Scientific Communication in the Social Media Era: A Critical Review of Opportunities, Challenges, and Ethical Dilemmas in Digital Knowledge Dissemination

Social media has radically transformed scientific communication, reshaping how knowledge is produced, disseminated, and debated. While these platforms promise unprecedented reach, democratized access, and real-time engagement, they simultaneously introduce profound challenges to scientific integrity, epistemic authority, and equitable participation. This review critically evaluates the dual impact of social media platforms, including X, Facebook, and TikTok, on scientific dissemination, assessing their role in redefining scholarly communication through rapid preprint sharing, decentralized peer critique, and interdisciplinary networking via hashtag forums, while bridging opportunities with systemic risks.A narrative review was done. Comprehensive searches were conducted across the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar. The paper also highlights systemic risks: the viral spread of misinformation, erosion of quality control in the absence of formal peer review, algorithmic amplification of polarization, and the marginalization of Global South researchers in digital knowledge economies. Using examples from COVID-19 messaging, climate change campaigns, and movements such as #BlackInSTEM, this review highlights how social media simultaneously connects and widens divides among scientists, policymakers, and the public. It also examines ethical challenges, from the shift toward superficial metrics ('altmetrics'), over substantive impact assessments, to the growing institutional demands for researchers to maintain an online presence. In line with that, the review proposes a framework for responsible engagement that includes advocating for science communication training, algorithmic transparency, and policies that reward quality over virality. In conclusion, social media offers benefits for visibility and networking but introduces ethical and epistemic challenges. As the boundaries between scholarly and public discourse blur, this work urges a recalibration of academic incentives, grassroots and community-led change, together with digital infrastructures to harness social media’s potential while safeguarding scientific rigor in the post-truth era.