Who has Australia’s most-followed Twitter accounts in health and medicine?

Abstract

Twitter is a social media platform that can be used by people working in health and medicine to distribute information, advocate, debate and network with large numbers of other users.We set out to determine the top 10 Australian Twitter accounts in four categories, ranked by number of Twitter followers. We extracted names with high follower volumes from 'lists' of health and medical Twitter accounts, and then 'crowdsourced' on Twitter for names that were not included on those lists.Individuals tweeting on single-issue topics (especially sugar, nutrition and fitness), health institutions, and people working in the media had higher Twitter followings and lower tweet-to-follower ratios than those tweeting on mixed health topics. Tweeting pictures was nominated by several as a way of attracting retweets. Highly followed Twitter users expressed a variety of benefits of using Twitter.

#IHMayDay: tweeting for empowerment and social and emotional wellbeing

“…It is also enabling the emergence of new forms of participatory media practices. 6,7 Additionally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are using Twitter to share Indigenous ways of being and doing. 8 This paper reports on a day-long Twitter festival about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health held on 1 May 2014.…”

“…It is also enabling the emergence of new forms of participatory media practices. 6,7 Additionally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are using Twitter to share Indigenous ways of being and doing. 8 (http://www.symplur.com/healthcare-social-mediaresearch/) was used to identify the related Twitter activity, and these tweets were analysed thematically.…”

The Content of Twitter Messages of Different Health Groups: The Role of Social Media in Health

“…In another study conducted on private health institutions, it was also emphasized that there is more sharing on healthy lifestyle issues [Akbolat et al, 2019]. As to the studies in other countries, such as, studies in the USA [Kordzadeh, 2019] and Australia [Chapman and Freeman, 2015], institutions give more importance to issues such as diabetes, nutrition and diets. Unlike this situation, a study conducted in Japan, which looked into 168 institutions'…”

Using Twitter to Explore (un)Healthy Housing: Learning from the #Characterbuildings Campaign in New Zealand

“…The growth of Web 2.0 has broadened the role of the public health community engaging in media advocacy [ 69 ] to require online engagement for successful health promotion, and through allowing direct engagement with politicians and media in a public conversation can not only increase awareness but also help to shape or reframe public health issues [ 70 ]. We suggest that as well as in addition to online media advocacy, public health researchers should consider using social media to broaden the reach of recruitment and engagement of participants in studies allowing for new expressions of “voice” to be represented in housing research.…”