Relationship Between Official Twitter Ambassadors and the Number of Retweets in the Annual Congress - "Tweet the Meeting"

Student perceptions of Twitter poll-based formative assessment in a rural medical college in India

Formative assessment is vital for student learning and engagement. Social media platforms like Twitter have gained popularity in medical education, but little research has explored student perceptions of formative assessment through Twitter. This study aimed to observe participation rates in Twitter poll-based formative assessment and survey students' perceptions of it in a rural medical college in India. Fifteen formative assessment sessions were conducted using a Twitter poll after physiology lectures, with five multiple-choice questions per session. The number of participants in each poll was recorded. A questionnaire collected student perceptions after the sessions. Across 15 Twitter poll sessions, we received an average of 12.65 ± 5.53 (median 12) responses. Most students (63%) did not participate, with only 4% participating in over 10 sessions. A total of 107 students participated in the survey, resulting in an 85.6% response rate. Students found social media-based formative assessment interesting and effective for increasing attention in class. However, they preferred alternative platforms like Telegram and Instagram for formative assessment. In conclusion, most students in a rural medical college in India do not participate in Twitter poll-based formative assessment. Nevertheless, students found it interesting and effective, highlighting the importance of considering students' platform preferences for implementing social media-based formative assessment.NEW & NOTEWORTHY The study presents the participation of medical students in Twitter poll-based formative assessment in a rural medical college in India. Despite low participation rates, students found social media-based formative assessment highly effective in increasing their attention during class. The study also reveals student preferences for alternative platforms like Telegram and Instagram. These insights contribute significantly to understanding the impact and relevance of social media-based formative assessment in diverse educational contexts.

Impact of Tweet Content on the Number of Retweets - "Tweet the Meeting 2022"

Background: Previous research has investigated the effectiveness of the "Tweet the Meeting" campaign, but the relationship between tweet content and the number of retweets has not been fully evaluated. Methods and Results: We analyzed the number of tweets and retweets during the Japanese Circulation Society's 2022 annual meeting. The ambassador group had significantly more session- and symposium-related tweets than the non-ambassador group (P<0.001), associated with the nubmer of retweets. Symposium-related tweets with figures generated more retweets than those without figures (mean [±SD] 3.47±3.31 vs. 2.48±1.94 retweets per tweet, respectively; P=0.001). Conclusions: The study revealed that official meeting-designated Twitter ambassadors disseminate more educational content than non-ambassadors, and generated more retweets.

Social media ambassadors and collaboration with OncoAlert: a European Network of Young Gynae Oncologists study of comparative Twitter analysis of #ESGO2021 and #ESGO2022

OBJECTIVE

The primary objective was to reveal the impact of social media ambassadors and the collaboration between the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) and the OncoAlert Network on Twitter during the ESGO 2022 Congress by comparing it with the ESGO 2021 Congress. We also aimed to share our experience on how to organize a social media ambassador program and evaluate the potential benefits for the society and the ambassadors.

METHODS

We defined the impact as promoting the congress, sharing the knowledge, change in follower count, and change in tweet, retweet, and reply counts. We used the Academic Track Twitter Application Programming Interface to retrieve data from ESGO 2021 and ESGO 2022. We used the keywords of ESGO2021 and ESGO2022 to retrieve data for each of the conferences. The time range in our study captured interactions from before, during, and after conferences. We collected the ambassadors', ESGO's, and the European Network of Young Gynae Oncologists' (ENYGO's) follower data on Twitter from November 2021 to November 2022 for comparative analysis.

RESULTS

There was a 7.23-fold increase in the use of the official congress hashtag in 2022 compared with 2021. Compared with #ESGO2021 data, the main interventions of the Social Media Ambassadors and OncoAlert partnership determined 7.79-, 17.36-, 5.50-, 10.58-, and 8.50-fold increases with #ESGO2022 data in the mentions, mentions in retweet, tweet, retweet, and replies, respectively. Similarly, all other most commonly used hashtags in the top 10 list indicated a range from 2.56- to 7.00-fold increase. Compared to the ESGO 2021 congress month, ESGO and the majority (83.3%, n=5) of ambassadors gained more followers during ESGO 2022 congress month.

CONCLUSIONS

An official social media ambassadors program and collaboration with influential accounts in the field of interest are beneficial for congress-related engagement on a social media platform (Twitter). Individuals participating in the program can also benefit from gaining higher visibility among specific audience.

The use of social media for professional purposes by healthcare professionals: the #intEHRAct survey

Social media (SoMe) represents a medium of communication in everyday life and has gained importance for professional use among clinicians. In the #intEHRAct survey, we aimed to describe the use of SoMe by the healthcare community in a professional setting. The EHRA e-Communication Committee and the Scientific Initiatives Committee prepared a questionnaire and distributed it via newsletters, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. The survey consisted of 19 questions made on an individual basis and collected anonymously. Two hundred and eighty-five responders from 35 countries (72.3% male, age 49 ± 11 years old) completed the survey. Most respondents (42.7%) declared to use SoMe as passive users while 38.3% and 19.0% declared to share content on a non-daily and daily basis, respectively. The respondents estimated they spent a median of 5 (Q1-Q3: 2-10) h per week on SoMe. The most widely used SoMe was LinkedIn (60.8%), but the use of each platform was heterogeneous between countries. Among the advantages of SoMe, respondents indicated the chance of being updated on recent publications (66.0%), networking (48.5%), and the availability of rare or interesting cases (47.9%) as the most useful. Regarding the disadvantages of SoMe, the respondents underlined the loss of personal contact (40.7%), the inability to get 'hands-on' training (38.7%), and the lack of control regarding quality of scientific evidence (37.1%). Social media is increasingly used for professional purposes for scientific updating, networking, and case-based learning. The results of this survey encourage scientific societies, journals, and authors to enhance the quality, reach and impact of scientific content provided through SoMe.