。