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      Quantifying the Twitter Influence of Third Party Commercial Entities versus Healthcare Providers in Thirteen Medical Conferences from 2011 – 2013

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          Abstract

          Introduction

          Twitter channels are increasingly popular at medical conferences. Many groups, including healthcare providers and third party entities (e.g., pharmaceutical or medical device companies) use these channels to communicate with one another. These channels are unregulated and can allow third party commercial entities to exert an equal or greater amount of Twitter influence than healthcare providers. Third parties can use this influence to promote their products or services instead of sharing unbiased, evidence-based information. In this investigation we quantified the Twitter influence that third party commercial entities had in 13 major medical conferences.

          Methods

          We analyzed tweets contained in the official Twitter hashtags of thirteen medical conferences from 2011 to 2013. We placed tweet authors into one of four categories based on their account profile: healthcare provider, third party commercial entity, none of the above and unknown. We measured Twitter activity by the number of tweet authors per category and the tweet-to-author ratio by category. We measured Twitter influence by the PageRank of tweet authors by category.

          Results

          We analyzed 51159 tweets authored by 8778 Twitter account holders in 13 conferences that were sponsored by 5 medical societies. A quarter of all authors identified themselves as healthcare providers, while only 18% could be identified as third party commercial entities. Healthcare providers had a greater tweet-to-author ratio than their third party commercial entity counterparts (8.98 versus 6.93 tweets). Despite having less authors and composing less tweets, third party commercial entities had a statistically similar PageRank as healthcare providers (0.761 versus 0.797).

          Conclusion

          The Twitter influence of third party commercial entities (PageRank) is similar to that of healthcare providers. This finding is interesting because the number of tweets and third party commercial entity authors required to achieve this PageRank is far fewer than that needed by healthcare providers. Without safety mechanisms in place, the Twitter channels of medical conferences can devolve into a venue for the spread of biased information rather than evidence-based medical knowledge that is expected at live conferences. Continuing to measure the Twitter influence that third parties exert can help conference organizers develop reasonable guidelines for Twitter channel activity.

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          Most cited references18

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          Social media and clinical care: ethical, professional, and social implications.

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            Ethical issues in using social media for health and health care research.

            The dramatic growth of social media in recent years has not gone unnoticed in the health sector. Media such as Facebook and Twitter are increasingly being used to disseminate information among health professionals and patients but, more recently, are being seen as a source of data for surveillance and research, for example by tracking public concerns or capturing discourses taking place outside traditional media outlets. This raises ethical issues, in particular the extent to which postings are considered public or private and the right to anonymity of those posting on social media. These issues are not clear cut as social media, by their nature, blur the boundary between public and private. There is a need for further research on the beliefs and expectations of those using social media in relation to how their material might be used in research. In contrast, there are areas where the ethical issues are more clear cut, such as when individuals are active participants in research, where traditional considerations apply. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
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              Can I get a retweet please? Health research recruitment and the Twittersphere.

              To evaluate the social networking site Twitter™ as a vehicle for recruitment in online health research and to examine how the Twitter community would share information: the focus of our study was the antenatal experience of mothers of advanced maternal age. One result of growth in worldwide Internet and mobile phone usage is the increased ability to source health information online and to use social media sites including Facebook and Twitter. Although social media have been used in previous health research, there is a lack of literature on the use of Twitter in health research. A cross-sectional survey. We report a novel recruitment method via a social networking site between May and August 2012. Through a Twitter account, we tweeted and requested other Twitter users to retweet our invitation to be involved in the study. Tweets contained a unique URL directing participants to an online survey hosted on the Survey Monkey™ website. Over 11 weeks, 749 original tweets were posted by the researcher. A total of 529 mothers accessed the survey as a result of 359 researcher tweets and subsequent retweets that were seen by Twitter users. The survey was fully completed by 299 (56·5%) participants. Twitter is a cost-effective means of recruitment, enabling engagement with potentially difficult-to-reach populations, providing participants with transparency, anonymity and a more accessible method by which to participate in health research. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                26 September 2016
                2016
                : 11
                : 9
                : e0162376
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Division of Nephrology, W.G. (Bill) VA Medical Center, Salisbury, North Carolina, United States of America
                [2 ]NOD Analytics, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States of America
                [3 ]Department of Internal Medicine, East Carolina University – Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, North Carolina, United States of America
                [4 ]Division of Endocrinology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
                [5 ]Monsanto Company, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America
                [6 ]Division of Nephrology, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
                [7 ]Department of Internal Medicine, Barnes Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America
                [8 ]Department of Surgery, East Carolina University – Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, North Carolina, United States of America
                [9 ]College of Arts and Sciences, College of William and Mary, Yorktown, Virginia, United States of America
                [10 ]Division of Rheumatology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States of America
                [11 ]Division of Gastroenterology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America
                [12 ]Department of Biostatistics, East Carolina University – Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, North Carolina, United States of America
                Lancaster University, UNITED KINGDOM
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: TD is an employee of the United States Government. TD is the creator of Nephrology On-Demand. This affiliation does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. Aabid Shariff is an employee of Monsanto. He has no other relevant declarations to make. His employment with Monsanto does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

                • Conceptualization: TD.

                • Data curation: TD DM.

                • Formal analysis: TD.

                • Funding acquisition: TD.

                • Investigation: TD Afreen Shariff Aabid Shariff XF EL PS SK ZS VD RM.

                • Methodology: TD Afreen Shariff Aabid Shariff.

                • Project administration: TD.

                • Resources: TD.

                • Software: TD.

                • Supervision: TD.

                • Validation: TD.

                • Visualization: TD.

                • Writing – original draft: TD.

                • Writing – review & editing: TD Afreen Shariff Aabid Shariff XF EL PS SK ZS VD RM.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0151-9766
                Article
                PONE-D-15-22305
                10.1371/journal.pone.0162376
                5036883
                27668433
                5330bf68-866d-4571-b272-910b7f2bfedc

                This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

                History
                : 22 May 2015
                : 22 August 2016
                Page count
                Figures: 6, Tables: 4, Pages: 16
                Funding
                Award Recipient :
                None of the authors received any grant funding for this project. The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Communications
                Social Communication
                Social Media
                Twitter
                Computer and Information Sciences
                Network Analysis
                Social Networks
                Social Media
                Twitter
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Social Networks
                Social Media
                Twitter
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Health Care
                Health Care Providers
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Nephrology
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Health Care
                Social Sciences
                Economics
                Finance
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Cardiology
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Anatomy
                Renal System
                Kidneys
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Anatomy
                Renal System
                Kidneys
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Communications
                Social Communication
                Social Media
                Computer and Information Sciences
                Network Analysis
                Social Networks
                Social Media
                Social Sciences
                Sociology
                Social Networks
                Social Media
                Custom metadata
                The data can be found on the internet. In table 1 I have listed URLs that have the data that we used. The data is freely available - no username is required.

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