The World Health Organization has not only signaled the health risks of COVID-19, but also labeled the situation as infodemic, due to the amount of information, true and false, circulating around this topic. Research shows that, in social media, falsehood is shared far more than evidence-based information. However, there is less research analyzing the circulation of false and evidence-based information during health emergencies. Thus, the present study aims at shedding new light on the type of tweets that circulated on Twitter around the COVID-19 outbreak for two days, in order to analyze how false and true information was shared. To that end, 1000 tweets have been analyzed. Results show that false information is tweeted more but retweeted less than science-based evidence or fact-checking tweets, while science-based evidence and fact-checking tweets capture more engagement than mere facts. These findings bring relevant insights to inform public health policies.

One of the challenges today is to face fake news (false information) in health due to its potential impact on people’s lives. This article contributes to a new application of social impact in social media (SISM) methodology. This study focuses on the social impact of the research to identify what type of health information is false and what type of information is evidence of the social impact shared in social media. The analysis of social media includes Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. This analysis contributes to identifying how interactions in these forms of social media depend on the type of information shared. The results indicate that messages focused on fake health information are mostly aggressive, those based on evidence of social impact are respectful and transformative, and finally, deliberation contexts promoted in social media overcome false information about health. These results contribute to advancing knowledge in overcoming fake health-related news shared in social media.

The social impact of research has usually been analysed through the scientific outcomes produced under the auspices of the research. The growth of scholarly content in social media and the use of altmetrics by researchers to track their work facilitate the advancement in evaluating the impact of research. However, there is a gap in the identification of evidence of the social impact in terms of what citizens are sharing on their social media platforms. This article applies a social impact in social media methodology (SISM) to identify quantitative and qualitative evidence of the potential or real social impact of research shared on social media, specifically on Twitter and Facebook. We define the social impact coverage ratio (SICOR) to identify the percentage of tweets and Facebook posts providing information about potential or actual social impact in relation to the total amount of social media data found related to specific research projects. We selected 10 projects in different fields of knowledge to calculate the SICOR, and the results indicate that 0.43% of the tweets and Facebook posts collected provide linkages with information about social impact. However, our analysis indicates that some projects have a high percentage (4.98%) and others have no evidence of social impact shared in social media. Examples of quantitative and qualitative evidence of social impact are provided to illustrate these results. A general finding is that novel evidences of social impact of research can be found in social media, becoming relevant platforms for scientists to spread quantitative and qualitative evidence of social impact in social media to capture the interest of citizens. Thus, social media users are showed to be intermediaries making visible and assessing evidence of social impact.

Social work during the COVID-19 crisis has faced one of the most challenging times to cover urgent social needs in an uncertain scenario. This study analyzes the immediate responses in social work to vulnerable groups in the first 15 days of the pandemic in Barcelona, one of the most affected areas worldwide by COVID-19. The sample for this qualitative study includes 23 semi-structured interviews with social workers from different fields of intervention, from general approaches (primary care) to specific ones (health, ageing, homeless, and justice). The data analysis followed the communicative methodology, including transformative and exclusionary dimensions, and the analytical categories focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social services users, the organizational responses of social workers, and the impact of the interventions to cover urgent social needs of attendees. The interventions have been accompanied by an improvement in communication channels with vulnerable groups, ensuring an understanding of the situation of families and individuals, and covering the most urgent social needs. The study shows the key role of social workers from diverse social attention tools and their contribution to the sustainability of social services with a long-term impact.

Recent advancements in the social impact assessment of science have shown the diverse methodologies being developed to monitor and evaluate the improvements for society as a result of research. These assessment methods include indicators to gather both quantitative and qualitative evidence of the social impact of science achieved in the short, medium, and long terms. In psychology, the impact of research has been mainly analyzed in relation to scientific publications in journals, but less is known about the methods for the social impact assessment of psychological research. Impact assessment in the domains of educational psychology and organizational psychology presents synergies with bottom-up approaches that include the voices of citizens and stakeholders in their analyses. Along these lines, the communicative methodology (CM) emerges as a methodology useful for the communicative evaluation of the social impact of research. Although the CM has widely demonstrated social impact in the social sciences, less is known about how it has been used and the impact achieved in psychological research. This article unpacks how to achieve social impact in psychology through the CM. In particular, it focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of the CM, the postulates linked to psychological research and some key actions for the implementation of the CM in relation to the design of Advisory Committees, working groups, and plenary meetings in research. Furthermore, it shows how the CM has been implemented in illustrative cases in psychological research. The article finishes with a conclusion and recommendations to further explore the ways in which the CM enables the social impact of research in psychology.

Student’s learning is the result of a large number of interactions in all areas. Consequently, with an increasing number of intercultural students, we need to bring to the classrooms successful educational actions that enhance interactions and that have an impact on improving education. Based on the CONEXITO project, this article shows how interactive groups (IGs) have contributed to increase not only the educational success of native students but also the success of immigrant students in different schools of Spain, for which IGs have particular educational outcomes. The communicative qualitative data presents evidence that, especially focusing on them, IGs increase instrumental learning and facilitate the bonds of solidarity and mutual help.