Twitter Usage Among Physicians From 2016 to 2020: Algorithm Development and Longitudinal Analysis Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Physicians are increasingly using Twitter as a channel for communicating with colleagues and the public. Identifying physicians on Twitter is difficult due to the varied and imprecise ways that people self-identify themselves on the social media platform. This is the first study to describe a reliable, repeatable methodology for identifying physicians on Twitter. By using this approach, we characterized the longitudinal activity of US physicians on Twitter.

Objective

We aimed to develop a reliable and repeatable methodology for identifying US physicians on Twitter and to characterize their activity on Twitter over 5 years by activity, tweeted topic, and account type.

Methods

In this study, 5 years of Twitter data (2016-2020) were mined for physician account

SUBMITTER: Nakagawa K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9490540 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature