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ObjectiveTo investigate potential violations of patient confidentiality or other breaches of medical ethics committed by physicians and medical students active on the social networking site Twitter.DesignPopulation-based cross-sectional observational study.SettingThe social networking site Twitter (Swedish-speaking users, n=298819).PopulationPhysicians and medical students (Swedish-speaking users, n=237) active on the social networking site Twitter between July 2007 and March 2012.Main outcome measurePostings that reflect unprofessional behaviour and ethical breaches among physicians and medical students.ResultsIn all, 237 Twitter accounts were established as held by physicians and medical students and a total of 13 780 tweets were analysed by content. In all, 276 (1.9%) tweets were labelled as ‘unprofessional’. Among these, 26 (0.2%) tweets written by 15 (6.3%) physicians and medical students included information that could violate patient privacy. No information on the personal ID number or names was disclosed, but parts of the patient documentation or otherwise specific indicatory information on patients were found. Unprofessional tweets were more common among users writing under a pseudonym and among medical students.ConclusionsIn this study of physicians and medical students on Twitter, we observed potential violations of patient privacy and other breaches of medical ethics. Our findings underline that every physician and medical student has to consider his or her presence on social networking sites. It remains to be investigated if the introduction of social networking site guidelines for medical professionals will improve awareness.

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Although data journalism is practiced globally, data journalism research has traditionally focused on a limited set of countries, primarily within the liberal and democratic corporatist media systems. Many recently published studies illustrate a growing scholarly interest in data journalism in other parts of the world, but these studies are still limited in number. This special issue brings together five new empirical studies of data journalism around the world, as well as two commentaries and two book reviews on the topic with the aim of broadening the theoretical, empirical, and geographic perspectives on data journalism. The core of the special issue consists of five national and comparative case studies studying data journalism in Africa, the Arab world, Italy, the UK, and Argentina. Combined, these articles and the other publications in this special issue point to three important contextual factors that shape data journalism worldwide: journalistic cultures, media markets, and the political environment. After a discussion of each of these three factors, areas for future research are proposed.