University to give up X (formerly Twitter) at the end of January

University Communications has decided to stop communicating on the University’s main accounts (University of Helsinki account, faculty accounts and Think Corner account) on the social media platform X (previously Twitter) as of 1 February 2025.

The coverage of the University’s X accounts has long been in decline, with visibility primarily secured through sponsored posts.

“X no longer serves the purpose for which we have used it: disseminating the University’s communications content to our desired target groups. On LinkedIn, for instance, our publications are currently gaining considerably more visibility,” says Director of Communications Taina Kyllönen.

Another reason for abandoning X is the transformation of its conversational culture.

“We don’t want to promote a conflict-seeking conversational culture, nor do we wish to expose our researchers to offensive behaviour through our own posts,” says Kyllönen.

Communications will continue in other social media channels, and new channels will also be trialled. An account has been created for the University of Helsinki on the BlueSky platform to test its effectiveness.

Communications staff actively monitor the development of various social media channels. Recently, Facebook has by far brought the most visibility to scholarly content, the sharing of which is also being developed on Instagram. Communications on Instagram and TikTok are for students and applicants, while on LinkedIn they target, among others, partners and prospective job seekers. Faculties have their own Facebook accounts.

As before, University Communications urges individual researchers and research groups to choose their communications channels based on most effectively reaching the people relevant to them. This varies, for example, by discipline and depending on whether the aim is to communicate to other researchers or the general public.

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