Twitter tweets and twaddle: twittering at AHPA's National Health Promotion Conference

Abstract

Issue addressed: This paper explored the first-time use of Twitter by the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA) at its 2013 National Health Promotion Conference. Methods: The @AHPA_AU Twitter account and #AHPA2013 hashtag were established and included in the conference program. Attendees were encouraged throughout the conference to use it. A total of 748 tweets were captured under the hashtag #AHPA2013 in chronological order from 16-19 June 2013. Tweets with photos and more than one hashtag were recorded. A thematic analysis of tweets was conducted. Results: Thirteen broad themes were identified, with each of the 748 tweets allocated to one of the themes. Tweets about keynote sessions made up 38% of all tweets, followed by 14% for concurrent sessions. A photo was included in 11% of tweets, and 25% were sent to more than one hashtag. There were 96 tweeters; 75% of them posted five or less tweets and~9%, including a professional blogger, posted greater than 20 tweets. At the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pre-conference workshop there was a relatively high level of Twitter engagement. Conclusion: Twitter could potentially be useful for promoting conference content and activities, but what it adds in value to a health promotion conference cannot be determined by this study.So what? This paper highlights the engagement of tweeters with conference content and activities and suggests that tweeting benefited from the engagement of a professional health blogger.

How Health Care Professionals Use Social Media to Create Virtual Communities: An Integrative Review

“…Sampling methods to gather the data corpus for analysis varied considerably. Most reports describe using a census sample [ 31 , 65 , 66 , 70 , 71 , 76 , 77 , 79 , 82 - 86 ] with stratified [ 27 , 80 , 87 - 91 ] or convenience samples [ 67 - 69 , 75 , 81 , 92 , 93 ] were used less often. A random sample was used only once [ 74 ]; however, this was not adequately described.…”

“…Web-based roles of members can be broadly described as participants (Web-based posters) and nonposters. Direct measurement of posting behaviors across a number of platforms demonstrated a pattern of a minority of members being responsible for most posts [ 31 , 65 - 67 , 69 , 82 , 94 , 130 ] or conference tweeting [ 77 , 86 , 87 , 89 , 90 ] (see Table 1 ; Multimedia Appendix 6 ). The same pattern was revealed across 4 surveys asking health care professionals about their Web-based behavior [ 69 , 94 , 96 , 126 ].…”

Social Media Engagement at Academic Conferences: Report of the Association of Pathology Chairs 2018 and 2019 Annual Meeting Social Media Committee

“…Reach and Impressions were calculated by third-party companies that are thought to overestimate these figures. 36 This makes sense because the calculations assume that each follower of a contributor is a distinct person who is not counted among the followers of other contributors, whereas in real life, 15 2013 Spanish Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology 198 NA Alvarez-Perea et al 2018 15 2014 Spanish Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology 741 NA Alvarez-Perea et al 15 2015 Spanish Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology 3016 NA Alvarez-Perea et al 15 2016 Spanish Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology 7623 NA Anderson et al 1 2013 Australian Health Promotion Association 748 52% Attai et al 16 2013 American Society of Breast Surgeons 887 72% Attai et al 16 2014 American Society of Breast Surgeons 3743 70% Attai et al 16 2015 American Society of Breast Surgeons 4702 80% Attai et al 16 2016 American Society of Breast Surgeons 6207 80% Awad and Cocchio 17 2015 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists 1539 31% Bert et al 18 2014 European Public Health Conference 1066 60% Borgmann et al 19 2013 European Association of Urology Congress 1572 59% Callister et al 20 2014 American Headache Society Symposium 1942 NA Callister et al 20 2015 American Headache Society Annual Meeting 5967 NA Callister et al 20 2015 American Headache Society Symposium 4007 NA Callister et al 20 2016 American Headache Society Meeting 4579 NA Callister et al 20 2016 American Headache Society Symposium 3441 NA Canvasser et al 21 2013 World Congress of Endourology 335 63% Chaudhry et al 22 2010 American Society of Clinical Oncology 979 56% Chaudhry 2012 22 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology 1477 60% Cheung et al 23 2015 Canadian Geriatrics Society 1491 56% Christiansen et al 7 2014 American Academy of Ophthalmology 4539 NA Christiansen et al 7 2015 American Academy of Ophthalmology 5065 66% Cochran et al 3 2013 Academic Surgical Congress 434 42% Cohen et al 4 2015 United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology 6524 NA D'Anna et al 24 2018 European Society of Neuroradiology 386 60% Desai et al…”

The academic tweet: Twitter as a tool to advance academic surgery

“…41,42 Live tweeting of professional conferences is an increasingly popular way to promote the latest research findings and to establish connections for future investigations. [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] Savvy presenters utilize Twitter to amplify the reach of their conference posters, workshops, and presentation content, and it is now becoming popular for presenters to pre-plan tweets of key figures to coincide with their podium presentations at meetings. Postpublication tweeting of a visual abstract, a graphic representation of the study's methods and results, has been shown to increase article dissemination and readership.…”