Universidades y redes sociales: De la divulgación científica a la autopromoción / Universities and social networks: From scientific dissemination to self-promotion

This study examines the use of social networks, specifically Facebook and Twitter, by three leading universities—Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Barcelona—to assess their strategies for scientific dissemination and institutional promotion. Over a two-month period, 1,217 posts were analysed to identify thematic trends, platform-specific uses, and audience engagement levels. Results show that scientific dissemination is the primary content type (41.4%), followed by institutional promotion (27.9%) and student-targeted information (15.5%). Twitter emerges as the preferred platform for external communication and research dissemination, while Facebook is more frequently used for community building and internal communication, achieving higher engagement rates. Multimedia resources, predominantly photographs, accompany the majority of posts, and links largely redirect to the universities’ own press releases and news portals, underscoring a self-promotional approach. While Twitter dominates in publication volume, Facebook posts foster deeper audience interaction. The findings highlight the differentiated roles of platforms in higher education communication strategies and suggest that integrating platform-specific content, enhanced visual resources, and interactive approaches can strengthen institutional visibility and outreach. This research contributes to the understanding of digital communication practices in top-ranked universities and provides a methodological framework for expanding studies to other platforms and institutions.