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Science News engagement report

@ScienceNews - 5.3M followers on X

Measured over 189 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 31, 2026.

Engagement

Bottom quarter for its size
Per follower
0.001%
of 5.3M followers
Per impression
0.122%
25K views on a typical post
Reach
0.46%
of its followers see a post
Typical post
30
interactions (median)
Saved
0.012%
3 bookmarks on a typical post
Posting rate
6.3/day
active 60% of days
Peak time
15:00 UTC
Saturday

A typical post picks up 30 interactions against 5.3M followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 189 original posts, its engagement rate beats 15% of 3,716 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 25K times each, and 0.122% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.461% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 6.3 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 60% of days. Most posts go out around 15:00 UTC, and Saturday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 189 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 9.5K interactions, about 316x its own typical post.

Measured over 189 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 31, 2026.

Compared with accounts its own size

Science News's engagement rate beats 15% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,716 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 10 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.

On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 11% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.

Where this sits in the catalog

At 0.001%, Science News sits below the 10th percentile of the 36,134 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.012%.

p100.002%
p250.012%
p50 (median)0.08%
p750.431%
p902.11%
p99161.6%
Engagement rate as a share of followers, across the 36,134 accounts we have scanned enough to measure. The axis is logarithmic, because the top and bottom of this population are about 107,713 times apart and a linear axis would flatten everything below the median into a single point.
Show the percentile table
Engagement rate percentiles
PercentileEngagement rate
10th percentile0.002%
25th percentile0.012%
50th percentile0.08%
75th percentile0.431%
90th percentile2.11%
99th percentile161.6%

This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built

Posting timing

This account posts most often around 15:00 UTC, and Saturday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.

Engagement by hour posted, UTCTwenty-four bars, one per UTC hour. Each bar shows how posts published in that hour compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest hour: 15:00 UTC.
0003060912151821
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 6%Busiest hour: 15:00 UTC
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
Engagement by hour posted, UTC
Hour (UTC)Vs author medianPosts
00:00 UTC-1%50K
01:00 UTC-2%51K
02:00 UTC-4%49K
03:00 UTC-4%53K
04:00 UTC-6%42K
05:00 UTC-4%41K
06:00 UTC-4%47K
07:00 UTC-5%51K
08:00 UTC-4%60K
09:00 UTC-3%68K
10:00 UTC-2%71K
11:00 UTC-3%77K
12:00 UTC-2%85K
13:00 UTC-2%93K
14:00 UTC-3%96K
15:00 UTC-2%99K
16:00 UTC-3%96K
17:00 UTC-2%89K
18:00 UTC-2%83K
19:00 UTC-2%79K
20:00 UTC-1%73K
21:00 UTC-1%65K
22:00 UTC-1%57K
23:00 UTC-2%51K
Engagement by day of weekSeven bars, one per weekday, Sunday first. Each bar shows how posts published on that day compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest day: Saturday.
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 5%Busiest day: Saturday
Show engagement by day of week as a table
Engagement by day of week
DayVs author medianPosts
Sunday+4%228K
Monday0%281K
Tuesday-2%270K
Wednesday-1%249K
Thursday-2%242K
Friday-3%250K
Saturday+3%225K
See what moves engagement across the whole catalogWhat counts as a good engagement rate at this size

Best tweets

  • Sep 1, 2022316x their median

    science

    7.4K1.1K95573View on X
  • Aug 20, 202682x their median

    A new study suggests that the COVID-19 vaccine might be somehow firing up the immune system’s cancer-fighting powers. https://t.co/zJgd3o0Eji

    1.8K49615267193K viewsView on X
  • Aug 21, 202642x their median

    Brain cancer patients who got a COVID-19 vaccine in the months before surgery lived longer than unvaccinated patients. Scientists observed this link only for COVID-19 vaccines, not vaccines for flu, pneumonia or shingles. https://t.co/zJgd3o0Eji

    873296771969K viewsView on X
  • Aug 19, 20267.4x their median

    A recent study adds to existing evidence that mRNA vaccines can prolong survival in cancer patients. https://t.co/zJgd3o0Eji

    165506131K viewsView on X
  • Aug 20, 20266.4x their median

    The Epstein-Barr virus has taken a huge toll on global health. Understanding how it works could offer ways to combat multiple sclerosis, cancer and more. https://t.co/ARNG7oQoWu

    137418547K viewsView on X
  • Aug 29, 20264.6x their median

    The telescope will observe 100 billion stars, billions of galaxies, 100,000 exoplanets, 80,000 stellar explosions and hundreds of black holes. https://t.co/Kp9S1WXkoh

    105247335K viewsView on X
  • Aug 18, 20264.6x their median

    The COVID-19 vaccine may give brain cancer patients a bonus shot at survival. https://t.co/zJgd3o0Eji

    962711547K viewsView on X
  • Aug 27, 20263.3x their median

    The personalized mRNA shot teaches the body to attack a patient’s specific melanoma cells. https://t.co/dtc0xPulLj

    76156153K viewsView on X
  • Aug 22, 20263.2x their median

    The American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend leucovorin for autism because the evidence supporting its use for treatment is insufficient. https://t.co/Pc2VKQtprA

    591917032K viewsView on X
  • Aug 21, 20263.1x their median

    Why do fangs, claws, stingers and cactus spines look so different when they all do similar jobs? A new analysis of nature’s piercing tools finds there’s more than one way to build a good one. https://t.co/TC6BIAFVGg

    542614028K viewsView on X

Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.

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Reading these numbers

A typical post picks up 30 interactions against 5.3M followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 189 original posts, its engagement rate beats 15% of 3,716 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 25K times each, and 0.122% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.461% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 6.3 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 60% of days. Most posts go out around 15:00 UTC, and Saturday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 189 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 9.5K interactions, about 316x its own typical post.

What is Science News's engagement rate on X?
Science News (@ScienceNews) has an engagement rate of 0.001%, based on the median interactions across 189 original posts from the last 30 days against 5,338,676 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
Is that a good engagement rate?
At 0.001%, Science News sits below the 10th percentile of the 36,134 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
Does @ScienceNews have real engagement?
Its engagement rate beats 15% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,716 accounts), which puts it in the bottom quarter for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
When does @ScienceNews post?
Most posts go out around 15:00 UTC, and Saturday is its busiest day, at roughly 6.3 posts per day across the measured window.

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