Joining the Conversation: Twitter as a Tool for Student Political Engagement

Science.gov (United States)

Journell, Wayne; Ayers, Cheryl A.; Beeson, Melissa Walker

2013-01-01

This article describes possibilities afforded by using social media, specifically Twitter, as a way to encourage students to join political conversations across the United States and around the world. In this study, we describe a project in which students used Twitter to share commentary about the state of the 2012 presidential election. The…

Mining twitter to understand the smoking cessation barriers.

Science.gov (United States)

Krittanawong, Chayakrit; Wang, Zhen

2017-10-26

Smoking cessation is challenging and lack of positive support is a known major barrier to quitting cigarettes. Previous studies have suggested that social influences might increase smokers' awareness of social norms for appropriate behavior, which might lead to smoking cessation. Although social media use is increasing among young adults in the United States, research on the relationship between social media use and smoking cessation is lacking. Twitter has provided a rich source of information for researchers, but no overview exists as to how the field uses Twitter in smoking cessation research. To the best of our knowledge, this study conducted a data mining analysis of Twitter to assess barriers to smoking cessation. In conclusion, Twitter is a cost-effective tool with the potential to disseminate information on the benefits of smoking cessation and updated research to the Twitter community on a global scale.

Facebook and Edublogs and Twitter, Oh My! Using Social Media to Connect Scientists to the Public

Science.gov (United States)

Cobabe-Ammann, E.; Stockman, S. A.; Wood, E. L.

2008-12-01

Social media is changing the way that the public receives and responds to news and information. By integrating technology, social interaction and the construction of words and pictures, social media creates multidirectional communication pathways that allow people to directly interact with the purveyors of information. Social media forums (e.g., Edublogs, Facebook, Second Life, and Twitter) are increasingly used by scientists and science programs to directly connect with the public, eliminating the "filter" of the news media. This creates both opportunities and challenges for scientists wanting to make sure that accurate information is reaching their audience. Here we talk about how NASA missions and programs have been using social media as an outreach tool and how social media can be used to bring authentic science to the public.

Twitter as a Tool in Crisis Communication in the European Union Area

OpenAIRE

Numminen, Anssi; Rajamäki, Jyri

2017-01-01

n this study we built understanding on how the social media and especially Twitter can be used in crisis communication in the EU. We conducted a case analysis about how the Munich Police Department did their crisis communication via Twitter during the Munich shooting crisis. The use of social media in crisis communication is increasing as well as the available mobile phone environment for the people in the EU area. EU projects have increased knowledge about the possible crises situations in t...

A little bird told me : Twitter may be growing at 700 per cent a week, but is it a valuable tool for the patch, or a distraction?

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Stastny, P

2009-10-15

The social networking tool Twitter may soon be adopted by petroleum industry workers as a means of ensuring increased communications. Comprised of social networks, link sharing, and live searching, the tool can be used to conduct subject searchers as well as to link to quarterly reports and press releases. Twitter is also being used to manage crisis communications as well as to monitor activities on the Internet. Twitter may also provide a means for oil and gas operators to follow influential industry bloggers as well as to develop effective communications strategies. It was concluded that Twitter may offer an opportunity for companies to participate in non-traditional communications approaches such as online forums, and other media-sharing tools. 1 fig.

Using Twitter data for demographic research

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dilek Yildiz

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Background: Social media data is a promising source of social science data. However, deriving the demographic characteristics of users and dealing with the nonrandom, nonrepresentative populations from which they are drawn represent challenges for social scientists. Objective: Given the growing use of social media data in social science research, this paper asks two questions: 1 To what extent are findings obtained with social media data generalizable to broader populations, and 2 what is the best practice for estimating demographic information from Twitter data? Methods: Our analyses use information gathered from 979,992 geo-located Tweets sent by 22,356 unique users in South East England between 23 June and 4 July 2014. We estimate demographic characteristics of the Twitter users with the crowd-sourcing platform CrowdFlower and the image-recognition software Face++. To evaluate bias in the data, we run a series of log-linear models with offsets and calibrate the nonrepresentative sample of Twitter users with mid-year population estimates for South East England. Results: CrowdFlower proves to be more accurate than Face++ for the measurement of age, whereas both tools are highly reliable for measuring the sex of Twitter users. The calibration exercise allows bias correction in the age-, sex-, and location-specific population counts obtained from the Twitter population by augmenting Twitter data with mid-year population estimates. Contribution: The paper proposes best practices for estimating Twitter users' basic demographic characteristics and a calibration method to address the selection bias in the Twitter population, allowing researchers to generalize findings based on Twitter to the general population.

#LancerHealth: Using Twitter and Instagram as a tool in a campus wide health promotion initiative.

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Santarossa, Sara; Woodruff, Sarah J

2018-02-05

The present study aimed to explore using popular technology that people already have/use as a health promotion tool, in a campus wide social media health promotion initiative, entitled #LancerHealth . During a two-week period the university community was asked to share photos on Twitter and Instagram of What does being healthy on campus look like to you ?, while tagging the image with #LancerHealth . All publically tagged media was collected using the Netlytic software and analysed. Text analysis (N=234 records, Twitter; N=141 records, Instagram) revealed that the majority of the conversation was positive and focused on health and the university. Social network analysis, based on five network properties, showed a small network with little interaction. Lastly, photo coding analysis (N=71 unique image) indicated that the majority of the shared images were of physical activity (52%) and on campus (80%). Further research into this area is warranted.

Twitter for travel medicine providers.

Science.gov (United States)

Mills, Deborah J; Kohl, Sarah E

2016-03-01

Travel medicine practitioners, perhaps more so than medical practitioners working in other areas of medicine, require a constant flow of information to stay up-to-date, and provide best practice information and care to their patients. Many travel medicine providers are unaware of the popularity and potential of the Twitter platform. Twitter use among our travellers, as well as by physicians and health providers, is growing exponentially. There is a rapidly expanding body of published literature on this information tool. This review provides a brief overview of the ways Twitter is being used by health practitioners, the advantages that are peculiar to Twitter as a platform of social media, and how the interested practitioner can get started. Some key points about the dark side of Twitter are highlighted, as well as the potential benefits of using Twitter as a way to disseminate accurate medical information to the public. This article will help readers develop an increased understanding of Twitter as a tool for extracting useful facts and insights from the ever increasing volume of health information. © International Society of Travel Medicine, 2016. All rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Does Twitter trigger bursts in signature collections?

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Yamaguchi, Rui; Imoto, Seiya; Kami, Masahiro; Watanabe, Kenji; Miyano, Satoru; Yuji, Koichiro

2013-01-01

The quantification of social media impacts on societal and political events is a difficult undertaking. The Japanese Society of Oriental Medicine started a signature-collecting campaign to oppose a medical policy of the Government Revitalization Unit to exclude a traditional Japanese medicine, "Kampo," from the public insurance system. The signature count showed a series of aberrant bursts from November 26 to 29, 2009. In the same interval, the number of messages on Twitter including the keywords "Signature" and "Kampo," increased abruptly. Moreover, the number of messages on an Internet forum that discussed the policy and called for signatures showed a train of spikes. In order to estimate the contributions of social media, we developed a statistical model with state-space modeling framework that distinguishes the contributions of multiple social media in time-series of collected public opinions. We applied the model to the time-series of signature counts of the campaign and quantified contributions of two social media, i.e., Twitter and an Internet forum, by the estimation. We found that a considerable portion (78%) of the signatures was affected from either of the social media throughout the campaign and the Twitter effect (26%) was smaller than the Forum effect (52%) in total, although Twitter probably triggered the initial two bursts of signatures. Comparisons of the estimated profiles of the both effects suggested distinctions between the social media in terms of sustainable impact of messages or tweets. Twitter shows messages on various topics on a time-line; newer messages push out older ones. Twitter may diminish the impact of messages that are tweeted intermittently. The quantification of social media impacts is beneficial to better understand people's tendency and may promote developing strategies to engage public opinions effectively. Our proposed method is a promising tool to explore information hidden in social phenomena.

Does Twitter trigger bursts in signature collections?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rui Yamaguchi

Full Text Available INTRODUCTION: The quantification of social media impacts on societal and political events is a difficult undertaking. The Japanese Society of Oriental Medicine started a signature-collecting campaign to oppose a medical policy of the Government Revitalization Unit to exclude a traditional Japanese medicine, "Kampo," from the public insurance system. The signature count showed a series of aberrant bursts from November 26 to 29, 2009. In the same interval, the number of messages on Twitter including the keywords "Signature" and "Kampo," increased abruptly. Moreover, the number of messages on an Internet forum that discussed the policy and called for signatures showed a train of spikes. METHODS AND FINDINGS: In order to estimate the contributions of social media, we developed a statistical model with state-space modeling framework that distinguishes the contributions of multiple social media in time-series of collected public opinions. We applied the model to the time-series of signature counts of the campaign and quantified contributions of two social media, i.e., Twitter and an Internet forum, by the estimation. We found that a considerable portion (78% of the signatures was affected from either of the social media throughout the campaign and the Twitter effect (26% was smaller than the Forum effect (52% in total, although Twitter probably triggered the initial two bursts of signatures. Comparisons of the estimated profiles of the both effects suggested distinctions between the social media in terms of sustainable impact of messages or tweets. Twitter shows messages on various topics on a time-line; newer messages push out older ones. Twitter may diminish the impact of messages that are tweeted intermittently. CONCLUSIONS: The quantification of social media impacts is beneficial to better understand people's tendency and may promote developing strategies to engage public opinions effectively. Our proposed method is a promising tool to explore

Twitter and Facebook Open the Door to Collaboration

Science.gov (United States)

Huwe, Terence K.

2012-01-01

Building a social media profile itself is a rewarding experience for digital librarians, but there is another aspect to social media immersion, and it is a powerful tool for the profession. As librarians establish expert status in the use of popular tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and WordPress, they can add training and even product…

The Top 100 Social Media Influencers in Plastic Surgery on Twitter: Who Should You Be Following?

Science.gov (United States)

Chandawarkar, Akash A; Gould, Daniel J; Grant Stevens, W

2018-03-06

Recent studies demonstrate that board-certified plastic surgeons are underrepresented amongst individuals posting public-directed marketing plastic surgery-related content on Instagram. However, peer-to-peer and education-based social media influence has not been studied. Twitter is a social media platform has been suggested to be useful for educating the masses and connecting with colleagues. The purpose of this study is to identify the top influencers in plastic surgery on Twitter, characterize who they are, and relate their social media influence to academic influence. Twitter influence scores for the topic search "plastic surgery" were collected in July 2017 using Right Relevance software. The accounts associated with the highest influencer scores were linked to individual names, status as a plastic surgeon, board certification, location, and academic h-index. The top 100 Twitter influencers in plastic surgery are presented. Seventy-seven percent of the top influencers are trained as plastic surgeons or facial plastic surgeons. Sixty-one percent of influencers are board-certified plastic surgeons or board-eligible/future eligible trainees. International plastic surgeons made up 16% of influencers. Other medical doctors made up another 10%. The other 13% of influencers were nonphysicians. Three-quarters of social media influencers were physically located in the United States. Academic h-index of social media influencers ranged from 0 to 62 (mean, 8.6). This study shows that the top plastic surgery social media influencers on Twitter are predominantly board-certified or eligible plastic surgeons and physically based in the United States. This study also provides the influencer network for other plastic surgeons to engage with to improve their own influence within the plastic surgery social media sphere.

#LancerHealth: Using Twitter and Instagram as a tool in a campus wide health promotion initiative

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sara Santarossa

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The present study aimed to explore using popular technology that people already have/use as a health promotion tool, in a campus wide social media health promotion initiative, entitled #LancerHealth. During a two-week period the university community was asked to share photos on Twitter and Instagram of What does being healthy on campus look like to you?, while tagging the image with #LancerHealth. All publically tagged media was collected using the Netlytic software and analysed. Text analysis (N=234 records, Twitter; N=141 records, Instagram revealed that the majority of the conversation was positive and focused on health and the university. Social network analysis, based on five network properties, showed a small network with little interaction. Lastly, photo coding analysis (N=71 unique image indicated that the majority of the shared images were of physical activity (52% and on campus (80%. Further research into this area is warranted.

Social Media Monitoring of the Campaigns for the 2013 German Bundestag Elections on Facebook and Twitter

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kaczmirek, Lars; Mayr, Philipp; Vatrapu, Ravi

-ment [translation: Bundestagswahl 2013]. We constructed several social media datasets using data from Facebook and Twitter. First, we identified the most relevant candidates (n=2,346) and checked whether they maintained social media accounts. The Facebook data was collected in November 2013 for the period...... of January 2009 to October 2013. On Facebook we identified 1,408 Facebook walls containing approximately 469,000 posts. Twitter data was collected between June and December 2013 finishing with the constitution of the government. On Twitter we identified 1,009 candidates and 76 other agents, for example...

Twitter and the Cyberpolitics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carmen Beatriz Fernández

2012-02-01

Full Text Available This paper explores the role that Twitter is taking in the e-policy of the region, based on recent studies and data. Twitter every day beats its own record with 200 million accounts worldwide and 140 million tweets per day, growing at a dizzying rate of 500 thousand new users per day. Is Twitter a good medium for political communication? Is it a useful tool for politicians? What about the citizens? The answer is only one, and emphatic yes. In any campaign should provide demonstrations of numerical strength. There is an important segment of the electorate based on the manifestations of power, and predictions of victory to finally make their voting decision. The article explores current uses, trends and contrasts with traditional media.

Political Polarization in Social Media: Analysis of the "Twitter Political Field" in Japan

OpenAIRE

Takikawa, Hiroki; Nagayoshi, Kikuko

2017-01-01

There is an ongoing debate about whether the Internet is like a public sphere or an echo chamber. Among many forms of social media, Twitter is one of the most crucial online places for political debate. Most of the previous studies focus on the formal structure of the Twitter political field, such as its homophilic tendency, or otherwise limit the analysis to a few topics. In order to explore whether Twitter functions as an echo chamber in general, however, we have to investigate not only the...

#DocsOnTwitter: How Physicians use Social Media to Build Social Capital.

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Hanzel, Taylor; Richards, Jessica; Schwitters, Paige; Smith, Kirsten; Wendland, Kyle; Martin, Jamie; Keltgen, Jaciel

2017-08-29

Using social capital theory, Augustana University healthcare marketing students examined how medical professionals utilize social media to further engage with their communities. The team selected Twitter as the social media network from which to collect data because of its popularity and ease of use. The sample was drawn from 1,000 Twitter profiles that were retrieved from 24 keywords such as MD. A total of 3,378,285 tweets from this sample were collected and analyzed for content, use of hashtags, mobile device use, frequency, longevity, medical relevance, medical specialty, gender, and approximate age. This is an important first look, using Big Data, at how physicians parlay the popularity of social media to build social capital through sharing research with colleagues, connecting with patients and prospective patients, and extending their personal and employer brands to increasingly information-hungry and interactive consumers.

Analysis of emergency physicians' Twitter accounts.

Science.gov (United States)

Lulic, Ileana; Kovic, Ivor

2013-05-01

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media networks for communication between users via short messages. Technology proficient physicians have demonstrated enthusiasm in adopting social media for their work. To identify and create the largest directory of emergency physicians on Twitter, analyse their user accounts and reveal details behind their connections. Several web search tools were used to identify emergency physicians on Twitter with biographies completely or partially written in English. NodeXL software was used to calculate emergency physicians' Twitter network metrics and create visualisation graphs. The authors found 672 Twitter accounts of self-identified emergency physicians. Protected accounts were excluded from the study, leaving 632 for further analysis. Most emergency physicians were located in USA (55.4%), had created their accounts in 2009 (43.4%), used their full personal name (77.5%) and provided a custom profile picture (92.2%). Based on at least one published tweet in the last 15 days, there were 345 (54.6%) active users on 31 December 2011. Active users mostly used mobile devices based on the Apple operating system to publish tweets (69.2%). Visualisation of emergency physicians' Twitter network revealed many users with no connections with their colleagues, and a small group of most influential users who were highly interconnected. Only a small proportion of registered emergency physicians use Twitter. Among them exists a smaller inner network of emergency physicians with strong social bonds that is using Twitter's full potentials for professional development.

Personal Branding on Twitter : How employed and freelance journalists stage themselves on social media

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brems, Cara; Temmerman, Martina; Graham, Todd; Broersma, Marcel

2017-01-01

Social media are increasingly embedded into everyday communication. This challenges journalism to anticipate the changes that social media trigger in the use and production of (news) media. In this paper, we focus on personal branding on Twitter. Journalists are increasingly encouraged to develop a

Is Social Media Too Social for Class? A Case Study of Twitter Use

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Lin, Meng-Fen Grace; Hoffman, Ellen S.; Borengasser, Claire

2013-01-01

This qualitative case study examined Twitter use by undergraduate and graduate students in three classes. Previous studies have shown that while some faculty use Twitter, few are incorporating it into classes despite many recommendations for such use. This study examined how students perceived Twitter as a classroom tool. As an optional activity,…

THE REACH OF TWITTER AS A POLITICAL TOOL

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vanessa González Mendoza

2010-07-01

Full Text Available The massive growth of Internet and all the possibilities that it offers, have made us beings of instant gratification. The need to know, to be informed, and to communicate at all times, stands above many other things, and rules our daily life. Tools like Twitter provide the citizen a way in which they can express their ideas, either to be heard or to make a change even in the political atmosphere. This article searches to determine the influence and the reach of Twitter in the political activism of a country.

@doesyourairlinetweet? An empirical examination of the use of twitter by 50 international airlines

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lucy Budd

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Purpose: To provide empirical evidence of the extent to which 50 of the world’s largest passenger airlines use the social media site twitter.Design/methodology/approach: Original empirical data on the presence and usage of 50 airlines’ official twitter accounts was accessed.Research limitations/implications: Research demonstrates the extent to which airlines are using twitter as a communications tool and suggests that some airline are not currently utilising twitter to its full extent.Practical implications: The research provides information on current twitter use and penetration, thus enabling airlines to benchmark their performance in this social media channel.Originality/value: The paper provides an original empirical insight into a growing phenomenon which is currently underreported in academic literatures.

Twitter vs. Facebook: Using Social Media to Promote Collaborative Argumentation in an Online Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Owens, Marissa; Nussbaum, E. Michael

2017-01-01

This study aimed to: 1) evaluate Twitter as a viable tool for promoting collaborative argumentation; 2) determine if scripting through sentence openers promotes a greater number of arguments within an online discussion; and 3) compare Twitter to Facebook as viable tools for promoting collaborative argumentation. Participants were 27 undergraduate…

Leveraging Twitter to Maximize the Radiology Meeting Experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Kalia, Vivek; Ortiz, Daniel A; Patel, Amy K; Moriarity, Andrew K; Canon, Cheri L; Duszak, Richard

2018-01-01

Over recent years, social media engagement has proliferated among physicians, health care systems, scientific journals, professional societies, and patients. In radiology, Twitter (Twitter Inc, San Francisco, California) has rapidly become the preferred social media engagement tool and is now an essential activity at many large radiology society meetings. Twitter offers a versatile, albeit simple, platform for anyone interested in engaging with others, regardless of title, stature, or geography. In radiology and other medical specialties, year-after-year increases in Twitter engagement before, during, and after professional society meetings continue with widespread positive feedback. This short-form messaging tool also allows users to connect and interact with high-impact individuals and organizations on an ongoing basis (rather than once a year during large meetings). Through live-polling, Twitter also has the power to gather global opinions on issues highly relevant to radiology's future, such as the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) or breast cancer screening. Also increasingly popular is "live-tweeting" of curated meeting content, which makes information from the meeting accessible to a global audience. Despite the promise of growing professional networks and enabling discussions that cross geographic boundaries, the risks of Twitter use during radiology meetings must be recognized and mitigated. These include posting of unpublished data without consent (eg, slide content captured on camera phones), propagation of misinformation, and copyright infringement. Despite these issues and with an eye towards professionalism, Twitter can nonetheless be used effectively to increase engagement among radiologists, radiology societies, and patients. Copyright © 2017 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Factors that contribute to social media influence within an Internal Medicine Twitter learning community.

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Desai, Tejas; Patwardhan, Manish; Coore, Hunter

2014-01-01

Medical societies, faculty, and trainees use Twitter to learn from and educate other social media users. These social media communities bring together individuals with various levels of experience. It is not known if experienced individuals are also the most influential members. We hypothesize that participants with the greatest experience would be the most influential members of a Twitter community. We analyzed the 2013 Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine Twitter community. We measured the number of tweets authored by each participant and the number of amplified tweets (re-tweets). We developed a multivariate linear regression model to identify any relationship to social media influence, measured by the PageRank. Faculty (from academic institutions) comprised 19% of the 132 participants in the learning community (p influence amongst all participants (mean 1.99, p influence (β = 0.068, p = 0.6). The only factors that predicted influence (higher PageRank) were the number of tweets authored (p influence. Any participant who was able to author the greatest number of tweets or have more of his/her tweets amplified could wield a greater influence on the participants, regardless of his/her authority.

Instagram, Flickr, or Twitter: Assessing the usability of social media data for visitor monitoring in protected areas.

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Tenkanen, Henrikki; Di Minin, Enrico; Heikinheimo, Vuokko; Hausmann, Anna; Herbst, Marna; Kajala, Liisa; Toivonen, Tuuli

2017-12-14

Social media data is increasingly used as a proxy for human activity in different environments, including protected areas, where collecting visitor information is often laborious and expensive, but important for management and marketing. Here, we compared data from Instagram, Twitter and Flickr, and assessed systematically how park popularity and temporal visitor counts derived from social media data perform against high-precision visitor statistics in 56 national parks in Finland and South Africa in 2014. We show that social media activity is highly associated with park popularity, and social media-based monthly visitation patterns match relatively well with the official visitor counts. However, there were considerable differences between platforms as Instagram clearly outperformed Twitter and Flickr. Furthermore, we show that social media data tend to perform better in more visited parks, and should always be used with caution. Based on stakeholder discussions we identified potential reasons why social media data and visitor statistics might not match: the geography and profile of the park, the visitor profile, and sudden events. Overall the results are encouraging in broader terms: Over 60% of the national parks globally have Twitter or Instagram activity, which could potentially inform global nature conservation.

ANALISIS SENTIMENT PADA SOSIAL MEDIA TWITTER MENGGUNAKAN NAIVE BAYES CLASSIFIER TERHADAP KATA KUNCI “KURIKULUM 2013”

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dyarsa Singgih Pamungkas

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Twitter salah satu situs sosial media yang memungkinkan penggunanya untuk menulis tentang berbagai hal yang terjadi dalam sehari-hari. Banyak pengguna mentweet sebuah produk atau layanan yang mereka gunakan. Tweet tersebut dapat digunakan sebagai sumber data untuk menilai sentimen pada Twitter. Pengguna sering menggunakan singkatan kata dan ejaan kata yang salah, dimana dapat menyulitkan fitur yang diambil serta mengurangi ketepatan klasifikasi. Dalam penelitian ini menggunakan Twitter Search API untuk mengambil data dari twitter, penulis menerapkan proses n-gram karakter untuk seleksi fitur serta menggunakan algoritma Naive Bayes Classifier untuk mengklasifikasi sentimen secara otomatis. Penulis menggunakan 3300 data tweet tentang sentimen kepada kata kunci “kurikulum 2013”. Data tersebut diklasifikasi secara manual dan dibagi kedalam masing-masing 1000 data untuk sentimen positif, negatif dan netral. Untuk proses latih di gunakan 3000 data tweet dan 1000 tweet tiap kategori sentimentnya. Hasil penelitian ini menghasilkan sebuah sistem yang dapat mengklasifikasi sentimen secara otomatis dengan hasil pengujian 3000 data latih dan 100 tweet data ujicoba mencapai 91 %. Kata kunci : Twitter, Twitter Search API, sosial media, tweet, analisis sentimen, sentimen, N-gram, Naive Bayes Classifier.

Twitter: A Professional Development and Community of Practice Tool for Teachers

Science.gov (United States)

Rosell-Aguilar, Fernando

2018-01-01

This article shows how a group of language teachers use Twitter as a tool for continuous professional development through the #MFLtwitterati hashtag. Based on data collected through a survey (n = 116) and interviews (n = 11), it describes how this collective of teachers use the hashtag and evaluates the impact of their Twitter network on their…

Tweets from the forest: using Twitter to increase student engagement in an undergraduate field biology course

Science.gov (United States)

Soluk, Lauren; Buddle, Christopher M.

2015-01-01

Twitter is a cold medium that allows users to deliver content-rich but small packets of information to other users, and provides an opportunity for active and collaborative communication. In an education setting, this social media tool has potential to increase active learning opportunities, and increase student engagement with course content. The effects of Twitter on learning dynamics was tested in a field biology course offered by a large Canadian University: 29 students agreed to take part in the Twitter project and quantitative and qualitative data were collected, including survey data from 18 students. Students published 200% more public Tweets than what was required, and interacted frequently with the instructor and teaching assistant, their peers, and users external to the course. Almost 80% of students stated that Twitter increased opportunities for among-group communication, and 94% of students felt this kind of collaborative communication was beneficial to their learning. Although students did not think they would use Twitter after the course was over, 77% of the students still felt it was a good learning tool, and 67% of students felt Twitter had a positive impact on how they engaged with course content. These results suggest social media tools such as Twitter can help achieve active and collaborative learning in higher education. PMID:26594328

Tweets from the forest: using Twitter to increase student engagement in an undergraduate field biology course.

Science.gov (United States)

Soluk, Lauren; Buddle, Christopher M

2015-01-01

Twitter is a cold medium that allows users to deliver content-rich but small packets of information to other users, and provides an opportunity for active and collaborative communication. In an education setting, this social media tool has potential to increase active learning opportunities, and increase student engagement with course content. The effects of Twitter on learning dynamics was tested in a field biology course offered by a large Canadian University: 29 students agreed to take part in the Twitter project and quantitative and qualitative data were collected, including survey data from 18 students. Students published 200% more public Tweets than what was required, and interacted frequently with the instructor and teaching assistant, their peers, and users external to the course. Almost 80% of students stated that Twitter increased opportunities for among-group communication, and 94% of students felt this kind of collaborative communication was beneficial to their learning. Although students did not think they would use Twitter after the course was over, 77% of the students still felt it was a good learning tool, and 67% of students felt Twitter had a positive impact on how they engaged with course content. These results suggest social media tools such as Twitter can help achieve active and collaborative learning in higher education.

[Exponential use of social media in medicine: example of the interest of Twitter(©) in urology].

Science.gov (United States)

Rouprêt, M; Misraï, V

2015-01-01

Social media (#SoMe) has changed the face of modern medicine. Our purpose was to asses the potential interest of Twitter in the field of urology. A systematic review of the literature has been performed using PubMed without timeline restriction with the following keywords (MeSH): social media; Web 2.0; Twitter; Internet; network; urology; journal club; education. There were 3 categories of interest of Twitter in the field of urology: spread of scientific knowledge, scientific interaction during medical conferences and medical education and international medical debates. The unique spread of evidence-based-medecine through traditional scientific journals in paper version is over. Main scientific journals in urology and scientific societies are now using a Twitter account and became virtual. They use new bibliometrics available on #SoMe to estimate the social impact. Twitter allows for a better interactivity of doctors attending scientific conferences. Exponential use of Twitter is in the interest of speakers and leaders, audience and scientific societies. Lastly, medical academic education and continuing medical education can be achieved through #SoMe. Twitter became a lively virtual platform for scientific debates for complex oncological cases (dematerialized tumor board). Twitter is also a place for intense scientific discussion during virtual journal club without geographic or timeline restriction. Physicians need to respect the rules for a wise use of #SoMe in order not to break the Hippocratic Oath. There is a revolution around #SoMe and Twitter in the spread of scientific knowledge and academic teaching. International urologists are already committed in this evolution and France should also get involved. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Social Networks on Spanish Politics: Twitter on 2011 Election Campaigns

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luis Izquierdo Labella

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Twitter broke during the campaign of the Spanish regional and municipal elections of May 2011 with great strength as a field over the electoral battle. Most of the communication equipment of the leading candidates made extensive use of this new tool making it an additional tool to conventional media. Thus it was found inthe race for the presidency of the Community of Madrid and the mayor at City Hall of Madrid. Five months later, his strength was multiplied during the November elections, consolidating Twitter as another tool for candidates, journalists and citizens in the political debate.

Social Medicine: Twitter in Healthcare.

Science.gov (United States)

Pershad, Yash; Hangge, Patrick T; Albadawi, Hassan; Oklu, Rahmi

2018-05-28

Social media enables the public sharing of information. With the recent emphasis on transparency and the open sharing of information between doctors and patients, the intersection of social media and healthcare is of particular interest. Twitter is currently the most popular form of social media used for healthcare communication; here, we examine the use of Twitter in medicine and specifically explore in what capacity using Twitter to share information on treatments and research has the potential to improve care. The sharing of information on Twitter can create a communicative and collaborative atmosphere for patients, physicians, and researchers and even improve quality of care. However, risks involved with using Twitter for healthcare discourse include high rates of misinformation, difficulties in verifying the credibility of sources, overwhelmingly high volumes of information available on Twitter, concerns about professionalism, and the opportunity cost of using physician time. Ultimately, the use of Twitter in healthcare can allow patients, healthcare professionals, and researchers to be more informed, but specific guidelines for appropriate use are necessary.

The Use of Twitter by Radiology Journals: An Analysis of Twitter Activity and Impact Factor.

Science.gov (United States)

Kelly, Brendan S; Redmond, Ciaran E; Nason, Gregory J; Healy, Gerard M; Horgan, Niall A; Heffernan, Eric J

2016-11-01

Medical journals use social media as a means to disseminate new research and interact with readers. The microblogging site Twitter is one such platform. The aim of this study was to analyze the recent use of Twitter by the leading radiology journals. The top 50 journals by Impact Factor were included. Twitter profiles associated with these journals, or their corresponding societies, were identified. Whether each journal used other social media platforms was also recorded. Each Twitter profile was analyzed over a one-year period, with data collected via Twitonomy software. Klout scores of social media influence were calculated. Results were analyzed in SPSS using Student's t test, Fisher contingency tables, and Pearson correlations to identify any association between social media interaction and Impact Factors of journals. Fourteen journals (28%) had dedicated Twitter profiles. Of the 36 journals without dedicated Twitter profiles, 25 (50%) were associated with societies that had profiles, leaving 11 (22%) journals without a presence on Twitter. The mean Impact Factor of all journals was 3.1 ± 1.41 (range, 1.7-6.9). Journals with Twitter profiles had higher Impact Factors than those without (mean, 3.37 vs 2.14; P Twitter profiles and those associated with affiliated societies (P = .47). Since joining Twitter, 7 of the 11 journals (64%) experienced increases in Impact Factor. A greater number of Twitter followers was correlated with higher journal Impact Factor (R 2  = 0.581, P = .029). The investigators assessed the prevalence and activity of the leading radiology journals on Twitter. Radiology journals with Twitter profiles have higher Impact Factors than those without profiles, and the number of followers of a journal's Twitter profile is positively associated with Impact Factor. Copyright © 2016 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

APPROXIMATIONS TO THE USES OF TWITTER BY UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES IN ARGENTINA.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Claudia Nora Laudano

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This article analyses the main uses of the social media Twitter in university libraries in Argentina. After revising existing literature, we outline the research methods used to identify whether libraries are currently adopting Twitter and how it is being used. We focus on the following areas: the starting date of the activity, basic institutional data, visibility and access to Twitter from the library web, the quantity of tweets over time, those "followed" and those "following" and quantity and type of posts during the period of time selected for research. The results show that few libraries have used Twitter and their use of this media tool has generally been unplanned, mostly for spreading information rather than interaction. It also stresses that despite an extensive literature on what are considered good practices, generally they are not taken by the institutions. At last, we propose further research in this area to widen our knowledge of the daily use of Twitter among librarians.

Social media: a tool to spread information: a case study analysis of twitter conversation at the Cardiac Society of Australia & New Zealand 61st annual scientific meeting 2013.

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Ferguson, Caleb; Inglis, Sally C; Newton, Phillip J; Cripps, Peter J S; MacDonald, Peter S; Davidson, Patricia M

2014-01-01

The World Wide Web has changed the way in which people communicate and consume information. More importantly, this innovation has increased the speed and spread of information. There has been recent increase in the percentage of cardiovascular professionals, including journals and associations using Twitter to engage with others and exchange ideas. Evaluating the reach and impact in scientific meetings is important in promoting the use of social media. This study evaluated Twitter use during the recent 61st Annual Scientific Meeting at the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. During the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand 2013 61st Annual Scientific Meeting Symplur was used to curate conversations that were publicly posted with the hashtag #CSANZ2013. The hashtag was monitored with analysis focused on the influencers, latest tweets, tweet statistics, activity comparisons, and tweet activity during the conference. Additionally, Radian6 social media listening software was used to collect data. A summary is provided. There were 669 total tweets sent from 107 unique Twitter accounts during 8th August 9 a.m. to 11th August 1 p.m. This averaged nine tweets per hour and six tweets per participant. This assisted in the sharing of ideas and disseminating the findings and conclusions from presenters at the conference with a total 1,432,573 potential impressions in Twitter users tweet streams. This analysis of Twitter conversations during a recent scientific meeting highlights the significance and place of social media within research dissemination and collaboration. Researchers and clinicians should consider using this technology to enhance timely communication of findings. The potential to engage with consumers and enhance shared decision-making should be explored further.

Social Media Tools for Teaching and Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Wagner, Ronald

2011-01-01

According to Wikipedia, "social media is the media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible scalable techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue." Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, contain millions of members who…

Applying Multiple Data Collection Tools to Quantify Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Communication on Twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

Massey, Philip M; Leader, Amy; Yom-Tov, Elad; Budenz, Alexandra; Fisher, Kara; Klassen, Ann C

2016-12-05

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. There are several vaccines that protect against strains of HPV most associated with cervical and other cancers. Thus, HPV vaccination has become an important component of adolescent preventive health care. As media evolves, more information about HPV vaccination is shifting to social media platforms such as Twitter. Health information consumed on social media may be especially influential for segments of society such as younger populations, as well as ethnic and racial minorities. The objectives of our study were to quantify HPV vaccine communication on Twitter, and to develop a novel methodology to improve the collection and analysis of Twitter data. We collected Twitter data using 10 keywords related to HPV vaccination from August 1, 2014 to July 31, 2015. Prospective data collection used the Twitter Search API and retrospective data collection used Twitter Firehose. Using a codebook to characterize tweet sentiment and content, we coded a subsample of tweets by hand to develop classification models to code the entire sample using machine learning procedures. We also documented the words in the 140-character tweet text most associated with each keyword. We used chi-square tests, analysis of variance, and nonparametric equality of medians to test for significant differences in tweet characteristic by sentiment. A total of 193,379 English-language tweets were collected, classified, and analyzed. Associated words varied with each keyword, with more positive and preventive words associated with "HPV vaccine" and more negative words associated with name-brand vaccines. Positive sentiment was the largest type of sentiment in the sample, with 75,393 positive tweets (38.99% of the sample), followed by negative sentiment with 48,940 tweets (25.31% of the sample). Positive and neutral tweets constituted the largest percentage of tweets mentioning prevention or protection (20

Framing the Use of Social Media Tools in Public Health

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Stoll, Jennifer; Quartarone, Richard; Torres-Urquidy, Miguel

2013-01-01

Objective Recent scholarship has focused on using social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) as a secondary data stream for disease event detection. However, reported implementations such as (4) underscore where the real value may lie in using social media for surveillance. We provide a framework to illuminate uses of social media beyond passive observation, and towards improving active responses to public health threats. Introduction User-generated content enabled by social media tools provide a stream of data that augment surveillance data. Current use of social media data focuses on identification of disease events. However, once identification occurs, the leveraging of social media in monitoring disease events remains unclear (2, 3). To clarify this, we constructed a framework mapped to the surveillance cycle, to understand how social media can improve public health actions. Methods This framework builds on extant literature on surveillance and social media found in PubMed, Science Direct, and Web of Science, using keywords: “public health”, “surveillance”, “outbreak”, and “social media”. We excluded articles on online tools that were not interactive e.g., aggregated web-search results. Of 2,064 articles, 23 articles were specifically on the use of social media in surveillance work. Our review yielded five categories of social media use within the surveillance cycle (Table 1). This framing within surveillance illuminates a range of roles for social media tools beyond disease event detection. [Insert Image #1 here] Finally, we used the 1918 Influenza Pandemic to illustrate an application of this framework (Fig 1), if it were part of the public health toolkit. In 1918, America was already becoming a “mass media” society. Yet a key difference in mass communications today is the enabling of public health to be more adaptive through the interactivity of social media. Results We used this “pre-social media” disease event to underscore where the

Review of Twitter for infectious diseases clinicians: useful or a waste of time?

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Goff, Debra A; Kullar, Ravina; Newland, Jason G

2015-05-15

Twitter is a social networking service that has emerged as a valuable tool for healthcare professionals (HCPs). It is the only platform that allows one to connect, engage, learn, and educate oneself and others in real time on a global scale. HCPs are using social media tools to communicate, educate, and engage with their peers worldwide. Twitter allows HCPs to deliver easily accessible "real-time" clinical information on a global scale. Twitter has more than 500 million active users who generate more than 58 million tweets and 2.1 billion search queries every day. Here, we explain why Twitter is important, how and when an infectious diseases (ID) HCP should use Twitter, the impact it has in disseminating ID news, and its educational value. We also describe various tools within Twitter, such as Twitter Chat, that connect and bond HCPs on a specific topic. Twitter may help ID HCPs teach others about the global responsible use of antimicrobials in a world of escalating antimicrobial resistance. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Social media as a tool for positioning of youth non-governmental organizations activity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. A. Shvab

2014-09-01

Full Text Available The article is devoted to the social media analysis, as an important tool of the mass media in the youth non-governmental organizations activity. The article is about special popularity of social media among youth because of the rapid information technologies development. The author emphasizes that social media is a main online channel of communication among young generation, that should be taken into the consideration during the external communication creation. Youth organizations often use social media for target audience involvement, information dissimilation and exchange, service promotion and online dialogue. The author analyses different social media tools, such as: blogs, microblogs (Twitter, social networking sites (Facebook, VKontakte, video-sharing websites (YouTube and others. All these tools are easy in use, do not need any special skills and resources, they are low-cost as well. The author considers that it would be useful to include the organization’s Internet addresses on all social media websites and in traditional media publications, to make it as easy as possible for customers to find the youth non-governmental organizations they are looking for among the broad range of social media communities and services.

Twitter as a Potential Disaster Risk Reduction Tool. Part II: Descriptive Analysis of Identified Twitter Activity during the 2013 Hattiesburg F4 Tornado.

Science.gov (United States)

Cooper, Guy Paul; Yeager, Violet; Burkle, Frederick M; Subbarao, Italo

2015-06-29

This article describes a novel triangulation methodological approach for identifying twitter activity of regional active twitter users during the 2013 Hattiesburg EF-4 Tornado. A data extraction and geographically centered filtration approach was utilized to generate Twitter data for 48 hrs pre- and post-Tornado. The data was further validated using six sigma approach utilizing GPS data. The regional analysis revealed a total of 81,441 tweets, 10,646 Twitter users, 27,309 retweets and 2637 tweets with GPS coordinates. Twitter tweet activity increased 5 fold during the response to the Hattiesburg Tornado.  Retweeting activity increased 2.2 fold. Tweets with a hashtag increased 1.4 fold. Twitter was an effective disaster risk reduction tool for the Hattiesburg EF-4 Tornado 2013.

How Do Online Citizens Persuade Fellow Voters? Using Twitter During the 2012 Dutch Parliamentary Election Campaign

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dayican, B.; Amrit, Chintan Amrit; Aarts, Kees; Dassen, A.

2014-01-01

This article explores how Twitter was used by voters to participate in electoral campaigning during the Dutch election campaign of 2012. New social media networks like Twitter are believed to be efficient tools of communication between electoral candidates and voters during electoral campaign

Using social media as a tool to predict syphilis.

Science.gov (United States)

Young, Sean D; Mercer, Neil; Weiss, Robert E; Torrone, Elizabeth A; Aral, Sevgi O

2018-04-01

Syphilis rates have been rapidly rising in the United States. New technologies, such as social media, might be used to anticipate and prevent the spread of disease. Because social media data collection is easy and inexpensive, integration of social media data into syphilis surveillance may be a cost-effective surveillance strategy, especially in low-resource regions. People are increasingly using social media to discuss health-related issues, such as sexual risk behaviors, allowing social media to be a potential tool for public health and medical research. This study mined Twitter data to assess whether social media could be used to predict syphilis cases in 2013 based on 2012 data. We collected 2012 and 2013 county-level primary and secondary (P&S) and early latent syphilis cases reported to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, along with >8500 geolocated tweets in the United States that were filtered to include sexual risk-related keywords, including colloquial terms for intercourse. We assessed the relationship between syphilis-related tweets and actual case reports by county, controlling for socioeconomic indicators and prior year syphilis cases. We found a significant positive relationship between tweets and cases of P&S and early latent syphilis. This study shows that social media may be an additional tool to enhance syphilis prediction and surveillance. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Media Sosial dan Citra Diri ( Studi Korelasional Pengaruh Penggunaan Media Sosial Twitter Terhadap Pembentukan Citra Diri Elit Politik Pada Mahasiswa Ilmu Komunikasi FISIP USU Angkatan 2012 dan 2013 )

OpenAIRE

Andhika, Irend Eka

2016-01-01

The tittle of this study is “Social Media and Self Image” (a corelational study of effect of the utilization social media Twitter to self image of political elite ) in Communication Science student in Faculty of Social Science and Political Science University of Sumatera Utara generation 2012 and 2013 . The aim of this study is to draw how the relation of social media Twitter to self image of political elite in Communication Science student in Faculty of Social Science and Political Scien...

The Media Strategy Game : Fostering Discussion on Media Strategy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dr. H.M.M. van Vliet; Rogier Brussee; Jeroen Nobel; Charlotte van Nus

2013-01-01

All social media should have a sticker saying 'Don't Jump for the Tool!' While it is tempting 'to use Twitter', the choice of a medium like Twitter cannot be seen in isolation of strategic goals, instruments and expected results, i.e. a communication strategy. We designed a board game, called the

Social Media in Shoulder & Elbow Surgery: An Analysis of Twitter and Instagram.

Science.gov (United States)

Ramkumar, Prem N; Navarro, Sergio M; Cornaghie, Margaret M; Haeberle, Heather S; Hameed, Hafsah; Schickendantz, Mark S; Ricchetti, Eric T; Iannotti, Joseph P

2018-07-01

Social media provide a unique method of analyzing outcomes and quality in medicine. The purpose of this observational study was to investigate the nature of social media content related to shoulder and elbow (S&E) surgery posted by patients, surgeons, and hospitals. A public search of Instagram for a two-year period yielded 1,177 patient-related posts. A categorical system assessed the perspective, timing, tone, and content of each post. Twitter accounts of 77 S&E specialists from the top five ranked U.S. News & World Report institutions were analyzed for activity and content. 5,246 Twitter and Instagram posts for the institutions were analyzed for frequency and content. Most patient-related posts were by patients (68%), postoperative (82%), positive (87%), and centered on return-to-play for Tommy John (34%), surgical site for shoulder arthroplasty (52%), and activities of daily living for rotator cuff repair (22%). 37% of surgeons had active accounts averaging 46 posts, 87% of which were practice advertisements. Hospitals averaged 273 posts over the 2-year period, focusing on education (38%) and community (18%). S&E patients share outcomes on social media in a positive tone with procedure-dependent emphases. Surgeons on social media use sites for practice augmentation. Hospitals often focused posts towards educating the community. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Using Twitter for Demographic and Social Science Research: Tools for Data Collection and Processing.

Science.gov (United States)

McCormick, Tyler H; Lee, Hedwig; Cesare, Nina; Shojaie, Ali; Spiro, Emma S

2017-08-01

Despite recent and growing interest in using Twitter to examine human behavior and attitudes, there is still significant room for growth regarding the ability to leverage Twitter data for social science research. In particular, gleaning demographic information about Twitter users-a key component of much social science research-remains a challenge. This article develops an accurate and reliable data processing approach for social science researchers interested in using Twitter data to examine behaviors and attitudes, as well as the demographic characteristics of the populations expressing or engaging in them. Using information gathered from Twitter users who state an intention to not vote in the 2012 presidential election, we describe and evaluate a method for processing data to retrieve demographic information reported by users that is not encoded as text (e.g., details of images) and evaluate the reliability of these techniques. We end by assessing the challenges of this data collection strategy and discussing how large-scale social media data may benefit demographic researchers.

Social media in radiology: early trends in Twitter microblogging at radiology's largest international meeting.

Science.gov (United States)

Hawkins, C Matthew; Duszak, Richard; Rawson, James V

2014-04-01

Twitter is a social media microblogging platform that allows rapid exchange of information between individuals. Despite its widespread acceptance and use at various other medical specialty meetings, there are no published data evaluating its use at radiology meetings. The purpose of this study is to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the use of Twitter as a microblogging platform at recent RSNA annual meetings. Twitter activity meta-data tagged with official meeting hashtags #RSNA11 and #RSNA12 were collected and analyzed. Multiple metrics were evaluated, including daily and hourly Twitter activity, frequency of microblogging activity over time, characteristics of the 100 most active Twitter users at each meeting, characteristics of meeting-related tweets, and the geographic origin of meeting microbloggers. The use of Twitter microblogging increased by at least 30% by all identifiable meaningful metrics between the 2011 and 2012 RSNA annual meetings, including total tweets, tweets per day, activity of the most active microbloggers, and total number of microbloggers. Similar increases were observed in numbers of North American and international microbloggers. Markedly increased use of the Twitter microblogging platform at recent RSNA annual meetings demonstrates the potential to leverage this technology to engage meeting attendees, improve scientific sessions, and promote improved collaboration at national radiology meetings. Copyright © 2014 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Media and the Practicing Hematologist: Twitter 101 for the Busy Healthcare Provider.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Michael A; Majhail, Navneet S; Wood, William A; Perales, Miguel-Angel; Chaboissier, Mélanie

2015-12-01

Social media is a relatively new form of media that includes social networks for communication dissemination and interaction. Patients, physicians, and other users are active on social media including the microblogging platform Twitter. Many online resources are available to facilitate joining and adding to online conversations. Social media can be used for professional uses, therefore, we include anecdotes of physicians starting on and implementing social media successfully despite the limits of time in busy practices. Various applications demonstrating the utility of social media are explored. These include case discussions, patient groups, research collaborations, medical education, and crowdsourcing/crowdfunding. Social media is integrating into the professional workflow for some individuals and hematology/oncology societies. The potential for improving hematology care and research is just starting to be explored.

Is Twitter a forum for disseminating research to health policy makers?

Science.gov (United States)

Kapp, Julie M; Hensel, Brian; Schnoring, Kyle T

2015-12-01

Findings from scientific research largely remain inside the scientific community. Research scientists are being encouraged to use social media, and especially Twitter, for dissemination of evidence. The potential for Twitter to narrow the gap on evidence translated into policy presents new opportunities. We explored the innovative question of the feasibility of Twitter as a tool for the scientific community to disseminate to and engage with health policy makers for research impact. We created a list of federal "health policy makers." In December 2014, we identified members using several data sources, then collected and summarized their Twitter usage data. Nearly all health policy makers had Twitter accounts. Their communication volume varied broadly. Policy makers are more likely to push information via Twitter than engage with constituents, although usage varied broadly. Twitter has the potential to aid the scientific community in dissemination of health-related research to health policy makers, after understanding how to effectively (and selectively) use Twitter. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Twitter in the cross fire--the use of social media in the Westgate Mall terror attack in Kenya.

Science.gov (United States)

Simon, Tomer; Goldberg, Avishay; Aharonson-Daniel, Limor; Leykin, Dmitry; Adini, Bruria

2014-01-01

On September 2013 an attack on the Westgate mall in Kenya led to a four day siege, resulting in 67 fatalities and 175 wounded. During the crisis, Twitter became a crucial channel of communication between the government, emergency responders and the public, facilitating the emergency management of the event. The objectives of this paper are to present the main activities, use patterns and lessons learned from the use of the social media in the crisis. Using TwitterMate, a system developed to collect, store and analyze tweets, the main hashtags generated by the crowd and specific Twitter accounts of individuals, emergency responders and NGOs, were followed throughout the four day siege. A total of 67,849 tweets were collected and analyzed. Four main categories of hashtags were identified: geographical locations, terror attack, social support and organizations. The abundance of Twitter accounts providing official information made it difficult to synchronize and follow the flow of information. Many organizations posted simultaneously, by their manager and by the organization itself. Creating situational awareness was facilitated by information tweeted by the public. Threat assessment was updated through the information posted on social media. Security breaches led to the relay of sensitive data. At times, misinformation was only corrected after two days. Social media offer an accessible, widely available means for a bi-directional flow of information between the public and the authorities. In the crisis, all emergency responders used and leveraged social media networks for communicating both with the public and among themselves. A standard operating procedure should be developed to enable multiple responders to monitor, synchronize and integrate their social media feeds during emergencies. This will lead to better utilization and optimization of social media resources during crises, providing clear guidelines for communications and a hierarchy for dispersing

Twitter in the cross fire--the use of social media in the Westgate Mall terror attack in Kenya.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomer Simon

Full Text Available On September 2013 an attack on the Westgate mall in Kenya led to a four day siege, resulting in 67 fatalities and 175 wounded. During the crisis, Twitter became a crucial channel of communication between the government, emergency responders and the public, facilitating the emergency management of the event. The objectives of this paper are to present the main activities, use patterns and lessons learned from the use of the social media in the crisis. Using TwitterMate, a system developed to collect, store and analyze tweets, the main hashtags generated by the crowd and specific Twitter accounts of individuals, emergency responders and NGOs, were followed throughout the four day siege. A total of 67,849 tweets were collected and analyzed. Four main categories of hashtags were identified: geographical locations, terror attack, social support and organizations. The abundance of Twitter accounts providing official information made it difficult to synchronize and follow the flow of information. Many organizations posted simultaneously, by their manager and by the organization itself. Creating situational awareness was facilitated by information tweeted by the public. Threat assessment was updated through the information posted on social media. Security breaches led to the relay of sensitive data. At times, misinformation was only corrected after two days. Social media offer an accessible, widely available means for a bi-directional flow of information between the public and the authorities. In the crisis, all emergency responders used and leveraged social media networks for communicating both with the public and among themselves. A standard operating procedure should be developed to enable multiple responders to monitor, synchronize and integrate their social media feeds during emergencies. This will lead to better utilization and optimization of social media resources during crises, providing clear guidelines for communications and a hierarchy for

Twitter in the Cross Fire—The Use of Social Media in the Westgate Mall Terror Attack in Kenya

Science.gov (United States)

Simon, Tomer; Goldberg, Avishay; Aharonson-Daniel, Limor; Leykin, Dmitry; Adini, Bruria

2014-01-01

On September 2013 an attack on the Westgate mall in Kenya led to a four day siege, resulting in 67 fatalities and 175 wounded. During the crisis, Twitter became a crucial channel of communication between the government, emergency responders and the public, facilitating the emergency management of the event. The objectives of this paper are to present the main activities, use patterns and lessons learned from the use of the social media in the crisis. Using TwitterMate, a system developed to collect, store and analyze tweets, the main hashtags generated by the crowd and specific Twitter accounts of individuals, emergency responders and NGOs, were followed throughout the four day siege. A total of 67,849 tweets were collected and analyzed. Four main categories of hashtags were identified: geographical locations, terror attack, social support and organizations. The abundance of Twitter accounts providing official information made it difficult to synchronize and follow the flow of information. Many organizations posted simultaneously, by their manager and by the organization itself. Creating situational awareness was facilitated by information tweeted by the public. Threat assessment was updated through the information posted on social media. Security breaches led to the relay of sensitive data. At times, misinformation was only corrected after two days. Social media offer an accessible, widely available means for a bi-directional flow of information between the public and the authorities. In the crisis, all emergency responders used and leveraged social media networks for communicating both with the public and among themselves. A standard operating procedure should be developed to enable multiple responders to monitor, synchronize and integrate their social media feeds during emergencies. This will lead to better utilization and optimization of social media resources during crises, providing clear guidelines for communications and a hierarchy for dispersing

Rare Cancers and Social Media: Analysis of Twitter Metrics in the First 2 Years of a Rare-Disease Community for Myeloproliferative Neoplasms on Social Media-#MPNSM.

Science.gov (United States)

Pemmaraju, Naveen; Utengen, Audun; Gupta, Vikas; Kiladjian, Jean-Jacques; Mesa, Ruben; Thompson, Michael A

2017-12-01

The use of social media has now become a standard means of communication for many individuals worldwide. The use of one specific form of social media, Twitter, has increased among healthcare providers, both as a means of information gathering and as a conduit for original content creation. Recently, major efforts by users have been put forward to help streamline the unprecedented amount of information that can be found on Twitter. These efforts have led to the creation of diseasespecific hashtag (#) medical communities and have greatly enhanced the ability to understand and better categorize the available data on Twitter. Specifically, for those involved in rare cancer fields, adhering to organically designed and consistently used hashtags has led to the rapid, reliable dissemination of information and the ability to efficiently discuss and debate topics of interest in the field. For the field of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), the creation of #MPNSM (myeloproliferative neoplasms on social media) in 2015 has facilitated interactions among healthcare stakeholders from all over the world in the MPN field. In order to better understand the trends and topics of interest to Twitter users of this novel medical community, we conducted the present analysis which focuses on Twitter analytics from the first two years of #MPNSM. In this analysis, we observed a sustained increase in the number of Twitter users, number of tweets, number of impressions, and number of retweets over time, demonstrating the feasibility of creating and maintaining a disease-specific hashtag for a rare cancer over time.

Rising tides or rising stars?: Dynamics of shared attention on Twitter during media events.

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Yu-Ru; Keegan, Brian; Margolin, Drew; Lazer, David

2014-01-01

"Media events" generate conditions of shared attention as many users simultaneously tune in with the dual screens of broadcast and social media to view and participate. We examine how collective patterns of user behavior under conditions of shared attention are distinct from other "bursts" of activity like breaking news events. Using 290 million tweets from a panel of 193,532 politically active Twitter users, we compare features of their behavior during eight major events during the 2012 U.S. presidential election to examine how patterns of social media use change during these media events compared to "typical" time and whether these changes are attributable to shifts in the behavior of the population as a whole or shifts from particular segments such as elites. Compared to baseline time periods, our findings reveal that media events not only generate large volumes of tweets, but they are also associated with (1) substantial declines in interpersonal communication, (2) more highly concentrated attention by replying to and retweeting particular users, and (3) elite users predominantly benefiting from this attention. These findings empirically demonstrate how bursts of activity on Twitter during media events significantly alter underlying social processes of interpersonal communication and social interaction. Because the behavior of large populations within socio-technical systems can change so dramatically, our findings suggest the need for further research about how social media responses to media events can be used to support collective sensemaking, to promote informed deliberation, and to remain resilient in the face of misinformation.

Rising Tides or Rising Stars?: Dynamics of Shared Attention on Twitter during Media Events

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Yu-Ru; Keegan, Brian; Margolin, Drew; Lazer, David

2014-01-01

“Media events” generate conditions of shared attention as many users simultaneously tune in with the dual screens of broadcast and social media to view and participate. We examine how collective patterns of user behavior under conditions of shared attention are distinct from other “bursts” of activity like breaking news events. Using 290 million tweets from a panel of 193,532 politically active Twitter users, we compare features of their behavior during eight major events during the 2012 U.S. presidential election to examine how patterns of social media use change during these media events compared to “typical” time and whether these changes are attributable to shifts in the behavior of the population as a whole or shifts from particular segments such as elites. Compared to baseline time periods, our findings reveal that media events not only generate large volumes of tweets, but they are also associated with (1) substantial declines in interpersonal communication, (2) more highly concentrated attention by replying to and retweeting particular users, and (3) elite users predominantly benefiting from this attention. These findings empirically demonstrate how bursts of activity on Twitter during media events significantly alter underlying social processes of interpersonal communication and social interaction. Because the behavior of large populations within socio-technical systems can change so dramatically, our findings suggest the need for further research about how social media responses to media events can be used to support collective sensemaking, to promote informed deliberation, and to remain resilient in the face of misinformation. PMID:24854030

Rising tides or rising stars?: Dynamics of shared attention on Twitter during media events.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yu-Ru Lin

Full Text Available "Media events" generate conditions of shared attention as many users simultaneously tune in with the dual screens of broadcast and social media to view and participate. We examine how collective patterns of user behavior under conditions of shared attention are distinct from other "bursts" of activity like breaking news events. Using 290 million tweets from a panel of 193,532 politically active Twitter users, we compare features of their behavior during eight major events during the 2012 U.S. presidential election to examine how patterns of social media use change during these media events compared to "typical" time and whether these changes are attributable to shifts in the behavior of the population as a whole or shifts from particular segments such as elites. Compared to baseline time periods, our findings reveal that media events not only generate large volumes of tweets, but they are also associated with (1 substantial declines in interpersonal communication, (2 more highly concentrated attention by replying to and retweeting particular users, and (3 elite users predominantly benefiting from this attention. These findings empirically demonstrate how bursts of activity on Twitter during media events significantly alter underlying social processes of interpersonal communication and social interaction. Because the behavior of large populations within socio-technical systems can change so dramatically, our findings suggest the need for further research about how social media responses to media events can be used to support collective sensemaking, to promote informed deliberation, and to remain resilient in the face of misinformation.

Participatory Learning through Social Media: How and Why Social Studies Educators Use Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Krutka, Daniel G.; Carpenter, Jeffrey P.

2016-01-01

The microblogging service Twitter offers a platform that social studies educators increasingly use for professional development, communication, and class activities, but to what ends? The authors drew on Deweyan conceptions of participatory learning and citizenship aims of the field as lenses through which to consider social media activities. To…

Use of twitter and Facebook by top European museums

OpenAIRE

Kostas Zafiropoulos; Vasiliki Vrana; Konstantinos Antoniadis

2015-01-01

With social media becoming so pervasive, museums strive to adopt them for their own use. Effective use of social media especially Facebook and Twitter seems to be promising. Social media offer museums the possibility to engage audiences, potential and active visitors with their collections and ideas. Facebook and Twitter are the market leaders of social media. This paper records the top European museums and their Facebook and Twitter accounts. It records the use of the two media, and by apply...

Let's Have a Tweetup: The Case for Using Twitter Professionally.

Science.gov (United States)

Fuller, Maren Y; Allen, Timothy Craig

2016-09-01

Social media use is very common and can be an effective way for professionals to discuss information and interact with colleagues. Twitter (Twitter, Inc, San Francisco, California) is a social media network where posts, termed tweets, are limited to 140 characters. Professional use of Twitter is ideal for physicians interested in both networking and education and is optimally used to facilitate in-person networking. Live-tweeting (posting real-time reactions to events) at professional meetings is also a popular and highly successful use of Twitter. Physicians report patient privacy as the top concern preventing use of social media for professional reasons, and although generally social media use is safe, it is essential to understand how to protect patient confidentially. Other social media platforms with potential for professional use include Facebook (Facebook, Inc, Menlo Park, California), Instagram (Facebook, Inc), YouTube (YouTube, LLC, San Bruno, California), and Periscope (Twitter, Inc). With Twitter and other social media options, now is the time for pathologists to increase our visibility on social media and worldwide.

E-Cigarette Social Media Messages: A Text Mining Analysis of Marketing and Consumer Conversations on Twitter

OpenAIRE

Lazard, Allison J; Saffer, Adam J; Wilcox, Gary B; Chung, Arnold DongWoo; Mackert, Michael S; Bernhardt, Jay M

2016-01-01

Background As the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) rises, social media likely influences public awareness and perception of this emerging tobacco product. Objective This study examined the public conversation on Twitter to determine overarching themes and insights for trending topics from commercial and consumer users. Methods Text mining uncovered key patterns and important topics for e-cigarettes on Twitter. SAS Text Miner 12.1 software (SAS Institute Inc) was used for descriptiv...

A Digital Ethnography of Medical Students who Use Twitter for Professional Development.

Science.gov (United States)

Chretien, Katherine C; Tuck, Matthew G; Simon, Michael; Singh, Lisa O; Kind, Terry

2015-11-01

While researchers have studied negative professional consequences of medical trainee social media use, little is known about how medical students informally use social media for education and career development. This knowledge may help future and current physicians succeed in the digital age. We aimed to explore how and why medical students use Twitter for professional development. This was a digital ethnography. Medical student "superusers" of Twitter participated in the study The postings ("tweets") of 31 medical student superusers were observed for 8 months (May-December 2013), and structured field notes recorded. Through purposive sampling, individual key informant interviews were conducted to explore Twitter use and values until thematic saturation was reached (ten students). Three faculty key informant interviews were also conducted. Ego network and subnetwork analysis of student key informants was performed. Qualitative analysis included inductive coding of field notes and interviews, triangulation of data, and analytic memos in an iterative process. Twitter served as a professional tool that supplemented the traditional medical school experience. Superusers approached their use of Twitter with purpose and were mindful of online professionalism as well as of being good Twitter citizens. Their tweets reflected a mix of personal and professional content. Student key informants had a high number of followers. The subnetwork of key informants was well-connected, showing evidence of a social network versus information network. Twitter provided value in two major domains: access and voice. Students gained access to information, to experts, to a variety of perspectives including patient and public perspectives, and to communities of support. They also gained a platform for advocacy, control of their digital footprint, and a sense of equalization within the medical hierarchy. Twitter can serve as a professional tool that supplements traditional education. Students

Social Media Management Strategies for Organizational Impression Management and their Effect on Public Perception

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Benthaus, Janek; Risius, Marten; Beck, Roman

2016-01-01

strategy, help companies to positively influence the public perception among social media users. A mixed methods approach is applied, where we quantitatively analyze 15 million user-generated Twitter messages containing information about 45 large global companies highly active on Twitter, as well as almost......With the growing importance of social media, companies increasingly rely on social media management tools to analyze social media activities and to professionalize their social media engagement. In this study, we evaluate how social media management tools, as part of an overarching social media...... 160 thousand corresponding messages sent from these companies via their corporate Twitter accounts. Additionally, we conducted interviews with six social media experts to gain complementary insights. By these means, we are able to identify significant differences between different social media...

Twitter Application Development For Dummies

CERN Document Server

Reagan, Dusty

2010-01-01

Get the guide to planning, developing and monetizing apps for Twitter!. Twitter is the one of the hottest trends in social networking. With several million users, Twitter's popularity is growing everyday. Twitter will continue to increase user base while third-party companies keep popping up all over to make money building Twitter apps for phones, advertising tools, analytics/management tools and more. Some of the most popular Twitter apps include TwitPic, Twhirl, TweetDeck, and FriendorFollow. With this book, author Dusty Reagan uses one of his unpublished Twitter app ideas and takes you thro

The Impact of Islamic Messages on Twitter Towards Moslem Youth

Science.gov (United States)

Fathan Hidayatullah, Ahmad; Hamzah, Almed

2017-03-01

The presence of social media has increased the opportunities for the Moslem in sharing and gaining knowledge about the religion of Islam. In general, Twitter can be an alternative for people to deliver and obtain Islamic messages. As the biggest moslem community, Indonesian people has made use of Twitter as a tool for them to gain knowledge about religion. As a matter of fact, there are many Islamic preachers that have been utilize Twitter as a media of proselytizing various topic related to religion practice. The most popular preacher usually has many follower. The result shows that there is a strong correlation between the two. There is a correlation between the number of tweets with the number of follower. The more preacher post a tweets the more follower they attained. Moreover, several topics are identified as the most frequently occurred. The tweets which contain about worship, love, information, and purification of soul have become the most favourable subject among preachers and scholars.

Social media and palliative medicine: a retrospective 2-year analysis of global Twitter data to evaluate the use of technology to communicate about issues at the end of life.

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Nwosu, Amara Callistus; Debattista, Maria; Rooney, Claire; Mason, Stephen

2015-06-01

Social media describes technological applications which are used to exchange information in a virtual environment. The use of social media is increasing, in professional and social contexts, on a variety of platforms such as Twitter; however, the scope and breadth of its use to discuss end-of-life care has not previously been reported. To determine the frequency, sentiment and trend of Twitter 'tweets' containing palliative care-related identifiers (hashtags) and/or phrases sent by users over a 2-year period. A 2-year retrospective analysis of Twitter posts (tweets), between the 1 August 2011 to 31 July 2013, using a social media analytics tool: TopsyPro. Thirteen search terms were identified and analysed for tweet volume, frequency, sentiment and acceleration. A total of 683.5K tweets containing a combination of 13 palliative care terms were analysed. The tweet volume for all terms increased by 62.3% between 2011-2012 (262.5K) and 2012-2013 (421K). The most popular terms include 'end-of-life' (210K), #hpm (114K) and 'palliative care' (93.8K). Sentiment was high with 89% of tweets rated more positive than all other tweets sent on Twitter during this period. The term 'Liverpool Care Pathway' experienced the highest percentage increase in tweets (55% increase) reaching a peak in July 2013. A lot of discussion about palliative care is taking place on Twitter, and the majority of this is positive. Social media presents a novel opportunity for engagement and ongoing dialogue with public and professional groups. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Upgrading a Social Media Strategy to Increase Twitter Engagement During the Spring Annual Meeting of the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine.

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Schwenk, Eric S; Jaremko, Kellie M; Gupta, Rajnish K; Udani, Ankeet D; McCartney, Colin J L; Snively, Anne; Mariano, Edward R

Microblogs known as "tweets" are a rapid, effective method of information dissemination in health care. Although several medical specialties have described their Twitter conference experiences, Twitter-related data in the fields of anesthesiology and pain medicine are sparse. We therefore analyzed the Twitter content of 2 consecutive spring meetings of the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine using publicly available online transcripts. We also examined the potential contribution of a targeted social media campaign on Twitter engagement during the conferences. The original Twitter meeting content was largely scientific in nature and created by meeting attendees, the majority of whom were nontrainee physicians. Physician trainees, however, represent an important and increasing minority of Twitter contributors. Physicians not in attendance predominantly contributed via retweeting original content, particularly picture-containing tweets, and thus increased reach to nonattendees. A social media campaign prior to meetings may help increase the reach of conference-related Twitter discussion.

Effective use of Twitter and Facebook in pathology practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Oltulu, Pembe; Mannan, Abul Ala Syed Rifat; Gardner, Jerad M

2018-03-01

Social networking has become a part of daily life for most people. In the era of globalization, it has become indispensable for effective communication between friends and peers across the world. Today, social media use is not restricted only to our personal lives; it is becoming increasingly incorporated into our professional lives, as well. Social media platforms are rapidly becoming a necessary tool for medical professionals. Apt use of social media platforms can revolutionize scientific communication and collaboration. Pathologists are increasingly counted among Facebook's 2 billion users and Twitter's 328 million members. Social media can be a powerful tool not only for individual career progression but also for raising the public profile of the specialty of pathology. It is now possible for us to reach out to millions of people, simultaneously and instantaneously, just by touching a screen. Real-time interactions between physicians, across geographic borders and subspecialty borders, will undeniably open unexplored avenues for effective communication, consultation, research collaboration, and education. Knowledge sharing through social media will immensely enrich and grow our careers as pathologists; it will also enlighten the public and physicians of other specialties as to the crucial role of pathologists in patient care. We discuss the uses of Facebook and Twitter in modern day pathology, its implication in routine daily practice, pros and cons, and tips for effective social media use by pathologists. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Social Media as Collaborative Media in Workplace Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Thomas, Kristopher J.; Akdere, Mesut

2013-01-01

As a result of rapid changes in technology, much is discussed about the use of social media in branding, marketing, and in general corporate communications. The intensity with which social media tools--blogs, wikis, Twitter, instant messaging (IM) and Facebook, among others--have proliferated is staggering. Increasingly important is the role of…

Use of twitter and Facebook by top European museums

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kostas Zafiropoulos

2015-12-01

Full Text Available With social media becoming so pervasive, museums strive to adopt them for their own use. Effective use of social media especially Facebook and Twitter seems to be promising. Social media offer museums the possibility to engage audiences, potential and active visitors with their collections and ideas. Facebook and Twitter are the market leaders of social media. This paper records the top European museums and their Facebook and Twitter accounts. It records the use of the two media, and by applying statistical analysis it investigates whether Twitter use is in accordance to Facebook use. Findings reveal that this is not the case. By using Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis the paper finds that there is, however, a district group of top museums which manage to excel in both media mainly by adopting carefully planned strategies and paying attention to the potential and benefits that social media offer.

Trial Promoter: A Web-Based Tool for Boosting the Promotion of Clinical Research Through Social Media.

Science.gov (United States)

Reuter, Katja; Ukpolo, Francis; Ward, Edward; Wilson, Melissa L; Angyan, Praveen

2016-06-29

Scarce information about clinical research, in particular clinical trials, is among the top reasons why potential participants do not take part in clinical studies. Without volunteers, on the other hand, clinical research and the development of novel approaches to preventing, diagnosing, and treating disease are impossible. Promising digital options such as social media have the potential to work alongside traditional methods to boost the promotion of clinical research. However, investigators and research institutions are challenged to leverage these innovations while saving time and resources. To develop and test the efficiency of a Web-based tool that automates the generation and distribution of user-friendly social media messages about clinical trials. Trial Promoter is developed in Ruby on Rails, HTML, cascading style sheet (CSS), and JavaScript. In order to test the tool and the correctness of the generated messages, clinical trials (n=46) were randomized into social media messages and distributed via the microblogging social media platform Twitter and the social network Facebook. The percent correct was calculated to determine the probability with which Trial Promoter generates accurate messages. During a 10-week testing phase, Trial Promoter automatically generated and published 525 user-friendly social media messages on Twitter and Facebook. On average, Trial Promoter correctly used the message templates and substituted the message parameters (text, URLs, and disease hashtags) 97.7% of the time (1563/1600). Trial Promoter may serve as a promising tool to render clinical trial promotion more efficient while requiring limited resources. It supports the distribution of any research or other types of content. The Trial Promoter code and installation instructions are freely available online.

Social Media and Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN): Analysis of Advanced Metrics From the First Year of a New Twitter Community: #MPNSM.

Science.gov (United States)

Pemmaraju, Naveen; Utengen, Audun; Gupta, Vikas; Kiladjian, Jean-Jacques; Mesa, Ruben; Thompson, Michael A

2016-12-01

The social media platform Twitter has provided the hematology/oncology community with unprecedented, novel methods of interpersonal communication and increased ability for the dissemination of important updates in a rapidly moving field. The advent, and subsequent success, of disease-specific Twitter communities have further enabled interested healthcare stakeholders to become quickly organized around a unique set of rare medical conditions, such as hematologic malignancies, that, historically, generally lack large amounts of reliable online information. One example is the Twitter community #MPNSM (myeloproliferative neoplasms on social media), which was started approximately one and half years ago and has served as a recognized venue for discussion among many members of the MPN community, including patients, researchers, providers, and advocacy organizations. This article will focus on understanding the impact of the founding of this community via the analysis of advanced Twitter metrics of user experience, from the first year of use for this novel healthcare hashtag.

Twittering in the OECD’s “Participative Web”: Microblogging and New Media Policy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tamara Shepherd

2009-01-01

Full Text Available The recent popularity of microblogging site Twitter raises regulatory concerns that outstrip the purview of emerging new media policy, such as the recommendations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD. The OECD’s 2007 report, Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking, frames user-generated content as key to the development of public discourse. Yet the report tends to ultimately conceive of user creations in terms of their contributions to the production of market-based value. Sites like Twitter both challenge and uphold such a reading, which becomes apparent upon examining the ways that policy adheres to certain popular myths around the Internet and digital technology. These myths—including this paper’s main concern, the myth of the “End of Geography”—work in the service of policy recommendations that reflect neoliberal, capitalist value systems. As such, new developments in new media regulation need to integrate critical perspectives on techno-myths in order to take a more nuanced approach to the structural inequalities that pervade online culture.

Climate change on Twitter: Content, media ecology and information sharing behaviour.

Science.gov (United States)

Veltri, Giuseppe A; Atanasova, Dimitrinka

2017-08-01

This article presents a study of the content, use of sources and information sharing about climate change analysing over 60,000 tweets collected using a random week sample. We discuss the potential for studying Twitter as a communicative space that is rich in different types of information and presents both new challenges and opportunities. Our analysis combines automatic thematic analysis, semantic network analysis and text classification according to psychological process categories. We also consider the media ecology of tweets and the external web links that users shared. In terms of content, the network of topics uncovered presents a multidimensional discourse that accounts for complex causal links between climate change and its consequences. The media ecology analysis revealed a narrow set of sources with a major role played by traditional media and that emotionally arousing text was more likely to be shared.

Social media as a student response system: new evidence on learning impact

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chelsea Liu

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The ubiquitousness of social media renders it a potentially powerful tool in higher education. This study explores the use of Twitter as a tool to enhance active learning and improve feedback during large-sized lectures. Students in a final-year undergraduate accounting course at an Australian university engaged in Twitter-based synchronous activities, including answering in-lecture quizzes and posting questions. This study explores two key questions: (1 ‘what encourages students to actively utilise social media in their learning process?’ and (2 ‘what pedagogical advantages are offered by social media in enhancing students’ learning experiences?’ Results of a student survey administered at the end of the course show that (1 students are more likely to participate in in-lecture Twitter activities if they are familiar with the technology, (2 Twitter activities encourage students to participate in active learning, (3 Twitter provides a platform enabling two-way student–instructor communication and (4 students find Twitter activities helpful regardless of whether they attend the lecture in real time or view online lecture recordings. These findings deepen our understanding of the pedagogical benefits of using Twitter as a student response system, which will assist educators to better harness the power of social media in the learning–teaching process.

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS AMONG NIGERIAN ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Facebook, twitter and other digital media, according to Levine (2012), has opened up a whole new world of social .... Marketing of personal goods and services 13. 40. 11. 64 (26.7%) .... trends and future challenges, USA: Prentice Hall. 51 ...

The value and use of social media as communication tool in the plant sciences.

Science.gov (United States)

Osterrieder, Anne

2013-07-11

Social media now complements many parts of our lives. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many other social networking sites allow users to share and interact with online content and to connect with like-minded people. Its strengths - rapid dissemination and amplification of content and the ability to lead informal conversations - make it a powerful tool to use in a professional context. This commentary explains the overall concept of social media and offers suggestions on usage and possible types of scientific content. It advises researchers on the potential benefits and how to take a strategic approach towards building a social media presence. It also presents examples of effective social media use within the plant science community. Common reasons for scientists to not engage with social media include the fear of appearing unprofessional, posting something wrong or being misunderstood, or a lack of confidence in their computer skills. With the rapid changes in academic publishing, dissemination and science communication, as well as the rise of 'altmetrics' to track online engagement with scientific content, digital literacy will become an essential skill in a scientist's tool kit.

Effect of a Novel Engagement Strategy Using Twitter on Test Performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Webb, Amanda L; Dugan, Adam; Burchett, Woodrow; Barnett, Kelly; Patel, Nishi; Morehead, Scott; Silverberg, Mark; Doty, Christopher; Adkins, Brian; Falvo, Lauren

2015-11-01

Medical educators in recent years have been using social media for more penetrance to technologically-savvy learners. The utility of using Twitter for curriculum content delivery has not been studied. We sought to determine if participation in a social media-based educational supplement would improve student performance on a test of clinical images at the end of the semester. 116 second-year medical students were enrolled in a lecture-based clinical medicine course, in which images of common clinical exam findings were presented. An additional, optional assessment was performed on Twitter. Each week, a clinical presentation and physical exam image (not covered in course lectures) were distributed via Twitter, and students were invited to guess the exam finding or diagnosis. After the completion of the course, students were asked to participate in a slideshow "quiz" with 24 clinical images, half from lecture and half from Twitter. We conducted a one-way analysis of variance to determine the effect Twitter participation had on total, Twitter-only, and lecture-only scores. Twitter participation data was collected from the end-of-course survey and was defined as submitting answers to the Twitter-only questions "all or most of the time", "about half of the time", and "little or none of the time." We found a significant difference in overall scores (pTwitter-only scores (pTwitter "all or most of the time" or "about half the time" had significantly higher overall scores and Twitter-only scores (pTwitter than from traditional classroom lecture, some retention was noted. Future research on social media in medical education would benefit from clear control and experimental groups in settings where quantitative use of social media could be measured. Ultimately, it is unlikely for social media to replace lecture in medical curriculum; however, there is a reasonable role for social media as an adjunct to traditional medical education.

Something Old, Something New: Engaging People in Making History with Twitter

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cristina Ioana Roiu

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In a world where communication has changed dramatically and where social media channels have been dominating our lives for a few years now, educational and research institutions are increasingly making use of these social media tools in education, teaching and research activities. The paper describes a few projects dedicated to major historical events like World War One, which are using Twitter as a broadcasting, teaching and engaging medium.

Using social media to monitor mental health discussions - evidence from Twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

McClellan, Chandler; Ali, Mir M; Mutter, Ryan; Kroutil, Larry; Landwehr, Justin

2017-05-01

Given the public health importance of communicating about mental illness and the growing use of social media to convey information, our goal was to develop an empirical model to identify periods of heightened interest in mental health topics on Twitter. We collected data on 176 million tweets from 2011 to 2014 with content related to depression or suicide. Using an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) data analysis, we identified deviations from predicted trends in communication about depression and suicide. Two types of heightened Twitter activity regarding depression or suicide were identified in 2014: expected increases in response to planned behavioral health events, and unexpected increases in response to unanticipated events. Tweet volume following expected increases went back to the predicted level more rapidly than the volume following unexpected events. Although ARIMA models have been used extensively in other fields, they have not been used widely in public health. Our findings indicate that our ARIMA model is valid for identifying periods of heightened activity on Twitter related to behavioral health. The model offers an objective and empirically based measure to identify periods of greater interest for timing the dissemination of credible information related to mental health. Spikes in tweet volume following a behavioral health event often last for less than 2 days. Individuals and organizations that want to disseminate behavioral health messages on Twitter in response to heightened periods of interest need to take this limited time frame into account. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association 2016. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the United States.

Extraction of unexpected rules from Twitter hashtags and its application to sport events

OpenAIRE

Adedoyin-Olowe, Mariam; Gaber, Mohamed Medhat; Dancausa, Carlos Martin; Stahl, Frederic

2014-01-01

Twitter has become a dependable microblogging tool for real time information dissemination and newsworthy events broadcast. Its users sometimes break news on the network faster than traditional newsagents due to their presence at ongoing real life events at most times. Different topic detection methods are currently used to match Twitter posts to real life news of mainstream media. In this paper, we analyse tweets relating to the English FA Cup finals 2012 by applying our novel method named T...

Virtual campaign effects in the universe of social media: the behavior of voters on Twitter during 2010 Elections

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

ROSSINI, Patrícia Gonçalves da Conceição

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The proposal of this exploratory research is to discuss the relationship between social network sites (SNSand the decision-making process, based on the assumptions of theories of voters’ behavior and Brundidge’s inadvertent exposure thesis, which provide a framework for understanding how people can be exposed topolitical information online. This study focuses on the use of Twitter during 2010 presidential race in Brazil, the country's first campaign with the use of social media. Through an empirical analysis based on a survey applied online, we seek to understand how Brazilian voters had access to political information, interacted with candidates on Twitter and felt about the use of social media during the campaign

Using Twitter to communicate conservation science from a professional conference.

Science.gov (United States)

Bombaci, Sara P; Farr, Cooper M; Gallo, H Travis; Mangan, Anna M; Stinson, Lani T; Kaushik, Monica; Pejchar, Liba

2016-02-01

Scientists are increasingly using Twitter as a tool for communicating science. Twitter can promote scholarly discussion, disseminate research rapidly, and extend and diversify the scope of audiences reached. However, scientists also caution that if Twitter does not accurately convey science due to the inherent brevity of this media, misinformation could cascade quickly through social media. Data on whether Twitter effectively communicates conservation science and the types of user groups receiving these tweets are lacking. To address these knowledge gaps, we examined live tweeting as a means of communicating conservation science at the 2013 International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB). We quantified and compared the user groups sending and reading live tweets. We also surveyed presenters to determine their intended audiences, which we compared with the actual audiences reached through live tweeting. We also asked presenters how effectively tweets conveyed their research findings. Twitter reached 14 more professional audience categories relative to those attending and live tweeting at ICCB. However, the groups often reached through live tweeting were not the presenters' intended audiences. Policy makers and government and non-governmental organizations were rarely reached (0%, 4%, and 6% of audience, respectively), despite the intent of the presenters. Plenary talks were tweeted about 6.9 times more than all other oral or poster presentations combined. Over half the presenters believed the tweets about their talks were effective. Ineffective tweets were perceived as vague or missing the presenters' main message. We recommend that presenters who want their science to be communicated accurately and broadly through Twitter should provide Twitter-friendly summaries that incorporate relevant hashtags and usernames. Our results suggest that Twitter can be used to effectively communicate speakers' findings to diverse audiences beyond conference walls. © 2015

The Use of Social Media for Communication In Official Statistics at European Level

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Ionela-Roxana GLĂVAN

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Social media tools are wide spread in web communication and are gaining popularity in the communication process between public institutions and citizens. This study conducts an analysis on how social media is used by Official Statistical Institutes to interact with citizens and disseminate information. A linear regression technique is performed to examine which social media platforms (Twitter or Facebook is a more effective tool in the communication process in the official statistics area. Our study suggests that Twitter is a more powerful tool than Facebook in enhancing the relationship between official statistics and citizens, complying with several other studies. Next, we performed an analysis on Twitter network characteristics discussing “official statistics” using NodeXL that revealed the unexploited potential of this network by official statistical agencies.

The Social Media Indicator 2 : Towards a Software Tool for Measuring the Influence of Social Media

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Withaar, Robin J.; Ribeiro, Gabriella F.; Effing, Robin

2013-01-01

Influence measurement regarding social media has gained importance. This paper introduces a matrix which is a framework to measure the influence of social media by individual users. This matrix comprises the metrics to measure personal influence for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+.

Reactions to adverse incidents in the health services on Twitter: a mixed methods study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sarah Meaney

2015-10-01

relation to the perinatal deaths. From the qualitative findings tweets indicated that the viewers were shocked and upset by the reported perinatal deaths. Tweeters branded the maternity unit as unsafe and questioned the governance of the entire maternity service. Conclusions: Twitter activity provides a useful insight into the public’s attitudes to health related events. Our findings would suggest that during this period the public perception formed was that the Irish maternity services were unsafe. This study found that one third of all content generated on Twitter in relation to the perinatal deaths were by media outlets or personnel. This activity is suggestive of the influence the media have within digital spheres. The role of the media in influencing public opinion and in turn patient’s decision making is well documented. Twitter was not utilised as a platform by any healthcare organisation or authority to release a statement to the public in relation to the perinatal deaths. Further study to identify how the clinical community could develop tools to utilise Twitter and other social media platforms to disseminate valid health information could be beneficial.

Twitter Use in the Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Community.

Science.gov (United States)

Patel, Sagar S; Majhail, Navneet S

2018-02-01

Social media has revolutionized the access and exchange of information in healthcare. The microblogging platform Twitter has been used by blood and marrow transplant physicians over the last several years with increasing enthusiasm. We review the adoption of Twitter in the transplant community and its implications on clinical care, education, and research. Twitter allows instantaneous access to the latest research publications, developments at national and international meetings, networking with colleagues, participation in advocacy, and promoting available clinical trials. Additionally, Twitter serves as a gateway for resources dedicated to education and support for patients undergoing transplantation. We demonstrate the utilization and various applications in using Twitter among hematopoietic cell transplant healthcare professionals, patients, and other affiliated stakeholders. Professionalism concerns with clinician use of such social media platforms, however, also exist. Overall, Twitter has enhanced and increased the opportunities for engagement in the transplant community.

Software Requirement Specifications For ASocial Media Threat Assessment Tool

Science.gov (United States)

2017-12-01

media means a much higher volume of threats than before, which taxes law enforcement’s ability to investigate each one. Complicating the investigation...Obtaining the identity of a Twitter account holder requires court paperwork based on probable cause or exigent circumstances. Second, social media...instant connectivity of social media means a much higher number of threats than before, which taxes law enforcement’s ability to investigate each one

Using Social Media to Generate and Collect Primary Data: The #ShowsWorkplaceCompassion Twitter Research Campaign.

Science.gov (United States)

Clyne, Wendy; Pezaro, Sally; Deeny, Karen; Kneafsey, Rosie

2018-04-23

Compassion is a core value embedded in the concept of quality in healthcare. The need for compassion toward healthcare staff in the workplace, for their own health and well-being and also to enable staff to deliver compassionate care for patients, is increasingly understood. However, we do not currently know how healthcare staff understand and characterize compassion toward themselves as opposed to patients. The aim of this study was to use social media for the generation and collection of primary data to gain understanding of the concept of workplace compassion. Tweets that contained the hashtag #ShowsWorkplaceCompassion were collected from Twitter and analyzed. The study took place between April 21 and May 21, 2016. Participants were self-selecting users of the social media service Twitter. The study was promoted by a number of routes: the National Health Service (NHS) England website, the personal Twitter accounts of the research team, internal NHS England communications, and via social media sharing. Participants were asked to contribute their views about what activities, actions, policies, philosophies or approaches demonstrate workplace compassion in healthcare using the hashtag #ShowsWorkplaceCompassion. All tweets including the research hashtag #ShowsWorkplaceCompassion were extracted from Twitter and studied using content analysis. Data concerning the frequency, nature, origin, and location of Web-based engagement with the research campaign were collected using Bitly (Bitly, Inc, USA) and Symplur (Symplur LLC, USA) software. A total of 260 tweets were analyzed. Of the 251 statements within the tweets that were coded, 37.8% (95/251) of the statements concerned Leadership and Management aspects of workplace compassion, 29.5% (74/251) were grouped under the theme related to Values and Culture, 17.5% (44/251) of the statements related to Personalized Policies and Procedures that support workplace compassion, and 15.2% (38/251) of the statements concerned

Evaluating the Use of Twitter to Enhance the Educational Experience of a Medical School Surgery Clerkship.

Science.gov (United States)

Reames, Bradley N; Sheetz, Kyle H; Englesbe, Michael J; Waits, Seth A

2016-01-01

Although it has been suggested that social-networking services such as Twitter could be used as a tool for medical education, few studies have evaluated its use in this setting. We sought to evaluate the use of Twitter as a novel educational tool in a medical school surgery clerkship. We hypothesized that Twitter can enhance the educational experience of clerkship students. We performed a prospective observational study. We created a new Twitter account, and delivered approximately 3 tweets per day consisting of succinct, objective surgical facts. Students were administered pre- and postclerkship surveys, and aggregate test scores were obtained for participating students and historical controls. Required third-year medical school surgery clerkship at the University of Michigan large tertiary-care academic hospital. Third-year medical students. The survey response rate was 94%. Preclerkship surveys revealed that most (87%) students have smartphones, and are familiar with Twitter (80% have used before). Following completion of the clerkship, most students (73%) reported using the Twitter tool, and 20% used it frequently. Overall, 59% believed it positively influenced their educational experience and very few believed it had a negative influence (2%). However, many (53%) did not believe it influenced their clerkship engagement. Aggregate mean National Board of Medical Examiners Shelf Examination scores were not significantly different in an analysis of medical student classes completing the clerkship before or after the Twitter tool (p = 0.37). Most of today's learners are familiar with social media, and own the technology necessary to implement novel educational tools in this platform. Applications such as Twitter can be facile educational tools to supplement and enhance the experience of students on a medical school clerkship. Copyright © 2015 Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Maintaining a Twitter Feed to Advance an Internal Medicine Residency Program’s Educational Mission

Science.gov (United States)

Narang, Akhil; Arora, Vineet M

2015-01-01

Background Residency programs face many challenges in educating learners. The millennial generation’s learning preferences also force us to reconsider how to reach physicians in training. Social media is emerging as a viable tool for advancing curricula in graduate medical education. Objective The authors sought to understand how social media enhances a residency program’s educational mission. Methods While chief residents in the 2013-2014 academic year, two of the authors (PB, AN) maintained a Twitter feed for their academic internal medicine residency program. Participants included the chief residents and categorical internal medicine house staff. Results At the year’s end, the authors surveyed residents about uses and attitudes toward this initiative. Residents generally found the chief residents’ tweets informative, and most residents (42/61, 69%) agreed that Twitter enhanced their overall education in residency. Conclusions Data from this single-site intervention corroborate that Twitter can strengthen a residency program’s educational mission. The program’s robust following on Twitter outside of the home program also suggests a need for wider adoption of social media in graduate medical education. Improved use of data analytics and dissemination of these practices to other programs would lend additional insight into social media’s role in improving residents’ educational experiences. PMID:27731845

AAHSL Twitter Use From 2007 to 2014: An Exploratory Analysis.

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Stellrecht, Elizabeth; Hendrix, Dean

2016-01-01

Twitter is a popular social media platform used by organizations for communication and marketing purposes. Many libraries, including members of the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL), have Twitter accounts, but how do these libraries use Twitter to communicate with their constituents and are they using it effectively? This study is a large-scale observational study of Twitter use within AAHSL libraries and reflects on the usage patterns present in the context of social media best practices. This study also aims to expand upon best practices for implementing and maintaining a Twitter account in a health sciences library setting.

Penggunaan media sosial (facebook dan twitter)terkait dengan pencarian informasi kesehatan oleh Mahasiswa Fakultas Kesehatan Masyarakat Universitas Sumatera Utara

OpenAIRE

Sinaga, Rosmawat

2015-01-01

This research, entitled The Use of Social Media (Facebook and Twitter) related to Health Information Search By Faculty of Public Health University of North Sumatra, which aims to identify the use of social media, the attitude towards health information seeking on social media, and knowing action on health information seeking on the media social by students of the Faculty of Public Health Universitas Sumatera Utara. The theory is considered relevant that used in this research...

Facebook and Twitter For Seniors For Dummies

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Collier, Marsha

2010-01-01

A fun and easy social media guide for the over-55 set. People over 55 were the fastest-growing user group on Facebook in the first half of 2009, and they're flocking to Twitter at a faster rate than their under-20 grandchildren. From basic information about establishing an Internet connection to rediscovering old friends, sharing messages and photos, and keeping in touch instantly with Twitter, this book by online expert Marsha Collier helps seniors jump right into social media.: Seniors are recognizing the communication possibilities of Facebook and Twitter and are signing up in record number

Global Health and Social Media: Using Instagram and Twitter in an Open Online Class for Global Service-Learning Projects

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Messner, Marcus; Medina-Messner, Vivian; Guidry, Jeanine

2016-01-01

Course description: An undergraduate open online course used Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to explore global health issues and designed social media campaigns for nonprofit clients. Social media platforms were used as teaching as well as learning platforms to allow students to explore their real life applications in global health contexts.

Twitter as a Tool for Teaching and Communicating Microbiology: The #microMOOCSEM Initiative

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Ignacio López-Goñi

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Online social networks are increasingly used by the population on a daily basis. They are considered a powerful tool for science communication and their potential as educational tools is emerging. However, their usefulness in academic practice is still a matter of debate. Here, we present the results of our pioneering experience teaching a full Basic Microbiology course via Twitter (#microMOOCSEM, consisting of 28 lessons of 40-45 minutes duration each, at a tweet per minute rate during 10 weeks. Lessons were prepared by 30 different lecturers, covering most basic areas in Microbiology and some monographic topics of general interest (malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, etc.. Data analysis on the impact and acceptance of the course were largely affirmative, promoting a 330% enhancement in the followers and a >350-fold increase of the number of visits per month to the Twitter account of the host institution, the Spanish Society for Microbiology. Almost one third of the course followers were located overseas. Our study indicates that Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC via Twitter are highly dynamic, interactive, and accessible to great audiences, providing a valuable tool for social learning and communicating science. This strategy attracts the interest of students towards particular topics in the field, efficiently complementing customary academic activities, especially in multidisciplinary areas like Microbiology.

Tweets from the forest: using Twitter to increase student engagement in an undergraduate field biology course [v1; ref status: indexed, http://f1000r.es/56w

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Lauren Soluk

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Twitter is a cold medium that allows users to deliver content-rich but small packets of information to other users, and provides an opportunity for active and collaborative communication. In an education setting, this social media tool has potential to increase active learning opportunities, and increase student engagement with course content. The effects of Twitter on learning dynamics was tested in a field biology course offered by a large Canadian University: 29 students agreed to take part in the Twitter project and quantitative and qualitative data were collected, including survey data from 18 students. Students published 200% more public Tweets than what was required, and interacted frequently with the instructor and teaching assistant, their peers, and users external to the course. Almost 80% of students stated that Twitter increased opportunities for among-group communication, and 94% of students felt this kind of collaborative communication was beneficial to their learning. Although students did not think they would use Twitter after the course was over, 77% of the students still felt it was a good learning tool, and 67% of students felt Twitter had a positive impact on how they engaged with course content. These results suggest social media tools such as Twitter can help achieve active and collaborative learning in higher education.

Using Twitter for breast cancer prevention: an analysis of breast cancer awareness month.

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Thackeray, Rosemary; Burton, Scott H; Giraud-Carrier, Christophe; Rollins, Stephen; Draper, Catherine R

2013-10-29

One in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. The best-known awareness event is breast cancer awareness month (BCAM). BCAM month outreach efforts have been associated with increased media coverage, screening mammography and online information searching. Traditional mass media coverage has been enhanced by social media. However, there is a dearth of literature about how social media is used during awareness-related events. The purpose of this research was to understand how Twitter is being used during BCAM. This was a cross-sectional, descriptive study. We collected breast cancer- related tweets from 26 September - 12 November 2012, using Twitter's application programming interface. We classified Twitter users into organizations, individuals, and celebrities; each tweet was classified as an original or a retweet, and inclusion of a mention, meaning a reference to another Twitter user with @username. Statistical methods included ANOVA and chi square. For content analysis, we used computational linguistics techniques, specifically the MALLET implementation of the unsupervised topic modeling algorithm Latent Dirichlet Allocation. There were 1,351,823 tweets by 797,827 unique users. Tweets spiked dramatically the first few days then tapered off. There was an average of 1.69 tweets per user. The majority of users were individuals. Nearly all of the tweets were original. Organizations and celebrities posted more often than individuals. On average celebrities made far more impressions; they were also retweeted more often and their tweets were more likely to include mentions. Individuals were more likely to direct a tweet to a specific person. Organizations and celebrities emphasized fundraisers, early detection, and diagnoses while individuals tweeted about wearing pink. Tweeting about breast cancer was a singular event. The majority of tweets did not promote any specific preventive behavior. Twitter is being used mostly as a one-way communication tool. To

Experience of Developing Twitter-Based Communities of Practice in Higher Education

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Lewis, Bex; Rush, David

2013-01-01

This article presents the results of a case study of the use of a microblogging tool by a university academic to increase their knowledge and experience of social media for educational purposes. The academic had the role of digital steward in a university and attempted to use microblogging (Twitter) to increase professional contacts within the…

Twitter and Physics Professional Development

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Nadji, Taoufik

2016-01-01

The advent of Twitter® and other social media services of its type ushered in a new era of professional development in education. This article addresses how a group of users have been employing Twitter to conduct professional development sessions that would benefit their participants by advancing their pedagogical approaches to learning and…

“PENGARUH INTENSITAS TERPAAN INFORMASI MELALUI TWITTER TERHADAP TINGKAT KEPUTUSAN PEMBELIAN” (Studi Eksplanatif tentang Pengaruh Intensitas Terpaan Informasi Melalui Twitter @cinema21 terhadap Tingkat Keputusan Pembelian yang Dikontrol oleh Sikap dan Tingkat Motif Pembelian Tiket Bioskop Pada Followers @cinema21)

OpenAIRE

SOWOLINO, GLORIA ANASTASIA

2014-01-01

Twitter merupakan salah satu tool masa kini yang marak digunakan oleh perusahaan-perusahaan dalam memasarkan produknya. Hal ini merupakan langkah yang ditempuh dalam melakukan kegiatan advertising atau periklanan bagi perusahaan. Twitter menjadi salah satu social media yang paling diminati oleh manusia saat ini karena sangat gampang diakses, simpel, dan aktual. 21 Cineplex Group merupakan perusahaan bioskop terbesar di tanah air, yang memiliki brand Cinema 21, Cinema XXI,...

Identifying Twitter influencer profiles for health promotion in Saudi Arabia.

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Albalawi, Yousef; Sixsmith, Jane

2017-06-01

New media platforms, such as Twitter, provide the ideal opportunity to positively influence the health of large audiences. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest number of Twitter users of any country, some of whom are very influential in setting agendas and contributing to the dissemination of ideas. Those opinion leaders, both individuals and organizations, influential in the new media environment have the potential to raise awareness of health issues, advocate for health and potentially instigate change at a social level. To realize the potential of the new media platforms for public health, the function of opinion leaders is key. This study aims to identify and profile the most influential Twitter accounts in Saudi Arabia. Multiple measures, including: number of followers and four influence scores, were used to evaluate Twitter accounts. The data were then filtered and analysed using ratio and percentage calculations to identify the most influential users. In total, 99 Saudi Twitter accounts were classified, resulting in the identification of 25 religious men/women, 16 traditional media, 14 sports related, 10 new media, 6 political, 6 company and 4 health accounts. The methods used to identify the key influential Saudi accounts can be applied to inform profile development of Twitter users in other countries. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Characterisation of the Use of Twitter by Australian Universities

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Palmer, Stuart

2013-01-01

Universities are now observed using social media communications channels for a variety of purposes, including marketing, student recruitment, student support and alumni communication. This paper presents an investigation into the use of the Twitter social media platform by universities in Australia, using publicly available Twitter data over a…

Twittering About Research: A Case Study of the World's First Twitter Poster Competition.

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Randviir, Edward P; Illingworth, Samuel M; Baker, Matthew J; Cude, Matthew; Banks, Craig E

2015-01-01

The Royal Society of Chemistry held, to our knowledge, the world's first Twitter conference at 9am on February 5 (th), 2015. The conference was a Twitter-only conference, allowing researchers to upload academic posters as tweets, replacing a physical meeting. This paper reports the details of the event and discusses the outcomes, such as the potential for the use of social media to enhance scientific communication at conferences. In particular, the present work argues that social media outlets such as Twitter broaden audiences, speed up communication, and force clearer and more concise descriptions of a researcher's work. The benefits of poster presentations are also discussed in terms of potential knowledge exchange and networking. This paper serves as a proof-of-concept approach for improving both the public opinion of the poster, and the enhancement of the poster through an innovative online format that some may feel more comfortable with, compared to face-to-face communication.

The Twitter Book

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O'Reilly, Tim

2011-01-01

Twitter is not just for talking about your breakfast anymore. It's become an indispensable communications tool for businesses, non-profits, celebrities, and people around the globe. With the second edition of this friendly, full-color guide, you'll quickly get up to speed not only on standard features, but also on new options and nuanced uses that will help you tweet with confidence. Co-written by two widely recognized Twitter experts, The Twitter Book is packed with all-new real-world examples, solid advice, and clear explanations guaranteed to turn you into a power user. Use Twitter to con

Communication about childhood obesity on Twitter.

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Harris, Jenine K; Moreland-Russell, Sarah; Tabak, Rachel G; Ruhr, Lindsay R; Maier, Ryan C

2014-07-01

Little is known about the use of social media as a tool for health communication. We used a mixed-methods design to examine communication about childhood obesity on Twitter. NodeXL was used to collect tweets sent in June 2013 containing the hashtag #childhoodobesity. Tweets were coded for content; tweeters were classified by sector and health focus. Data were also collected on the network of follower connections among the tweeters. We used descriptive statistics and exponential random graph modeling to examine tweet content, characteristics of tweeters, and the composition and structure of the network of connections facilitating communication among tweeters. We collected 1110 tweets originating from 576 unique Twitter users. More individuals (65.6%) than organizations (32.9%) tweeted. More tweets focused on individual behavior than environment or policy. Few government and educational tweeters were in the network, but they were more likely than private individuals to be followed by others. There is an opportunity to better disseminate evidence-based information to a broad audience through Twitter by increasing the presence of credible sources in the #childhoodobesity conversation and focusing the content of tweets on scientific evidence.

@AACAnatomy twitter account goes live: A sustainable social media model for professional societies.

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Benjamin, Hannah K; Royer, Danielle F

2018-05-01

Social media, with its capabilities of fast, global information sharing, provides a useful medium for professional development, connecting and collaborating with peers, and outreach. The goals of this study were to describe a new, sustainable model for Twitter use by professional societies, and analyze its impact on @AACAnatomy, the Twitter account of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists. Under supervision of an Association committee member, an anatomy graduate student developed a protocol for publishing daily tweets for @AACAnatomy. Five tweet categories were used: Research, Announcements, Replies, Engagement, and Community. Analytics from the 6-month pilot phase were used to assess the impact of the new model. @AACAnatomy had a steady average growth of 33 new followers per month, with less than 10% likely representing Association members. Research tweets, based on Clinical Anatomy articles with an abstract link, were the most shared, averaging 5,451 impressions, 31 link clicks, and nine #ClinAnat hashtag clicks per month. However, tweets from non-Research categories accounted for the highest impression and engagement metrics in four out of six months. For all tweet categories, monthly averages show consistent interaction of followers with the account. Daily tweet publication resulted in a 103% follower increase. An active Twitter account successfully facilitated regular engagement with @AACAnatomy followers and the promotion of clinical anatomy topics within a broad community. This Twitter model has the potential for implementation by other societies as a sustainable medium for outreach, networking, collaboration, and member engagement. Clin. Anat. 31:566-575, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Connected or informed?: Local Twitter networking in a London neighbourhood

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John Bingham-Hall

2015-08-01

Full Text Available This paper asks whether geographically localised, or ‘hyperlocal’, uses of Twitter succeed in creating peer-to-peer neighbourhood networks or simply act as broadcast media at a reduced scale. Literature drawn from the smart cities discourse and from a UK research project into hyperlocal media, respectively, take on these two opposing interpretations. Evidence gathered in the case study presented here is consistent with the latter, and on this basis we criticise the notion that hyperlocal social media can be seen as a community in itself. We demonstrate this by creating a network map of Twitter followers of a popular hyperlocal blog in Brockley, southeast London. We describe various attributes of this network including its average degree and clustering coefficient to suggest that a small and highly connected cluster of visible local entities such as businesses form a clique at the centre of this network, with individual residents following these but not one another. We then plot the locations of these entities and demonstrate that sub-communities in the network are formed due to close geographical proximity between smaller sets of businesses. These observations are illustrated with qualitative evidence from interviews with users who suggest instead that rather than being connected to one another they benefit from what has been described as ‘neighbourhood storytelling’. Despite the limitations of working with Twitter data, we propose that this multi-modal approach offers a valuable way to investigate the experience of using social media as a communication tool in urban neighbourhoods.

Learning by Tweeting: Using Twitter as a Pedagogical Tool

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Rinaldo, Shannon B.; Tapp, Suzanne; Laverie, Debra A.

2011-01-01

Marketing professionals use Twitter extensively for communicating with and monitoring customers, for observing competitors, and for analyzing chatter concerning brands, products, and company image. Can professors use Twitter to engage students in conversation about a marketing course? The authors argue that Twitter has many benefits for marketing…

The use of social media to supplement resident medical education - the SMART-ME initiative.

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Galiatsatos, Panagis; Porto-Carreiro, Fernanda; Hayashi, Jennifer; Zakaria, Sammy; Christmas, Colleen

2016-01-01

Residents work at variable times and are often unable to attend all scheduled educational sessions. Therefore, new asynchronistic approaches to learning are essential in ensuring exposure to a comprehensive education. Social media tools may be especially useful, because they are accessed at times convenient for the learner. Assess if the use of Twitter for medical education impacts the attitude and behavior of residents toward using social media for medical education. Preintervention and postintervention surveys. Internal medicine resident physicians were surveyed before the launch of a residency-specific Twitter webpage on August 1, 2013, and again 135 days later, to determine their use of the Twitter application and web page, as well as other social media for medical education. Residents at an internal medicine urban academic training program. All residents within our training program were administered web-based surveys. The surveys assessed resident views and their frequency of use of social media for medical education purposes, and consisted of 10 Likert scale questions. Each answer consisted of a datapoint on a 1-5 scale (1=not useful, 3=useful, 5=very useful). The final survey question was open-ended and asked for general comments. Thirty-five of 50 residents (70%) completed the presurvey and 40 (80%) participated in the postsurvey. At baseline, 34 out of 35 residents used social media and nine specifically used Twitter. Twenty-seven (77%) used social media for medical education; however, only three used Twitter for educational purposes. After the establishment of the Twitter page, the percentage of residents using social media for educational purposes increased (34 of 40 residents, 85%), and 22 used Twitter for this purpose (pmedia could be useful as a medical education tool, which slightly increased from 30 out of 35 in the preintervention survey (p=0.01). Residents believe social media could be used for medical education. After we launched a Twitter page

Twitter-Augmented Journal Club: Educational Engagement and Experience So Far.

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Udani, Ankeet D; Moyse, Daniel; Peery, Charles Andrew; Taekman, Jeffrey M

2016-04-15

Social media is a nascent medical educational technology. The benefits of Twitter include (1) easy adoption; (2) access to experts, peers, and patients across the globe; (3) 24/7 connectivity; (4) creation of virtual, education-based communities using hashtags; and (5) crowdsourcing information using retweets. We report on a novel Twitter-augmented journal club for anesthesia residents: its design, implementation, and impact. Our inaugural anesthesia Twitter-augmented journal club succeeded in engaging the anesthesia community and increasing residents' professional use of Twitter. Notably, our experience suggests that anesthesia residents are willing to use social media for their education.

E-Cigarette Social Media Messages: A Text Mining Analysis of Marketing and Consumer Conversations on Twitter.

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Lazard, Allison J; Saffer, Adam J; Wilcox, Gary B; Chung, Arnold DongWoo; Mackert, Michael S; Bernhardt, Jay M

2016-12-12

As the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) rises, social media likely influences public awareness and perception of this emerging tobacco product. This study examined the public conversation on Twitter to determine overarching themes and insights for trending topics from commercial and consumer users. Text mining uncovered key patterns and important topics for e-cigarettes on Twitter. SAS Text Miner 12.1 software (SAS Institute Inc) was used for descriptive text mining to reveal the primary topics from tweets collected from March 24, 2015, to July 3, 2015, using a Python script in conjunction with Twitter's streaming application programming interface. A total of 18 keywords related to e-cigarettes were used and resulted in a total of 872,544 tweets that were sorted into overarching themes through a text topic node for tweets (126,127) and retweets (114,451) that represented more than 1% of the conversation. While some of the final themes were marketing-focused, many topics represented diverse proponent and user conversations that included discussion of policies, personal experiences, and the differentiation of e-cigarettes from traditional tobacco, often by pointing to the lack of evidence for the harm or risks of e-cigarettes or taking the position that e-cigarettes should be promoted as smoking cessation devices. These findings reveal that unique, large-scale public conversations are occurring on Twitter alongside e-cigarette advertising and promotion. Proponents and users are turning to social media to share knowledge, experience, and questions about e-cigarette use. Future research should focus on these unique conversations to understand how they influence attitudes towards and use of e-cigarettes. ©Allison J Lazard, Adam J Saffer, Gary B Wilcox, Arnold DongWoo Chung, Michael S Mackert, Jay M Bernhardt. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 12.12.2016.

Analisis Penerapan Relationship Maintenance Strategy Melalui Penggunaan Media Sosial(Studi Pada Twitter Perbankan di Indonesia

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Rahmatul Jannatin Naimah

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Nowadays, banks are actively using twitter in order to maintain relationships with customers. Unfortunately, the trend of using social media as Relationship Maintenance  Strategy  (RMS  for  the  banking  industry  is  not  supported  by adequate research in the realm of marketing public relation science. Positivity, openness, task sharing, networking, access, and assurance are six dimensions that can be used to measure the application of RMS through twitter. Thus, this research aims to analyze whether there are differences in the implementation of RMS in the Indonesia Banking Industry through content analysis of its offi cial twitter.  The  banks  that  will  be  further  investigated  are  the  three  top  banks belonging  to  Indonesia  Bank  Loyalty  Index  (IBLI  and  Most  Followed  Bank (MFB.  Research  fi ndings  resulted  Banks  belonging  to  IBLI  and  MFB  group  has  a different  level  implementation  of  RMS  through  twitter.  The  overall  level  of implementation were found in two groups are still very low, especially in the task sharing dimension. IBLI banks more implement the dimension of RMS than MFB bank group. Assurance was most widely used on the two banking groups.  Keywords : Relationship  Maintenance  Strategy,  Marketing  Public  Relation,  Banking, Twitter.

Twitter as a Potential Disaster Risk Reduction Tool. Part III: Evaluating Variables that Promoted Regional Twitter Use for At-risk Populations During the 2013 Hattiesburg F4 Tornado.

Science.gov (United States)

Cooper, Guy Paul; Yeager, Violet; Burkle, Frederick M; Subbarao, Italo

2015-06-29

Study goals attempt to identify the variables most commonly associated with successful tweeted messages and determine which variables have the most influence in promoting exponential dissemination of information (viral spreading of the message) and trending (becoming popular) in the given disaster affected region. Part II describes the detailed extraction and triangulation filtration methodological approach to acquiring twitter data for the 2013 Hattiesburg Tornado. The data was then divided into two 48 hour windows before and after the tornado impact with a 2 hour pre-tornado buffer to capture tweets just prior to impact. Criteria-based analysis was completed for Tweets and users. The top 100 pre-Tornado and post-Tornado retweeted users were compared to establish the variability among the top retweeted users during the 4 day span.  Pre-Tornado variables that were correlated to higher retweeted rates include total user tweets (0.324), and total times message retweeted (0.530).  Post-Tornado variables that were correlated to higher retweeted rates include total hashtags in a retweet (0.538) and hashtags #Tornado (0.378) and #Hattiesburg (0.254). Overall hashtags usage significantly increased during the storm. Pre-storm there were 5,763 tweets with a hashtag and post-storm there was 13,598 using hashtags. Twitter's unique features allow it to be considered a unique social media tool applicable for emergency managers and public health officials for rapid and accurate two way communication.  Additionally, understanding how variables can be properly manipulated plays a key role in understanding how to use this social media platform for effective, accurate, and rapid mass information communication.

EFFECT OF A NOVEL ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY USING TWITTER ON TEST PERFORMANCE

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Amanda L. Webb

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Medical educators in recent years have been using social media for more penetrance to technologically-savvy learners. The utility of using Twitter for curriculum content delivery has not been studied. We sought to determine if participation in a social media-based educational supplement would improve student performance on a test of clinical images at the end of the semester. Methods: 116 second-year medical students were enrolled in a lecture-based clinical medicine course, in which images of common clinical exam findings were presented. An additional, optional assessment was performed on Twitter. Each week, a clinical presentation and physical exam image (not covered in course lectures were distributed via Twitter, and students were invited to guess the exam finding or diagnosis. After the completion of the course, students were asked to participate in a slideshow “quiz” with 24 clinical images, half from lecture and half from Twitter. Results: We conducted a one-way analysis of variance to determine the effect Twitter participation had on total, Twitter-only, and lecture-only scores. Twitter participation data was collected from the end-of-course survey and was defined as submitting answers to the Twitter-only questions “all or most of the time”, “about half of the time”, and “little or none of the time.” We found a significant difference in overall scores (p<0.001 and in Twitter-only scores (p<0.001. There was not enough evidence to conclude a significant difference in lecture-only scores (p=0.124. Students who submitted answers to Twitter “all or most of the time” or “about half the time” had significantly higher overall scores and Twitter-only scores (p<0.001 and p<0.001, respectively than those students who only submitted answers “little or none of the time.” Conclusion: While students retained less information from Twitter than from traditional classroom lecture, some retention was noted. Future

Twitter e comunicação política: limites e possibilidades

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Graça Penha Nascimento Rossetto

2013-10-01

Full Text Available The scenario of expanding technological boundaries to communication imposes promises and challenges to democracy and politics. The social media are a proof of this, and here they are exemplified by Twitter, created in 2006 and already a great subject of research. Based on that, we propose an exploratory study of the recent Brazilian literature that addresses the uses and potential of Twitter in political communication. The goal is to map trends and avenues of research and outlines the limits of a prominent search field. This research found 50 studies about the theme, most of them are reports about the use of Twitter in the elections. Also noteworthy is the enrichment of their use caused by the evolution of the tool and its domain by political actors.

Enhancing learning with the social media: student teachers’ perceptions on Twitter in a debate activity

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Gemma Tur

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents research focused on the educational experience of students using the microblogging platform Twitter for debate activities in three groups in different teacher education programmes at the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain. The implementation of this technology-based task in a face-to-face class was introduced as an innovative experience as a way of enhancing student learning and fostering participation in the context of formal learning. The educational objectives of these activities, besides working on the topics of the debate, were to empower student teachers’ Personal Learning Environments, engage student participation and enhance their use of social media and mobile devices for learning. Student perceptions were assessed by means of a questionnaire completed by them at the end of the courses. Tweets related to the debate were also collected in order to obtain some statistical data on student participation. Data collected allowed the researchers to observe student teacher engagement with the use of Twitter for the debate activity and its impact on their learning and understanding of the debate topic. Results also showed positive perceptions towards the use of social media in education and students’ willingness for future use, learning opportunities from Twitter and the use of mobile technology were also envisioned. Finally, conclusions argue the implications for practice of the current study and highlight some issues for further research, such as the exploration of new and innovative uses for teachers’ professional development and the empowerment of new activities and habits in learning on the move.

The Social Media Revolution in Nephrology Education

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Gates B. Colbert

2018-05-01

Full Text Available The past decade has been marked by the increasing use of social media platforms, often on mobile devices. In the nephrology community, this has resulted in the organic and continued growth of individuals interested in using these platforms for education and professional development. Here, we review several social media educational resources used in nephrology education and tools including Twitter, videos, blogs, and visual abstracts. We will also review how these tools are used together in the form of games (NephMadness, online journal clubs (NephJC, interactive learning (GlomCon, and digital mentorship (Nephrology Social Media Collective [NSMC] Internship to build unique educational experiences that are available globally 24 hours per day. Throughout this discussion, we focus on specific examples of free open-access medical education (FOAMed tools that provide education and professional growth at minimal or no cost to the user. In addition, we discuss inclusion of FOAMed resource development in the promotion and tenure process, along with potential pitfalls and future directions. Keywords: education, graphical abstract, nephrology, social media, Twitter

Cancer and Social Media: A Comparison of Traffic about Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, and Other Reproductive Cancers on Twitter and Instagram.

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Vraga, Emily K; Stefanidis, Anthony; Lamprianidis, Georgios; Croitoru, Arie; Crooks, Andrew T; Delamater, Paul L; Pfoser, Dieter; Radzikowski, Jacek R; Jacobsen, Kathryn H

2018-01-01

Social media are often heralded as offering cancer campaigns new opportunities to reach the public. However, these campaigns may not be equally successful, depending on the nature of the campaign itself, the type of cancer being addressed, and the social media platform being examined. This study is the first to compare social media activity on Twitter and Instagram across three time periods: #WorldCancerDay in February, the annual month-long campaigns of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM) in October and Movember in November, and during the full year outside of these campaigns. Our results suggest that women's reproductive cancers - especially breast cancer - tend to outperform men's reproductive cancer - especially prostate cancer - across campaigns and social media platforms. Twitter overall generates substantially more activity than Instagram for both cancer campaigns, suggesting Instagram may be an untapped resource. However, the messaging for both campaigns tends to focus on awareness and support rather than on concrete actions and behaviors. We suggest health communication efforts need to focus on effective messaging and building engaged communities for cancer communication across social media platforms.

Twitter-Based EFL Pronunciation Instruction

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Mompean, José Antonio; Fouz-González, Jonás

2016-01-01

This paper looks at the use of "Twitter" as a language teaching/learning tool. It describes the results of a study aimed at testing "Twitter's" effectiveness for pronunciation teaching. The purpose of the study was to determine whether "Twitter" can foster online participation and whether it may have a positive effect…

Opinion Analysis on Rohingya using Twitter Data

Science.gov (United States)

Rochmawati, N.; Wibawa, S. C.

2018-04-01

Rohingya is an ethnicity in Myanmar. Recently there was a conflict in the area between the Rakhine population and the Myanmar army. Many opinions are pro and contra in addressing this issue. There is a critic, there is a support and there is a neutral. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the world public opinion about the case of Rohingya. The opinion data to be processed is taken from twitter. the reason for using twitter is because twitter has become one of the popular social media and includes the most frequently visited social media. Therefore, it would be a lot of data that can be taken from twitter to be processed in the process of sentiment analysis. The grouping of opinions will be divided into 3 parts of positive, negative and neutral. the method used in grouping is the naïve Bayes method.

The many modes of Twitter: developing and maintaining a professional identity on Twitter

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Rowan, C. J.

2012-12-01

Describing the potential benefits of using Twitter (or similar social networks such as Google+) is complicated by the fact that it is a tool that can be used in a variety of different ways. Usage of Twitter is a mixture of consumption of links and news from other users and organisations, sharing information (e.g. recently published papers) yourself, and interaction with other users; the precise mixture will vary depending on what a person tweets and who they chose to follow, making every user's experience somewhat unique. In addition to the more commonly cited benefits in the area of scientific outreach, all of these usage modes have potential professional benefits for a scientist, allowing them to keep up to date with the latest developments in their field, and to establish and maintain connections with other scientists. Any or all of these are possible goals for your social media presence and will shape how you use services like Twitter. For a passive real-time news service, you just need to follow the right people and organisations; building an online community requires seeking out like-minded people and regularly interacting with them; true outreach requires building an audience through a long-term commitment to adding value through sharing information and participating in discussions. With respect to your professional identity, the public and relatively informal nature of social networks means that it is important to consider, and set defined limits, on how much of yourself and your opinions you are comfortable sharing. On Twitter, retweets allow something you say to reach many people who do not even follow you, and if you use your real name then your profile may be easily findable on a search engine. On most social networks, it is impossible to totally control your experience as it depends largely on how other users interact with you. Whilst it is useful to consider what you want to get out of your use of social media when you begin, and develop a strategy

Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological Research.

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Peoples, Brandon K; Midway, Stephen R; Sackett, Dana; Lynch, Abigail; Cooney, Patrick B

2016-01-01

The relationship between traditional metrics of research impact (e.g., number of citations) and alternative metrics (altmetrics) such as Twitter activity are of great interest, but remain imprecisely quantified. We used generalized linear mixed modeling to estimate the relative effects of Twitter activity, journal impact factor, and time since publication on Web of Science citation rates of 1,599 primary research articles from 20 ecology journals published from 2012-2014. We found a strong positive relationship between Twitter activity (i.e., the number of unique tweets about an article) and number of citations. Twitter activity was a more important predictor of citation rates than 5-year journal impact factor. Moreover, Twitter activity was not driven by journal impact factor; the 'highest-impact' journals were not necessarily the most discussed online. The effect of Twitter activity was only about a fifth as strong as time since publication; accounting for this confounding factor was critical for estimating the true effects of Twitter use. Articles in impactful journals can become heavily cited, but articles in journals with lower impact factors can generate considerable Twitter activity and also become heavily cited. Authors may benefit from establishing a strong social media presence, but should not expect research to become highly cited solely through social media promotion. Our research demonstrates that altmetrics and traditional metrics can be closely related, but not identical. We suggest that both altmetrics and traditional citation rates can be useful metrics of research impact.

Twitter predicts citation rates of ecological research

Science.gov (United States)

Peoples, Brandon K.; Midway, Stephen R.; Sackett, Dana K.; Lynch, Abigail; Cooney, Patrick B.

2016-01-01

The relationship between traditional metrics of research impact (e.g., number of citations) and alternative metrics (altmetrics) such as Twitter activity are of great interest, but remain imprecisely quantified. We used generalized linear mixed modeling to estimate the relative effects of Twitter activity, journal impact factor, and time since publication on Web of Science citation rates of 1,599 primary research articles from 20 ecology journals published from 2012–2014. We found a strong positive relationship between Twitter activity (i.e., the number of unique tweets about an article) and number of citations. Twitter activity was a more important predictor of citation rates than 5-year journal impact factor. Moreover, Twitter activity was not driven by journal impact factor; the ‘highest-impact’ journals were not necessarily the most discussed online. The effect of Twitter activity was only about a fifth as strong as time since publication; accounting for this confounding factor was critical for estimating the true effects of Twitter use. Articles in impactful journals can become heavily cited, but articles in journals with lower impact factors can generate considerable Twitter activity and also become heavily cited. Authors may benefit from establishing a strong social media presence, but should not expect research to become highly cited solely through social media promotion. Our research demonstrates that altmetrics and traditional metrics can be closely related, but not identical. We suggest that both altmetrics and traditional citation rates can be useful metrics of research impact.

Using Twitter for breast cancer prevention: an analysis of breast cancer awareness month

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-01

mostly as a one-way communication tool. To expand the reach of the message and maximize the potential for word-of-mouth marketing using Twitter, organizations need a strategic communications plan to ensure on-going social media conversations. Organizations may consider collaborating with individuals and celebrities in these conversations. Social media communication strategies that emphasize fundraising for breast cancer research seem particularly appropriate. PMID:24168075

Communicating Ebola through social media and electronic news media outlets: A cross-sectional study.

Science.gov (United States)

Househ, Mowafa

2016-09-01

Social media and electronic news media activity are an important source of information for the general public. Yet, there is a dearth of research exploring the use of Twitter and electronic news outlets during significant worldly events such as the recent Ebola Virus scare. The purpose of this article is to investigate the use of Twitter and electronic news media outlets in communicating Ebola Virus information. A cross-sectional survey of Twitter data and Google News Trend data from 30 September till 29 October, 2014 was conducted. Between 30 September and 29 October, there were approximately 26 million tweets (25,925,152) that contained the word Ebola. The highest number of correlated activity for Twitter and electronic news outlets occurred on 16 October 2014. Other important peaks in Twitter data occurred on 1 October, 6 October, 8 October, and 12 October, 2014. The main influencers of the Twitter feeds were news media outlets. The study reveals a relationship between electronic news media publishing and Twitter activity around significant events such as Ebola. Healthcare organizations should take advantage of the relationship between electronic news media and trending events on social media sites such as Twitter and should work on developing social media campaigns in co-operation with leading electronic news media outlets (e.g. CNN, Yahoo, Reuters) that can have an influence on social media activity. © The Author(s) 2015.

Twitter 101 and beyond: introduction to social media platforms available to practicing hematologist/oncologists.

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Thompson, Michael A; Ahlstrom, Jenny; Dizon, Don S; Gad, Yash; Matthews, Greg; Luks, Howard J; Schorr, Andrew

2017-10-01

Social media utilizes specific media platforms to allow increased interactivity between participants. These platforms serve diverse groups and purposes including participation from patients, family caregivers, research scientists, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies. Utilization of these information outlets has increased with integration at conferences and between conferences with the use of hashtags and "chats". In the realm of the "e-Patient" it is key to not underestimate your audience. Highly technical information is just as useful as a basic post. With growing use, social media analytics help track the volume and impact of content. Additionally, platforms are leveraging each other for uses, including Twitter, blogs, web radio, and recorded video and images. We explore information on social media resources and applications from varying perspectives. While these platforms will evolve over time, or disappear with new platforms taking their place, it is apparent they are now a part of the everyday experience of oncology communication. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Un potencial comunicativo desaprovechado. Twitter como mecanismo generador de diálogo en campaña electoral

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Laura Alonso-Muñoz

2016-10-01

Full Text Available El uso de Twitter como herramienta estratégica para la comunicación política se ha incrementado notablemente durante los últimos años, especialmente en periodo de campaña electoral. El objetivo de esta investigación es examinar el grado de cumplimiento de los principios dialógicos atribuidos a las redes sociales. Para ello se aplica la técnica del análisis de contenido cuantitativo a los tuits publicados por los principales partidos españoles (PP, PSOE, Podemos y Ciudadanos durante las elecciones generales de 2015. Los resultados demuestran que pese al elevado número de publicaciones realizadas por los cuatro partidos, ninguno aprovecha el potencial dialógico de Twitter. Untapped communication potential. Twitter as a mechanism for generating dialogue in an electoral campaign Abstract The use of Twitter as strategic tool for political communication has increased considerably in recent years, particularly during electoral campaigns. The main goal of this paper is to examine the degree of compliance with the principles of dialogue attributed to social media. To achieve this, a quantitative content analysis was carried out on the tweets shared by the main Spanish political parties during the 2015 General Elections. The results show that although a high number of tweets were made by the four political parties during this period, none of them took advantage of the full potential of dialogue on Twitter. Keywords: Twitter, social media, political communication, electoral campaign, digital media

A Tool for Monitoring of YouTube Content

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lashari, Intzar Ali; Wiil, Uffe Kock

2014-01-01

in abundance from social media is difficult. This paper describes a new tool that can collect, monitor, and mine data from YouTube. The tool is part of a larger framework aimed at monitoring various social media including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. A specific case focusing on “Islamic Jihad Holy War...

The use and impact of Twitter at medical conferences: Best practices and Twitter etiquette.

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Pemmaraju, Naveen; Mesa, Ruben A; Majhail, Navneet S; Thompson, Michael A

2017-10-01

The use of social media, and in particular, Twitter, for professional use among healthcare providers is rapidly increasing across the world. One medical subspecialty that is leading the integration of this new platform for communication into daily practice and for information dissemination to the general public is the field of hematology/oncology. A growing amount of research in this area demonstrates that there is increasing interest among physicians to learn not only how to use social media for consumption of educational material, but also how to generate and contribute original content in one's interest/expert areas. One aspect in which this phenomenon has been highlighted is at the time of maximum new information presentation: at a major medical conference. Hematologists/oncologists are engaging regularly in one of the most common forms of social media, Twitter, during major medical conferences, for purposes of debate, discussion, and real-time evaluation of the data being presented. As interest has grown in this area, this article aims to review the new norms, practices, and impact of using Twitter at the time of medical conferences, and also explores some of the barriers and pitfalls that users are encountering in this emerging field. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Tools Beyond Control: Social Media and the Work of Advocacy Organizations

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Luis E. Hestres

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Advocacy organizations rely on social media services, such as Facebook and Twitter, to engage their supporters. These services increasingly influence how citizens and advocacy organizations engage politically online through the technical features and policies they choose to implement—a phenomenon that can sometimes disrupt the work of advocates. Interviews with digital strategists at several US advocacy organizations revealed low levels of awareness of this phenomenon, despite its potential impact on their work; substantial dependence on these services for advocacy work; and a shared sense of necessity to embrace these tools, despite their potential downsides. Implications for the scholarship and practice of Internet governance and digitally mediated advocacy are discussed.

Twitter Usage of Universities in Turkey

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Yolcu, Ozgu

2013-01-01

Universities are among the users of the most popular social media networks. Usage of social media by especially students and many other people and institutions, which constitutes the target audience for universities, encourages the universities to effectively use this environment. Twitter is among these social media networks which facilitate the…

Are Public Health Organizations Tweeting to the Choir? Understanding Local Health Department Twitter Followership

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Choucair, Bechara; Maier, Ryan C; Jolani, Nina; Bernhardt, Jay M

2014-01-01

Background One of the essential services provided by the US local health departments is informing and educating constituents about health. Communication with constituents about public health issues and health risks is among the standards required of local health departments for accreditation. Past research found that only 61% of local health departments met standards for informing and educating constituents, suggesting a considerable gap between current practices and best practice. Objective Social media platforms, such as Twitter, may aid local health departments in informing and educating their constituents by reaching large numbers of people with real-time messages at relatively low cost. Little is known about the followers of local health departments on Twitter. The aim of this study was to examine characteristics of local health department Twitter followers and the relationship between local health department characteristics and follower characteristics. Methods In 2013, we collected (using NodeXL) and analyzed a sample of 4779 Twitter followers from 59 randomly selected local health departments in the United States with Twitter accounts. We coded each Twitter follower for type (individual, organization), location, health focus, and industry (eg, media, government). Local health department characteristics were adopted from the 2010 National Association of City and County Health Officials Profile Study data. Results Local health department Twitter accounts were followed by more organizations than individual users. Organizations tended to be health-focused, located outside the state from the local health department being followed, and from the education, government, and non-profit sectors. Individuals were likely to be local and not health-focused. Having a public information officer on staff, serving a larger population, and “tweeting” more frequently were associated with having a higher percentage of local followers. Conclusions Social media has the

The utility of Twitter as a tool for increasing reach of research on sexual violence.

Science.gov (United States)

Wekerle, Christine; Vakili, Negar; Stewart, Sherry H; Black, Tara

2018-05-16

Researchers in violence prevention areas seek to disseminate work for impact to practice and policy. Knowledge transfer, exchange, and mobilization are common terms for research knowledge utilization where public communication platforms are playing an increasing role, having unique capacity to connect stakeholders in advocacy and lived experience, academia, non-governmental organizations, government-supported organizations, such as child welfare, and research funding bodies. Social networking platforms provide a communication intervention opportunity to test the effectiveness of the research reach. A Canadian Institutes of Health Research- funded team grant in boys' and men's health, focusing on sexual violence (SV) victimization, health, and resilience undertook an evaluation to examine whether a strategic approach involving a cadre of SV experts (n = 46) and their research increased engagement. Using a unique identifier (#CIHRTeamSV) content was shared on social media (Twitter) within an ABABAB experimental monthly format (A = no sharing; B = sharing content), following a baseline entry of researchers. Active Twitter engagement lead to increases in the number of individuals' profile views, article downloads, and citations. These findings encourage further research into the utility of social media for disseminating sexual violence research, and that social media has developed as a forum for evidence-based conversation on sensitive topics of public health import. Crown Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets

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McFedries, Paul

2010-01-01

Maximize your fun and boost your productivity with this updated, full-color guide to tantalizing Twitter tips!. The popularity of Twitter continues to soar, and is fast becoming the most popular social networking site online. Whether you're looking to learn how to set up an account for the first time or are on the prowl for some cool third-party Twitter apps, this full-color guide will boost your entire Twitter experience. Allowing you to communicate with fellow Twitters within a 140-character limit, this fun and fascinating social networking tool is easier than maintaining a blog and quicker

Debating poverty porn on Twitter:social media as a place for everyday socio-political talk

OpenAIRE

Brooker, Phil; Vines, John; Sutton, Selina; Barnett, Julie; Feltwell, Tom; Lawson, Shaun

2015-01-01

This paper presents an empirical investigation of how people appropriated Twitter for socio-political talk in response to a television (TV) portrayal of people supported by state welfare and benefits. Our findings reveal how online discussion during, and in-between, TV broadcasts was characterised by distinctly different qualities, topics and user behaviours. These findings offer design opportunities for social media services to (i) support more balanced real-time commentaries of politically-...

Social media adoption in local health departments nationwide.

Science.gov (United States)

Harris, Jenine K; Mueller, Nancy L; Snider, Doneisha

2013-09-01

We examined whether characteristics of local health departments (LHD) and their geographic region were associated with using Facebook and Twitter. We also examined the number of tweets per month for Twitter accounts as an indicator of social media use by LHDs. In 2012, we searched for Facebook and Twitter accounts for 2565 LHDs nationwide, and collected adoption date and number of connections for each account. Number of tweets sent indicated LHD use of social media. LHDs were classified as innovators, early adopters, or nonadopters. Characteristics of LHDs were compared across adoption categories, and we examined geographic characteristics, connections, and use. Twenty-four percent of LHDs had Facebook, 8% had Twitter, and 7% had both. LHDs serving larger populations were more likely to be innovators, tweeted more often, and had more social media connections. Frequency of tweeting was not associated with adoption category. There were differences in adoption across geographic regions, with western states more likely to be innovators. Innovation was also higher in states where the state health department adopted social media. Social media has the potential to aid LHDs in disseminating information across the public health system. More evidence is needed to develop best practices for this emerging tool.

The use of social media to supplement resident medical education – the SMART-ME initiative

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Galiatsatos, Panagis; Porto-Carreiro, Fernanda; Hayashi, Jennifer; Zakaria, Sammy; Christmas, Colleen

2016-01-01

Background Residents work at variable times and are often unable to attend all scheduled educational sessions. Therefore, new asynchronistic approaches to learning are essential in ensuring exposure to a comprehensive education. Social media tools may be especially useful, because they are accessed at times convenient for the learner. Objective Assess if the use of Twitter for medical education impacts the attitude and behavior of residents toward using social media for medical education. Design Preintervention and postintervention surveys. Internal medicine resident physicians were surveyed before the launch of a residency-specific Twitter webpage on August 1, 2013, and again 135 days later, to determine their use of the Twitter application and web page, as well as other social media for medical education. Participants Residents at an internal medicine urban academic training program. Main Measures All residents within our training program were administered web-based surveys. The surveys assessed resident views and their frequency of use of social media for medical education purposes, and consisted of 10 Likert scale questions. Each answer consisted of a datapoint on a 1–5 scale (1=not useful, 3=useful, 5=very useful). The final survey question was open-ended and asked for general comments. Key Results Thirty-five of 50 residents (70%) completed the presurvey and 40 (80%) participated in the postsurvey. At baseline, 34 out of 35 residents used social media and nine specifically used Twitter. Twenty-seven (77%) used social media for medical education; however, only three used Twitter for educational purposes. After the establishment of the Twitter page, the percentage of residents using social media for educational purposes increased (34 of 40 residents, 85%), and 22 used Twitter for this purpose (pincreased from 11.4 to 60.0% (psocial media could be useful as a medical education tool, which slightly increased from 30 out of 35 in the preintervention survey (p=0

Student Teachers’ Attitude towards Twitter for Educational Aims

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Victoria I. Marín

2014-07-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an educational experience with 100 student teachers from different courses of the University of the Balearic Islands (Spain in which Twitter is used for various different activities. The aim of this experiment was to explore student teachers’ perceptions in order to value their attitude towards Twitter for educational aims. Afterwards, students were asked to write down their reflections on an eportfolio. Data was collected from their eportfolio evidence, which was analysed to review their attitude towards the use of Twitter for educational purposes and for their future teaching and professional development. The conclusions indicate the need to conduct different educational activities in which Twitter is used in various ways. In addition, conclusions reflect on the real impact of Twitter on students’ learning enhancement, in order to improve student teachers’ attitudes towards social media in education. Therefore, this article contributes to the body of existing research on the use of technology in education, specifically to the possibilities of the use of social media and microblogging in Teacher Education.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest – nowe perspektywy badawcze

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Maria Czarkowska

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest – new research perspectivesThe goal of this paper is to present the vast array of content that is emerging within social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and analyze the ways in which they can be classified. This is a review of the available interdisciplinary methods and factors that should be taken into consideration when researching the genelogy of the texts that arise in the network. The Internet has changed the face of social communication. It has highlighted processes that were much less visible before. The challenge for researchers is to analyze the enormous amount of content and incorporate it into a classification system. Above all, statements made on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, require analysis. Previous attempts to systematize them did not correspond to the reality of the network. Research on the Internet genres and communication forms requires the use of relevant analytical tools and interdisciplinary approaches.   Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest – nowe perspektywy badawczeCelem publikacji jest zaprezentowanie ogromnej liczby różnorodnych treści, które powstają w ramach platform społecznościowych: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram i Pinterest, oraz analiza dostępnych sposobów ich klasyfikacji. Chodzi zatem o przegląd dostępnych interdyscyplinarnych metod i czynników, które warto brać pod uwagę przy badaniach genologicznych tekstów, które powstają w sieci. Internet zmienił oblicze społecznej komunikacji. Uwypuklił procesy, które do tej pory nie były tak widoczne. Wyzwaniem dla badaczy jest analiza ogromnej ilości treści i ujęcie ich w system klasyfikacji. Analizy wymagają przede wszystkim komunikaty powstające w ramach mediów społecznościowych, takich jak Facebook, Twitter, Instagram i Pinterest. Dotychczasowe próby systematyzacji nie odpowiadały realiom sieci. Badania form

Online Communication about Depression and Anxiety among Twitter Users with Schizophrenia: Preliminary Findings to Inform a Digital Phenotype Using Social Media.

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Hswen, Yulin; Naslund, John A; Brownstein, John S; Hawkins, Jared B

2018-01-12

Digital technologies hold promise for supporting the detection and management of schizophrenia. This exploratory study aimed to generate an initial understanding of whether patterns of communication about depression and anxiety on popular social media among individuals with schizophrenia are consistent with offline representations of the illness. From January to July 2016, posts on Twitter were collected from a sample of Twitter users who self-identify as having a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (n = 203) and a randomly selected sample of control users (n = 173). Frequency and timing of communication about depression and anxiety were compared between groups. In total, the groups posted n = 1,544,122 tweets and users had similar characteristics. Twitter users with schizophrenia showed significantly greater odds of tweeting about depression compared with control users (OR = 2.69; 95% CI 1.76-4.10), and significantly greater odds of tweeting about anxiety compared with control users (OR = 1.81; 95% CI 1.20-2.73). This study offers preliminary insights that Twitter users with schizophrenia may express elevated symptoms of depression and anxiety in their online posts, which is consistent with clinical characteristics of schizophrenia observed in offline settings. Social media platforms could further our understanding of schizophrenia by informing a digital phenotype and may afford new opportunities to support early illness detection.

Nursing and Twitter: creating an online community using hashtags.

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Moorley, Calvin R; Chinn, Teresa

2014-01-01

Social media is becoming a facet of our lives and a tool for connecting, uniting and supporting people. Its use is growing in nursing, medical and health settings. This article describes the process, development and growth of an online community to connect nurses via Twitter using hashtags. Data was analysed to identify the benefits, barriers and enablers for the creation of an online nursing community. Methods consisted of key word searches in Twitter relevant to nursing, visits to the WeNurses website and tracking the number of followers on the website. A social media monitoring tool (SM2) was used to monitor visibility to establish baseline data and identify trends. WeNurses was launched in July 2012 and has over 7000 followers. Visits to the website are between 500 and 1500 each day. The use of a systematic nursing approach including the key principles of both nursing and social media (honesty, transparency, listening and reacting) helped to create and develop an online nursing community. It was found that WeNurses provides a platform for nurses to discuss issues in nursing, or complain about reforms. Nurses are free to question on how they can improve skills and contemplate their understanding of changes in the health service. Enablers included a committed group who openly discussed their thoughts, opinions and practices, a shared identity, an understanding each other's perspective and ownership by members. Using a nursing framework in a digital space added a unique dimension that resonated with members and provided a structured approach to the project. Nurses have begun to not only embrace social media but also use it for their own development. Health employers also need to encourage use of social media to help develop expertise, experience and knowledge in nurses and nursing practice. Social media can provide a social and professional space for nurses, and has potential to influence the health and wellness of different population groups involved in both

Social Media Management Strategies for Organizational Impression Management and their Effect on Public Perception

OpenAIRE

Benthaus, Janek; Risius, Marten; Beck, Roman

2016-01-01

With the growing importance of social media, companies increasingly rely on social media management tools to analyze social media activities and to professionalize their social media engagement. In this study, we evaluate how social media management tools, as part of an overarching social media strategy, help companies to positively influence the public perception among social media users. A mixed methods approach is applied, where we quantitatively analyze 15 million user-generated Twitter m...

Klasifikasi Model Percakapan Twitter Mengenai Ujian Nasional

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Emilya Ully Artha

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The rise of internet usage especially in social media such as Twitter make a possibility to analyze an existing conversations and derived it to various conversation theme. The data was obtained from the Twitter conversation using text mining that is a "national exam" using the National #ujian, #unas, and #ujianan hastags. Twitter API was used to extract tweet data. This research use the naive bayesian access method to view communication forms based on users and applications. Based on calculation this research obtain a 0.278 result that most of Twitter users (users are being from @kabarDiknas. The data that used in this research are taken from is a twitter conversation about the “ujian nasional” in 2016.

Mapping auroral activity with Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Case, N. A.; MacDonald, E. A.; Heavner, M.; Tapia, A. H.; Lalone, N.

2015-05-01

Twitter is a popular, publicly accessible, social media service that has proven useful in mapping large-scale events in real time. In this study, for the first time, the use of Twitter as a measure of auroral activity is investigated. Peaks in the number of aurora-related tweets are found to frequently coincide with geomagnetic disturbances (detection rate of 91%). Additionally, the number of daily aurora-related tweets is found to strongly correlate with several auroral strength proxies (ravg≈0.7). An examination is made of the bias for location and time of day within Twitter data, and a first-order correction of these effects is presented. Overall, the results suggest that Twitter can provide both specific details about an individual aurora and accurate real-time indication of when, and even from where, an aurora is visible.

Tapping into the Power of Twitter: A Look at Its Potential in Canadian Health Libraries

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David C. Waddell

2012-12-01

Full Text Available In health libraries, it is becoming increasingly important to recognize and understand user interactions and expectations. Research suggests that more and more patients will begin to rely on online resources to receive health information. In response, many health organizations have turned to social media and micro-blogging services to try and meet those needs. The ease of posting and sharing information on Twiter makes it an essential tool for health libraries use to reach their users. However, libraries that lack systematic metrics for measuring success can find themselves pouring precious resources into social media upkeep without knowing if they are promoting their strategic vision. This paper first uses a literature review to summarize the best practices among Twitter researchers. The authors then measure the success of these practices among several health libraries using simple metrics for evaluation. By advocating accountable Twitter use, the authors hope to promote a goal-oriented social media strategy that ensures health libraries are maximizing their efficiency. Administrators and libraries can engage communities through active Twitter use by going well beyond just promoting their services. Through better Twitter use, libraries can show users that they listen to other organizations in the community, hear and respond to the questions and concerns of individual users, and send people links to information that go beyond the reach of their own website. Administrators can subsequently report accurate metrics to demonstrate what is working well and which strategies have not been successful. It is then possible to make immediate changes to maximize the impact that social media can have on that organization’s strategic goals. The objective of this paper is to provide every reader with the ability to head into a meeting about social media and confidently develop a strategy that will plan for success, with the metrics to prove it.

The Analisis Sentimen Sosial Media Twitter Dengan Algoritma Machine Learning Menggunakan Software R

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Jaka Aulia Pratama

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Media sosial adalah wadah untuk mengungkapkan opini terhadap suatu topik tertentu. Ketersediaan informasi dan opini dari para pengguna media sosial merupakan kumpulan dokumen data berupa teks yang amat sangat besar dan berguna untuk kepentingan penelitian maupun membuat suatu keputusan bagi pihak – pihak tertentu. Text Mining bisa didefinisikan sebagai proses penggalian informasi di mana pengguna berinteraksi dengan kumpulan dokumen dari waktu ke waktu dengan menggunakan suatu alat analisis. Analisis sentimen atau Opinion Mining adalah salah satu studi di bidang komputasi yang berhubungan dengan kasus publik mengenai opini, penilaian, sikap, dan emosi. Penelitian ini akan menggunakan metode Machine Learning pada analisis sentimen pengguna layanan jejaring sosial Twitter terhadap Donald Trump dan Barack Obama dalam 20000 tweets. Nilai akurasi metode Machine Learning yang diperoleh cukup tinggi yaitu 87.52% untuk Data Training dan 87.4% untuk Data Testing.

Who tweets? Deriving the demographic characteristics of age, occupation and social class from twitter user meta-data.

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Luke Sloan

Full Text Available This paper specifies, designs and critically evaluates two tools for the automated identification of demographic data (age, occupation and social class from the profile descriptions of Twitter users in the United Kingdom (UK. Meta-data data routinely collected through the Collaborative Social Media Observatory (COSMOS: http://www.cosmosproject.net/ relating to UK Twitter users is matched with the occupational lookup tables between job and social class provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS using SOC2010. Using expert human validation, the validity and reliability of the automated matching process is critically assessed and a prospective class distribution of UK Twitter users is offered with 2011 Census baseline comparisons. The pattern matching rules for identifying age are explained and enacted following a discussion on how to minimise false positives. The age distribution of Twitter users, as identified using the tool, is presented alongside the age distribution of the UK population from the 2011 Census. The automated occupation detection tool reliably identifies certain occupational groups, such as professionals, for which job titles cannot be confused with hobbies or are used in common parlance within alternative contexts. An alternative explanation on the prevalence of hobbies is that the creative sector is overrepresented on Twitter compared to 2011 Census data. The age detection tool illustrates the youthfulness of Twitter users compared to the general UK population as of the 2011 Census according to proportions, but projections demonstrate that there is still potentially a large number of older platform users. It is possible to detect "signatures" of both occupation and age from Twitter meta-data with varying degrees of accuracy (particularly dependent on occupational groups but further confirmatory work is needed.

Who Tweets? Deriving the Demographic Characteristics of Age, Occupation and Social Class from Twitter User Meta-Data

Science.gov (United States)

Sloan, Luke; Morgan, Jeffrey; Burnap, Pete; Williams, Matthew

2015-01-01

This paper specifies, designs and critically evaluates two tools for the automated identification of demographic data (age, occupation and social class) from the profile descriptions of Twitter users in the United Kingdom (UK). Meta-data data routinely collected through the Collaborative Social Media Observatory (COSMOS: http://www.cosmosproject.net/) relating to UK Twitter users is matched with the occupational lookup tables between job and social class provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) using SOC2010. Using expert human validation, the validity and reliability of the automated matching process is critically assessed and a prospective class distribution of UK Twitter users is offered with 2011 Census baseline comparisons. The pattern matching rules for identifying age are explained and enacted following a discussion on how to minimise false positives. The age distribution of Twitter users, as identified using the tool, is presented alongside the age distribution of the UK population from the 2011 Census. The automated occupation detection tool reliably identifies certain occupational groups, such as professionals, for which job titles cannot be confused with hobbies or are used in common parlance within alternative contexts. An alternative explanation on the prevalence of hobbies is that the creative sector is overrepresented on Twitter compared to 2011 Census data. The age detection tool illustrates the youthfulness of Twitter users compared to the general UK population as of the 2011 Census according to proportions, but projections demonstrate that there is still potentially a large number of older platform users. It is possible to detect “signatures” of both occupation and age from Twitter meta-data with varying degrees of accuracy (particularly dependent on occupational groups) but further confirmatory work is needed. PMID:25729900

Examining ISIS Support and Opposition Networks on Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

2016-01-01

Examining ISIS Support and Opposition Networks on Twitter Elizabeth Bodine-Baron, Todd C. Helmus, Madeline Magnuson, Zev Winkelman C O R P O R A T...Syria (ISIS), like no other terrorist organization before, has used Twitter and other social media channels to broadcast its message, inspire followers...and recruit new fighters. Though much less heralded, ISIS opponents have also taken to Twitter to cas- tigate the ISIS message. This report draws on

Public Relations Models and Dialogic Communication in the Twitterverse: An Analysis of How Colleges and Universities Are Engaging Their Public through Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Beverly, Jason Antwuan

2013-01-01

Colleges and universities throughout this world are realizing the importance of engaging in and building mutually-beneficial relationships with their key publics through social media. The introduction of the microblogging tool known as Twitter extends the use of social media in higher education, beyond the classroom, and into the realm of public…

Social Media for Networking, Professional Development, and Patient Engagement.

Science.gov (United States)

Markham, Merry Jennifer; Gentile, Danielle; Graham, David L

2017-01-01

Social media has become an established method of communication, and many physicians are finding these interactive tools and platforms to be useful for both personal and professional use. Risks of social media, or barriers to its use, include perceived lack of time, privacy concerns, and the risk of damage to one's reputation by unprofessional behavior. Of the social media platforms, Twitter has become favored by physicians and other health care professionals. Although one of the most obvious uses of social media is for rapid dissemination and receipt of information, oncologists are finding that social media is important for networking through blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. These platforms also have potential for providing opportunities for professional development, such as finding collaborators through networking, participation in Twitter journal clubs, and participating in online case-based tumor boards. Social media can also be used for patient engagement, such as through participation in tweet chats. There is emerging data that patient engagement through these platforms may lead to improvement in some health-related outcomes; however, data are sparse for oncology-specific outcomes. Efforts are underway to determine how to assess how social media engagement impacts health outcomes in oncology patients.

The susceptibility of the South African Media to be used as a tool for information warfare

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Jansen van Vuuren, A

2012-07-01

Full Text Available media practitioners should also recognize the negative consequences and ethical implications of these new media platforms, as the sources distributing information on social media sites such as Twitter may not be truthful and accurate. Journalists should...

A Systematic Identification of Scientists on Twitter

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ke, Q.; Ahn, Y.Y.; Sugimoto, C.R.

2016-07-01

There is an increasing use of Twitter and other social media to estimate the broader social impacts of scholarship. However, without systematic understanding of the entities that participate in conversations about science, efforts to translate altmetrics into impact indicators may produce highly misleading results. Here we present a systematic approach to identifying scientists on Twitter. (Author)

Using social media technologies for teaching and research

OpenAIRE

Minocha, Shailey

2012-01-01

The goal of this workshop is to examine and discuss how educators and researchers can adopt and use social media tools such as blogs, wikis, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), social bookmarking tools, photo-sharing sites (e.g. Flickr), or social networking tools (e.g. Facebook) in the service of their teaching and research, and, particularly, in engaging with students and other researchers. \\ud \\ud We will cover the following topics in the workshop:\\ud a. A catalogue of social media tools that c...

E-Cigarette Social Media Messages: A Text Mining Analysis of Marketing and Consumer Conversations on Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

2016-01-01

Background As the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) rises, social media likely influences public awareness and perception of this emerging tobacco product. Objective This study examined the public conversation on Twitter to determine overarching themes and insights for trending topics from commercial and consumer users. Methods Text mining uncovered key patterns and important topics for e-cigarettes on Twitter. SAS Text Miner 12.1 software (SAS Institute Inc) was used for descriptive text mining to reveal the primary topics from tweets collected from March 24, 2015, to July 3, 2015, using a Python script in conjunction with Twitter’s streaming application programming interface. A total of 18 keywords related to e-cigarettes were used and resulted in a total of 872,544 tweets that were sorted into overarching themes through a text topic node for tweets (126,127) and retweets (114,451) that represented more than 1% of the conversation. Results While some of the final themes were marketing-focused, many topics represented diverse proponent and user conversations that included discussion of policies, personal experiences, and the differentiation of e-cigarettes from traditional tobacco, often by pointing to the lack of evidence for the harm or risks of e-cigarettes or taking the position that e-cigarettes should be promoted as smoking cessation devices. Conclusions These findings reveal that unique, large-scale public conversations are occurring on Twitter alongside e-cigarette advertising and promotion. Proponents and users are turning to social media to share knowledge, experience, and questions about e-cigarette use. Future research should focus on these unique conversations to understand how they influence attitudes towards and use of e-cigarettes. PMID:27956376

Social Media and Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN)--Focus on Twitter and the Development of a Disease-specific Community: #MPNSM.

Science.gov (United States)

Pemmaraju, Naveen; Gupta, Vikas; Mesa, Ruben; Thompson, Michael A

2015-12-01

The advent of social media has led to the ability for individuals all over the world to communicate with each other, in real time, about mutual topics of interest in an unprecedented manner. Recently, the use of social media has increased among people interested in healthcare and medical research, particularly in the field of hematology and oncology, a field which frequently experiences rapid shifts of information and novel, practice-changing discoveries. Among the many social media platforms available to cancer patients and providers, one platform in particular, Twitter, has become the focus for the creation of disease-specific communities, especially for those interested in, affected by, or those who perform research in the fields of rare cancers, which historically have had a dearth of reliable information available. This article will focus on the initiation and progress of one such Twitter hematology/oncology community, #mpnsm, which was originally created for the purpose of serving as a venue for improving the interaction among patients, providers, researchers, and organizations with interest in the myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) and to further the availability of reliable up-to-date analysis; relevant expert commentary; and readily usable information for patients, providers, and other groups interested in this field.

People as sensors: mass media and local temperature influence climate change discussion on Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Kirilenko, A.; Molodtsova, T.; Stepchenkova, S.

2014-12-01

We examined whether people living under significant temperature anomalies connect their sensory experiences to climate change and the role that media plays in this process. We used Twitter messages containing words "climate change" and "global warming" as the indicator of attention that public pays to the issue. Specifically, the goals were: (1) to investigate whether people immediately notice significant local weather anomalies and connect them to climate change and (2) to examine the role of mass media in this process. Over 2 million tweets were collected for a two-year period (2012 - 2013) and were assigned to 157 urban areas in the continental USA (Figure 1). Geographical locations of the tweets were identified with a geolocation resolving algorithm based the profile of the users. Daily number of tweets (tweeting rate) was computed for 157 conterminous USA urban areas and adjusted for data acquisition errors. The USHCN daily minimum and maximum temperatures were obtained for the station locations closest to the centers of the urban areas and the 1981-2010 30-year temperature mean and standard deviation were used as the climate normals. For the analysis, we computed the following indices for each day of 2012 - 2013 period: standardized temperature anomaly, absolute standardized temperature anomaly, and extreme cold and hot temperature anomalies for each urban zone. The extreme cold and hot temperature anomalies were then transformed into country-level values that represent the number of people living in extreme temperature conditions. The rate of tweeting on climate change was regressed on the time variables, number of climate change publications in the mass media, and temperature. In the majority of regression models, the mass media and temperature variables were significant at the pmedia acts as a mediator in the relationship between local weather and climate change discourse intensity. Our analysis of Twitter data confirmed that the public is able to

Evaluating college students’ displayed alcohol references on Facebook and Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Moreno, Megan A.; Arseniev-Koehler, Alina; Litt, Dana; Christakis, Dimitri

2018-01-01

Purpose Current trends suggest adolescents and young adults typically maintain a social media “portfolio” of several sites including Facebook and Twitter, but little is known regarding how an individual chooses to display risk behaviors across these different sites. The purpose of this study was to investigate college students’ displayed alcohol references on both Facebook and Twitter. Methods Among a larger sample of college students from two universities, we identified participants who maintained both Facebook and Twitter profiles. Data collection included evaluation of 5 months of participants’ Facebook and Twitter posts for alcohol references, number of social connections (i.e. friends or followers) and number of posts. Phone interviews assessed participants’ frequency of Facebook and Twitter use and self-reported alcohol use. Analyses included Fisher’s exact test, Wilcoxon matched pair sign test, Freidman rank-sum tests and logistic regression. Results Of 112 eligible participants, 94 (RR=84.8%) completed the study. Participants were more likely to display alcohol references on Facebook compared to Twitter (76% versus 34%, p=0.02). Participants reported more social connections on Facebook versus Twitter (average 801.2 friends versus 189.4 followers, pTwitter (94.6% versus 50%, pTwitter displayed alcohol references, but mediators differed in each model. Discussion College students were more likely to display alcohol references on Facebook compared to Twitter. Understanding these patterns and predictors may inform prevention and intervention efforts directed at particular social media sites. PMID:26995291

Enhance Your Twitter Experience

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, Shannon McClintock

2010-01-01

The author has been encouraging teachers, students, and others to join Twitter and build their personal learning networks (PLNs) ever since she delved into this great social networking site. In this article, she offers a few other tools and tips that can improve the Twitter experience of those who have opened up an account and dabbled a bit but…

Integrating Social Media into the Classroom Curriculum

Science.gov (United States)

Abe, Paige; Jordan, Nickolas A.

2013-01-01

Over the past decade, social media and technology have become prevalent in the day-to-day life of many college and university students. From Skype to Twitter to Facebook, these modes of social media are often used as tools to keep in touch with friends and family, socialize, and share personal opinions. Considering that such a high percentage of…

PhishAri: Automatic Realtime Phishing Detection on Twitter

OpenAIRE

Aggarwal, Anupama; Rajadesingan, Ashwin; Kumaraguru, Ponnurangam

2013-01-01

With the advent of online social media, phishers have started using social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare to spread phishing scams. Twitter is an immensely popular micro-blogging network where people post short messages of 140 characters called tweets. It has over 100 million active users who post about 200 million tweets everyday. Phishers have started using Twitter as a medium to spread phishing because of this vast information dissemination. Further, it is difficult to det...

Large Scale Crowdsourcing and Characterization of Twitter Abusive Behavior

OpenAIRE

Founta, Antigoni-Maria; Djouvas, Constantinos; Chatzakou, Despoina; Leontiadis, Ilias; Blackburn, Jeremy; Stringhini, Gianluca; Vakali, Athena; Sirivianos, Michael; Kourtellis, Nicolas

2018-01-01

In recent years, offensive, abusive and hateful language, sexism, racism and other types of aggressive and cyberbullying behavior have been manifesting with increased frequency, and in many online social media platforms. In fact, past scientific work focused on studying these forms in popular media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Building on such work, we present an 8-month study of the various forms of abusive behavior on Twitter, in a holistic fashion. Departing from past work, we examine a ...

Social media as a student response system: new evidence on learning impact

OpenAIRE

Chelsea Liu

2018-01-01

The ubiquitousness of social media renders it a potentially powerful tool in higher education. This study explores the use of Twitter as a tool to enhance active learning and improve feedback during large-sized lectures. Students in a final-year undergraduate accounting course at an Australian university engaged in Twitter-based synchronous activities, including answering in-lecture quizzes and posting questions. This study explores two key questions: (1) ‘what encourages students to actively...

Quantifying Salient Concepts Discussed in Social Media Content: A Case Study using Twitter Content Written by Radicalized Youth

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shadi Ghajar-Khosravi

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Social Media has become an important source for information about people and real-world events. Its importance is driven largely by the enormous number of people generating and updating content in Social Media platforms. In this report, we measure the extent to which we can accurately measure the salience of topics/concepts that might be of interest to an analyst, and evaluate whether concepts like positive and negative sentiment can be meaningfully extracted from Social Media content. As a test case, we examined Twitter content generated by female users who are sympathetic to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS. The basic technique proposed here can be developed further to create a more fine-grained exanimation of Social Media content.

Characterizing JUUL-related posts on Twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

Allem, Jon-Patrick; Dharmapuri, Likhit; Unger, Jennifer B; Cruz, Tess Boley

2018-06-23

As vaping rapidly becomes more prevalent, social media data can be harnessed to capture individuals' discussions of e-cigarette products quickly. The JUUL vaporizer is the latest advancement in e-cigarette technology, which delivers nicotine to the user from a device that is the size and shape of a thumb drive. Despite JUUL's growing popularity, little research has been conducted on JUUL. Here we utilized Twitter data to determine the public's early experiences with JUUL describing topics of posts. Twitter posts containing the term "JUUL" were obtained for 1 April 2107 to 14 December 2017. Text classifiers were used to identify topics in posts (n = 81,689). The most prevalent topic wasPerson Tagging (use of @username to tag someone in a post) at 20.48% followed by Pods (mentions of JUUL's refill cartridge) at 14.72% and Buying (mentions of purchases) at 10.49%. The topic School (posts indicative of using JUUL or seeing someone use JUUL while at elementary, middle, or high school) comprised 3.66% of posts. The topic of Quit Smoking was rare at 0.29%. Data from social media may be used to extend the surveillance of newly introduced vaping products. Findings suggest Twitter users are bonding around, and inquiring about, JUUL on social media. JUUL's discreetness may facilitate its use in places where vaping is prohibited. Educators may be in need of training on how to identify JUUL in the classroom. Despite JUUL's branding as a smoking alternative, very few Twitter users mentioned smoking cessation with JUUL. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Understanding health food messages on Twitter for health literacy promotion.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, J; Liu, F; Zhou, H

2018-05-01

With the popularity of social media, Twitter has become an important tool to promote health literacy. However, many health-related messages on Twitter are dead-ended and cannot reach many people. This is unhelpful for health literacy promotion. This article aims to examine the features of online health food messages that people like to retweet. We adopted rumour theory as our theoretical foundation and extracted seven characteristics (i.e. emotional valence, attractiveness, sender's authoritativeness, external evidence, argument length, hashtags, and direct messages). A total of 10,025 health-related messages on Twitter were collected, and 1496 messages were randomly selected for further analysis. Each message was treated as one unit and then coded. All the hypotheses were tested with logistic regression. Emotional valence, attractiveness, sender's authoritativeness, argument length, and direct messages in a Twitter message had positive effects on people's retweet behaviour. The effect of external evidence was negative. Hashtags had no significant effect after consideration of other variables. Online health food messages containing positive emotions, including pictures, containing direct messages, having an authoritative sender, having longer arguments, or not containing external URLs are more likely to be retweeted. However, a message only containing positive or negative emotions or including direct messages without any support information will not be retweeted.

What makes people talk about antibiotics on social media? A retrospective analysis of Twitter use.

Science.gov (United States)

Dyar, Oliver J; Castro-Sánchez, Enrique; Holmes, Alison H

2014-09-01

Social media has reshaped individual and institutional communication. The unrestricted access to spontaneous views and opinions of society can enrich the evaluation of healthcare interventions. Antimicrobial resistance has been identified as a global threat to health requiring collaboration between clinicians and healthcare users. We sought to explore events and individuals influencing the discourse about antibiotics on Twitter. A web-based tool (www.topsy.com) was used to detect daily occurrences of the word 'antibiotic' from 24 September 2012 to 23 September 2013 in worldwide Tweets. Activity peaks (message frequency over three times that of baseline) were analysed to identify events leading to the increase. Of 135 billion messages posted during the study period, 243000 (0.000002%) referred to 'antibiotic'. The greatest activity increases appeared after: (i) the UK Chief Medical Officer's (CMO's) declaration of antimicrobial resistance as a national risk (January 2013 and March 2013); (ii) the release of the US CDC's report on antimicrobial resistance (September 2013); and (iii) the US FDA announcement on azithromycin safety concerns (March 2013). The CMO report in March reached an estimated worldwide audience of 20 million users in a single day. However, the frequency of antibiotic Tweets returned to basal levels within 48 h of all four peaks in activity. Institutional events can rapidly amplify antibiotic discussions on social media, but their short lifespan may hinder their public impact. Multipronged strategies may be required to prolong responses. Developing methods to refine social media monitoring to evaluate the impact and sustainability of societal engagement in the antimicrobial resistance agenda remains essential. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

Studying and researching with social media

CERN Document Server

Poore, Megan

2014-01-01

Wondering what your lecturers are looking for in a blog post? Asking yourself how that's different from writing an essay (or a wiki page)? Unsure if Twitter really can be used to build your online profile as a researcher? If you want -- or need -- to integrate social media tools into your studies and research, this practical book is your one-stop shop. Megan Poore shares the secrets of how to harness the power of social media tools to improve your academic productivity. Inside, you'll find out how to: ...write a good blog post ...contribute to a wiki ...maximise your grades when creating an audio-visual presentation ...find and share the latest research via Twitter ...keep safe online. Featuring handy illustrations and exercises, as well as guidance on broader issues such as copyright, avoiding plagiarism, and cyberbullying, you'll find out all you need to successfully use social media to support your study and research. Megan Poore is Assistant Professor in Teacher Education at the University of Canberra.

Twitter accounts followed by Congressional health staff.

Science.gov (United States)

Grande, David; Meisel, Zachary F; Merchant, Raina M; Seymour, Jane; Gollust, Sarah E

2017-07-01

Although health policy research should inform policy making, the communication gap between researchers and policy makers limits successful translation. Social media represents a new opportunity to connect researchers and policy makers. Our objective was to assess who Congressional health policy staff follow on a major social media platform. Cross-sectional study. Our study measured Congressional health policy staff's use of Twitter and the types of individuals and organizations they follow. To focus on more influential Twitter accounts, we restricted our sample to those followed by at least 3 individual Congressional staff members. Of the 30,843 accounts followed by the 115 Congressional health policy staff, 1273 were potentially policy-related and followed by 3 or more staff. Of these, few were academically affiliated (2.4%) or explicitly health-related (5.6%) sites; many were general news media sources (50.9%) and political and governmental sources (36.4%). Health-focused accounts were frequently connected to the news media or government rather than academia. Top accounts followed (ie, highest quintile) were most likely to be national news organizations (odds ratio [OR], 5.88; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.75-19.7) and elected officials (OR, 8.22; 95% CI, 1.75-38.6) compared with advocacy and interest groups. Health-related and academic sources are largely absent from the Twitter conversations with US Congressional health policy staff. Even within social media, traditional and political news media are important information intermediaries that researchers and journals should target to disseminate health policy evidence.

Effectiveness of Corporate Social Media Activities to Increase Relational Outcomes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Risius, Marten; Beck, Roman

2015-01-01

This study applies social media analytics to investigate the impact of different corporate social media activities on user word of mouth and attitudinal loyalty. We conduct a multilevel analysis of approximately 5 million tweets regarding the main Twitter accounts of 28 large global companies. We...... empirically identify different social media activities in terms of social media management strategies (using social media management tools or the web-frontend client), account types (broadcasting or receiving information), and communicative approaches (conversational or disseminative). We find positive...... effects of social media management tools, broadcasting accounts, and conversational communication on public perception....

Identifying behaviors that generate positive interactions between museums and people on a social media platform: An analysis of 27 science museums on Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, Stacy Christine

The aim of this study was to provide a detailed examination of how science museums use Twitter and suggest changes these museums should make to improve their current approach on this social media platform. Previous studies have identified the types of content museums are creating on social media, but none have quantitatively investigated the specific types of content most likely to generate interaction and engagement with a social media audience. A total of 5,278 tweets from 27 science museums were analyzed to determine what type of tweet yields the greatest impact measured in retweets and favorites. 1,453 of those tweets were selected for additional qualitative analysis. The results indicate that tweets with educational content, links, and hashtags lead to the greatest number of retweets and favorites. The results also indicate that the majority of tweets posted by museums do not generate interaction and engagement with a social media audience. A model for existing museums to improve their use of Twitter was created using the results of this study.

Evaluating social media's capacity to develop engaged audiences in health promotion settings: use of Twitter metrics as a case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Neiger, Brad L; Thackeray, Rosemary; Burton, Scott H; Giraud-Carrier, Christophe G; Fagen, Michael C

2013-03-01

Use of social media in health promotion and public health continues to grow in popularity, though most of what is reported in literature represents one-way messaging devoid of attributes associated with engagement, a core attribute, if not the central purpose, of social media. This article defines engagement, describes its value in maximizing the potential of social media in health promotion, proposes an evaluation hierarchy for social media engagement, and uses Twitter as a case study to illustrate how the hierarchy might function in practice. Partnership and participation are proposed as culminating outcomes for social media use in health promotion. As use of social media in health promotion moves toward this end, evaluation metrics that verify progress and inform subsequent strategies will become increasingly important.

Twitter: A tool to improve healthcare professionals' awareness of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Antimicrobial stewardship requires a multidisciplinary approach; however, many programmes still struggle to achieve the 'reach' required to educate and engage all healthcare providers (HCPs). Twitter use among South Africans has grown by 129% in 12 months, from 2.4 million to 5.5 million. HCPs can use Twitter to ...

Evaluating College Students' Displayed Alcohol References on Facebook and Twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

Moreno, Megan A; Arseniev-Koehler, Alina; Litt, Dana; Christakis, Dimitri

2016-05-01

Current trends suggest that adolescents and young adults typically maintain a social media "portfolio" of several sites including Facebook and Twitter, but little is known regarding how an individual chooses to display risk behaviors across these different sites. The purpose of this study was to investigate college students' displayed alcohol references on both Facebook and Twitter. Among a larger sample of college students from two universities, we identified participants who maintained both Facebook and Twitter profiles. Data collection included evaluation of 5 months of participants' Facebook and Twitter posts for alcohol references, number of social connections (i.e., friends or followers), and number of posts. Phone interviews assessed participants' frequency of Facebook and Twitter use and self-reported alcohol use. Analyses included Fisher's exact test, Wilcoxon matched pair sign test, Friedman rank-sum tests, and logistic regression. Of 112 eligible participants, 94 completed the study. Participants were more likely to display alcohol references on Facebook compared with those on Twitter (76% vs. 34%, p = .02). Participants reported more social connections on Facebook versus Twitter (average 801.2 friends vs. 189.4 followers, p Twitter (94.6% vs. 50%, p Twitter displayed alcohol references, but mediators differed in each model. College students were more likely to display alcohol references on Facebook compared with those on Twitter. Understanding these patterns and predictors may inform prevention and intervention efforts directed at particular social media sites. Copyright © 2016 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Spatial Characteristics of Twitter Users—Toward the Understanding of Geosocial Media Production

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michal Rzeszewski

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Social media is a rich source of spatial data but it has also many flaws and well-known limitations, especially in regard to representation and representativeness, since very little is known about the demographics of the user population. At the same time, the use of locational services, is in fact, dependent on those characteristics. We address this gap in knowledge by exploring divides between Twitter users, based on the spatial and temporal distribution of the content they produce. We chose five cities and data from 2015 to represent different socio-spatial contexts. Users were classified according to spatial and non-spatial measures: home range estimation; standard distance; nearest neighbor index, and; proposed localness index. There are distinct groups of geosocial media producers, which suggests that such datasets cannot be treated as uniform representations. We found a positive correlation between spatial behavior and posting activity. It is suggested that there are universal patterns of behavior that are conditioned by software services—the example of Foucauldian “technologies of self”. They can also represent the dominance of the most prolific users over the whole data stream. Results are discussed in the context of the importance and role of user location in social media.

Leveraging social media in the stem cell sector: exploring Twitter's potential as a vehicle for public information campaigns.

Science.gov (United States)

McNutt, Kathleen; Zarzeczny, Amy

2017-10-01

Our aim in this project was to explore Twitter's potential as a vehicle for an online public information campaign (PIC) focused on providing evidence-based information about stem cell therapies and the market for unproven stem cell-based interventions. We designed an online, Twitter-based PIC using classic design principles and identified a set of target intermediaries (organizations with online influence) using a network governance approach. We tracked the PIC's dissemination over a 2-month period, and evaluated it using metrics from the #SMMStandards Conclave. Participation was limited but the PIC achieved some reach and engagement. Social media based online PICs appear to have potential but also face challenges. Future research is required to better understand how to most effectively maximize their strengths.

Twitter, Millennials, and Nursing Education Research.

Science.gov (United States)

Stephens, Teresa M; Gunther, Mary E

2016-01-01

This article reports the use of Twitter as an intervention delivery method in a multisite experimental nursing research study. A form of social networking, Twitter is considered a useful means of communication, particularly with millennials. This method was chosen based on current literature exploring the characteristics of millennial students. Ahern's Model of Adolescent Resilience served as the theoretical framework. Participants were 70 junior-level baccalaureate nursing students, ages 19-23, at two state-supported universities. Twitter was found to be a convenient, cost-effective, and enjoyable means of intervention delivery for the researcher. Participants in the experimental and control groups expressed positive feelings about the use of Twitter. The findings contribute to future efforts to use social media in nursing research and education to increase faculty-student engagement, promote critical reflection, provide social support, reinforce course content, and increase the sense of community.

Engagement through Microblogging: Educator Professional Development via Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Carpenter, Jeffrey P.; Krutka, Daniel G.

2015-01-01

Traditional, top-down professional development (PD) can render teachers mere implementers of the ideas of others, but there is some hope that the participatory nature of social media such as Twitter might support more grassroots PD. To better understand Twitter's role in education, we conducted a survey of K-16 educators regarding their use of the…

Fine social aspiration: Twitter as a voice for cytopathology.

Science.gov (United States)

Lepe, M; Gardner, J M

2017-08-01

Social media is an influential tool that has the power to transform cytopathology. Twitter is being used more and more to share cutting-edge updates from pathology meetings ("live-tweeting"). Modern smartphones can now take high resolution microscopic photographs and easily transmit them worldwide via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, allowing cytopathologists to share educational pearls and discuss difficult cases on a global scale like never before. Social media also allows cytopathologists to share a behind-the-scenes look at their subspecialty with other physicians and even the non-medical public, helping them to better understand the crucial importance of cytopathology in modern medicine. This could positively impact rapport with other specialties, influence policy making, and possibly even improve delivery of patient care. Rare disease patient communities are being formed by patients on Facebook. By joining and volunteering with these patient groups, cytopathologists would have further opportunity to interact directly with patients and their family members, explaining the role of cytopathology in patient care and helping patients to better understand their own diseases. Social media enables cytopathologists and their colleagues in other pathology subspecialties to easily and rapidly form a broad and diverse worldwide network with one another. The authors believe that this is the key to a bright future for our specialty, a strong unified global community of pathologists all working together for education, patient advocacy, and outstanding patient care. Social media can allow us to build that community, strengthen its bonds, and harness its power like never before in history. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2017;45:705-713. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Comparing Twitter and Online Panels for Survey Recruitment of E-Cigarette Users and Smokers.

Science.gov (United States)

Guillory, Jamie; Kim, Annice; Murphy, Joe; Bradfield, Brian; Nonnemaker, James; Hsieh, Yuli

2016-11-15

E-cigarettes have rapidly increased in popularity in recent years, driven, at least in part, by marketing and word-of-mouth discussion on Twitter. Given the rapid proliferation of e-cigarettes, researchers need timely quantitative data from e-cigarette users and smokers who may see e-cigarettes as a cessation tool. Twitter provides an ideal platform for recruiting e-cigarette users and smokers who use Twitter. Online panels offer a second method of accessing this population, but they have been criticized for recruiting too few young adults, among whom e-cigarette use rates are highest. This study compares effectiveness of recruiting Twitter users who are e-cigarette users and smokers who have never used e-cigarettes via Twitter to online panelists provided by Qualtrics and explores how users recruited differ by demographics, e-cigarette use, and social media use. Participants were adults who had ever used e-cigarettes (n=278; male: 57.6%, 160/278; age: mean 34.26, SD 14.16 years) and smokers (n=102; male: 38.2%, 39/102; age: mean 42.80, SD 14.16 years) with public Twitter profiles. Participants were recruited via online panel (n=190) or promoted tweets using keyword targeting for e-cigarette users (n=190). Predictor variables were demographics (age, gender, education, race/ethnicity), e-cigarette use (eg, past 30-day e-cigarette use, e-cigarette puffs per day), social media use behaviors (eg, Twitter use frequency), and days to final survey completion from survey launch for Twitter versus panel. Recruitment method (Twitter, panel) was the dependent variable. Across the total sample, participants were recruited more quickly via Twitter (incidence rate ratio=1.30, P=.02) than panel. Compared with young adult e-cigarette users (age 18-24 years), e-cigarette users aged 25 to 34 years (OR 0.01, 95% CI 0.00-0.60, P=.03) and 35 to 44 years (OR 0.01, 95% CI 0.00-0.51, P=.02) were more likely to be recruited via Twitter than panel. Smokers aged 35 to 44 years were less

An Academic Healthcare Twitter Account: The Mayo Clinic Experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Widmer, R Jay; Engler, Nicole B; Geske, Jeffrey B; Klarich, Kyle W; Timimi, Farris K

2016-06-01

With more than 300 million monthly active users, Twitter is a powerful social media tool in healthcare, yet the characterization of an academic healthcare Twitter account remains poor to date. We assessed basic gender and geographic data on the account's "followers," as well as categorization of each tweet based on content type. We analyzed the impressions, engagements, retweets, favorites, replies, hashtag clicks, and detail expansions using both Sprinklr and Twitter Analytics. Over a period of 12 months, the account amassed 1,235 followers, with 54 percent being male and 68 percent residing in the United States. Of the 1,635 tweets sent out over the life of the account, we report more than 382,464 impressions, 6,023 engagements, 1,255 retweets, 776 favorites, and 1,654 embedded media clicks in this period. When broken down by tweet category, publication tweets garnered the highest engagement with an estimated mean number of clicks per tweet of 8.2 ± 81.9. Original content had higher total engagement per tweet than retweeted material (2.8 ± 9.2 vs. 0.2 ± 0.9 engagements per tweet; p < 0.0001). Tweets regarding internal, national, and continuing medical education events had similar engagement. Herein is the first publication within the medical literature describing a "case series" of cardiovascular tweets over 12 months. We highlight a rapidly emerging group of interactive followers, a successful means by which to disseminate and engage in breaking topics throughout the cardiovascular field, and the importance of combining physician-led knowledge with intermittent marketing messages.

Patterns of Twitter Usage in One Cohort-Based Doctoral Program

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Armand A Buzzelli

2016-05-01

Full Text Available An Instructional Management and Leadership doctoral program (IML incorporated the use of Twitter to examine what this looked like in practice. Did students actually use Twitter, and if so, how frequently, for what purpose(s, and were there differences between students on the pattern of use? Additionally, we sought to determine if Twitter is a legitimate instructional tool and if the use of Twitter can help mitigate feelings of isolation. Utilizing a descriptive case study design we implemented a survey methodology by distributing a modified version of the First Year Engagement Questionnaire to five IML cohorts. Active use of Twitter was infrequent. IML students used Twitter to gather news, follow experts, and find stimulating interactions. Active users and students who previously had a Twitter account were more positive about using Twitter. On average however, IML students were infrequent, passive Twitter users, aggregating information to supplement instruction. They did not use Twitter to reduce feelings of isolation. Female and male students used Twitter similarly. Younger students were more active than older students. Familiarity with the platform potentially moderates Twitter activity. Twitter has utility as a supplemental instructional tool but expanded use requires active student engagement.

Identifying Depression on Twitter

OpenAIRE

Nadeem, Moin

2016-01-01

Social media has recently emerged as a premier method to disseminate information online. Through these online networks, tens of millions of individuals communicate their thoughts, personal experiences, and social ideals. We therefore explore the potential of social media to predict, even prior to onset, Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in online personas. We employ a crowdsourced method to compile a list of Twitter users who profess to being diagnosed with depression. Using up to a year of pri...

From hybrid-media system to hybrid-media politicians

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Blach-Ørsten, Mark; Eberholst, Mads Kæmsgaard; Burkal, Rasmus

2017-01-01

’ media use is changing rapidly; 15%–16% of Danish candidates used Twitter in 2011 but 68% in 2015. In this large-sample content analysis, party leaders have high traditional-news-media and low Twitter presence, and younger candidates visa-versa, but some politicians have high presence in both. Hybrid...

Twittering About Research: A Case Study of the World’s First Twitter Poster Competition [version 2; referees: 3 approved

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Edward P. Randviir

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The Royal Society of Chemistry held, to our knowledge, the world’s first Twitter conference at 9am on February 5 th, 2015. The conference was a Twitter-only conference, allowing researchers to upload academic posters as tweets, replacing a physical meeting. This paper reports the details of the event and discusses the outcomes, such as the potential for the use of social media to enhance scientific communication at conferences. In particular, the present work argues that social media outlets such as Twitter broaden audiences, speed up communication, and force clearer and more concise descriptions of a researcher’s work. The benefits of poster presentations are also discussed in terms of potential knowledge exchange and networking. This paper serves as a proof-of-concept approach for improving both the public opinion of the poster, and the enhancement of the poster through an innovative online format that some may feel more comfortable with, compared to face-to-face communication.

Twittering About Research: A Case Study of the World’s First Twitter Poster Competition [version 3; referees: 3 approved

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Edward P. Randviir

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The Royal Society of Chemistry held, to our knowledge, the world’s first Twitter conference at 9am on February 5 th, 2015. The conference was a Twitter-only conference, allowing researchers to upload academic posters as tweets, replacing a physical meeting. This paper reports the details of the event and discusses the outcomes, such as the potential for the use of social media to enhance scientific communication at conferences. In particular, the present work argues that social media outlets such as Twitter broaden audiences, speed up communication, and force clearer and more concise descriptions of a researcher’s work. The benefits of poster presentations are also discussed in terms of potential knowledge exchange and networking. This paper serves as a proof-of-concept approach for improving both the public opinion of the poster, and the enhancement of the poster through an innovative online format that some may feel more comfortable with, compared to face-to-face communication.

Healthy Tweets: Use and Importance of Twitter for Health Prevention

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lina M. Gomez Vasquez

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Social media platforms have changed the way people stayinformed, communicate with others, and share ideas. These interactive social platforms are used for many purposes from being in contact with family and friends to promote products and services. However, little is known about the use and importance of social media for health prevention, especially for communication among Hispanic communities.The purpose of this paper is to analyze how social media platforms, especially Twitter, are used for health prevention and communication in Hispanic communities. In doing so, a quantitative content analysis was performed on 3000 tweets with the hashtag #prevención (prevention. Results indicate that most of the prevention messages shared among organizations and users on Twitter were informational messages and very few users promoted interactive communication and mobilization. Mass media and governmental institutions posted more messages to encourage health prevention, especially about publichealth and healthy cities. This study stresses the many social media platforms’ potentialities and functionalities, especially Twitter, that contribute to health prevention and communication. Findings are useful for organizations and users when planning prevention content or campaigns through these platforms.

BEYOND THE BLOG: THE NETWORKED SELF OF TRAVEL BLOGGERS ON TWITTER

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Deepti Ruth Azariah

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Studies of the use of social media in tourism rarely discuss various tools in conjunction with each other. The growth of Twitter has attracted the attention of tourism researchers interested in the platform as a marketing tool and a source of information about consumers (Claster, Cooper, & Sallis, 2010; Hay, 2010. Similar studies of travel blogs largely focus on what tourists say about destinations and their own experiences (Akehurst, 2009; Bosangit, McCabe, & Hibbert, 2009; Schmallegger & Carson, 2008. Blogs in general, and travel blogs in particular, are widely regarded as providing credible information about their authors. Both the content and formal features of these online narratives shape the self-presentation and positioning of their authors as bloggers. Given that blogs are increasingly "distributed" (Helmond, 2010 and that independent travel bloggers often link to other platforms, it is necessary to consider author-created content beyond the blog to understand the presentation of what Papacharissi (2010 calls a "networked self." Drawing on the theories of Bakhtin and Goffman, which have informed previous analyses of blogs, and Dann’s (1996 concept of tourist discourse, this paper argues that the Twitter pages of independent travel bloggers extend the self-presentation in their blogs. In particular, it focuses on how travel bloggers use specific conventions, formal features, and narrative techniques of Twitter to express a networked self and reiterate themes of the blog. Through a random selection and textual analysis of various messages it finds that while there is some mention of the travel experience, the various conventions and conversations on Twitter are self-presentational elements that generally strengthen the authors’ position as travel bloggers. The characteristic narrative techniques of Twitter also reveal tensions between the discourses of travel and tourism. The networked self of the independent travel blogger is

TWITTER AS A TOOL OF PARA-DIPLOMACY: AN EXPLORATORY COHORT STUDY BASED ON CATALONIA (2013-2017

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Matthias Erlandsen

2018-03-01

Full Text Available This exploratory cohort study investigated the phenomenon of Digital Diplomacy by sub-state actors within the field of para-diplomacy, specifically the use of social media platforms by Catalonian Secretaries and Delegates of the Generalitat, and in particular how they use Twitter for the international promotion of its independence and/or its nation branding. A stratified significant sample of each year between 2013 and 2017 was collected using R software, and then analyzed using Nvivo. The methodology was based on Abela (2001, Krippendorff (2004, and Neuendorf (2002. The data shows that both Catalan public servants as well as its Delegates Abroad, use Twitter mostly for personal use. However, when analyzing only the contents about international or intermestic topics, it is observed that there is a tendency to publish topics related to independence rather than national brand.

Hashtags and retweets: using Twitter to aid Community, Communication and Casual (informal learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peter Reed

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Since the evolution of Web 2.0, or the Social Web, the way in which users interact with/on the Internet has seen a massive paradigm shift. Web 2.0 tools and technologies have completely changed the dynamics of the Internet, enabling users to create content; be it text, photographs or video; and furthermore share and collaborate across massive geographic boundaries. As part of this revolution, arguably the most significant tools have been those employing social media. This research project set out to investigate student's attitudes, perceptions and activity toward the use of Twitter in supporting learning and teaching. In so doing, this paper touches on a number of current debates in higher education, such as the role (and perceived rise of informal learning; and debates around Digital Natives/Immigrants vs. Digital Residents/Visitors. In presenting early research findings, the author considers the 3Cs of Twitter (T3c: Community, Communication and Casual (informal learning. Data suggests that students cannot be classed as Digital Natives purely on age and suggests a rethinking of categorisations is necessary. Furthermore, the data suggests students are developing their own personal learning environments (PLEs based on user choice. Those students who voluntarily engaged with Twitter during this study positively evaluated the tool for use within learning and teaching.

The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Comparing Political Campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bossetta, Michael

2018-01-01

(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat) are compared along the typology. Using the 2016 U.S. elections as a case, interviews with three Republican digital strategists are complimented with social media data to qualify the study’s theoretical claim that a platform’s network structure, functionality...

The Twitter-thing (exhibition)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Birkbak, Andreas; Bornakke, Tobias; Papazu, Irina Maria Clara Hansen

of multiple and constantly transforming issue-oriented publics? What kinds of issues come to the fore, how long does this last, and who associate themselves with them? The aim of the Twitter-thing is to trace the cuts issues make in a parliament. Each time a parliamentarian use a hashtag in a tweet, a link...... they are not necessarily aware of themselves as publics. At the same time, it is possible to self-select membership of these publics by using a specific hashtag. This raises the question of what feedback loops are at work between visualizations and those being visualized. How might a tool like the Twitter-thing change...... (parliamentary) politics? More generally, the tool prompts us to think about the fate of issues in institutionalized democracy. The Twitter-thing invites users to explore these questions by making the network available in an interactive format that makes it possible to zoom, search for particular politicians...

Examining Public Perceptions about Lead in School Drinking Water: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Twitter Response to an Environmental Health Hazard.

Science.gov (United States)

Ekenga, Christine C; McElwain, Cora-Ann; Sprague, Nadav

2018-01-20

Exposure to lead has long been a community health concern in St. Louis, Missouri. The objective of this study was to examine public response to reports of elevated lead levels in school drinking water in St. Louis, Missouri via Twitter, a microblogging platform with over 320 million active users. We used a mixed-methods design to examine Twitter user status updates, known as "tweets," from 18 August to 31 December 2016. The number of tweets each day was recorded, and Twitter users were classified into five user types (General Public, Journalist/News, Health Professional/Academic, Politician/Government Official, and Non-Governmental Organization). A total of 492 tweets were identified during the study period. The majority of discourse on Twitter occurred during the two-week period after initial media reports and was driven by members of the General Public. Thematic analysis of tweets revealed four themes: Information Sharing, Health Concerns, Sociodemographic Disparities, and Outrage. Twitter users characterized lead in school drinking water as an issue of environmental inequity. The findings of this study provide evidence that social media platforms can be utilized as valuable tools for public health researchers and practitioners to gauge public sentiment about environmental health issues, identify emerging community concerns, and inform future communication and research strategies regarding environmental health hazards.

Scientific Story Telling & Social Media The role of social media in effectively communicating science

Science.gov (United States)

Brinkhuis, D.; Peart, L.

2012-12-01

Scientific discourse generally takes place in appropriate journals, using the language and conventions of science. That's fine, as long as the discourse remains in scientific circles. It is only outside those circles that the rules and techniques of engaging social media tools gain importance. A young generation of scientists are eager to share their experiences by using social media, but is this effective? And how can we better integrate all outreach & media channels to engage general audiences? How can Facebook, Twitter, Skype and YouTube be used as synergy tools in scientific story telling? Case: during IODP Expedtion 342 (June-July 2012) onboard the scientific drillship JOIDES Resolution an onboard educator and videographer worked non-stop fort two months on an integrated outreach plan that tried and tested the limits of all social media tools available to interact with an international public while at sea. The results are spectacular!

The Space for Social Media in Structured Online Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Salmon, Gilly; Ross, Bella; Pechenkina, Ekaterina; Chase, Anne-Marie

2015-01-01

In this paper, we explore the benefits of using social media in an online educational setting, with a particular focus on the use of Facebook and Twitter by participants in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) developed to enable educators to learn about the Carpe Diem learning design process. We define social media as digital social tools and…

The Use of Social Media for Communication In Official Statistics at European Level

OpenAIRE

Ionela-Roxana GLĂVAN; Andreea MIRICĂ; Bogdan Narcis FÎRȚESCU

2016-01-01

Social media tools are wide spread in web communication and are gaining popularity in the communication process between public institutions and citizens. This study conducts an analysis on how social media is used by Official Statistical Institutes to interact with citizens and disseminate information. A linear regression technique is performed to examine which social media platforms (Twitter or Facebook) is a more effective tool in the communication process in the official statistics area. O...

Identity Use and Misuse of Public Persona on Twitter

OpenAIRE

Köse, Dicle Berfin; Veijalainen, Jari; Semenov, Alexander

2016-01-01

Social media sites have appeared during the last 10 years and their use has exploded all over the world. Twitter is a microblogging service that has currently 320 million user profiles and over 100 million daily active users. Many celebrities and leading politicians have a verified profile on Twitter, including Justin Bieber, president Obama, and the Pope. In this paper we investigate the '‘hundreds of Putins and Obamas phenomenon’ on Twitter. We collected two data sets in 2015 co...

Developing an Approach to Harvesting, Cleaning, and Analyzing Data from Twitter Using R

Science.gov (United States)

Hill, Stephen; Scott, Rebecca

2017-01-01

Using data from social media can be of great value to businesses and other interested parties. However, harvesting data from social media networks such as Twitter, cleaning the data, and analyzing the data can be difficult. In this article, a step-by-step approach to obtaining data via the Twitter application program interface (API) is described.…

Twitter: A Novel Tool for Studying the Health and Social Needs of Transgender Communities.

Science.gov (United States)

Krueger, Evan A; Young, Sean D

2015-01-01

Limited research has examined the health and social needs of transgender and gender nonconforming populations. Due to high levels of stigma, transgender individuals may avoid disclosing their identities to researchers, hindering this type of work. Further, researchers have traditionally relied on clinic-based sampling methods, which may mask the true heterogeneity of transgender and gender nonconforming communities. Online social networking websites present a novel platform for studying this diverse, difficult-to-reach population. The objective of this study was to attempt to examine the perceived health and social needs of transgender and gender nonconforming communities by examining messages posted to the popular microblogging platform, Twitter. Tweets were collected from 13 transgender-related hashtags on July 11, 2014. They were read and coded according to general themes addressed, and a content analysis was performed. Qualitative and descriptive statistics are presented. There were 1135 tweets that were collected in total. Both "positive" and "negative" events were discussed, in both personal and social contexts. Violence, discrimination, suicide, and sexual risk behavior were discussed. There were 34.36% (390/1135) of tweets that addressed transgender-relevant current events, and 60.79% (690/1135) provided a link to a relevant news article or resource. This study found that transgender individuals and allies use Twitter to discuss health and social needs relevant to the population. Real-time social media sites like Twitter can be used to study issues relevant to transgender communities.

Experiences with the Twitter Health Surveillance (THS) System.

Science.gov (United States)

Rodríguez-Martínez, Manuel

2017-06-01

Social media has become an important platform to gauge public opinion on topics related to our daily lives. In practice, processing these posts requires big data analytics tools since the volume of data and the speed of production overwhelm single-server solutions. Building an application to capture and analyze posts from social media can be a challenge simply because it requires combining a set of complex software tools that often times are tricky to configure, tune, and maintain. In many instances, the application ends up being an assorted collection of Java/Scala programs or Python scripts that developers cobble together to generate the data products they need. In this paper, we present the Twitter Health Surveillance (THS) application framework. THS is designed as a platform to allow end-users to monitor a stream of tweets, and process the stream with a combination of built-in functionality and their own user-defined functions. We discuss the architecture of THS, and describe its implementation atop the Apache Hadoop Ecosystem. We also present several lessons learned while developing our current prototype.

Experiences with the Twitter Health Surveillance (THS) System

Science.gov (United States)

Rodríguez-Martínez, Manuel

2018-01-01

Social media has become an important platform to gauge public opinion on topics related to our daily lives. In practice, processing these posts requires big data analytics tools since the volume of data and the speed of production overwhelm single-server solutions. Building an application to capture and analyze posts from social media can be a challenge simply because it requires combining a set of complex software tools that often times are tricky to configure, tune, and maintain. In many instances, the application ends up being an assorted collection of Java/Scala programs or Python scripts that developers cobble together to generate the data products they need. In this paper, we present the Twitter Health Surveillance (THS) application framework. THS is designed as a platform to allow end-users to monitor a stream of tweets, and process the stream with a combination of built-in functionality and their own user-defined functions. We discuss the architecture of THS, and describe its implementation atop the Apache Hadoop Ecosystem. We also present several lessons learned while developing our current prototype. PMID:29607412

Twitter and Public Health (Part 1): How Individual Public Health Professionals Use Twitter for Professional Development.

Science.gov (United States)

Hart, Mark; Stetten, Nichole E; Islam, Sabrina; Pizarro, Katherine

2017-09-20

The use of social networking sites is increasingly being adopted in public health, in part, because of the barriers to funding and reduced resources. Public health professionals are using social media platforms, specifically Twitter, as a way to facilitate professional development. The objective of this study was to identify public health professionals using Twitter and to analyze how they use this platform to enhance their formal and informal professional development within the context of public health. Keyword searches were conducted to identify and invite potential participants to complete a survey related to their use of Twitter for public health and professional experiences. Data regarding demographic attributes, Twitter usage, and qualitative information were obtained through an anonymous Web-based survey. Open-response survey questions were analyzed using the constant comparison method. "Using Twitter makes it easier to expand my networking opportunities" and "I find Twitter useful for professional development" scored highest, with a mean score of 4.57 (standard deviation [SD] 0.74) and 4.43 (SD 0.76) on a 5-point Likert scale. Analysis of the qualitative data shows the emergence of the following themes for why public health professionals mostly use Twitter: (1) geography, (2) continuing education, (3) professional gain, and (4) communication. For public health professionals in this study, Twitter is a platform best used for their networking and professional development. Furthermore, the use of Twitter allows public health professionals to overcome a series of barriers and enhances opportunities for growth. ©Mark Hart, Nichole E Stetten, Sabrina Islam, Katherine Pizarro. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 20.09.2017.

Analisis Penggunaan Twitter Sebagai Media Komunikasi Selebritis Di Jakarta

OpenAIRE

Azeharie, Suzy

2014-01-01

: This study discusses the use of twitter as a medium of communication that do celebrities in Jakarta, Indra Aziz, Pongki Barata and kerispatih. The support of the fans means a lot to all three top celebrities in order to continue working in the entertainment industry. Communication is the key to self-publish to the public in order to gain support for their new works. Twitter is one of the medium used to communicate with fans. Therefore the aim of this study was to determine the reason and pu...

"To Tweet or Not to Tweet?" A Comparison of Academics' and Students' Usage of Twitter in Academic Contexts

Science.gov (United States)

Knight, Charles G.; Kaye, Linda K.

2016-01-01

The emergence of social media as a new channel for communication and collaboration has led educators to hope that they may enhance the student experience and provide a pedagogical tool within Higher Education (HE). This paper explores academics' and undergraduates' usage of Twitter within a post-92 university. It argues that the observed disparity…

Dermatopathology and Social Media: A Survey of 131 Medical Professionals From 29 Countries.

Science.gov (United States)

Carlquist, Erin; Lee, Nathan E; Shalin, Sara C; Goodman, Michael; Gardner, Jerad M

2018-02-01

- Use of social media in the medical profession is an increasingly prevalent and sometimes controversial practice. Many doctors believe social media is the future and embrace it as an educational and collaborative tool. Others maintain reservations concerning issues such as patient confidentiality, and legal and ethical risks. - To explore the utility of social media as an educational and collaborative tool in dermatopathology. - We constructed 2 identical surveys containing questions pertaining to the responders' demographics and opinions regarding the use of social media for dermatopathology. The surveys were available on Twitter and Facebook for a period of 10 days. - The survey was completed by 131 medical professionals from 29 different countries: the majority (81%, 106 of 131) were 25 to 45 years of age. Most replied that they access Facebook or Twitter several times a day (68%, 89 of 131) for both professional and social purposes (77%, 101 of 131). The majority agreed that social media provides useful and relevant information, but stated limitations they would like addressed. - Social media is a powerful tool with the ability to instantaneously share dermatopathology with medical professionals across the world. This study reveals the opinions and characteristics of the population of medical professionals currently using social media for education and collaboration in dermatopathology.

Vape, quit, tweet? Electronic cigarettes and smoking cessation on Twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

van der Tempel, Jan; Noormohamed, Aliya; Schwartz, Robert; Norman, Cameron; Malas, Muhannad; Zawertailo, Laurie

2016-03-01

Individuals seeking information about electronic cigarettes are increasingly turning to social media networks like Twitter. We surveyed dominant Twitter communications about e-cigarettes and smoking cessation, examining message sources, themes, and attitudes. Tweets from 2014 were searched for mentions of e-cigarettes and smoking cessation. A purposive sample was subjected to mixed-methods analysis. Twitter communication about e-cigarettes increased fivefold since 2012. In a sample of 300 tweets from high-authority users, attitudes about e-cigarettes as smoking cessation aids were favorable across user types (industry, press, public figures, fake accounts, and personal users), except for public health professionals, who lacked consensus and contributed negligibly to the conversation. The most prevalent message themes were marketing, news, and first-person experiences with e-cigarettes as smoking cessation aids. We identified several industry strategies to reach Twitter users. Our findings show that Twitter users are overwhelmingly exposed to messages that favor e-cigarettes as smoking cessation aids, even when disregarding commercial activity. This underlines the need for effective public health engagement with social media to provide reliable information about e-cigarettes and smoking cessation online.

Using Social Media to Increase Accessibility to Online Teaching Resources.

Science.gov (United States)

O'Kelly, B; McHugh, S; McHugh, T; Fady, N; Boyle, E; Hill, A D K

2015-09-01

The key learning points of Surgical Grand Rounds (SGR) are often not accessible at times of exam revision for students. We sought to use Twitter as an online teaching repository. A SGR Twitter profile was created. 23 SGR presentations were made accessible on Twitter over a 3 month period. 93 students were invited to complete a questionnaire assessing usage of the repository. 84 (90%) in total responded, of these, 25 (80.6%) felt that the online provision of SGR through twitter was "useful". The majority (71%) felt that the online content was easily accessible. The novel use of social media is a useful adjunctive educational tool in accessing an online repository of SGR presentations.

Protests against #delhigangrape on Twitter: Analyzing India’s Arab Spring

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saifuddin Ahmed

2013-11-01

Full Text Available This study offers a comprehensive approach towards analyzing and explaining the role of Twitter in shaping and facilitating social movements especially during protests. It presents automatic and manual analyses of the tweet themes, usage characteristics and major Twitter users during a public outcry against a gangrape incident in Delhi, the capital city of India. Our results identified Twitter as an important channel for the diffusion of ideas and news among a vast set of adopters in defiance of geographical boundaries. Results of the content analyses highlight the prominent use of social media resources in disseminating information on Twitter, and the remarkable role of Twitter users as citizen journalists during the days of the protest. Results of the social network analysis suggest that major role players on Twitter were the offline protest leaders.

Dealing with big data: The case of Twitter

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Tjong Kim Sang, E.; van den Bosch, A.

2013-01-01

As data sets keep growing, computational linguists are experiencing more big data problems: challenging demands on storage and processing caused by very large data sets. An example of this is dealing with social media data: including metadata, the messages of the social media site Twitter in 2012

Developing a research agenda on ethical issues related to using social media in healthcare : Lessons from the first Dutch Twitter heart operation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Adams, S.A.; van Veghel, Dennis; Dekker, Lukas

2014-01-01

The consequences of using publicly available social media applications specifically for healthcare purposes are largely unaddressed in current research. Where they are addressed, the focus is primarily on issues of privacy and data protection. We therefore use a case study of the first live Twitter

Anatomy of a Tweet workshop: how to use social media as an academic tool

OpenAIRE

Hennessy, Catherine; Keenan, I D; Border, S

2016-01-01

This workshop welcomes novices and existing social media users alike, to collaborate and participate in using social media in order to disseminate information and network with other delegates. This workshop will inform delegates how social media can be effectively used long-term for both professional and educational purposes, beyond the conclusion of the conference. \\ud New users will be inspired to create their own academic Twitter accounts and to become confident in tweeting, while existing...

21 Recipes for Mining Twitter

CERN Document Server

Russell, Matthew

2011-01-01

Millions of public Twitter streams harbor a wealth of data, and once you mine them, you can gain some valuable insights. This short and concise book offers a collection of recipes to help you extract nuggets of Twitter information using easy-to-learn Python tools. Each recipe offers a discussion of how and why the solution works, so you can quickly adapt it to fit your particular needs. The recipes include techniques to: Use OAuth to access Twitter dataCreate and analyze graphs of retweet relationshipsUse the streaming API to harvest tweets in realtimeHarvest and analyze friends and followers

Developing a Social Media Marketing tool

OpenAIRE

Valova, Olga

2015-01-01

The objective of the thesis is to develop a better, easier to use social media marketing tool that could be utilised in any business. By understanding and analysing how business uses social media as well as currently available social media marketing tools, design a tool with the maximum amount of features, but with a simple and intuitive User Interface. An agile software development life cycle was used throughout the creation of the tool. Qualitative analysis was used to analyse existing ...

Media preparation and bacteriological tools.

Science.gov (United States)

Elbing, Karen; Brent, Roger

2002-08-01

Recipes are provided in this unit for minimal liquid media, rich liquid media, solid media, top agar, and stab agar. Also included are descriptions and useful information about tools used with growth media such as inoculating loops, sterile toothpicks and spreaders.

Medical Institutions and Twitter: A Novel Tool for Public Communication in Japan.

Science.gov (United States)

Sugawara, Yuya; Narimatsu, Hiroto; Tsuya, Atsushi; Tanaka, Atsushi; Fukao, Akira

2016-01-01

Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service on the Internet. Medical professionals and patients have started to use Twitter in medicine. Twitter use by medical institutions can interactively and efficiently provide public health information and education for laypeople. This study examined Twitter usage by medical institutions. We reviewed all Japanese user accounts in which the names of medical institutions were described in the user's Twitter profile. We then classified medical institutions' tweets by content. We extracted 168 accounts for medical institutions with ≥500 followers. The medical specialties of those accounts were dentistry and oral surgery (n=73), dermatology (n=12), cosmetic surgery (n=10), internal medicine (n=10), ophthalmology (n=6), obstetrics and gynecology (n=5), plastic surgery (n=2), and others (n=50). Of these, 21 accounts tweeted medical knowledge and 45 accounts tweeted guidance about medical practice and consultation hours, including advertisements. In the dentistry and oral surgery accounts, individual behavior or thinking was the most frequent (22/71, 31%) content. On the other hand, consultation including advertisements was the most frequent (14/23, 61%) in cosmetic surgery, plastic surgery, and dermatology. Some medical specialties used Twitter for disseminating medical knowledge or guidance including advertisements. This indicates that Twitter potentially can be used for various purposes by different medical specialties.

Social Media for the Dissemination of Cochrane Child Health Evidence: Evaluation Study.

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Dyson, Michele P; Newton, Amanda S; Shave, Kassi; Featherstone, Robin M; Thomson, Denise; Wingert, Aireen; Fernandes, Ricardo M; Hartling, Lisa

2017-09-01

Health care providers value ready access to reliable synthesized information to support point-of-care decision making. Web-based communities, facilitated by the adoption of social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, are increasingly being used for knowledge dissemination, bridging the gap between knowledge generation and synthesis and knowledge implementation. Our objective was to implement and evaluate a structured social media strategy, using multiple platforms, to disseminate Cochrane Child Health evidence to health care providers caring for children. Our social media strategy had three components: daily "tweets" using the Cochrane Child Health Twitter account, weekly WordPress blog posts, and a monthly journal club on Twitter ("tweet chat"). Each tweet, blog, and journal club shared Cochrane evidence on a child health topic. We evaluated the strategy through (1) Twitter and blog site analytics, (2) traceable link (Bitly) statistics, (3) Altmetric.com scores for promoted evidence, and (4) participant feedback. We also tracked the resources required to write the blog, tweet content, and manage the strategy. The 22-week social media strategy ran between November 2014 and April 2015. We created 25 blog posts, sent 585 tweets, and hosted 3 tweet chats. Monthly blog visits and views and Twitter account followers increased over time. During the study period, the blog received 2555 visitors and 3967 page views from a geographically diverse audience of health care providers, academics, and health care organizations. In total, 183 traceable Bitly links received 3463 clicks, and the Twitter account gained 469 new followers. The most visited and viewed blog posts included gastrointestinal topics (lactose avoidance), research on respiratory conditions (honey for cough and treatments for asthma), and maternal newborn care (skin-to-skin contact). On Twitter, popular topics were related to public health (vaccination) and pain management. We collected Altmetric

Cross-tools and cross-media effects

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Voorveld, H.

2013-01-01

Effects of persuasive messages depend on the content of the message itself and on the media or tools that deliver the persuasive messages. Nowadays almost all campaigns make use of multiple media or multiple promotional tools. Therefore, it is important to study so-called cross-media (or

Utilizing Twitter for Concept Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Buzzelli, Armand; Holdan, E. Gregory; Rota, Daniel; McCarthy, John

2016-01-01

Despite the perception that face-to-face classrooms provide speaking opportunities, studies by Fassinger (1995), Nunn (1996), and Weimer (2013) have conveyed that there is limited interaction in a traditional college lecture setting. Social media networks such as Twitter provide an opportunity for instructors to utilize popular mobile technology…

Characterizing Sleep Issues Using Twitter.

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McIver, David J; Hawkins, Jared B; Chunara, Rumi; Chatterjee, Arnaub K; Bhandari, Aman; Fitzgerald, Timothy P; Jain, Sachin H; Brownstein, John S

2015-06-08

Sleep issues such as insomnia affect over 50 million Americans and can lead to serious health problems, including depression and obesity, and can increase risk of injury. Social media platforms such as Twitter offer exciting potential for their use in studying and identifying both diseases and social phenomenon. Our aim was to determine whether social media can be used as a method to conduct research focusing on sleep issues. Twitter posts were collected and curated to determine whether a user exhibited signs of sleep issues based on the presence of several keywords in tweets such as insomnia, "can't sleep", Ambien, and others. Users whose tweets contain any of the keywords were designated as having self-identified sleep issues (sleep group). Users who did not have self-identified sleep issues (non-sleep group) were selected from tweets that did not contain pre-defined words or phrases used as a proxy for sleep issues. User data such as number of tweets, friends, followers, and location were collected, as well as the time and date of tweets. Additionally, the sentiment of each tweet and average sentiment of each user were determined to investigate differences between non-sleep and sleep groups. It was found that sleep group users were significantly less active on Twitter (P=.04), had fewer friends (Pcost-effective, and customizable data to be gathered.

Social Media in Hematology in 2017: Dystopia, Utopia, or Somewhere In-between?

Science.gov (United States)

Gerds, Aaron T; Chan, Teresa

2017-12-01

Social media is becoming a crucial part of our society. While the field of medicine has lagged behind in adopting and harnessing these platforms, we are now starting to see a surge in social media usage for medical education and scientific communication (e.g., knowledge translation, research collaboration, discussion, and discourse). Over the course of this review, we aim to update the reader on the way in which Twitter and other social media platforms may be used in hematology for research ideas, collaboration, and scholarly activity. Twitter use has grown exponentially over the past decade and is now woven into the fabric of modern communication. It can be a useful tool for those who wish to engage both colleagues and the public. While some issues such as reporting of financial conflict of interest still need to be addressed, Twitter, and social medial in general, can be a powerful instrument for researchers, educators, patients, and advocacy groups.

The use of digital diplomacy as a tool for symbolic violence: Framing analysis of Russian–Turkish relations on Twitter

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Sherzod Arapov

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Symbols are primarily used by diplomatic actors to better project the core ideas behind certain political initiatives. Author defines symbolic violence as a practice, manifested in deliberate action of a given diplomatic actor to damage his adversary’s reputation, status and dignity through a certain set of actions, such as linguistic violence (e.g., insult, intimidation, disobeying diplomatic tact and so forth. This study aims to examine whether it is possible to establish how a change in practice (in the example of Russia–Turkey relations before and after the downing of the Russian fighter plane Su-24 originates, utilising an alternative practice – theoretical toolkit – contradictory framing of the past. To achieve this, the author examines what potentially might cause a change in practice in the Russia–Turkish case and to what extent the potential of social media can be harnessed by governments to shape public opinion and influence diplomatic actors’ international reputation. The methodology employed was based on previous practice and framing studies that have perfected the tools necessary for the detection and analysis of frames. In this research, these tools were employed on 140-character-long tweets. Identifying general themes was achieved through thematic analysis, the method for identifying, analyzing and reporting on patterns, or themes, within data corpus. The paper mentions that both Russia and Turkey attempted to narrate each other’s behaviour through framing one another on Twitter focusing on the legitimacy and morality of each other’s policies to limit the opponent’s ability to carry out the latter’s foreign political prerogatives. Moreover, as the Twitter analysis of the Russian and Turkish framing of one another showed, governments can and do harness the potential of using images and words as the weapons of symbolic violence when they attempt to impose their own narration on a given event or situation.

Evaluating the Impact of Cooperative Extension Outreach via Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

O'Neill, Barbara

2014-01-01

Twitter is increasingly being used by Extension educators as a teaching and program-marketing tool. It is not enough, however, to simply use Twitter to disseminate information. Steps must be taken to evaluate program impact with quantitative and qualitative data. This article described the following Twitter evaluation metrics: unique hashtags,…

Exploring the Role of Twitter in Promoting Women's Health in the Arab World: Lessons Learned.

Science.gov (United States)

Bahkali, Salwa; Almaiman, Ahmad; Altassan, Nahla; Almaiman, Sarah; Househ, Mowafa; Alsurimi, Khaled

2015-01-01

Women's health is a topic that has been largely overlooked within the Arab world. Nevertheless, the constant growth in the use of social media provides an opportunity to improve women's health in the Arab world. In this paper, we discuss our experiences and lessons learned with the development of a women's health promotional campaign in the Arabic language using Twitter, a popular social media platform in the Arab world. We analyzed the combined experiences of five researchers in the development of the Twitter account. Two separate meetings were held, one on March 10 and another on March 25, 2015 with the researchers to review their experiences and lessons learned in developing a Twitter health promotion platform for women's health in the Arab world. The shared experiences were thematically transcribed, coded, matched and grouped under six key themes identified as the main driving forces for the development of a successful health promotion Twitter account. We found that the success of the Twitter account was the result of: defining clear goals, being passionate about the health promotion campaign, being motivated and creative, being knowledgeable about the health promotion area, developing trust between Twitter accounts users and the healthcare provider, and being patient in communicating with Twitter account users. Future research needs to focus on a more detailed analysis of the twitter feeds shared between the users and the health practitioners which can enhance our understanding of the social media based public health educational interventions.

#europehappinessmap: A Framework for Multi-Lingual Sentiment Analysis via Social Media Big Data (A Twitter Case Study

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Mustafa Coşkun

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The growth and popularity of social media platforms have generated a new social interaction environment thus a new collaboration and communication network among individuals. These platforms own tremendous amount of data about users’ behaviors and sentiments since people create, share or exchange their information, ideas, pictures or video using them. One of these popular platforms is Twitter, which via its voluntary information sharing structure, provides researchers data potential of benefit for their studies. Based on Twitter data, in this study a multilingual sentiment detection framework is proposed to compute European Gross National Happiness (GNH. This framework consists of a novel data collection, filtering and sampling method, and a newly constructed multilingual sentiment detection algorithm for social media big data, and tested with nine European countries (United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Turkey, Portugal, The Netherlands, Italy, France and Spain and their national languages over a six year period. The reliability of the data is checked with peak/troughs comparison for special days from Wikipedia news lists. The validity is checked with a group of correlation analyses with OECD Life Satisfaction survey reports’, Euro-Dollar and other currency exchanges, and national stock market time series data. After validity and reliability confirmations, the European GNH map is drawn for six years. The main problem addressed is to propose a novel multilingual social media sentiment analysis framework for calculating GNH for countries and change the way of OECD type organizations’ survey and interview methodology. Also, it is believed that this framework can serve more detailed results (e.g., daily or hourly sentiments of society in different languages.

Social media and its dual use in biopreparedness: communication and visualization tools in an animal bioterrorism incident.

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Sjöberg, Elisabeth; Barker, Gary C; Landgren, Jonas; Griberg, Isaac; Skiby, Jeffrey E; Tubbin, Anna; von Stapelmohr, Anne; Härenstam, Malin; Jansson, Mikael; Knutsson, Rickard

2013-09-01

This article focuses on social media and interactive challenges for emergency organizations during a bioterrorism or agroterrorism incident, and it outlines the dual-use dilemma of social media. Attackers or terrorists can use social media as their modus operandi, and defenders, including emergency organizations in law enforcement and public and animal health, can use it for peaceful purposes. To get a better understanding of the uses of social media in these situations, a workshop was arranged in Stockholm, Sweden, to raise awareness about social media and animal bioterrorism threats. Fifty-six experts and crisis communicators from international and national organizations participated. As a result of the workshop, it was concluded that emergency organizations can collect valuable information and monitor social media before, during, and after an outbreak. In order to make use of interactive communication to obtain collective intelligence from the public, emergency organizations must adapt to social networking technologies, requiring multidisciplinary knowledge in the fields of information, communication, IT, and biopreparedness. Social network messaging during a disease outbreak can be visualized in stream graphs and networks showing clusters of Twitter and Facebook users. The visualization of social media can be an important preparedness tool in the response to bioterrorism and agroterrorism.

A Survey of Text Mining in Social Media: Facebook and Twitter Perspectives

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Said A. Salloum

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Text mining has become one of the trendy fields that has been incorporated in several research fields such as computational linguistics, Information Retrieval (IR and data mining. Natural Language Processing (NLP techniques were used to extract knowledge from the textual text that is written by human beings. Text mining reads an unstructured form of data to provide meaningful information patterns in a shortest time period. Social networking sites are a great source of communication as most of the people in today’s world use these sites in their daily lives to keep connected to each other. It becomes a common practice to not write a sentence with correct grammar and spelling. This practice may lead to different kinds of ambiguities like lexical, syntactic, and semantic and due to this type of unclear data, it is hard to find out the actual data order. Accordingly, we are conducting an investigation with the aim of looking for different text mining methods to get various textual orders on social media websites. This survey aims to describe how studies in social media have used text analytics and text mining techniques for the purpose of identifying the key themes in the data. This survey focused on analyzing the text mining studies related to Facebook and Twitter; the two dominant social media in the world. Results of this survey can serve as the baselines for future text mining research.

Medical Institutions and Twitter: A Novel Tool for Public Communication in Japan

Science.gov (United States)

Sugawara, Yuya; Tsuya, Atsushi; Tanaka, Atsushi; Fukao, Akira

2016-01-01

Background Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service on the Internet. Medical professionals and patients have started to use Twitter in medicine. Twitter use by medical institutions can interactively and efficiently provide public health information and education for laypeople. Objective This study examined Twitter usage by medical institutions. Methods We reviewed all Japanese user accounts in which the names of medical institutions were described in the user’s Twitter profile. We then classified medical institutions’ tweets by content. Results We extracted 168 accounts for medical institutions with ≥500 followers. The medical specialties of those accounts were dentistry and oral surgery (n=73), dermatology (n=12), cosmetic surgery (n=10), internal medicine (n=10), ophthalmology (n=6), obstetrics and gynecology (n=5), plastic surgery (n=2), and others (n=50). Of these, 21 accounts tweeted medical knowledge and 45 accounts tweeted guidance about medical practice and consultation hours, including advertisements. In the dentistry and oral surgery accounts, individual behavior or thinking was the most frequent (22/71, 31%) content. On the other hand, consultation including advertisements was the most frequent (14/23, 61%) in cosmetic surgery, plastic surgery, and dermatology. Conclusions Some medical specialties used Twitter for disseminating medical knowledge or guidance including advertisements. This indicates that Twitter potentially can be used for various purposes by different medical specialties. PMID:27227154

Evidence of complex contagion of information in social media: An experiment using Twitter bots.

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Bjarke Mønsted

Full Text Available It has recently become possible to study the dynamics of information diffusion in techno-social systems at scale, due to the emergence of online platforms, such as Twitter, with millions of users. One question that systematically recurs is whether information spreads according to simple or complex dynamics: does each exposure to a piece of information have an independent probability of a user adopting it (simple contagion, or does this probability depend instead on the number of sources of exposure, increasing above some threshold (complex contagion? Most studies to date are observational and, therefore, unable to disentangle the effects of confounding factors such as social reinforcement, homophily, limited attention, or network community structure. Here we describe a novel controlled experiment that we performed on Twitter using 'social bots' deployed to carry out coordinated attempts at spreading information. We propose two Bayesian statistical models describing simple and complex contagion dynamics, and test the competing hypotheses. We provide experimental evidence that the complex contagion model describes the observed information diffusion behavior more accurately than simple contagion. Future applications of our results include more effective defenses against malicious propaganda campaigns on social media, improved marketing and advertisement strategies, and design of effective network intervention techniques.

Evidence of complex contagion of information in social media: An experiment using Twitter bots.

Science.gov (United States)

Mønsted, Bjarke; Sapieżyński, Piotr; Ferrara, Emilio; Lehmann, Sune

2017-01-01

It has recently become possible to study the dynamics of information diffusion in techno-social systems at scale, due to the emergence of online platforms, such as Twitter, with millions of users. One question that systematically recurs is whether information spreads according to simple or complex dynamics: does each exposure to a piece of information have an independent probability of a user adopting it (simple contagion), or does this probability depend instead on the number of sources of exposure, increasing above some threshold (complex contagion)? Most studies to date are observational and, therefore, unable to disentangle the effects of confounding factors such as social reinforcement, homophily, limited attention, or network community structure. Here we describe a novel controlled experiment that we performed on Twitter using 'social bots' deployed to carry out coordinated attempts at spreading information. We propose two Bayesian statistical models describing simple and complex contagion dynamics, and test the competing hypotheses. We provide experimental evidence that the complex contagion model describes the observed information diffusion behavior more accurately than simple contagion. Future applications of our results include more effective defenses against malicious propaganda campaigns on social media, improved marketing and advertisement strategies, and design of effective network intervention techniques.

Tweeting celebrity suicides: Users' reaction to prominent suicide deaths on Twitter and subsequent increases in actual suicides.

Science.gov (United States)

Ueda, Michiko; Mori, Kota; Matsubayashi, Tetsuya; Sawada, Yasuyuki

2017-09-01

A substantial amount of evidence indicates that news coverage of suicide deaths by celebrities is followed by an increase in suicide rates, suggesting a copycat behavior. However, the underlying process by which celebrity status and media coverage leads to increases in subsequent suicides is still unclear. This study collected over 1 million individual messages ("tweets") posted on Twitter that were related to 26 prominent figures in Japan who died by suicide between 2010 and 2014 and investigated whether media reports on suicide deaths that generated a greater level of reactions by the public are likely to be followed by a larger increase in actual suicides. We also compared the number of Twitter posts and the number of media reports in newspaper and on television to understand whether the number of messages on Twitter in response to the deaths corresponds to the amount of coverage in the traditional media. Using daily data from Japan's national death registry between 2010 and 2014, our analysis found an increase in actual suicides only when suicide deaths generated a large reaction from Twitter users. In contrast, no discernible increase in suicide counts was observed when the analysis included suicide deaths to which Twitter users did not show much interest, even when these deaths were covered considerably by the traditional media. This study also found suicides by relatively young entertainers generated a large number of posts on Twitter. This sharply contrasts with the relatively smaller volume of reaction to them generated by traditional forms of media, which focuses more on the deaths of non-entertainers. The results of this study strongly suggest that it is not sufficient to examine only traditional news media when investigating the impact of media reports on actual suicides. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Scientific Misconduct and Social Media: Role of Twitter in the Stimulus Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency Cells Scandal.

Science.gov (United States)

Sugawara, Yuya; Tanimoto, Tetsuya; Miyagawa, Shoko; Murakami, Masayasu; Tsuya, Atsushi; Tanaka, Atsushi; Kami, Masahiro; Narimatsu, Hiroto

2017-02-28

The academic scandal on a study on stimulus‑triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells in Japan in 2014 involved suspicions of scientific misconduct by the lead author of the study after the paper had been reviewed on a peer‑review website. This study investigated the discussions on STAP cells on Twitter and content of newspaper articles in an attempt to assess the role of social compared with traditional media in scientific peer review. This study examined Twitter utilization in scientific peer review on STAP cells misconduct. Searches for tweets and newspaper articles containing the term "STAP cells" were carried out through Twitter's search engine and Nikkei Telecom database, respectively. The search period was from January 1 to July 1, 2014. The nouns appearing in the "top tweets" and newspaper articles were extracted through a morphological analysis, and their frequency of appearance and changes over time were investigated. The total numbers of top tweets and newspaper articles containing the term were 134,958 and 1646, respectively. Negative words concerning STAP cells began to appear on Twitter by February 9-15, 2014, or 3 weeks after Obokata presented a paper on STAP cells. The number of negative words in newspaper articles gradually increased beginning in the week of March 12-18, 2014. A total of 1000 tweets were randomly selected, and they were found to contain STAP-related opinions (43.3%, 433/1000), links to news sites and other sources (41.4%, 414/1000), false scientific or medical claims (8.9%, 89/1000), and topics unrelated to STAP (6.4%, 64/1000). The discussion on scientific misconduct during the STAP cells scandal took place at an earlier stage on Twitter than in newspapers, a traditional medium. ©Yuya Sugawara, Tetsuya Tanimoto, Shoko Miyagawa, Masayasu Murakami, Atsushi Tsuya, Atsushi Tanaka, Masahiro Kami, Hiroto Narimatsu. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 28.02.2017.

Twitter and the health reforms in the English National Health Service.

Science.gov (United States)

King, Dominic; Ramirez-Cano, Daniel; Greaves, Felix; Vlaev, Ivo; Beales, Steve; Darzi, Ara

2013-05-01

Social media (for example Facebook and YouTube) uses online and mobile technologies to allow individuals to participate in, comment on and create user-generated content. Twitter is a widely used social media platform that lets users post short publicly available text-based messages called tweets that other users can respond to. Alongside traditional media outlets, Twitter has been a focus for discussions about the controversial and radical reforms to the National Health Service (NHS) in England that were recently passed into law by the current coalition Government. Looking at over 120,000 tweets made about the health reforms, we have investigated whether any insights can be obtained about the role of Twitter in informing, debating and influencing opinion in a specific area of health policy. In particular we have looked at how the sentiment of tweets changed with the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill through Parliament, and how this compared to conventional opinion polls taken over the same time period. We examine which users appeared to have the most influence in the 'Twittersphere' and suggest how a widely used metric of academic impact - the H-index - could be applied to measure context-dependent influence on Twitter. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Health tweets: an exploration of health promotion on twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

Donelle, Lorie; Booth, Richard G

2012-09-30

Twitter® is a popular microblogging site that allows users to disseminate information in 140 characters of text or less. A review of literature indicated that, to date, there has been little inquiry into the health based discussions conceptualized and enacted within and among Twitter users. Methods for this qualitative study included a directed content analysis, guided by the Public Health Agency of Canada's Determinant of Health (DOH) framework was completed to explore health based discussions on Twitter. A 24-hour cross-section of tweets (N=2400) containing the word or hashtag 'health' were collected for analysis. Findings revealed predominant themes of health services, personal health practices, and education. Many of the tweeted messages reflected existing political and social issues publicized within the global mass media. This study also considered the evolving dynamic behind the conceptualization of health and how it is co-constructed through news media, advertising, and social network technologies. Discussion of the emerging themes and implications for practice are presented.

Twitter as equipment for educational interaction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tække, Jesper

As a researcher in the action research project Socio Media Education (SME) I have wondered why it has been so difficult for the participants to integrate the, through successful actions, developed uses of Twitter in their everyday practice. In the research project, the test class and its teachers...... through actions and experimentation, in an exemplary manner have developed a number of applications of the interaction medium Twitter in the educational interaction. These uses seem clearly to facilitate student learning, increase their participation and commitment and reduce their Internet...... class’ everyday use of Twitter. This shows that the class does not generally enjoy the learning and attention catching developed teaching methods. Only when a teacher takes the initiative, which they do not do all, and nobody always do, the methods are used. Through a cross-optic established...

Professional Twitter Development with Examples in NET 35

CERN Document Server

Crenna, Daniel

2009-01-01

Twitter is rapidly moving up the social networking food chain and is currently outranked by only Facebook and MySpace. It features a programming API that allows you to build Web sites and applications (both desktop and mobile) for reading and posting to Twitter, finding other Twitter users, aggregating Twitter content, and other uses. This book walks you through the process of combining many programming tools in order to build exciting, useful, and profitable applications. You'll begin with a look at RESTful services and examine how to structure your queries, handle asynchronous operations,

Pemanfaatan Twitter Buzzer Untuk Meningkatkan Partisipasi Pemilih Muda dalam Pemilihan Umum

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Dwi Yuliahsari

2016-03-01

Full Text Available This article tries to describe the use of twitter buzzer as one way to increase the participation of young voters in the general election in Indonesia. The theoretical basis of this paper is the theory of diffusion - innovation that illustrates the power of mass media messages in influencing attitudes and behavior as well as spread the new discovery. Through the use of descriptive qualitative methods can be drawn that social media twitter with all its advantages and supported by the buzzer as an opinion leader, then the use of twitter buzzer become one of the solutions to increase the participation of young voters in the general election in Indonesia. But its utility must be adapted to the characteristics of the audience, so that appropriate goals and objectives are achieved with the maximum.

Social Media and U.S. Intelligence Agencies: Just Trending or a Real Tool to Engage and Educate?

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Michael Landon-Murray

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Social media use has become ubiquitous not just among individuals, groups, and businesses, but also government institutions. In turn, the adoption of services like Facebook and Twitter in the public sector has increasingly become the focus of academic study. U.S. intelligence agencies, however, have been excluded from examination. The potential benefits—engagement, education, and transparency, among others—are significant, and studying how U.S. intelligence uses social media will help us realize those benefits. In the arcane, complex and potentially intrusive world of intelligence, new opportunities to bolster public knowledge and accountability must be utilized. Today, understanding government requires studying e-government, and in intelligence, social media likely represents the most direction connection between citizens and the public agencies that serve them. To take a first step, this study maps how U.S. intelligence agencies are using Facebook and Twitter, examines other social media practices, and presents findings from correspondence with four intelligence and security journalists.

Italian codified hashtags for weather warning on Twitter - who is really using them?

Science.gov (United States)

Grasso, Valentina; Crisci, Alfonso; Morabito, Marco; Nesi, Paolo; Pantaleo, Gianni; Zaza, Imad; Gozzini, Bernardo

2017-04-01

During emergencies, an increasing number of messages are shared through social media platforms, becoming a primary source of information for lay people and emergency managers. Weather services and institutions have started to employ social media to deliver weather warnings even if sometimes this communication lacks in strategy. In Twitter, for example, hashtagging is very important to associate messages with certain topics; in recent years, codified hashtagging is emerging as a practical way to coordinate Twitter conversations during emergencies and quickly retrieve relevant information. In 2014, a syntax for codified hashtags for weather warning was proposed in Italy: a list of 20 hashtags, realized by combining #allertameteo (weather warning) + XXX, where final letters code the regional identification. This contribution presents a monitoring of Twitter usage of weather warning codified hashtags in Italy (since July 2015) and an analysis of different contexts. Twitter messages were retrieved using TwitterVigilance, a multi-users platform to crawl Twitter data, collect and store messages and perform quantitative analytics, about users, hashtags, tweets/retweets volumes. The Codified Hashtags data set is presented and discussed with main analytics and evaluation of regional contexts where it was successfully employed.

Effective Usage of Social Media for Dark Skies Awareness

Science.gov (United States)

Hennig, A. J.; Heenatigala, T.; Walker, C. E.

2012-12-01

Social media has become a daily tool in our culture. Networks such as Facebook with 900 million active users and Twitter with 140 million active users make an ideal platform to create awareness. It helps to generate and share new content and enables multi-communication channels. This presentation will address how effectively social media can be used as an education tool to create awareness of light pollution. As a "green" focus becomes more important in our world the topic of light pollution is also rising as an important issue. Light Pollution affects many aspects of our world ranging from flora and fauna to the economic well-being of many industrialized countries. Mixed among the many important pollutants in our world light pollution can fall by the way-side, forgotten, but it is imperative to bring out awareness of this problem, especially since studies are beginning to show how by fighting light pollution we will also be fighting other pollution such as air pollutants. GLOBE at Night has combined social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter with its educational awareness campaign on light pollution to reach out to social media community. Currently our Facebook reaches citizens of twenty separate countries ranging from the Czech Republic and Peru to the United States and the United Kingdom. On Facebook our reach is estimated at over 800,000 friends of our fans. These networks help us to directly answer users' immediate questions and encourage participation in the GLOBE at Night campaigns. Important news on light pollution appearing in cyberspace is monitored regularly using Google Alerts and Twitter hash tags filters which gets posted regularly on our networks. Social media networking has become a tool for users not only for information about GLOBE at Night but also for information about the overall topic of light pollution itself. Many individuals and organizations struggle with the mass content shared in social networks. It is important to know where to

Facebook & Twitter for seniors for dummies

CERN Document Server

Collier, Marsha

2014-01-01

New to social media? This easy-to-use guide will get you started in no time! Social media is a ton of fun, and this updated guide makes it easy to set up a Facebook or Twitter account to catch up with old friends, communicate with your family, and enjoy your online experience. You'll get hands-on guidance to connecting to the Internet with a computer or mobile device, creating social media accounts and profiles, searching for friends, joining groups, sharing photos and videos, and more. If you're one of the 100+ million seniors using Facebook or other social media sites, this 2nd Edition of Fa

Ethical issues in using Twitter for population-level depression monitoring: a qualitative study.

Science.gov (United States)

Mikal, Jude; Hurst, Samantha; Conway, Mike

2016-04-14

Recently, significant research effort has focused on using Twitter (and other social media) to investigate mental health at the population-level. While there has been influential work in developing ethical guidelines for Internet discussion forum-based research in public health, there is currently limited work focused on addressing ethical problems in Twitter-based public health research, and less still that considers these issues from users' own perspectives. In this work, we aim to investigate public attitudes towards utilizing public domain Twitter data for population-level mental health monitoring using a qualitative methodology. The study explores user perspectives in a series of five, 2-h focus group interviews. Following a semi-structured protocol, 26 Twitter users with and without a diagnosed history of depression discussed general Twitter use, along with privacy expectations, and ethical issues in using social media for health monitoring, with a particular focus on mental health monitoring. Transcripts were then transcribed, redacted, and coded using a constant comparative approach. While participants expressed a wide range of opinions, there was an overall trend towards a relatively positive view of using public domain Twitter data as a resource for population level mental health monitoring, provided that results are appropriately aggregated. Results are divided into five sections: (1) a profile of respondents' Twitter use patterns and use variability; (2) users' privacy expectations, including expectations regarding data reach and permanence; (3) attitudes towards social media based population-level health monitoring in general, and attitudes towards mental health monitoring in particular; (4) attitudes towards individual versus population-level health monitoring; and (5) users' own recommendations for the appropriate regulation of population-level mental health monitoring. Focus group data reveal a wide range of attitudes towards the use of public

Empirical study on how social media promotes product innovation

OpenAIRE

Idota, Hiroki; Bunno, Teruyuki; Tsuji, Masatsugu

2014-01-01

Social media such as SNS, Twitter, and the blogs has been spreading all over the world, and a large number of firms recognize social media as new communication tools for obtaining information on consumer needs and market for developing new goods and services and promoting marketing. In spite of increasing its use in the reality, academic research on whether or how social media contributes to promoting product innovation is not enough yet. This study thus attempts to analyze empirically how so...

Social media insights for sustainable development and humanitarian action in Indonesia

Science.gov (United States)

Amin, Imaduddin; Pramestri, Zakiya; Hodge, George; Lee, Jong Gun

2018-03-01

Tracking human development and humanitarian action has been enhanced by the growth of social media. Twitter is a data source with potential, when used alongside data from surveys, especially the national census, to understand the situation on the ground and track changes. In Indonesia, a country with one of the highest Twitter penetration rates, we seize this opportunity by using Twitter data to produce more timely insights and to enhance evidence-based decision-making. Despite social media’s limitations, namely representativeness and validity, we are able to show its potential by looking at case studies on five different topics; (a) food and agriculture, (b) public health (c) economic well-being (d) urban resilience and (e) humanitarian action. We observe that the insights gained by using Twitter data were derived not only from the content of posts such as understanding public opinion or sentiment, but also from activities related to it, for instance the location and time-stamp of the post, which furthers our real-time understanding of the situation and user behavior changes. In this paper, we also briefly explain “social listener”, a social media monitoring tool that used by Government of Indonesia to understand citizen opinions in social media related to government priorities.

Building Community Through a #pulmcc Twitter Chat to Advocate for Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep.

Science.gov (United States)

Carroll, Christopher L; Bruno, Kristi; Ramachandran, Pradeep

2017-08-01

Social media sites such as Twitter can significantly enhance education and advocacy efforts. In 2013, the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) launched a Twitter chat series using the hashtag #pulmcc to educate and advocate for topics related to pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine. To assess the reach of these chats, we analyzed the metrics using Symplur analytics, and compared data from each chat, as well as participant data. Since December 19, 2013, there have been 12 Twitter chats: six have been on critical care-related topics, four have been on pulmonary-/sleep-related topics, and two have been conducted during the CHEST annual meeting on more general topics. During these 1-h Twitter chats, there were a total of 4,212 tweets by 418 participants, resulting in 9,361,519 impressions (ie, views). There were similar numbers of participants and tweets in the three categories of Twitter chats, but there was a significantly greater reach during the more general Twitter chats conducted at the CHEST annual meeting, with 1,596,013 ± 126,472 impressions per chat session at these chats, compared with 739,203 ± 73,109 impressions per chat session during the critical care Twitter chats and 621,965 ± 123,933 impressions per chat session in the pulmonary/sleep chats. Seventy-five participants participated in two or more #pulmcc Twitter chats, and the average percent of return participants in each chat was 30% ± 7%. Most of the return participants were health-care providers. Twitter chats can be a powerful tool for the widespread engagement of a medical audience. Copyright © 2017 American College of Chest Physicians. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mining the Social Web Analyzing Data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Other Social Media Sites

CERN Document Server

Russell, Matthew

2011-01-01

Want to tap the tremendous amount of valuable social data in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+? This refreshed edition helps you discover who's making connections with social media, what they're talking about, and where they're located. You'll learn how to combine social web data, analysis techniques, and visualization to find what you've been looking for in the social haystack-as well as useful information you didn't know existed. Each standalone chapter introduces techniques for mining data in different areas of the social Web, including blogs and email. All you need to get started

Use of Social Media in PR: A Change of Trend

OpenAIRE

Tang Mui Joo; Chan Eang Teng

2016-01-01

The use of social media has become more defined. It has been widely used for the purpose of business. More marketers are now using social media as tools to enhance their businesses. Whereas on the other hand, there are more and more people spending their time through mobile apps to be engaged in the social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others. Social media has even become common in Public Relations (PR). It has become number one platform for creating and sharing content. In ...

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

Science.gov (United States)

Chisholm, Elinor; O'Sullivan, Kimberley

2017-11-21

While increasingly used for research, Twitter remains largely untapped as a source of data about housing. We explore the growth of social media and use of Twitter in health and social research, and question why housing researchers have avoided using Twitter to explore housing issues to date. We use the #characterbuildings campaign, initiated by an online media platform in New Zealand in 2014 to illustrate that Twitter can provide insights into housing as a public health and social problem. We find that Twitter users share details of problems with past and present homes on this public platform, and that this readily available data can contribute to the case for improving building quality as a means of promoting public health. Moreover, the way people responded to the request to share details about their housing experiences provides insight into how New Zealanders conceive of housing problems.

Twitter Users with Access to Academic Library Services Request Health Sciences Literature through Social Media

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elizabeth Margaret Stovold

2017-09-01

Full Text Available A Review of: Swab, M., & Romme, K. (2016. Scholarly sharing via Twitter: #icanhazpdf requests for health sciences literature. Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association, 37(1, 6-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.5596/c16-009 Abstract Objective – To analyze article sharing requests for health sciences literature on Twitter, received through the #icanhazpdf protocol. Design – Social media content analysis. Setting – Twitter. Subjects – 302 tweets requesting health sciences articles with the #icanhazpdf tag. Methods – The authors used a subscription service called RowFeeder to collect public tweets posted with the hashtag #icanhazpdf between February and April 2015. Rowfeeder recorded the Twitter user name, location, date and time, URL, and content of the tweet. The authors excluded all retweets and then each reviewed one of two sets. They recorded the geographic region and affiliation of the requestor, whether the tweet was a request or comment, type of material requested, how the item was identified, and if the subject of the request was health or non-health. Health requests were further classified using the Scopus subject category of the journal. A journal could be classified with more than one category. Any uncertainties during the coding process were resolved by both authors reviewing the tweet and reaching a consensus. Main results – After excluding all the retweets and comments, 1079 tweets were coded as heath or non-health related. A final set of 302 health related requests were further analyzed. Almost all the requests were for journal articles (99%, n=300. The highest-ranking subject was medicine (64.9%, n=196, and the lowest was dentistry (0.3%, n=1. The most common article identifier was a link to the publisher’s website (50%, n=152, followed by a link to the PubMed record (22%, n=67. Articles were also identified by citation information (11%, n=32, DOI (5%, n=14, a direct request to an individual (3%, n=9, another method

The social media revolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Dubose, Cheryl

2011-01-01

The growing popularity and use of social media tools such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogging, and wikis have led to a social media revolution. Given this widespread influence, it is important for educators, administrators, and technologists to understand the risks of using social media in the classroom and workplace. To investigate popular social media sites and their effect on radiologic technology education and business practices. A comprehensive search of literature was performed to examine social media and its applications in education, health care, and business. Social media use is on the rise, affecting all aspects of mainstream society. Leaders in the radiologic sciences should be familiar with social media and cognizant of its risks. Future studies regarding social media use in the radiologic sciences are necessary to determine its effect on the radiologic science community. ©2011 by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists.

Twittering About Research: A Case Study of the World’s First Twitter Poster Competition [version 1; referees: 2 approved

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Edward P. Randviir

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The Royal Society of Chemistry held, to our knowledge, the world’s first Twitter conference at 9am on February 5th, 2015. This paper reports the details of the event and discusses the outcomes, such as the potential for the use of social media to enhance scientific communication at conferences. In particular, the present work argues that social media outlets such as Twitter broaden audiences, speed up communication, and force clearer and more concise descriptions of a researcher’s work. The benefits of poster presentations are also discussed in terms of potential knowledge exchange and networking. This paper serves as a proof-of-concept approach for improving both the public opinion of the poster, and the enhancement of the poster through an innovative online format that some may feel more comfortable with, compared to face-to-face communication.

Identifying Prominent Life Events on Twitter

OpenAIRE

Dickinson, Thomas; Fernández, Miriam; Thomas, Lisa A.; Mulholland, Paul; Briggs, Pam; Alani, Harith

2015-01-01

Social media is a common place for people to post and share digital reflections of their life events, including major events such as getting married, having children, graduating, etc. Although the creation of such posts is straightforward, the identification of events on online media remains a challenge. Much research in recent years focused on extracting major events from Twitter, such as earthquakes, storms, and floods. This paper however, targets the automatic detection of personal life ev...

Social Media Channels in Health Care Research and Rising Ethical Issues.

Science.gov (United States)

Azer, Samy A

2017-11-01

Social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have been used as tools in health care research, opening new horizons for research on health-related topics (e.g., the use of mobile social networking in weight loss programs). While there have been efforts to develop ethical guidelines for internet-related research, researchers still face unresolved ethical challenges. This article investigates some of the risks inherent in social media research and discusses how researchers should handle challenges related to confidentiality, privacy, and consent when social media tools are used in health-related research. © 2017 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest – nowe perspektywy badawcze

OpenAIRE

Maria Czarkowska; Anna Gumkowska

2017-01-01

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest – new research perspectivesThe goal of this paper is to present the vast array of content that is emerging within social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and analyze the ways in which they can be classified. This is a review of the available interdisciplinary methods and factors that should be taken into consideration when researching the genelogy of the texts that arise in the network. The Internet has changed the face of soc...

Representasi Kepemimpinan Calon Presiden di Twitter

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nurul Hasfi

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Twitter is a new political communication channel massively used during Indonesian presidential election 2014. The character of the medium identified as interactive, participative and decentralized become main reasons why experts optimist on how this new media develop democratization. However, based on political situation in the context of Indonesian presidential election 2014, the argument needs to be confirmed. Twitter with its democratizing character, on the other hand has contradiction impact in facilitating irrational discussion, particularly run under mechanism of imagology politic. It is found in this research that implements Critical Discourse Analysis and confirmed with deliberative democracy theory. The study concludes that successful political discussion on Twitter about political leadership of presidential candidate was not determined by rational discussion (egalitarian, consensus, equal communication, etc but it’s merely determined by how skillful political actor construct the image of political leadership of the presidential candidate.

Introduction to social media investigation a hands-on approach

CERN Document Server

Golbeck, Jennifer

2015-01-01

If you're interested in using social media as an investigative tool, Introduction to Social Media Investigation will show you how! Social networks and social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, are some of the most popular services on the Web, with hundreds of millions of users. The public information that people share on these sites can be valuable for anyone interested in investigating people of interest through open, public sources. Social media as an investigative device is in its infancy and not well understood. This book presents an overview of social media and discusses s

FCJ-190 Building a Better Twitter: A Study of the Twitter Alternatives GNU social, Quitter, rstat.us, and Twister

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robert W. Gehl

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Drawing on interviews with developers and close readings of site interfaces and architectures, this essay explores four Twitter alternatives: Twister, rstat.us, GNU social (a Free Software Foundation microblogging software project and Quitter (a specific installation of GNU social. The interviews and analyses of these Twitter alternatives reveal how these developers relate their projects to mainstream social media architectures and cultures; how they conceive of Twitter’s development over time; how they think about legal issues as they make their alternatives; and whether or not they conceive of their work as activism. In sum, I explore how these developers are critically reverse engineering Twitter and how that process intersects with multiple concerns and tensions, and how these tensions are generating new ways to think about what it means to do microblogging.

Should Your Library Have a Social Media Policy?

Science.gov (United States)

Kroski, Ellyssa

2009-01-01

Today's new media tools are incredibly powerful communication vehicles that allow organizations to connect and engage with many different audiences. With more than seven million users, Twitter is growing at an annual rate of 1,382 percent, Facebook boasts over 250 million active members, and aspiring writers have started more than 133 million…

A biased review of biases in Twitter studies on political collective action

Science.gov (United States)

Cihon, Peter; Yasseri, Taha

2016-08-01

In recent years researchers have gravitated to Twitter and other social media platforms as fertile ground for empirical analysis of social phenomena. Social media provides researchers access to trace data of interactions and discourse that once went unrecorded in the offline world. Researchers have sought to use these data to explain social phenomena both particular to social media and applicable to the broader social world. This paper offers a minireview of Twitter-based research on political crowd behaviour. This literature offers insight into particular social phenomena on Twitter, but often fails to use standardized methods that permit interpretation beyond individual studies. Moreover, the literature fails to ground methodologies and results in social or political theory, divorcing empirical research from the theory needed to interpret it. Rather, investigations focus primarily on methodological innovations for social media analyses, but these too often fail to sufficiently demonstrate the validity of such methodologies. This minireview considers a small number of selected papers; we analyse their (often lack of) theoretical approaches, review their methodological innovations, and offer suggestions as to the relevance of their results for political scientists and sociologists.

Bibliographic Analysis of Nature Based on Twitter and Facebook Altmetrics Data.

Science.gov (United States)

Xia, Feng; Su, Xiaoyan; Wang, Wei; Zhang, Chenxin; Ning, Zhaolong; Lee, Ivan

2016-01-01

This paper presents a bibliographic analysis of Nature articles based on altmetrics. We assess the concern degree of social users on the Nature articles through the coverage analysis of Twitter and Facebook by publication year and discipline. The social media impact of a Nature article is examined by evaluating the mention rates on Twitter and on Facebook. Moreover, the correlation between tweets and citations is analyzed by publication year, discipline and Twitter user type to explore factors affecting the correlation. The results show that Twitter users have a higher concern degree on Nature articles than Facebook users, and Nature articles have higher and faster-growing impact on Twitter than on Facebook. The results also show that tweets and citations are somewhat related, and they mostly measure different types of impact. In addition, the correlation between tweets and citations highly depends on publication year, discipline and Twitter user type.

The Use of Twitter by the Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery Journals: Twitter Activity, Impact Factor, and Alternative Metrics.

Science.gov (United States)

Hughes, Hannah; Hughes, Andrew; Murphy, Colin

2017-12-10

Aim Social media (SoMe) platforms have become leading methods of communication and dissemination of scientific information in the medical community. They allow for immediate discussion and widespread engagement around important topics. It has been hypothesized that the activity on Twitter positively correlates with highly cited articles. The purpose of this study was to analyze the prevalence and activity of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery journals on Twitter, with the hypothesis that the impact factor is positively associated with the Twitter usage. Methods The top 50 Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery journals, ranked by 2016 Impact Factor were analyzed. The Twitter profiles of each journal or affiliated society were identified. Other SoMe platforms used were also recorded. The Twitonomy software (Digonomy Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia) was used to analyze the Twitter profiles over a one-year period. The Twitter Klout scores were recorded for each journal to approximate the SoMe influence. The Altmetric scores (the total number of mentions via alternative metrics) were also recorded. The statistical analysis was carried out to identify correlations between journal Impact Factors, SoMe activity, Twitter Klout scores and Altmetric scores.  Results Twenty-two journals (44%) were dedicated to the Twitter profiles. Fourteen journals (28%) were associated with societies that had profiles and 14 journals (28%) had no Twitter presence. The mean Impact Factor overall was 2.16 +/- 0.14 (range, 1.07-5.16). The journals with dedicated Twitter profiles had higher Impact Factors than those without (mean 2.41 vs. 1.61; P=0.005). A greater number of Twitter followers were associated with higher Impact Factors (R2 0.317, P=0.03). The journals with higher Twitter Klout scores had higher Impact Factors (R2 0.357, P=0.016). The Altmetric score was positively associated with an Impact Factor (R2 0.310, P=0.015). The journals with higher numbers of retweets (virtual citations in

Snow, Ice, & Satellites: An Early Career Researcher's Experience with Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Pope, A.; Scambos, T. A.

2014-12-01

As a doctoral student, I was lucky enough to be able to experiment with a variety of communication and outreach activities (classroom visits, museum events, science festivals, blogging, social media, etc.) to build communication skills and learn how to talk about my science without writing a journal article. More importantly, the wide range of experience helped me identify what worked for me. My favorite way to share my science now? Twitter. To many, Twitter is a frivolous platform for sharing snippets 140 characters or less. To me, however, it is how I can connect directly with the elusive "wider public" and share my science. Specifically, I use satellite imagery (mostly Landsat 8) to study glaciers around the world. I look at long-term change related to climate, and I also investigate new, innovative ways to use satellite imagery to better understand glaciers and ice sheets. Luckily for me, my research is very visual. Whether fieldwork snapshots or satellite data, images make for great, shareable, accessible tweets. In this presentation, I propose to share my experience of tweeting as an early career researcher. I will include successful strategies (e.g. particular #hashtags, creating new content, using story-telling, timely tweets), as well as some not-so-successful attempts. I will also talk about how I built my Twitter network. In addition to anecdotes, I will include evaluation of my Twitter activity using available metrics and analytics (e.g. followers, favorites, re-tweets, Klout score, etc.). While misunderstood by many in the scientific community, Twitter is a platform increasingly being adopted by researchers. Used correctly, it can be a great tool for connecting directly with an interested, non-technical audience eager to learn about your research. With my experiences and evaluation, I will show how both scientists and the networks that they join and create can benefit by using Twitter as a platform for science communication.

Social Media for Enhancing Stakeholders' Innovation Networks in Ontario, Canada

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kaushik, Pawandeep; Chowdhuy, Ataharul; Hambly Odame, Helen; Passen, van Annemarie

2018-01-01

This case study assessed local food stakeholders' use of Facebook and Twitter to support interaction and build their networks of innovation in Ontario. Data were collected using Netlytic − an online data mining tool from the social media platforms − and key informant interviews. Findings revealed

Facebook and Twitter, communication and shelter, and the 2011 Tuscaloosa tornado.

Science.gov (United States)

Stokes, Courtney; Senkbeil, Jason C

2017-01-01

This paper represents one of the first attempts to analyse the many ways in which Facebook and Twitter were used during a tornado disaster. Comparisons between five randomly selected campus samples and a city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, sample revealed that campus samples used Facebook and Twitter significantly more both before and after the tornado, but Facebook usage was not significantly different after the event. Furthermore, differences in social media usage and other forms of communication before the tornado were found for age, education, and years lived in Tuscaloosa. Generally, age and education were inversely proportionate to social media usage. Influences on shelter-seeking actions varied between social media users and three random samples of non-social media users; however, it appears that social media respondents were likely to be using a smartphone simultaneously to access warning polygon information, to receive text message alerts, and to listen or respond to environmental cues. © 2017 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2017.

The Evolution of the Journal Club: From Osler to Twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

Topf, Joel M; Sparks, Matthew A; Phelan, Paul J; Shah, Nikhil; Lerma, Edgar V; Graham-Brown, Matthew P M; Madariaga, Hector; Iannuzzella, Francesco; Rheault, Michelle N; Oates, Thomas; Jhaveri, Kenar D; Hiremath, Swapnil

2017-06-01

Journal clubs have typically been held within the walls of academic institutions and in medicine have served the dual purpose of fostering critical appraisal of literature and disseminating new findings. In the last decade and especially the last few years, online and virtual journal clubs have been started and are flourishing, especially those harnessing the advantages of social media tools and customs. This article reviews the history and recent innovations of journal clubs. In addition, the authors describe their experience developing and implementing NephJC, an online nephrology journal club conducted on Twitter. Copyright © 2017 National Kidney Foundation, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Evaluating Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia as Tools for Influenza Surveillance Using Bayesian Change Point Analysis: A Comparative Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Sharpe, J Danielle; Hopkins, Richard S; Cook, Robert L; Striley, Catherine W

2016-10-20

Traditional influenza surveillance relies on influenza-like illness (ILI) syndrome that is reported by health care providers. It primarily captures individuals who seek medical care and misses those who do not. Recently, Web-based data sources have been studied for application to public health surveillance, as there is a growing number of people who search, post, and tweet about their illnesses before seeking medical care. Existing research has shown some promise of using data from Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia to complement traditional surveillance for ILI. However, past studies have evaluated these Web-based sources individually or dually without comparing all 3 of them, and it would be beneficial to know which of the Web-based sources performs best in order to be considered to complement traditional methods. The objective of this study is to comparatively analyze Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia by examining which best corresponds with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ILI data. It was hypothesized that Wikipedia will best correspond with CDC ILI data as previous research found it to be least influenced by high media coverage in comparison with Google and Twitter. Publicly available, deidentified data were collected from the CDC, Google Flu Trends, HealthTweets, and Wikipedia for the 2012-2015 influenza seasons. Bayesian change point analysis was used to detect seasonal changes, or change points, in each of the data sources. Change points in Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia that occurred during the exact week, 1 preceding week, or 1 week after the CDC's change points were compared with the CDC data as the gold standard. All analyses were conducted using the R package "bcp" version 4.0.0 in RStudio version 0.99.484 (RStudio Inc). In addition, sensitivity and positive predictive values (PPV) were calculated for Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia. During the 2012-2015 influenza seasons, a high sensitivity of 92% was found for Google, whereas the PPV for

Statistics of co-occurring keywords in confined text messages on Twitter

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mathiesen, Joachim; Angheluta, L.; Jensen, M. H.

2014-01-01

Online social media such as the micro-blogging site Twitter has become a rich source of real-time data on online human behaviors. Here we analyze the occurrence and co-occurrence frequency of keywords in user posts on Twitter. From the occurrence rate of major international brand names, we provide...... examples of predictions of brand-user behaviors. From the co-occurrence rates, we further analyze the user-perceived relationships between international brand names and construct the corresponding relationship networks. In general the user activity on Twitter is highly intermittent and we show...

Toward Real-Time Infoveillance of Twitter Health Messages.

Science.gov (United States)

Colditz, Jason B; Chu, Kar-Hai; Emery, Sherry L; Larkin, Chandler R; James, A Everette; Welling, Joel; Primack, Brian A

2018-06-21

There is growing interest in conducting public health research using data from social media. In particular, Twitter "infoveillance" has demonstrated utility across health contexts. However, rigorous and reproducible methodologies for using Twitter data in public health are not yet well articulated, particularly those related to content analysis, which is a highly popular approach. In 2014, we gathered an interdisciplinary team of health science researchers, computer scientists, and methodologists to begin implementing an open-source framework for real-time infoveillance of Twitter health messages (RITHM). Through this process, we documented common challenges and novel solutions to inform future work in real-time Twitter data collection and subsequent human coding. The RITHM framework allows researchers and practitioners to use well-planned and reproducible processes in retrieving, storing, filtering, subsampling, and formatting data for health topics of interest. Further considerations for human coding of Twitter data include coder selection and training, data representation, codebook development and refinement, and monitoring coding accuracy and productivity. We illustrate methodological considerations through practical examples from formative work related to hookah tobacco smoking, and we reference essential methods literature related to understanding and using Twitter data. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 21, 2018: e1-e6. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304497).

"Typing Back": Social Media as Space for Critical Discourse

Science.gov (United States)

Careless, Erin Jennifer

2015-01-01

Social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter have become integrated into sociocultural practices for millions of people around the world, and are having an enduring impact on the field of adult education. As essentially free, virtually non-hierarchical tools that facilitate user-generated knowledge, these online spaces may be powerful…

Collection, Analysis, and Monitoring of Social Media Content

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lashari, Intzar Ali

sites, such as YouTube and twitter. Interchange of information for the users is one of the main research focus of the Industry. They might be able to predict any activity or any product reviews that they might receive a marketing advantage for their products and also for the intelligence agencies...... developed measure to quantify from the data based on sentiment analysis and network relation. The proposed methods have been implemented as software tools to provide features for the collection, monitoring, and processing of social media content. In this thesis, our focus was on You-Tube and twitter...

The Effects of Twitter Sentiment on Stock Price Returns.

Science.gov (United States)

Ranco, Gabriele; Aleksovski, Darko; Caldarelli, Guido; Grčar, Miha; Mozetič, Igor

2015-01-01

Social media are increasingly reflecting and influencing behavior of other complex systems. In this paper we investigate the relations between a well-known micro-blogging platform Twitter and financial markets. In particular, we consider, in a period of 15 months, the Twitter volume and sentiment about the 30 stock companies that form the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index. We find a relatively low Pearson correlation and Granger causality between the corresponding time series over the entire time period. However, we find a significant dependence between the Twitter sentiment and abnormal returns during the peaks of Twitter volume. This is valid not only for the expected Twitter volume peaks (e.g., quarterly announcements), but also for peaks corresponding to less obvious events. We formalize the procedure by adapting the well-known "event study" from economics and finance to the analysis of Twitter data. The procedure allows to automatically identify events as Twitter volume peaks, to compute the prevailing sentiment (positive or negative) expressed in tweets at these peaks, and finally to apply the "event study" methodology to relate them to stock returns. We show that sentiment polarity of Twitter peaks implies the direction of cumulative abnormal returns. The amount of cumulative abnormal returns is relatively low (about 1-2%), but the dependence is statistically significant for several days after the events.

Twitter use at the 2016 Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health: analyzing #DIScience16.

Science.gov (United States)

Allen, Caitlin G; Andersen, Brittany; Chambers, David A; Groshek, Jacob; Roberts, Megan C

2018-02-20

Poor dissemination of research findings may hamper the reach and impact of scientific discoveries. One key emerging platform for research dissemination is social media, including Twitter. While Twitter and other social media are increasingly being used to disseminate research content presented during scientific conferences, few studies have investigated the extent to which these tools are used throughout conferences and how they are being used. The aim for this study was to better understand the use of Twitter during the 2016 Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health (D&I conference). We performed an analysis of Twitter use before, during, and after the 2016 D&I conference, which took place from December 14 to 15. All tweets (posted between December 1 and 31) that included the conference-specific hashtag (#DIScience16) were assessed. We identified 2639 tweets using the data analytics platform NUVI. We used NUVI software to generate statistics about reach, influence, mentions, and origin of the tweets. Individual tweet content was also assessed using DiscoverText and coded for disease category, implementation outcomes discussed, category of tweet, and conference track. A total of 2639 tweets were analyzed; 89.1% of the tweets were posted during the conference. A total of 389 unique users participated on Twitter, representing 31 states and 22 locations outside of the USA. Most (56.8%) tweets were re-tweets and were used for scientific promotion (50.6%). Key conference speakers and implementation outcomes (de-implementation, adaptation, and fidelity) were commonly discussed. Our findings reveal that Twitter was used as a platform during the D&I conference, both to facilitate conference discussion and to promote scientific ideas. This work contributes to the existing data analytics and implementation science literature in two major ways: (1) by advancing knowledge of how social media is used during annual academic conferences and (2

Follow the money: A study of cashtags on Twitter

OpenAIRE

Hentschel, Martin; Alonso, Omar

2014-01-01

The popularity of Twitter goes beyond trending topics, world events, memes, and popular hashtags. Recently a new way of sharing financial information is taking place in social media under the name of cashtags, stock ticker symbols that are prefixed with a dollar sign. In this paper we present an exploratory analysis of cashtags on Twitter. Specifically, we investigate how widespread cashtags are, what stock symbols are tweeted more often, and which users tweet about cashtags in general. We an...

Hookah-Related Twitter Chatter: A Content Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Krauss, Melissa J; Sowles, Shaina J; Moreno, Megan; Zewdie, Kidist; Grucza, Richard A; Bierut, Laura J; Cavazos-Rehg, Patricia A

2015-07-30

Hookah smoking is becoming increasingly popular among young adults and is often perceived as less harmful than cigarette use. Prior studies show that it is common for youth and young adults to network about substance use behaviors on social media. Social media messages about hookah could influence its use among young people. We explored normalization or discouragement of hookah smoking, and other common messages about hookah on Twitter. From the full stream of tweets posted on Twitter from April 12, 2014, to May 10, 2014 (approximately 14.5 billion tweets), all tweets containing the terms hookah, hooka, shisha, or sheesha were collected (n = 358,523). The hookah tweets from Twitter users (tweeters) with high influence and followers were identified (n = 39,824) and a random sample of 5,000 tweets was taken (13% of tweets with high influence and followers). The sample of tweets was qualitatively coded for normalization (ie, makes hookah smoking seem common and normal or portrays positive experiences with smoking hookah) or discouragement of hookah smoking, and other common themes using crowdsourcing. Approximately 87% of the sample of tweets normalized hookah use, and 7% were against hookah or discouraged its use. Nearly half (46%) of tweets that normalized hookah indicated that the tweeter was smoking hookah or wanted to smoke hookah, and 19% were advertisements/promotions for hookah bars or products. Educational campaigns about health harms from hookah use and policy changes regarding smoke-free air laws and tobacco advertising on the Internet may be useful to help offset the influence of pro-hookah messages seen on social media.

Utilizing Social Media to Increase Student Engagement: A Study of Kern County Public Schools

Science.gov (United States)

Bynum, Steven Lance

2011-01-01

Social media has permeated almost every aspect of the lives of anyone who utilizes the internet. Teachers and students are no exception. Students are most likely to use social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. This research focuses on best practices related to augmenting school curriculum to utilize these tools to increase student…

Detecting Bots on Russian Political Twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

Stukal, Denis; Sanovich, Sergey; Bonneau, Richard; Tucker, Joshua A

2017-12-01

Automated and semiautomated Twitter accounts, bots, have recently gained significant public attention due to their potential interference in the political realm. In this study, we develop a methodology for detecting bots on Twitter using an ensemble of classifiers and apply it to study bot activity within political discussions in the Russian Twittersphere. We focus on the interval from February 2014 to December 2015, an especially consequential period in Russian politics. Among accounts actively Tweeting about Russian politics, we find that on the majority of days, the proportion of Tweets produced by bots exceeds 50%. We reveal bot characteristics that distinguish them from humans in this corpus, and find that the software platform used for Tweeting is among the best predictors of bots. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that one prominent activity that bots were involved in on Russian political Twitter is the spread of news stories and promotion of media who produce them.

Librarian's nitty-gritty guide to social media

CERN Document Server

Solomon, Laura

2014-01-01

The vast array of social media options present a challenge: it's tough to keep current, let alone formulate a plan for using these tools effectively. Solomon, a librarian with extensive experience in web development, design, and technology, cuts to the chase with this invaluable guide to using social media in any kind of library. With a straightforward and pragmatic approach, she broadens her best-selling ALA Editions Special Report on the topic and Presents an overview of the social media world, providing context for services like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and analyzes how adults' an

Twitter and Non-Elites: Interpreting Power Dynamics in the Life Story of the (#)BRCA Twitter Stream.

Science.gov (United States)

Vicari, Stefania

2017-09-01

In May 2013 and March 2015, actress Angelina Jolie wrote in the New York Times about her choice to undergo preventive surgery. In her two op-eds, she explained that - as a carrier of the BRCA1 gene mutation - preventive surgery was the best way to lower her heightened risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. By applying a digital methods approach to BRCA-related tweets from 2013 and 2015, before, during, and after the exposure of Jolie's story, this study maps and interprets Twitter discursive dynamics at two time points of the BRCA Twitter stream. Findings show an evolution in curation and framing dynamics occurring between 2013 and 2015, with individual patient advocates replacing advocacy organizations as top curators of BRCA content and coming to prominence as providers of specialist illness narratives. These results suggest that between 2013 and 2015, Twitter went from functioning primarily as an organization-centered news reporting mechanism, to working as a crowdsourced specialist awareness system. This article advances a twofold contribution. First, it points at Twitter's fluid functionality for an issue public and suggests that by looking at the life story-rather than at a single time point-of an issue-based Twitter stream, we can track the evolution of power roles underlying discursive practices and better interpret the emergence of non-elite actors in the public arena. Second, the study provides evidence of the rise of activist cultures that rely on fluid, non-elite, collective, and individual social media engagement.

What do computer scientists tweet? Analyzing the link-sharing practice on Twitter.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marco Schmitt

Full Text Available Twitter communication has permeated every sphere of society. To highlight and share small pieces of information with possibly vast audiences or small circles of the interested has some value in almost any aspect of social life. But what is the value exactly for a scientific field? We perform a comprehensive study of computer scientists using Twitter and their tweeting behavior concerning the sharing of web links. Discerning the domains, hosts and individual web pages being tweeted and the differences between computer scientists and a Twitter sample enables us to look in depth at the Twitter-based information sharing practices of a scientific community. Additionally, we aim at providing a deeper understanding of the role and impact of altmetrics in computer science and give a glance at the publications mentioned on Twitter that are most relevant for the computer science community. Our results show a link sharing culture that concentrates more heavily on public and professional quality information than the Twitter sample does. The results also show a broad variety in linked sources and especially in linked publications with some publications clearly related to community-specific interests of computer scientists, while others with a strong relation to attention mechanisms in social media. This refers to the observation that Twitter is a hybrid form of social media between an information service and a social network service. Overall the computer scientists' style of usage seems to be more on the information-oriented side and to some degree also on professional usage. Therefore, altmetrics are of considerable use in analyzing computer science.

What do computer scientists tweet? Analyzing the link-sharing practice on Twitter.

Science.gov (United States)

Schmitt, Marco; Jäschke, Robert

2017-01-01

Twitter communication has permeated every sphere of society. To highlight and share small pieces of information with possibly vast audiences or small circles of the interested has some value in almost any aspect of social life. But what is the value exactly for a scientific field? We perform a comprehensive study of computer scientists using Twitter and their tweeting behavior concerning the sharing of web links. Discerning the domains, hosts and individual web pages being tweeted and the differences between computer scientists and a Twitter sample enables us to look in depth at the Twitter-based information sharing practices of a scientific community. Additionally, we aim at providing a deeper understanding of the role and impact of altmetrics in computer science and give a glance at the publications mentioned on Twitter that are most relevant for the computer science community. Our results show a link sharing culture that concentrates more heavily on public and professional quality information than the Twitter sample does. The results also show a broad variety in linked sources and especially in linked publications with some publications clearly related to community-specific interests of computer scientists, while others with a strong relation to attention mechanisms in social media. This refers to the observation that Twitter is a hybrid form of social media between an information service and a social network service. Overall the computer scientists' style of usage seems to be more on the information-oriented side and to some degree also on professional usage. Therefore, altmetrics are of considerable use in analyzing computer science.

Tweeting the meeting: an in-depth analysis of Twitter activity at Kidney Week 2011.

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Tejas Desai

Full Text Available In recent years, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN has increased its efforts to use its annual conference to inform and educate the public about kidney disease. Social media, including Twitter, has been one method used by the Society to accomplish this goal. Twitter is a popular microblogging service that serves as a potent tool for disseminating information. It allows for short messages (140 characters to be composed by any author and distributes those messages globally and quickly. The dissemination of information is necessary if Twitter is to be considered a tool that can increase public awareness of kidney disease. We hypothesized that content, citation, and sentiment analyses of tweets generated from Kidney Week 2011 would reveal a large number of educational tweets that were disseminated to the public. An ideal tweet for accomplishing this goal would include three key features: 1 informative content, 2 internal citations, and 3 positive sentiment score. Informative content was found in 29% of messages, greater than that found in a similarly sized medical conference (2011 ADA Conference, 16%. Informative tweets were more likely to be internally, rather than externally, cited (38% versus 22%, p<0.0001, thereby amplifying the original information to an even larger audience. Informative tweets had more negative sentiment scores than uninformative tweets (means -0.162 versus 0.199 respectively, p<0.0001, therefore amplifying a tweet whose content had a negative tone. Our investigation highlights significant areas of promise and improvement in using Twitter to disseminate medical information in nephrology from a scientific conference. This goal is pertinent to many nephrology-focused conferences that wish to increase public awareness of kidney disease.

The Effect of Twitter on College Student Engagement and Grades

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Junco, R.; Heiberger, G.; Loken, E.

2011-01-01

Despite the widespread use of social media by students and its increased use by instructors, very little empirical evidence is available concerning the impact of social media use on student learning and engagement. This paper describes our semester-long experimental study to determine if using Twitter--the microblogging and social networking…

Usos de Twitter en la Educación Superior.

OpenAIRE

Toro Araneda, Guillermo

2010-01-01

Twitter is presented as microblogging platform and raises some potential uses in higher education, according to the suggestion in the literature. Along with this we review some applications that extend the basic functionality of Twitter: tools for analysis, multimedia implementations and search, among other

Towards a realtime Twitter analysis during crises for operational crisis management

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Terpstra, T.; Stronkman, R.J.P.; Vries, A. de; Paradies, G.L.

2012-01-01

Today's crises attract great attention on social media, from local and distant citizens as well as from news media. This study investigates the possibilities of real-time and automated analysis of Twitter messages during crises. The analysis was performed through application of an information

Twitter analytics as indicator of news engagement

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Vergeer, M.R.M.; Skoric, M.M.; Parycek, P.; Sachs, M.

2017-01-01

The rise of popularity of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Mixi) to share opinions about what's on people's mind has opened possibilities to track the public's activities and sentiments. By using generic identifiers (hashtags #journaal and #RTLnieuws) on two of the most watched news

Information-sharing tendency on Twitter and time evolution of tweeting

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Kwon, H. W.; Kim, H. S.; Lee, K.; Choi, M. Y.

2013-03-01

While topics on Twitter may be categorized according to their predictability and sustainability, some topics have characteristics depending on the time scale. Here we propose a good measure for the transition of sustainability, which we call the information-sharing tendency, and find that the unpredictability on Twitter is provoked by the exposure of Twitter users to external environments, e.g., mass media and other social network services. In addition, it is demonstrated that the numbers of articles and comments on on-line newspapers serve as plausible measures of exposure. From such measures of exposure, the time evolution of tweeting can be described, when the information-sharing tendency is known.

A systematic identification and analysis of scientists on Twitter.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qing Ke

Full Text Available Metrics derived from Twitter and other social media-often referred to as altmetrics-are increasingly used to estimate the broader social impacts of scholarship. Such efforts, however, may produce highly misleading results, as the entities that participate in conversations about science on these platforms are largely unknown. For instance, if altmetric activities are generated mainly by scientists, does it really capture broader social impacts of science? Here we present a systematic approach to identifying and analyzing scientists on Twitter. Our method can identify scientists across many disciplines, without relying on external bibliographic data, and be easily adapted to identify other stakeholder groups in science. We investigate the demographics, sharing behaviors, and interconnectivity of the identified scientists. We find that Twitter has been employed by scholars across the disciplinary spectrum, with an over-representation of social and computer and information scientists; under-representation of mathematical, physical, and life scientists; and a better representation of women compared to scholarly publishing. Analysis of the sharing of URLs reveals a distinct imprint of scholarly sites, yet only a small fraction of shared URLs are science-related. We find an assortative mixing with respect to disciplines in the networks between scientists, suggesting the maintenance of disciplinary walls in social media. Our work contributes to the literature both methodologically and conceptually-we provide new methods for disambiguating and identifying particular actors on social media and describing the behaviors of scientists, thus providing foundational information for the construction and use of indicators on the basis of social media metrics.

Using Twitter for Demographic and Social Science Research: Tools for Data Collection and Processing

Science.gov (United States)

McCormick, Tyler H.; Lee, Hedwig; Cesare, Nina; Shojaie, Ali; Spiro, Emma S.

2017-01-01

Despite recent and growing interest in using Twitter to examine human behavior and attitudes, there is still significant room for growth regarding the ability to leverage Twitter data for social science research. In particular, gleaning demographic information about Twitter users--a key component of much social science research--remains a…

Ophthalmology on social networking sites: an observational study of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

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Micieli JA

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Jonathan A Micieli,1 Edmund Tsui2 1Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2Department of Surgery, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, USA Background: The use of social media in ophthalmology remains largely unknown. Our aim was to evaluate the extent and involvement of ophthalmology journals, professional associations, trade publications, and patient advocacy and fundraising groups on social networking sites. Methods: An archived list of 107 ophthalmology journals from SCImago, trade publications, professional ophthalmology associations, and patient advocacy organizations were searched for their presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Activity and popularity of each account was quantified by using the number of “likes” on Facebook, the number of followers on Twitter, and members on LinkedIn. Results: Of the 107 journals ranked by SCImago, 21.5% were present on Facebook and 18.7% were present on Twitter. Journal of Community Eye Health was the most popular on Facebook and JAMA Ophthalmology was most popular on Twitter. Among the 133 members of the International Council of Ophthalmology, 17.3% were present on Facebook, 12.8% were present on Twitter, and 7.5% were present on LinkedIn. The most popular on Facebook was the International Council of Ophthalmology, and the American Academy of Ophthalmology was most popular on Twitter and LinkedIn. Patient advocacy organizations were more popular on all sites compared with journals, professional association, and trade publications. Among the top ten most popular pages in each category, patient advocacy groups were most active followed by trade publications, professional associations, and journals. Conclusion: Patient advocacy groups lead the way in social networking followed by professional organizations and journals. Although some journals use social media, most have yet to engage its full potential and maximize the number of

To Twitter to Woo: Harnessing the power of social media (SoMe) in nurse education to enhance the student's experience.

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Sinclair, Wendy; McLoughlin, Moira; Warne, Tony

2015-11-01

This paper explores some of the difficulties, challenges and rewards for student nurses and nurse academics when harnessing social media (SoMe) as part of the overall learning experience. The paper draws upon data in the form of student voices, captured through an online planned Twitter chat. This data analysis provides the basis of a case study on the student experience in practice placements. A planned 1 h Twitter chat took place in June 2013, specifically aimed at student nurses. What transpired was an illuminating debate, eliciting responses from around the globe about learning in practice, mentors, and student support that lasted over 3 h. More importantly, the Twitter chat also included qualified nurses and mentors, listening and responding in real time, offering thoughts and solutions to how support and mentoring could be improved. This was in contrast to how students, locally, currently use a paper based questionnaire to give feedback in isolation. The authenticity of this feedback is often compromised by university link lecturers' who often provide a more sanitised version of this feedback to clinical placement. This paper explores whether it is possible to facilitate a realignment and capture the zeitgeist in order to provide the opportunity for enhancing learning in practice. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Tale of Two Doctoral Students: Social Media Tools and Hybridised Identities

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Bennett, Liz; Folley, Sue

2014-01-01

This paper explores the experiences of two doctoral students who embraced Web 2.0 tools in their digital scholarship practices. The paper gives an insider perspective of the challenges and potential of working with online tools, such as blogs, and participating in online communities, such as Twitter's #phdchat. We explore by drawing on our…

Factors that contribute to social media influence within an Internal Medicine Twitter learning community [v1; ref status: indexed, http://f1000r.es/3jd

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Tejas Desai

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Medical societies, faculty, and trainees use Twitter to learn from and educate other social media users. These social media communities bring together individuals with various levels of experience. It is not known if experienced individuals are also the most influential members. We hypothesize that participants with the greatest experience would be the most influential members of a Twitter community. We analyzed the 2013 Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine Twitter community. We measured the number of tweets authored by each participant and the number of amplified tweets (re-tweets. We developed a multivariate linear regression model to identify any relationship to social media influence, measured by the PageRank. Faculty (from academic institutions comprised 19% of the 132 participants in the learning community (p < 0.0001. Faculty authored 49% of all 867 tweets (p < 0.0001. Their tweets were the most likely to be amplified (52%, p < 0.01. Faculty had the greatest influence amongst all participants (mean 1.99, p < 0.0001. Being a faculty member had no predictive effect on influence (β = 0.068, p = 0.6. The only factors that predicted influence (higher PageRank were the number of tweets authored (p < 0.0001 and number of tweets amplified (p < 0.0001 The status of “faculty member” did not confer a greater influence. Any participant who was able to author the greatest number of tweets or have more of his/her tweets amplified could wield a greater influence on the participants, regardless of his/her authority.

El Uso de las Redes Sociales en las Universidades Andaluzas: El Caso de Facebook y Twitter/ The Use of Social Media in the Andalusian Universities: The Case of Facebook and Twitter

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Jesús Reina Estevez

2012-12-01

Full Text Available ResumenLa Universidad es una institución al servicio de la sociedad. Con su actividad y conocimientos se avanza en el desarrollo social, económico y cultural. La Web 2.0 permite que la organización interactúe con sus públicos y con los usuarios, comunicándose a un nivel nuevo, sin limitaciones temporales o espaciales. La siguiente investigación se lleva a cabo sobre las Universidades Públicas Andaluzas, para estudiar su presencia en las redes sociales, y el uso que están haciendo de las mismas; concretamente, sobre Facebook y Twitter, por ser las redes sociales más destacadas y populares. La metodología utilizada es de carácter empírico-analítico, y se apoya en el uso de la técnica del análisis de contenido.AbstractUniversity is an institution at the service of society. With its knowledge and activity it is advanced in social, economic and cultural development. Web 2.0 allows to the institution to interact with their audiences and users, communicating to a new level, with no temporal or spatial limitations. The following research was conducted on Andalusian Public Universities to study their social media presence, and how are making use of them, specifically, on Facebook and Twitter, being the most prominent and popular social media. The methodology used is empirical-analytic, and relies on the use of the technique of content analysis.

Use of Twitter at a major national pharmacy conference.

Science.gov (United States)

Awad, Nadia I; Cocchio, Craig

2015-01-01

The results of a study of Twitter use by attendees of the 2013 ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting (MCM) and other interested parties are presented. All messages posted on the social media platform Twitter under the official MCM "hashtag" (#ashpmidyear) during the five-day conference were archived and evaluated. Demographic data on authors of MCM-related tweets were collected by evaluating information provided by Twitter users in their public profiles. The archived messages were classified by content type. A total of 1539 messages originating from 400 unique U.S.- and foreign-based Twitter accounts were posted under the MCM hashtag, an average of 3.84 tweets per account. The estimated rate of conference-related Twitter use by MCM attendees was 1.7%. One third of Twitter users posting conference-related tweets were identified as pharmacists; 86 (21.5%) and 65 (16.25%) tweets originated from accounts held by pharmacy students and pharmaceutical industry representatives, respectively. The authors of MCM-related tweets represented a broad cross-section of pharmacy practice settings and specialties. About 39% of the evaluated Twitter postings were classified as social, with about 31% of postings pertaining to specific MCM educational sessions and nearly 25% classified as advertising. The majority of MCM-related tweets by onsite and remote Twitter users were social in nature or pertained to educational sessions held over the course of the conference. Copyright © 2015 by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, Inc. All rights reserved.

Conversations with the community: the Methodist Hospital System's experience with social media.

Science.gov (United States)

Angelle, Denny; Rose, Clare L

2011-01-01

The Methodist Hospital System has maintained a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube since 2009. After initial unofficial excursions into the world of social media, we discovered that social media can be a useful tool to extend a conversation with our patients and the community at large and share our hospital's culture with a larger base of like-minded people. But with this new power comes a heightened responsibility--platforms that can potentially reach millions of viewers and readers also provide a potential for misuse that can jeopardize patient privacy and place hospitals at risk. Because of their unique restrictions, even hospitals that use the tools regularly have much left to learn about social media. With constant monitoring and stewardship and a commitment to educating staff, hospitals can effectively use social media tools for marketing and education.

A Linguistic Analysis of Suicide-Related Twitter Posts.

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O'Dea, Bridianne; Larsen, Mark E; Batterham, Philip J; Calear, Alison L; Christensen, Helen

2017-09-01

Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide. Identifying those at risk and delivering timely interventions is challenging. Social media site Twitter is used to express suicidality. Automated linguistic analysis of suicide-related posts may help to differentiate those who require support or intervention from those who do not. This study aims to characterize the linguistic profiles of suicide-related Twitter posts. Using a dataset of suicide-related Twitter posts previously coded for suicide risk by experts, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and regression analyses were conducted to determine differences in linguistic profiles. When compared with matched non-suicide-related Twitter posts, strongly concerning suicide-related posts were characterized by a higher word count, increased use of first-person pronouns, and more references to death. When compared with safe-to-ignore suicide-related posts, strongly concerning suicide-related posts were characterized by increased use of first-person pronouns, greater anger, and increased focus on the present. Other differences were found. The predictive validity of the identified features needs further testing before these results can be used for interventional purposes. This study demonstrates that strongly concerning suicide-related Twitter posts have unique linguistic profiles. The examination of Twitter data for the presence of such features may help to validate online risk assessments and determine those in need of further support or intervention.

Campaigns and counter campaigns: reactions on Twitter to e-cigarette education.

Science.gov (United States)

Allem, Jon-Patrick; Escobedo, Patricia; Chu, Kar-Hai; Soto, Daniel W; Cruz, Tess Boley; Unger, Jennifer B

2017-03-01

Social media present opportunities for public health departments to galvanise interest in health issues. A challenge is creating content that will resonate with target audiences, and determining reactions to educational material. Twitter can be used as a real-time surveillance system to capture individuals' immediate reactions to education campaigns and such information could lead to better campaigns in the future. A case study testing Twitter's potential presented itself when the California Department of Public Health launched its 'Still Blowing Smoke' media campaign about the potential harmful effects of e-cigarettes. Pro-e-cigarette advocacy groups, in response, launched a counter campaign titled 'Not Blowing Smoke'. This study tracked the popularity of the two campaigns on Twitter, analysed the content of the messages and determined who was involved in these discussions. The study period was from 22 March 2015 to 27 June 2015. A stratified sampling procedure supplied 2192 tweets for analysis. Content analysis identified pro, anti and neutral e-cigarette tweets, and five additional themes: Marketing Elements, Money, Regulation/propaganda, Health, and Other. Metadata were analysed to obtain additional information about Twitter accounts. 'Not Blowing Smoke' was referenced more frequently than 'Still Blowing Smoke' on Twitter. Messages commonly objected to government regulation of e-cigarettes, refuted claims that e-cigarette manufactures were aligned with big tobacco, and touted the health benefits of e-cigarette use. E-cigarette companies and vape shops used campaign slogans to communicate with customers on Twitter. Findings showed the time dynamics of Twitter and the possibility for real-time monitoring of education campaigns. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

The net neutrality debate on Twitter

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Wolf J. Schünemann

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The internet has been seen as a medium that empowers individual political actors in relation to established political elites and media gatekeepers. The present article discusses this “net empowerment hypothesis” and tests it empirically by analysing Twitter communication on the regulation of net neutrality. We extracted 503.839 tweets containing #NetNeutrality posted between January and March 2015 and analysed central developments and the network structure of the debate. The empirical results show that traditional actors from media and politics still maintain a central role.

Introducing Twitter as an assessed component of the undergraduate nursing curriculum: case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Ray; Kelsey, Janet; Nelmes, Pam; Chinn, Nick; Chinn, Teresa; Proctor-Childs, Tracey

2016-07-01

To ask: (i) is it feasible to include Twitter as an assessed element of the first-year nursing curriculum; (ii) how should it be introduced and assessed; and (iii) do students think it worthwhile and learn anything from its use? Nursing students need to use social media professionally, avoiding pitfalls but using learning opportunities. This case study (2014-2015) comprised: (i) pilot introduction of Digital Professionalism (including Twitter) with second- and third-year students; (ii) introduction and assessment with a first cohort of 450 first-year students. Based on feedback, methods were revised for; (iii) a second cohort of 97. Students received a face-to-face lecture, two webinars, used chat rooms and were asked to create course Twitter accounts and were assessed on their use. Few second and third year students started optional Twitter use whereas nearly all first years used it. Most students (70·1% first, 88·0% second cohort) thought inclusion of Twitter was worthwhile. Changes from first to second cohort included better peer-peer support, more contextualization and more emphasis on nursing communities. More second cohort students learned from Twitter (44·4% vs. 70·8%) and used Twitter recently (43·3% vs. 81·6%). Students gained wider perspectives on nursing, better understanding of social media, 'being student nurses' and topics like health promotion. Students mostly followed not only online nursing communities but also patient organizations. Including Twitter as an assessed element for first-year nursing students was feasible, students think it worthwhile and other nursing schools should consider introducing it in the broader context of Digital Professionalism. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Early Flood Detection for Rapid Humanitarian Response: Harnessing Near Real-Time Satellite and Twitter Signals

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Brenden Jongman

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Humanitarian organizations have a crucial role in response and relief efforts after floods. The effectiveness of disaster response is contingent on accurate and timely information regarding the location, timing and impacts of the event. Here we show how two near-real-time data sources, satellite observations of water coverage and flood-related social media activity from Twitter, can be used to support rapid disaster response, using case-studies in the Philippines and Pakistan. For these countries we analyze information from disaster response organizations, the Global Flood Detection System (GFDS satellite flood signal, and flood-related Twitter activity analysis. The results demonstrate that these sources of near-real-time information can be used to gain a quicker understanding of the location, the timing, as well as the causes and impacts of floods. In terms of location, we produce daily impact maps based on both satellite information and social media, which can dynamically and rapidly outline the affected area during a disaster. In terms of timing, the results show that GFDS and/or Twitter signals flagging ongoing or upcoming flooding are regularly available one to several days before the event was reported to humanitarian organizations. In terms of event understanding, we show that both GFDS and social media can be used to detect and understand unexpected or controversial flood events, for example due to the sudden opening of hydropower dams or the breaching of flood protection. The performance of the GFDS and Twitter data for early detection and location mapping is mixed, depending on specific hydrological circumstances (GFDS and social media penetration (Twitter. Further research is needed to improve the interpretation of the GFDS signal in different situations, and to improve the pre-processing of social media data for operational use.

A Fake Follower Story: improving fake accounts detection on Twitter

OpenAIRE

Di Pietro, Roberto; Petrocchi, Marinella; Spognardi, Angelo; Tesconi, Maurizio; Cresci, Stefano

2014-01-01

Fake followers are those Twitter accounts created to inflate the number of followers of a target account. Fake followers are dangerous to the social platform and beyond, since they may alter concepts like popularity and influence in the Twittersphere-hence impacting on economy, politics, and Society. In this paper, we contribute along different dimensions. First, we review some of the most relevant existing features and rules (proposed by Academia and Media) for anomalous Twitter accounts det...

Validation of Twitter opinion trends with national polling aggregates: Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump.

Science.gov (United States)

Bovet, Alexandre; Morone, Flaviano; Makse, Hernán A

2018-06-06

Measuring and forecasting opinion trends from real-time social media is a long-standing goal of big-data analytics. Despite the large amount of work addressing this question, there has been no clear validation of online social media opinion trend with traditional surveys. Here we develop a method to infer the opinion of Twitter users by using a combination of statistical physics of complex networks and machine learning based on hashtags co-occurrence to build an in-domain training set of the order of a million tweets. We validate our method in the context of 2016 US Presidential Election by comparing the Twitter opinion trend with the New York Times National Polling Average, representing an aggregate of hundreds of independent traditional polls. The Twitter opinion trend follows the aggregated NYT polls with remarkable accuracy. We investigate the dynamics of the social network formed by the interactions among millions of Twitter supporters and infer the support of each user to the presidential candidates. Our analytics unleash the power of Twitter to uncover social trends from elections, brands to political movements, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional surveys.

Use of Social Media for Professional Development by Health Care Professionals: A Cross-Sectional Web-Based Survey

Science.gov (United States)

2016-01-01

Background Social media can be used in health care settings to enhance professional networking and education; patient communication, care, and education; public health programs; organizational promotion; and research. Objective The aim of this study was to explore the use of social media networks for the purpose of professional development among health care professionals in Saudi Arabia using a purpose-designed Web-based survey. Methods A cross-sectional web-based survey was undertaken. A link to the survey was posted on the investigator’s personal social media accounts including Twitter, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp. Results A total of 231 health care professionals, who are generally social media users, participated in the study. Of these professionals, 70.6% (163/231) use social media for their professional development. The social media applications most frequently used, in the descending order, for professional development were Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. The majority of respondents used social media for professional development irrespective of their age group, with the highest proportion seen in those aged 20-30 years. Social media were perceived as being most beneficial for professional development in terms of their impact on the domains of knowledge and problem solving and least helpful for enhancing clinical skills. Twitter was perceived as the most helpful type of social media for all domains listed. Respondents most frequently reported that social media were useful for professional development for the reasons of knowledge exchange and networking. Conclusions Social media are frequently used by health care professionals in Saudi Arabia for the purposes of professional development, with Twitter most frequently used for this purpose. These findings suggest that social media networks can be powerful tools for engaging health care professionals in their professional development. PMID:27731855

Use of Social Media for Professional Development by Health Care Professionals: A Cross-Sectional Web-Based Survey.

Science.gov (United States)

Alsobayel, Hana

2016-09-12

Social media can be used in health care settings to enhance professional networking and education; patient communication, care, and education; public health programs; organizational promotion; and research. The aim of this study was to explore the use of social media networks for the purpose of professional development among health care professionals in Saudi Arabia using a purpose-designed Web-based survey. A cross-sectional web-based survey was undertaken. A link to the survey was posted on the investigator's personal social media accounts including Twitter, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp. A total of 231 health care professionals, who are generally social media users, participated in the study. Of these professionals, 70.6% (163/231) use social media for their professional development. The social media applications most frequently used, in the descending order, for professional development were Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. The majority of respondents used social media for professional development irrespective of their age group, with the highest proportion seen in those aged 20-30 years. Social media were perceived as being most beneficial for professional development in terms of their impact on the domains of knowledge and problem solving and least helpful for enhancing clinical skills. Twitter was perceived as the most helpful type of social media for all domains listed. Respondents most frequently reported that social media were useful for professional development for the reasons of knowledge exchange and networking. Social media are frequently used by health care professionals in Saudi Arabia for the purposes of professional development, with Twitter most frequently used for this purpose. These findings suggest that social media networks can be powerful tools for engaging health care professionals in their professional development.

The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Comparing Political Campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election

OpenAIRE

Bossetta, Michael

2018-01-01

The present study argues that political communication on social media is mediated by a platform’s digital architecture – the technical protocols that enable, constrain, and shape user behavior in a virtual space. A framework for understanding digital architectures is introduced, and four platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat) are compared along the typology. Using the 2016 U.S. elections as a case, interviews with three Republican digital strategists are complimented with soci...

Mining for Social Media: Usage Patterns of Small Businesses

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Balan Shilpa

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Background: Information can now be rapidly exchanged due to social media. Due to its openness, Twitter has generated massive amounts of data. In this paper, we apply data mining and analytics to extract the usage patterns of social media by small businesses. Objectives: The aim of this paper is to describe with an example how data mining can be applied to social media. This paper further examines the impact of social media on small businesses. The Twitter posts related to small businesses are analyzed in detail. Methods/Approach: The patterns of social media usage by small businesses are observed using IBM Watson Analytics. In this paper, we particularly analyze tweets on Twitter for the hashtag #smallbusiness. Results: It is found that the number of females posting topics related to small business on Twitter is greater than the number of males. It is also found that the number of negative posts in Twitter is relatively low. Conclusions: Small firms are beginning to understand the importance of social media to realize their business goals. For future research, further analysis can be performed on the date and time the tweets were posted.

Assessing Anti-American Sentiment Through Social Media Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

2016-12-01

165 Yuri Kageyama, “Twitter Takes Off in Japan – Social Network Changes Nation’s Internet Culture,” Journal - Gazette, July 4, 2010, http...military shows of force in and around Japan . 14. SUBJECT TERMS anti-Americanism, Twitter, social media analysis; drone strike; Pakistan, UAV...hypothesizes that social media analysis, specifically analysis of messages sent through the Twitter network , can be used to gauge the overall

Assessing the integration of Twitter into the strategic operations of sporting organisations: the case of national governing bodies for sports in England

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Simon Chadwick

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Twitter, a social media application, has opened up communicative avenues for many stakeholders in the sports industry. The pervasive and rapid emergence of Twitter has given sports business and management researchers an opportunity to explore the strategic exploitation of the application by all kinds of sporting organisations. The purpose of this paper is to assess how sporting organisations’ social media content helps them achieve their strategic goals in terms of engagement and persuasion. To this end, the paper empirically examines how nine national governing bodiesfor various sports in England use Twitter. The study’s results accentuate the opportunities that these organisations have to use Twitter to achieve their ultimate goal of increasing participation in their respective sports. Accordingly, the paper recommends that these sporting organisations adopt proactive approaches to the way they use social media/networking and integrate Twitter into their strategic operations.

Hubungan antara Terpaan Tweet Iklan pada Akun Twitter @Infotembalang dan Brand Awareness @CalzoneUp dengan Minat Beli Masyarakat

OpenAIRE

Fatma, Sofi Kumala; Pradekso, Tandiyo; Setiabudi, Djoko

2014-01-01

NAMA : SOFI KUMALA FATMANIM : D2C009113JUDUL : HUBUNGAN ANTARA TERPAAN TWEET IKLAN PADAAKUN TWITTER @INFOTEMBALANG DAN BRANDAWARENESS @CALZONEUP DENGAN MINAT BELIMASYARAKATABSTRAKPemanfaatan media sosial khususnya Twitter saat ini bukan hanya sebagai saranaberkomunikasi, melainkan juga sebagai media untuk keperluan pemasaran.@infotembalang di sini merupakan salah satu dari sekian banyak akun Twitteryang banyak dilirik brand lokal, yang digunakan untuk menawarkan produkmereka. Salah satu brand...

Characterizing the followers and tweets of a marijuana-focused Twitter handle.

Science.gov (United States)

Cavazos-Rehg, Patricia; Krauss, Melissa; Grucza, Richard; Bierut, Laura

2014-06-27

Twitter is a popular social media forum for sharing personal experiences, interests, and opinions. An improved understanding of the discourse on Twitter that encourages marijuana use can be helpful for tailoring and targeting online and offline prevention messages. The intent of the study was to assess the content of "tweets" and the demographics of followers of a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (@stillblazingtho). We assessed the sentiment and content of tweets (sent from May 1 to December 31, 2013), as well as the demographics of consumers that follow a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (approximately 1,000,000 followers) using Twitter analytics from Demographics Pro. This analytics company estimates demographic characteristics based on Twitter behavior/usage, relying on multiple data signals from networks, consumption, and language and requires confidence of 95% or above to make an estimate of a single demographic characteristic. A total of 2590 tweets were sent from @stillblazingtho during the 8-month period and 305 (11.78%) replies to another Twitter user were excluded for qualitative analysis. Of the remaining 2285 tweets, 1875 (82.06%) were positive about marijuana, 403 (17.64%) were neutral, and 7 (0.31%) appeared negative about marijuana. Approximately 1101 (58.72%) of the positive marijuana tweets were perceived as jokes or humorous, 340 (18.13%) implied that marijuana helps you to feel good or relax, 294 (15.68%) mentioned routine, frequent, or heavy use, 193 (10.29%) mentioned blunts, marijuana edibles, or paraphernalia (eg, bongs, vaporizers), and 186 (9.92%) mentioned other risky health behaviors (eg, tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, sex). The majority (699,103/959,143; 72.89%) of @stillblazingtho followers were 19 years old or younger. Among people ages 17 to 19 years, @stillblazingtho was in the top 10% of all Twitter handles followed. More followers of @stillblazingtho in the United States were African American (323,107/759,407; 42.55%) or

Characterizing the Followers and Tweets of a Marijuana-Focused Twitter Handle

Science.gov (United States)

Krauss, Melissa; Grucza, Richard; Bierut, Laura

2014-01-01

Background Twitter is a popular social media forum for sharing personal experiences, interests, and opinions. An improved understanding of the discourse on Twitter that encourages marijuana use can be helpful for tailoring and targeting online and offline prevention messages. Objectives The intent of the study was to assess the content of “tweets” and the demographics of followers of a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (@stillblazingtho). Methods We assessed the sentiment and content of tweets (sent from May 1 to December 31, 2013), as well as the demographics of consumers that follow a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (approximately 1,000,000 followers) using Twitter analytics from Demographics Pro. This analytics company estimates demographic characteristics based on Twitter behavior/usage, relying on multiple data signals from networks, consumption, and language and requires confidence of 95% or above to make an estimate of a single demographic characteristic. Results A total of 2590 tweets were sent from @stillblazingtho during the 8-month period and 305 (11.78%) replies to another Twitter user were excluded for qualitative analysis. Of the remaining 2285 tweets, 1875 (82.06%) were positive about marijuana, 403 (17.64%) were neutral, and 7 (0.31%) appeared negative about marijuana. Approximately 1101 (58.72%) of the positive marijuana tweets were perceived as jokes or humorous, 340 (18.13%) implied that marijuana helps you to feel good or relax, 294 (15.68%) mentioned routine, frequent, or heavy use, 193 (10.29%) mentioned blunts, marijuana edibles, or paraphernalia (eg, bongs, vaporizers), and 186 (9.92%) mentioned other risky health behaviors (eg, tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, sex). The majority (699,103/959,143; 72.89%) of @stillblazingtho followers were 19 years old or younger. Among people ages 17 to 19 years, @stillblazingtho was in the top 10% of all Twitter handles followed. More followers of @stillblazingtho in the United States were

Twitter and its Usage for Dialogic Stakeholder Communication by MNCs and NGOs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schoeneborn, Dennis; Inauen, Sarah

2014-01-01

“Web 2.0” have dramatically widened the range of options for such dialogue processes. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in particular make use of “social media” (e.g., Facebook, Weblogs, Twitter) which enable them to quickly generate attention regarding socially and environmentally harmful business...... one particular social media application, that is, Twitter, for dialogic stakeholder communication. In our empirical study, we examine current practices of Twitter usage by MNCs and NGOs. We investigate a dataset of more than 3,000 Twitter articles from 30 MNCs and 30 NGOs in the German-speaking world....... Our analysis is based on the “conceptual orality or literality” scale by Koch and Oesterreicher (1994). The comparative analysis shows that on average MNCs and NGOs exhibit a surprisingly similar profile on Twitter. Both tend toward conceptual literality. However, the analysis of Tweets per...

How Twitter Is Studied in the Medical Professions: A Classification of Twitter Papers Indexed in PubMed.

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Shirley Ann; Terras, Melissa; Warwick, Claire

2013-01-01

Since their inception, Twitter and related microblogging systems have provided a rich source of information for researchers and have attracted interest in their affordances and use. Since 2009 PubMed has included 123 journal articles on medicine and Twitter, but no overview exists as to how the field uses Twitter in research. This paper aims to identify published work relating to Twitter within the fields indexed by PubMed, and then to classify it. This classification will provide a framework in which future researchers will be able to position their work, and to provide an understanding of the current reach of research using Twitter in medical disciplines. Papers on Twitter and related topics were identified and reviewed. The papers were then qualitatively classified based on the paper's title and abstract to determine their focus. The work that was Twitter focused was studied in detail to determine what data, if any, it was based on, and from this a categorization of the data set size used in the studies was developed. Using open coded content analysis additional important categories were also identified, relating to the primary methodology, domain, and aspect. As of 2012, PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations from biomedical literature, and from these a corpus of 134 potentially Twitter related papers were identified, eleven of which were subsequently found not to be relevant. There were no papers prior to 2009 relating to microblogging, a term first used in 2006. Of the remaining 123 papers which mentioned Twitter, thirty were focused on Twitter (the others referring to it tangentially). The early Twitter focused papers introduced the topic and highlighted the potential, not carrying out any form of data analysis. The majority of published papers used analytic techniques to sort through thousands, if not millions, of individual tweets, often depending on automated tools to do so. Our analysis demonstrates that researchers are starting to use knowledge

How Twitter Is Studied in the Medical Professions: A Classification of Twitter Papers Indexed in PubMed

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-01

Background Since their inception, Twitter and related microblogging systems have provided a rich source of information for researchers and have attracted interest in their affordances and use. Since 2009 PubMed has included 123 journal articles on medicine and Twitter, but no overview exists as to how the field uses Twitter in research. Objective This paper aims to identify published work relating to Twitter within the fields indexed by PubMed, and then to classify it. This classification will provide a framework in which future researchers will be able to position their work, and to provide an understanding of the current reach of research using Twitter in medical disciplines. Methods Papers on Twitter and related topics were identified and reviewed. The papers were then qualitatively classified based on the paper’s title and abstract to determine their focus. The work that was Twitter focused was studied in detail to determine what data, if any, it was based on, and from this a categorization of the data set size used in the studies was developed. Using open coded content analysis additional important categories were also identified, relating to the primary methodology, domain, and aspect. Results As of 2012, PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations from biomedical literature, and from these a corpus of 134 potentially Twitter related papers were identified, eleven of which were subsequently found not to be relevant. There were no papers prior to 2009 relating to microblogging, a term first used in 2006. Of the remaining 123 papers which mentioned Twitter, thirty were focused on Twitter (the others referring to it tangentially). The early Twitter focused papers introduced the topic and highlighted the potential, not carrying out any form of data analysis. The majority of published papers used analytic techniques to sort through thousands, if not millions, of individual tweets, often depending on automated tools to do so. Our analysis demonstrates that

An investigation of how the Australian brewing industry influence consumers on Twitter

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Torgeir Aleti

2016-08-01

Full Text Available In this paper we develop and test hypotheses around organisations’ behaviour on social media and its effect on consumers’ responses. We draw on the notion of the market maven to underpin the research and suggest that organisations on social media need to focus on acting in a maven-like manner in order to influence audiences in Twitter. We collected data from the Twitter accounts of the entire brewing industry in Australia, analysing organisational postings and their impact on influence (follower numbers, retweets of their respective Twitter accounts. In particular, we look at message formulation and language, native platform behaviour, reciprocity and persistency variables. Findings suggest that establishing a larger follower base requires an interactive, one-to-one and reciprocal approach. In order to influence audiences to retweet organisations need to speak the ‘native platform language’ and employ a soft-sell strategy. Maven-like behaviour tends to reside in the small independent craft breweries. We offer the conclusion that these craft breweries have realised that, on social media, a different approach to marketing is required: the organisations must act in a maven-like manner.

Mining twitter to understand the smoking cessation barriers

OpenAIRE

Krittanawong, Chayakrit; Wang, Zhen

2017-01-01

Smoking cessation is challenging and lack of positive support is a known major barrier to quitting cigarettes. Previous studies have suggested that social influences might increase smokers’ awareness of social norms for appropriate behavior, which might lead to smoking cessation. Although social media use is increasing among young adults in the United States, research on the relationship between social media use and smoking cessation is lacking. Twitter has provided a rich source of informati...

Tobacco control advocacy in the age of social media: using Facebook, Twitter and change.

Science.gov (United States)

Hefler, Marita; Freeman, Becky; Chapman, Simon

2013-05-01

The tobacco industry's use of social media sites, such as Facebook, is an emerging area of research; however, this is the first study of the potential for social media to advance tobacco control. This paper presents three case studies of using social media for tobacco control advocacy, demonstrates how social media can facilitate direct and effective action, and provides tools and lessons learned for future campaigns.

“We definitely need an audience”: experiences of Twitter, Twitter networks and tweet content in adults with severe communication disabilities who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)

Science.gov (United States)

Hemsley, Bronwyn; Dann, Stephen; Palmer, Stuart; Allan, Meredith; Balandin, Susan

2015-01-01

Abstract Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the Twitter experiences of adults with severe communication disabilities who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to inform Twitter training and further research on the use of Twitter in populations with communication disabilities. Method: This mixed methods research included five adults with severe communication disabilities who use AAC. It combined (a) quantitative analysis of Twitter networks and (b) manual coding of tweets with (c) narrative interviews with participants on their Twitter experiences and results. Results: The five participants who used AAC and Twitter were diverse in their patterns and experiences of using Twitter. Twitter networks reflected interaction with a close-knit network of people rather than with the broader publics on Twitter. Conversational, Broadcast and Pass Along tweets featured most prominently, with limited use of News or Social Presence tweets. Tweets appeared mostly within each participant's micro- or meso-structural layers of Twitter. Conclusions: People who use AAC report positive experiences in using Twitter. Obtaining help in Twitter, and engaging in hashtag communities facilitated higher frequency of tweets and establishment of Twitter networks. Results reflected an inter-connection of participant Twitter networks that might form part of a larger as yet unexplored emergent community of people who use AAC in Twitter.Implications for RehabilitationTwitter can be used as an important vehicle for conversation and a forum for people with communication disabilities to exchange information and participate socially in online communities.It is important that information and resources relating to the effective use of Twitter for a range of purposes are made available to people with communication disabilities who wish to take up or maintain use of Twitter.People with communication disabilities might benefit from support in using Twitter to meet their goals

Detecting Hacked Twitter Accounts based on Behavioural Change

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Nauta, Meike; Habib, Mena Badieh; van Keulen, Maurice

Social media accounts are valuable for hackers for spreading phishing links, malware and spam. Furthermore, some people deliberately hack an acquaintance to damage his or her image. This paper describes a classification for detecting hacked Twitter accounts. The model is mainly based on features

Is Twitter a Public Sphere for Online Conflicts? A Cross-Ideological and Cross-Hierarchical Look

OpenAIRE

Liu, Zhe; Weber, Ingmar

2014-01-01

The rise in popularity of Twitter has led to a debate on its impact on public opinions. The optimists foresee an increase in online participation and democratization due to social media's personal and interactive nature. Cyber-pessimists, on the other hand, explain how social media can lead to selective exposure and can be used as a disguise for those in power to disseminate biased information. To investigate this debate empirically, we evaluate Twitter as a public sphere using four metrics: ...

Experience of developing Twitter-based communities of practice in higher education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bex Lewis

2013-06-01

Full Text Available This article presents the results of a case study of the use of a microblogging tool by a university academic to increase their knowledge and experience of social media for educational purposes. The academic had the role of digital steward in a university and attempted to use microblogging (Twitter to increase professional contacts within the framework of a community of practice. Several types of data were collected and analysed. These included the structure of the network arising from the links formed with others by microblogging, the similarity of stated interests between the academic and others in the network, and the contents of postings such as their external references. It was found that a personal network had been established, with some of the characteristics of a community of practice. The activity demonstrated the utility of social media in supporting the professional development of academic staff using technology.

Developing nursing leadership in social media.

Science.gov (United States)

Moorley, Calvin; Chinn, Teresa

2016-03-01

A discussion on how nurse leaders are using social media and developing digital leadership in online communities. Social media is relatively new and how it is used by nurse leaders and nurses in a digital space is under explored. Discussion paper. Searches used CINAHL, the Royal College of Nursing webpages, Wordpress (for blogs) and Twitter from 2000-2015. Search terms used were Nursing leadership + Nursing social media. Understanding the development and value of nursing leadership in social media is important for nurses in formal and informal (online) leadership positions. Nurses in formal leadership roles in organizations such as the National Health Service are beginning to leverage social media. Social media has the potential to become a tool for modern nurse leadership, as it is a space where can you listen on a micro level to each individual. In addition to listening, leadership can be achieved on a much larger scale through the use of social media monitoring tools and exploration of data and crowd sourcing. Through the use of data and social media listening tools nursing leaders can seek understanding and insight into a variety of issues. Social media also places nurse leaders in a visible and accessible position as role models. Social media and formal nursing leadership do not have to be against each other, but they can work in harmony as both formal and online leadership possess skills that are transferable. If used wisely social media has the potential to become a tool for modern nurse leadership. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Pro-ana versus Pro-recovery: A Content Analytic Comparison of Social Media Users’ Communication about Eating Disorders on Twitter and Tumblr

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dawn B. Branley

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Objectives: To compare how people communicate about eating disorders on two popular social media platforms – Twitter and Tumblr.Materials and Methods: Thematic analysis was conducted to characterize the types of communications posted, and a content analysis was undertaken of between-platform differences.Results: Three types of content (pro-ana, anti-ana, and pro-recovery were posted on each platform. Overall, across both platforms, extreme pro-ana posts were in the minority compared to anti-ana and pro-recovery. Pro-ana posts (including ‘thinspiration’ were more common on Twitter than Tumblr, whereas anti-ana and pro-recovery posts were more common on Tumblr.Conclusion: The findings have implications for future research and health care relating to the treatment and prevention of eating disorders. Developers of future interventions targeting negative pro-ana content should remain aware of the need to avoid any detrimental impact on positive online support.

Pro-ana versus Pro-recovery: A Content Analytic Comparison of Social Media Users' Communication about Eating Disorders on Twitter and Tumblr.

Science.gov (United States)

Branley, Dawn B; Covey, Judith

2017-01-01

Objectives: To compare how people communicate about eating disorders on two popular social media platforms - Twitter and Tumblr. Materials and Methods: Thematic analysis was conducted to characterize the types of communications posted, and a content analysis was undertaken of between-platform differences. Results: Three types of content (pro-ana, anti-ana, and pro-recovery) were posted on each platform. Overall, across both platforms, extreme pro-ana posts were in the minority compared to anti-ana and pro-recovery. Pro-ana posts (including 'thinspiration') were more common on Twitter than Tumblr, whereas anti-ana and pro-recovery posts were more common on Tumblr. Conclusion: The findings have implications for future research and health care relating to the treatment and prevention of eating disorders. Developers of future interventions targeting negative pro-ana content should remain aware of the need to avoid any detrimental impact on positive online support.

#GeriMedJC: The Twitter Complement to the Traditional-Format Geriatric Medicine Journal Club.

Science.gov (United States)

Gardhouse, Amanda I; Budd, Laura; Yang, Seu Y C; Wong, Camilla L

2017-06-01

Twitter is a public microblogging platform that overcomes physical limitations and allows unrestricted participation beyond academic silos, enabling interactive discussions. Twitter-based journal clubs have demonstrated growth, sustainability, and worldwide communication, using a hashtag (#) to follow participation. This article describes the first year of #GeriMedJC, a monthly 1-hour live, 23-hour asynchronous Twitter-based complement to the traditional-format geriatric medicine journal club. The Twitter moderator tweets from the handle @GeriMedJC; encourages use of #GeriMedJC; and invites content experts, study authors, and followers to participate in critical appraisal of medical literature. Using the hashtag #GeriMedJC, tweets were categorized according to thematic content, relevance to the journal club, and authorship. Third-party analytical tools Symplur and Twitter Analytics were used for growth and effect metrics (number of followers, participants, tweets, retweets, replies, impressions). Qualitative analysis of follower and participant profiles was used to establish country of origin and occupation. A semistructured interview of postgraduate trainees was conducted to ascertain qualitative aspects of the experience. In the first year, @GeriMedJC has grown to 541 followers on six continents. Most followers were physicians (43%), two-thirds of which were geriatricians. Growth metrics increased over 12 months, with a mean of 121 tweets, 25 participants, and 105,831 impressions per journal club. Tweets were most often related to the article being appraised (87.5%) and ranged in thematic content from clinical practice (29%) to critical appraisal (24%) to medical education (20%). #GeriMedJC is a feasible example of using social media platforms such as Twitter to encourage international and interprofessional appraisal of medical literature. © 2017, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation © 2017, The American Geriatrics Society.

The Social Media Revolution in Nephrology Education.

Science.gov (United States)

Colbert, Gates B; Topf, Joel; Jhaveri, Kenar D; Oates, Tom; Rheault, Michelle N; Shah, Silvi; Hiremath, Swapnil; Sparks, Matthew A

2018-05-01

The past decade has been marked by the increasing use of social media platforms, often on mobile devices. In the nephrology community, this has resulted in the organic and continued growth of individuals interested in using these platforms for education and professional development. Here, we review several social media educational resources used in nephrology education and tools including Twitter, videos, blogs, and visual abstracts. We will also review how these tools are used together in the form of games (NephMadness), online journal clubs (NephJC), interactive learning (GlomCon), and digital mentorship (Nephrology Social Media Collective [NSMC] Internship) to build unique educational experiences that are available globally 24 hours per day. Throughout this discussion, we focus on specific examples of free open-access medical education (FOAMed) tools that provide education and professional growth at minimal or no cost to the user. In addition, we discuss inclusion of FOAMed resource development in the promotion and tenure process, along with potential pitfalls and future directions.

#TwitterforTeachers: The Implications of Twitter as a Self-Directed Professional Development Tool for K-12 Teachers

Science.gov (United States)

Visser, Ryan D.; Evering, Lea Calvert; Barrett, David E.

2014-01-01

This mixed-methods study explores how K-12 teachers use Twitter. An online survey was disseminated via Twitter to gauge their usage of, access to, and perceptions of Twitter. The results indicated that teachers highly value Twitter as a means of self-directed professional development. Respondents who reported using Twitter multiple times a day…

Statistics of co-occurring keywords in confined text messages on Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Mathiesen, J.; Angheluta, L.; Jensen, M. H.

2014-09-01

Online social media such as the micro-blogging site Twitter has become a rich source of real-time data on online human behaviors. Here we analyze the occurrence and co-occurrence frequency of keywords in user posts on Twitter. From the occurrence rate of major international brand names, we provide examples of predictions of brand-user behaviors. From the co-occurrence rates, we further analyze the user-perceived relationships between international brand names and construct the corresponding relationship networks. In general the user activity on Twitter is highly intermittent and we show that the occurrence rate of brand names forms a highly correlated time signal.

Ask an Anatomist: Identifying Global Trends, Topics and Themes of Academic Anatomists Using Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Marsland, Madeleine J.; Lazarus, Michelle D.

2018-01-01

Social media (SoMe) is increasingly used in higher education (HE) to access knowledge and enable global communication. The SoMe platform Twitter® is particularly beneficial in these contexts because it is readily accessible, easily searchable (via hashtags) and global. Given these advantages, the twitter platform @AskAnatomist was created to…

Conversations and Campaign Dynamics in a Hybrid Media Environment: Use of Twitter by Members of the German Bundestag

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christian Nuernbergk

2016-02-01

Full Text Available This article examines how Members of the German Bundestag (MdBs used Twitter in the context of the country’s 2013 federal elections. In particular, we explore the dynamics in the MdBs’ use of Twitter during different periods of the electoral term: How do the tweeting habits of MdBs differ by party before and during the election campaign in (a public versus personal communication and (b campaign versus policy messages? How are the selection of interaction partners, centralization on leading actors, and reciprocity of the MdBs’ Twitter networks affected by election campaigning? We address these questions by conducting a content analysis combined with a network analysis of interaction patterns. The comparative application of both methods explains the differences of MdBs’ networks. The comparison clearly exhibits election campaign-driven changes related to the amount of activity and the character of tweeted messages. During the campaign period, MdBs’ tweets clearly discussed specific policies less than before. Tweeting about one’s personal life occurred also less frequently in the final campaign stage. Instead, the MdBs mainly complement other forms of election campaigning through a vivid metacommunication on campaign developments. Network relations reflect these variations and were less often reciprocated in proximity to the election and showed a higher degree of group homophily. We also found a substantial representation of print and broadcast media actors in the examined @reply networks. It is likely that these interactions and conversations with journalists are part of an MdB’s individual performance of “news management.”

Fame for sale: Efficient detection of fake Twitter followers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cresci, Stefano; Di Pietro, Roberto; Petrocchi, Marinella

2015-01-01

Fake followers are those Twitter accounts specifically created to inflate the number of followers of a target account. Fake followers are dangerous for the social platform and beyond, since they may alter concepts like popularity and influence in the Twittersphere - hence impacting on economy......, politics, and society. In this paper, we contribute along different dimensions. First, we review some of the most relevant existing features and rules (proposed by Academia and Media) for anomalous Twitter accounts detection. Second, we create a baseline dataset of verified human and fake follower accounts...... sensitivity of each of the features employed by the classifier. The findings reported in this paper, other than being supported by a thorough experimental methodology and interesting on their own, also pave the way for further investigation on the novel issue of fake Twitter followers....

A pattern-matched Twitter analysis of US cancer-patient sentiments.

Science.gov (United States)

Crannell, W Christian; Clark, Eric; Jones, Chris; James, Ted A; Moore, Jesse

2016-12-01

Twitter has been recognized as an important source of organic sentiment and opinion. This study aimed to (1) characterize the content of tweets authored by the United States cancer patients; and (2) use patient tweets to compute the average happiness of cancer patients for each cancer diagnosis. A large sample of English tweets from March 2014 through December 2014 was obtained from Twitter. Using regular expression software pattern matching, the tweets were filtered by cancer diagnosis. For each cancer-specific tweetset, individual patients were extracted, and the content of the tweet was categorized. The patients' Twitter identification numbers were used to gather all tweets for each patient, and happiness values for patient tweets were calculated using a quantitative hedonometric analysis. The most frequently tweeted cancers were breast (n = 15,421, 11% of total cancer tweets), lung (n = 2928, 2.0%), prostate (n = 1036, 0.7%), and colorectal (n = 773, 0.5%). Patient tweets pertained to the treatment course (n = 73, 26%), diagnosis (n = 65, 23%), and then surgery and/or biopsy (n = 42, 15%). Computed happiness values for each cancer diagnosis revealed higher average happiness values for thyroid (h_avg = 6.1625), breast (h_avg = 6.1485), and lymphoma (h_avg = 6.0977) cancers and lower average happiness values for pancreatic (h_avg = 5.8766), lung (h_avg = 5.8733), and kidney (h_avg = 5.8464) cancers. The study confirms that patients are expressing themselves openly on social media about their illness and that unique cancer diagnoses are correlated with varying degrees of happiness. Twitter can be employed as a tool to identify patient needs and as a means to gauge the cancer patient experience. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Use of Twitter for Professional Growth and Development

Science.gov (United States)

Gerstein, Jackie

2011-01-01

Twitter, the micro blogging tool, has seen unprecedented growth in the past year and is expected to continue into the future. Twitter's power, engagement, and popularity lie in its endless networking opportunities. Its potential as a venue for professional growth and development needs to be explored, discussed, and ultimately used as such. A brief…

Predicting age groups of Twitter users based on language and metadata features.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Antonio A Morgan-Lopez

Full Text Available Health organizations are increasingly using social media, such as Twitter, to disseminate health messages to target audiences. Determining the extent to which the target audience (e.g., age groups was reached is critical to evaluating the impact of social media education campaigns. The main objective of this study was to examine the separate and joint predictive validity of linguistic and metadata features in predicting the age of Twitter users. We created a labeled dataset of Twitter users across different age groups (youth, young adults, adults by collecting publicly available birthday announcement tweets using the Twitter Search application programming interface. We manually reviewed results and, for each age-labeled handle, collected the 200 most recent publicly available tweets and user handles' metadata. The labeled data were split into training and test datasets. We created separate models to examine the predictive validity of language features only, metadata features only, language and metadata features, and words/phrases from another age-validated dataset. We estimated accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 metrics for each model. An L1-regularized logistic regression model was conducted for each age group, and predicted probabilities between the training and test sets were compared for each age group. Cohen's d effect sizes were calculated to examine the relative importance of significant features. Models containing both Tweet language features and metadata features performed the best (74% precision, 74% recall, 74% F1 while the model containing only Twitter metadata features were least accurate (58% precision, 60% recall, and 57% F1 score. Top predictive features included use of terms such as "school" for youth and "college" for young adults. Overall, it was more challenging to predict older adults accurately. These results suggest that examining linguistic and Twitter metadata features to predict youth and young adult Twitter users may

A language-based approach to modelling and analysis of Twitter interactions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Maggi, Alessandro; Petrocchi, Marinella; Spognardi, Angelo

2017-01-01

More than a personal microblogging site, Twitter has been transformed by common use to an information publishing venue, which public characters, media channels and common people daily rely on for, e.g., news reporting and consumption, marketing, and social messaging. The use of Twitter...... in a cooperative and interactive setting calls for the precise awareness of the dynamics regulating message spreading. In this paper, we describe Twitlang, a language for modelling the interactions among Twitter accounts. The associated operational semantics allows users to precisely determine the effects...... of their actions on Twitter, such as post, reply-to or delete tweets. The language is implemented in the form of a Maude interpreter, Twitlanger, which takes a language term as an input and explores the computations arising from the term. By combining the strength of Twitlanger and the Maude model checker...

Media Portrayals of Hashtag Activism: A Framing Analysis of Canada’s #Idlenomore Movement

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Derek Moscato

2016-04-01

Full Text Available The confluence of activism and social media—legitimized by efforts such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Movements—represents a growing area of mainstream media focus. Using Canada’s #IdleNoMore movement as a case, this study uses framing theory to better understand how traditional media are representing activism borne of social media such as Twitter, and how such activism can ultimately have an impact in political and public policy debates. A qualitative framing analysis is used to identify frames present in media reporting of #IdleNoMore during its first two months by two prominent Canadian publications. Emergent frames show that hashtag activism as a catalyst for a social movement was embraced as a theme by one of the publications, therefore helping to legitimize the role of social media tools such as Twitter. In other frames, both positive and negative depictions of the social movement helped to identify for mainstream audiences both historical grievances and future challenges and opportunities for Canada’s First Nations communities.

New Practices in Doing Academic Development: Twitter as an Informal Learning Space

Science.gov (United States)

McPherson, Megan; Budge, Kylie; Lemon, Narelle

2015-01-01

Using social media platforms to build informal learning processes and social networks is significant in academic development practices within higher education. We present three vignettes illustrating academic practices occurring on Twitter to show that using social media is beneficial for building networks of academics, locally and globally,…

Driving Change on Twitter: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of the Twitter Debates on the Saudi Ban on Women Driving

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lama Altoaimy

2018-05-01

Full Text Available This paper explores how Twitter has been used in the debate on women’s right to drive in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA. The overarching aim of this investigation is to explain how gender roles and the relationship between the genders are navigated in these debates. For Saudi Arabian women, social media platforms such as Twitter provide a unique space to express opinions and highlight areas of concern in a way that they are unable to in any other public sphere. The exploration of the debate on women’s right to drive in the KSA was achieved by collecting a body of tweets in Arabic addressing this topic from the last three months of 2015. Following a corpus-assisted discourse studies approach, this paper analyzes arguments by Twitter users discussing the KSA’s ban on women drivers, which may have contributed to women being granted the right to drive and also raised awareness of the restrictions imposed on women.

Tweeting the Good News--and Other Ways to Use Social Media

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Larkin, Patrick

2013-01-01

School leaders need to look beyond the hyped stories of social media being misused by teenagers. They must begin thoughtfully using tools like Twitter and Facebook to help their students gain skills and to reach out to their communities. Larkin, principal of Burlington High School in Massachusetts and a well-known advocate for technology in…

Building automatic customer complaints filtering application based on Twitter in Bahasa Indonesia

Science.gov (United States)

Gunawan, D.; Siregar, R. P.; Rahmat, R. F.; Amalia, A.

2018-03-01

Twitter has become a media to provide communication between a company with its customers. The average number of Twitter active users monthly is 330 million. A lot of companies realize the potential of Twitter to establish good relationship with their customers. Therefore, they usually have one official Twitter account to act as customer care division. In Indonesia, one of the company that utilizes the potential of Twitter to reach their customers is PT Telkom. PT Telkom has an official customer service account (called @TelkomCare) to receive customers’ problem. However, because of this account is open for public, Twitter users might post all kind of messages (not only complaints) to Telkom Care account. This leads to a problem that the Telkom Care account contains not only the customer complaints but also compliment and ordinary message. Furthermore, the complaints should be distributed to relevant division such as “Indihome”, “Telkomsel”, “UseeTV”, and “Telepon” based on the content of the message. This research built the application that automatically filter twitter post messages into several pre-defined categories (based on existing divisions) using Naïve Bayes algorithm. This research is done by collecting Twitter message, data cleaning, data pre-processing, training and testing data, and evaluate the classification result. This research yields 97% accuracy to classify Twitter message into the categories mentioned earlier.

The Measles Vaccination Narrative in Twitter: A Quantitative Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Radzikowski, Jacek; Stefanidis, Anthony; Jacobsen, Kathryn H; Croitoru, Arie; Crooks, Andrew; Delamater, Paul L

2016-01-01

The emergence of social media is providing an alternative avenue for information exchange and opinion formation on health-related issues. Collective discourse in such media leads to the formation of a complex narrative, conveying public views and perceptions. This paper presents a study of Twitter narrative regarding vaccination in the aftermath of the 2015 measles outbreak, both in terms of its cyber and physical characteristics. We aimed to contribute to the analysis of the data, as well as presenting a quantitative interdisciplinary approach to analyze such open-source data in the context of health narratives. We collected 669,136 tweets referring to vaccination from February 1 to March 9, 2015. These tweets were analyzed to identify key terms, connections among such terms, retweet patterns, the structure of the narrative, and connections to the geographical space. The data analysis captures the anatomy of the themes and relations that make up the discussion about vaccination in Twitter. The results highlight the higher impact of stories contributed by news organizations compared to direct tweets by health organizations in communicating health-related information. They also capture the structure of the antivaccination narrative and its terms of reference. Analysis also revealed the relationship between community engagement in Twitter and state policies regarding child vaccination. Residents of Vermont and Oregon, the two states with the highest rates of non-medical exemption from school-entry vaccines nationwide, are leading the social media discussion in terms of participation. The interdisciplinary study of health-related debates in social media across the cyber-physical debate nexus leads to a greater understanding of public concerns, views, and responses to health-related issues. Further coalescing such capabilities shows promise towards advancing health communication, thus supporting the design of more effective strategies that take into account the complex

School Leaders' Use of Twitter to To Engage the School Community

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Suzzan, Sheri Lustig

2017-01-01

Social media and the ways in which educational leaders choose to utilize it their schools is at the forefront of professional development throughout numerous districts across Long Island and nationwide. While many districts have incorporated various models of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram into their standard communication…

A systematic identification and analysis of scientists on Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Ke, Qing; Ahn, Yong-Yeol; Sugimoto, Cassidy R.

2017-01-01

Metrics derived from Twitter and other social media—often referred to as altmetrics—are increasingly used to estimate the broader social impacts of scholarship. Such efforts, however, may produce highly misleading results, as the entities that participate in conversations about science on these platforms are largely unknown. For instance, if altmetric activities are generated mainly by scientists, does it really capture broader social impacts of science? Here we present a systematic approach to identifying and analyzing scientists on Twitter. Our method can identify scientists across many disciplines, without relying on external bibliographic data, and be easily adapted to identify other stakeholder groups in science. We investigate the demographics, sharing behaviors, and interconnectivity of the identified scientists. We find that Twitter has been employed by scholars across the disciplinary spectrum, with an over-representation of social and computer and information scientists; under-representation of mathematical, physical, and life scientists; and a better representation of women compared to scholarly publishing. Analysis of the sharing of URLs reveals a distinct imprint of scholarly sites, yet only a small fraction of shared URLs are science-related. We find an assortative mixing with respect to disciplines in the networks between scientists, suggesting the maintenance of disciplinary walls in social media. Our work contributes to the literature both methodologically and conceptually—we provide new methods for disambiguating and identifying particular actors on social media and describing the behaviors of scientists, thus providing foundational information for the construction and use of indicators on the basis of social media metrics. PMID:28399145

Twitter as a Learning Community in Higher Education

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Ricoy, María-Carmen; Feliz, Tiberio

2016-01-01

Considering the potential and popularity of social media it is important to inquire into its use in learning. In this study the implementation of the activity carried out in Twitter with higher education students was analysed. The research was conducted following a mixed methodology, based on virtual ethnography complemented by quantitative…

Analysis of First-Year Twitter Metrics of a Rare Disease Community for Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm (BPDCN) on Social Media: #BPDCN.

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Pemmaraju, Naveen; Utengen, Audun; Gupta, Vikas; Thompson, Michael A; Lane, Andrew A

2017-12-01

The use of Twitter, one of the most commonly engaged social media platforms in the world, is increasing among the general public. Notably, this trend has also been observed among those involved in the healthcare field. With its ability to readily connect diverse groups of stakeholders in a given area of interest, Twitter has become a focal point for those involved in increasing awareness and information exchange in orphan disease fields. Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) is a rare, aggressive hematologic malignancy with generally poor long-term outcomes for adult patients and no standard therapeutic guidelines. Coupled with its low incidence rate, the disease has experienced a number of name changes over the past three decades (e.g., blastic NK cell lymphoma, CD4+CD56+ hematodermic tumor), thereby historically resulting in difficulties in its clinico-pathologic diagnosis and treatment approaches. All of these factors have led to a striking gap in terms of accurate information available to patients and the general public. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the development of more venues for the dissemination of information, particularly online, for this rare cancer. In this context, we began the Twitter medical community, #BPDCN, over a year ago, to help fill this information void. Now, completing its first year of existence, we aimed to analyze the metrics of Twitter use in order to better understand and to describe the characteristics and reach in of #BPDCN, and to determine the feasibility of starting and maintaining a disease-specific hashtag community in a particularly rare cancer.

Emoticons vs. Emojis on Twitter: A Causal Inference Approach

OpenAIRE

Pavalanathan, Umashanthi; Eisenstein, Jacob

2015-01-01

Online writing lacks the non-verbal cues present in face-to-face communication, which provide additional contextual information about the utterance, such as the speaker's intention or affective state. To fill this void, a number of orthographic features, such as emoticons, expressive lengthening, and non-standard punctuation, have become popular in social media services including Twitter and Instagram. Recently, emojis have been introduced to social media, and are increasingly popular. This r...

Sentimental Analysis for Airline Twitter data

Science.gov (United States)

Dutta Das, Deb; Sharma, Sharan; Natani, Shubham; Khare, Neelu; Singh, Brijendra

2017-11-01

Social Media has taken the world by surprise at a swift and commendable pace. With the advent of any kind of circumstances may it be related to social, political or current affairs the sentiments of people throughout the world are expressed through their help, making them suitable candidates for sentiment mining. Sentimental analysis becomes highly resourceful for any organization who wants to analyse and enhance their products and services. In the airline industries it is much easier to get feedback from astute data source such as Twitter, for conducting a sentiment analysis on their respective customers. The beneficial factors relating to twitter sentiment analysis cannot be impeded by the consumers who want to know the who’s who and what’s what in everyday life. In this paper we are classifying sentiment of Twitter messages by exhibiting results of a machine learning algorithm using R and Rapid Miner. The tweets are extracted and pre-processed and then categorizing them in neutral, negative and positive sentiments finally summarising the results as a whole. The Naive Bayes algorithm has been used for classifying the sentiments of recent tweets done on the different airlines.

TwitterSensing: An Event-Based Approach for Wireless Sensor Networks Optimization Exploiting Social Media in Smart City Applications.

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Costa, Daniel G; Duran-Faundez, Cristian; Andrade, Daniel C; Rocha-Junior, João B; Peixoto, João Paulo Just

2018-04-03

Modern cities are subject to periodic or unexpected critical events, which may bring economic losses or even put people in danger. When some monitoring systems based on wireless sensor networks are deployed, sensing and transmission configurations of sensor nodes may be adjusted exploiting the relevance of the considered events, but efficient detection and classification of events of interest may be hard to achieve. In Smart City environments, several people spontaneously post information in social media about some event that is being observed and such information may be mined and processed for detection and classification of critical events. This article proposes an integrated approach to detect and classify events of interest posted in social media, notably in Twitter , and the assignment of sensing priorities to source nodes. By doing so, wireless sensor networks deployed in Smart City scenarios can be optimized for higher efficiency when monitoring areas under the influence of the detected events.

TwitterSensing: An Event-Based Approach for Wireless Sensor Networks Optimization Exploiting Social Media in Smart City Applications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel G. Costa

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Modern cities are subject to periodic or unexpected critical events, which may bring economic losses or even put people in danger. When some monitoring systems based on wireless sensor networks are deployed, sensing and transmission configurations of sensor nodes may be adjusted exploiting the relevance of the considered events, but efficient detection and classification of events of interest may be hard to achieve. In Smart City environments, several people spontaneously post information in social media about some event that is being observed and such information may be mined and processed for detection and classification of critical events. This article proposes an integrated approach to detect and classify events of interest posted in social media, notably in Twitter, and the assignment of sensing priorities to source nodes. By doing so, wireless sensor networks deployed in Smart City scenarios can be optimized for higher efficiency when monitoring areas under the influence of the detected events.

Increased use of Twitter at a medical conference: a report and a review of the educational opportunities.

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McKendrick, Douglas R A; Cumming, Grant P; Lee, Amanda J

2012-12-11

Most consider Twitter as a tool purely for social networking. However, it has been used extensively as a tool for online discussion at nonmedical and medical conferences, and the academic benefits of this tool have been reported. Most anesthetists still have yet to adopt this new educational tool. There is only one previously published report of the use of Twitter by anesthetists at an anesthetic conference. This paper extends that work. We report the uptake and growth in the use of Twitter, a microblogging tool, at an anesthetic conference and review the potential use of Twitter as an educational tool for anesthetists. A unique Twitter hashtag (#WSM12) was created and promoted by the organizers of the Winter Scientific Meeting held by The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI) in London in January 2012. Twitter activity was compared with Twitter activity previously reported for the AAGBI Annual Conference (September 2011 in Edinburgh). All tweets posted were categorized according to the person making the tweet and the purpose for which they were being used. The categories were determined from a literature review. A total of 227 tweets were posted under the #WSM12 hashtag representing a 530% increase over the previously reported anesthetic conference. Sixteen people joined the Twitter stream by using this hashtag (300% increase). Excellent agreement (κ = 0.924) was seen in the classification of tweets across the 11 categories. Delegates primarily tweeted to create and disseminate notes and learning points (55%), describe which session was attended, undertake discussions, encourage speakers, and for social reasons. In addition, the conference organizers, trade exhibitors, speakers, and anesthetists who did not attend the conference all contributed to the Twitter stream. The combined total number of followers of those who actively tweeted represented a potential audience of 3603 people. This report demonstrates an increase in uptake and

The Efficacy of Social Media as a Research Tool and Information Source for Safeguards Verification

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Skoeld, T.; Feldman, Y.

2015-01-01

The IAEA Department of Safeguards aims to provide credible assurances to the international community that States are fulfiling their safeguards obligations in that all nuclear material remains in peaceful use. In order to draw a soundly-based safeguards conclusion for a State that has a safeguards agreement in force with the IAEA, the Department establishes a knowledge base of the State's nuclear-related infrastructure and activities against which a State's declarations are evaluated for correctness and completeness. Open source information is one stream of data that is used in the evaluation of nuclear fuel cycle activities in the State. The Department is continuously working to ensure that it has access to the most up-to-date, accurate, relevant and credible open source information available, and has begun to examine the use of social media as a new source of information. The use of social networking sites has increased exponentially in the last decade. In fact, social media has emerged as the key vehicle for delivering and acquiring information in near real-time. Therefore, it has become necessary for the open source analyst to consider social media as an essential element in the broader concept of open source information. Characteristics, such as ''immediacy'', ''recency'', ''interractiveness'', which set social networks apart from the ''traditional media'', are also the same attributes that present a challenge for using social media as an efficient information-delivery platform and a credible source of information. New tools and technologies for social media analytics have begun to emerge to help systematically monitor and mine this large body of data. The paper will survey the social media landscape in an effort to identify platforms that could be of value for safeguards verification purposes. It will explore how a number of social networking sites, such as Twitter

Facebook and Twitter vaccine sentiment in response to measles outbreaks.

Science.gov (United States)

Deiner, Michael S; Fathy, Cherie; Kim, Jessica; Niemeyer, Katherine; Ramirez, David; Ackley, Sarah F; Liu, Fengchen; Lietman, Thomas M; Porco, Travis C

2017-11-01

Social media posts regarding measles vaccination were classified as pro-vaccination, expressing vaccine hesitancy, uncertain, or irrelevant. Spearman correlations with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-reported measles cases and differenced smoothed cumulative case counts over this period were reported (using time series bootstrap confidence intervals). A total of 58,078 Facebook posts and 82,993 tweets were identified from 4 January 2009 to 27 August 2016. Pro-vaccination posts were correlated with the US weekly reported cases (Facebook: Spearman correlation 0.22 (95% confidence interval: 0.09 to 0.34), Twitter: 0.21 (95% confidence interval: 0.06 to 0.34)). Vaccine-hesitant posts, however, were uncorrelated with measles cases in the United States (Facebook: 0.01 (95% confidence interval: -0.13 to 0.14), Twitter: 0.0011 (95% confidence interval: -0.12 to 0.12)). These findings may result from more consistent social media engagement by individuals expressing vaccine hesitancy, contrasted with media- or event-driven episodic interest on the part of individuals favoring current policy.

Identifying Sentiment of Hookah-Related Posts on Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Ramanujam, Jagannathan; Lerman, Kristina; Chu, Kar-Hai; Boley Cruz, Tess; Unger, Jennifer B

2017-01-01

Background The increasing popularity of hookah (or waterpipe) use in the United States and elsewhere has consequences for public health because it has similar health risks to that of combustible cigarettes. While hookah use rapidly increases in popularity, social media data (Twitter, Instagram) can be used to capture and describe the social and environmental contexts in which individuals use, perceive, discuss, and are marketed this tobacco product. These data may allow people to organically report on their sentiment toward tobacco products like hookah unprimed by a researcher, without instrument bias, and at low costs. Objective This study describes the sentiment of hookah-related posts on Twitter and describes the importance of debiasing Twitter data when attempting to understand attitudes. Methods Hookah-related posts on Twitter (N=986,320) were collected from March 24, 2015, to December 2, 2016. Machine learning models were used to describe sentiment on 20 different emotions and to debias the data so that Twitter posts reflected sentiment of legitimate human users and not of social bots or marketing-oriented accounts that would possibly provide overly positive or overly negative sentiment of hookah. Results From the analytical sample, 352,116 tweets (59.50%) were classified as positive while 177,537 (30.00%) were classified as negative, and 62,139 (10.50%) neutral. Among all positive tweets, 218,312 (62.00%) were classified as highly positive emotions (eg, active, alert, excited, elated, happy, and pleasant), while 133,804 (38.00%) positive tweets were classified as passive positive emotions (eg, contented, serene, calm, relaxed, and subdued). Among all negative tweets, 95,870 (54.00%) were classified as subdued negative emotions (eg, sad, unhappy, depressed, and bored) while the remaining 81,667 (46.00%) negative tweets were classified as highly negative emotions (eg, tense, nervous, stressed, upset, and unpleasant). Sentiment changed drastically when

#publicrelations on Twitter: Pushers, Talkers, Influencers on Spamming PR and Job Hunting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ana Adi

2015-12-01

Full Text Available A space generally associated with marketers and breaking news (Hobsbawn, 2009 cited in Evans, Twomey & Talan, 2011, Twitter has also become a space debate, community building and legitimization for companies and social movements alike. The academic literature has seen a rise in interest in the micro-blogging platform. For instance, Adi and Moloney (2012 assess the strategic uses of Twitter by protest groups, Adi, Erickson and Lilleker (2014 reflect on the networks and use pattern of the same platform by politicians, namely UK Labor party representatives in the House of Lords while Adi and Grigore (2015 analyze the strategic uses of social media by corporations. Bajpai and Jaiswal (2011 on the other hand propose a framework for analyzing collective action events on Twitter and so do the creators behind visual analysis platforms like NodeXL, Gephi, Linkurious and Socioviz. Public Relations research too has provided several reflections and analyses of Twitter. Verhoeven et al (2012 and Sweetsner and Kelleher discuss how practitioners use social media; Lovejoy, Waters and Saxton evaluate how NGO are engaging stakeholders though the new medium, while Saffer, Sommerfeldt and Taylor (2013 suggest that Twitter interactivity influences the quality of organization–public relationships. With questions about the professionalization of Public Relations as well as about the portrayals and perceptions of the profession continuing to intrigue researchers, it is surprising that only Xifra and Grau (2010 looked into the type of information shared in tweets about public relations. Using the Twitter data collection and analysis option from Socioviz this paper provides an exploratory account of the #publicrelations on Twitter. Using the visualizations provided by the platform and automated data analysis to gain insight into over 10,000 tweets published during June 15-24 and July 15-24, this paper qualitatively assesses the emerging themes about public relations

Leading by Following: An Analysis of How K-12 School Leaders Use Twitter

Science.gov (United States)

Sauers, Nicholas J.; Richardson, Jayson W.

2015-01-01

This study analyzed how active Twitter users who are also school leaders used the tool. The researchers collaboratively identified K-12 school leaders who were active on Twitter and then collected tweets from those school leaders. The final sample for this study included 115 Twitter users and over 180,000 tweets from those individuals. The results…

Mining Twitter Data to Augment NASA GPM Validation

Science.gov (United States)

Teng, Bill; Albayrak, Arif; Huffman, George; Vollmer, Bruce; Loeser, Carlee; Acker, Jim

2017-01-01

The Twitter data stream is an important new source of real-time and historical global information for potentially augmenting the validation program of NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. There have been other similar uses of Twitter, though mostly related to natural hazards monitoring and management. The validation of satellite precipitation estimates is challenging, because many regions lack data or access to data, especially outside of the U.S. and in remote and developing areas. The time-varying set of "precipitation" tweets can be thought of as an organic network of rain gauges, potentially providing a widespread view of precipitation occurrence. Twitter provides a large source of crowd for crowdsourcing. During a 24-hour period in the middle of the snow storm this past March in the U.S. Northeast, we collected more than 13,000 relevant precipitation tweets with exact geolocation. The overall objective of our project is to determine the extent to which processed tweets can provide additional information that improves the validation of GPM data. Though our current effort focuses on tweets and precipitation, our approach is general and applicable to other social media and other geophysical measurements. Specifically, we have developed an operational infrastructure for processing tweets, in a format suitable for analysis with GPM data; engaged with potential participants, both passive and active, to "enrich" the Twitter stream; and inter-compared "precipitation" tweet data, ground station data, and GPM retrievals. In this presentation, we detail the technical capabilities of our tweet processing infrastructure, including data abstraction, feature extraction, search engine, context-awareness, real-time processing, and high volume (big) data processing; various means for "enriching" the Twitter stream; and results of inter-comparisons. Our project should bring a new kind of visibility to Twitter and engender a new kind of appreciation of the value

The emerging use of Twitter by urological journals.

Science.gov (United States)

Nason, Gregory J; O'Kelly, Fardod; Kelly, Michael E; Phelan, Nigel; Manecksha, Rustom P; Lawrentschuk, Nathan; Murphy, Declan G

2015-03-01

To assess the emerging use of Twitter by urological journals. A search of the Journal of Citation Reports 2012 was performed to identify urological journals. These journals were then searched on Twitter.com. Each journal website was accessed for links to social media (SoMe). The number of 'tweets', followers and age of profile was determined. To evaluate the content, over a 6-month period (November 2013 to April 2014), all tweets were scrutinised on the journals Twitter profiles. To assess SoMe influence, the Klout score of each journal was also calculated. In all, 33 urological journals were identified. Eight (24.2%) had Twitter profiles. The mean (range) number of tweets and followers was 557 (19-1809) and 1845 (82-3692), respectively. The mean (range) age of the twitter profiles was 952 (314-1758) days with an average 0.88 tweets/day. A Twitter profile was associated with a higher mean impact factor of the journal (mean [sd] 3.588 [3.05] vs 1.78 [0.99], P = 0.013). Over a 6-month period, November 2013 to April 2014, the median (range) number of tweets per profile was 82 (2-415) and the median (range) number of articles linked to tweets was 73 (0-336). Of these 710 articles, 152 were Level 1 evidence-based articles, 101 Level 2, 278 Level 3 and 179 Level 4. The median (range) Klout score was 47 (19-58). The Klout scores of major journals did not exactly mirror their impact factors. SoMe is increasingly becoming an adjunct to traditional teaching methods, due to its convenient and user-friendly platform. Recently, many of the leading urological journals have used Twitter to highlight significant articles of interest to readers. © 2014 The Authors. BJU International © 2014 BJU International.

Twitter-Delivered Behavioral Weight-Loss Interventions: A Pilot Series.

Science.gov (United States)

Pagoto, Sherry L; Waring, Molly E; Schneider, Kristin L; Oleski, Jessica L; Olendzki, Effie; Hayes, Rashelle B; Appelhans, Bradley M; Whited, Matthew C; Busch, Andrew M; Lemon, Stephenie C

2015-10-23

Lifestyle interventions are efficacious at reducing risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease but have not had a significant public health impact given high cost and patient and provider burden. Online social networks may reduce the burden of lifestyle interventions to the extent that they displace in-person visits and may enhance opportunities for social support for weight loss. We conducted an iterative series of pilot studies to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of using online social networks to deliver a lifestyle intervention. In Study 1 (n=10), obese participants with depression received lifestyle counseling via 12 weekly group visits and a private group formed using the online social network, Twitter. Mean weight loss was 2.3 pounds (SD 7.7; range -19.2 to 8.2) or 1.2% (SD 3.6) of baseline weight. A total of 67% (6/9) of participants completing exit interviews found the support of the Twitter group at least somewhat useful. In Study 2 (n=11), participants were not depressed and were required to be regular users of social media. Participants lost, on average, 5.6 pounds (SD 6.3; range -15 to 0) or 3.0% (SD 3.4) of baseline weight, and 100% (9/9) completing exit interviews found the support of the Twitter group at least somewhat useful. To explore the feasibility of eliminating in-person visits, in Study 3 (n=12), we delivered a 12-week lifestyle intervention almost entirely via Twitter by limiting the number of group visits to one, while using the same inclusion criteria as that used in Study 2. Participants lost, on average, 5.4 pounds (SD 6.4; range -14.2 to 3.9) or 3.0% (SD 3.1) of baseline weight, and 90% (9/10) completing exit interviews found the support of the Twitter group at least somewhat useful. Findings revealed that a private Twitter weight-loss group was both feasible and acceptable for many patients, particularly among regular users of social media. Future research should evaluate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of online

PERBINCANGAN MENGENAI HUKUMAN MATI TERKAIT KASUS BALI NINE DAN MARY JANE DALAM SITUS JEJARING SOSIAL TWITTER

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jimi Narotama Mahameruaji

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Twitter telah menjadi alat atau media komunikasi yang sangat populer diantara para pengguna Internet. Melalui Twitter, penggunanya dapat berbagi cerita hidup mereka sehari-hari, melakukan perbincangan dengan pengguna lain dan juga mengekspresikan pendapat mereka. Twitter juga dapat dilihat sebagai sebuah wadah untuk melakukan perbincangan politik dan isu-isu publik. Oleh karena itu, peran Twitter terkait partisipasi publik, kampanye, dan pembentukan opini publik kini semakin diperhitungkan (Jungherr, 2015. Fokus penelitian ini tentang perbincangan para pengguna Twitter di Indonesia mengenai peristiwa hukuman mati kasus narkoba Bali Nine dan Mary Jane. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui apa ragam perbincangan yang terjadi di antara para pengguna Twitter Indonesia terkait kasus hukuman mati tersebut, apa argumen yang muncul terkait penolakan maupun dukungan terhadap isu hukuman mati, dan juga siapa saja Twitter Influencer yang berperan dalam isu ini.   DOI: 10.24198/jkk.vol4n1.5

Talking about tobacco on Twitter is associated with tobacco product use.

Science.gov (United States)

Unger, Jennifer B; Urman, Robert; Cruz, Tess Boley; Majmundar, Anuja; Barrington-Trimis, Jessica; Pentz, Mary Ann; McConnell, Rob

2018-06-10

Tobacco-related content appears on social media in the form of advertising and messages by individuals. However, little is known about associations between posting social media messages and tobacco product use among adolescents and young adults. Self-reports of tobacco product use were obtained from the Children's Health Study of young adults in Southern California. Among the 1486 respondents in the most recent wave of the cohort (2016-2017), 284 provided tobacco product use data and their Twitter user names to access publicly available Twitter account data (mean age = 20.1 yrs. (SD = 0.6), 54% female, 49% Hispanic). We obtained the tweets that those respondents posted on Twitter, searched the tweets for 14 nicotine- and tobacco-related keywords, and coded these statements as positive or negative/neutral. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine whether respondents who posted positive tobacco-related tweets were more likely to report tobacco product use, relative to those who did not post any positive tobacco-related tweets. Respondents who posted any positive messages about tobacco had significantly higher odds of reporting past month use of cigarettes (OR = 3.15, 95% CI = 1.36, 7.30) and any tobacco product (OR = 2.41, 95% CI = 1.16, 5.01), relative to respondents who did not post about tobacco. This is the first study to establish an empirical link between adolescents' and young adults' tobacco-related Twitter activity and their tobacco product use. Health communications about the risks of tobacco use could target adolescents who post positive messages about tobacco products on Twitter. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Twitter discussions about the predicaments of robots in geriatric nursing: forecast of nursing robotics in aged care.

Science.gov (United States)

Eriksson, Henrik; Salzmann-Erikson, Martin

2018-02-01

People use social media to express perceptions, attitudes and a wide range of concerns regarding human life. This study aims at analysing the ongoing discussions on the internet microblog Twitter and offers some coming predicaments regarding developments in geriatric nursing regarding nursing robots. Data were retrospectively collected from Twitter. 1322 mentions were included in the final analyses, where principles of interpreting data by using netnography were utilized. Many ideas are presented expressing functional, psychological and social aspects of robots in nursing care. Most postings come from metropolitan cities around the globe. The discussion focuses on market-driven, science fiction solutions for aged care. Twitter users overall seem to be positive using various nursing robots in aged care. These discussions offer a window into the attitudes and ideas of this group of users. We suggest that monitoring Twitter discussions on social media can provide valuable insights into current attitudes as well as forecast coming trends.

Twitter Analytics: Are the U.S. Coastal Regions Prepared for Climate Change in 2017?

Science.gov (United States)

Singleton, S. L.; Kumar, S.

2017-12-01

According to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, the Southeast Coast and Gulf Coast of the United States are particularly susceptible to sea level rise, heat waves, hurricanes and less accessibility to clean water due to climate change. This is because of the extreme variation of topography in these two regions. Preparation for climate change consequences can only occur with conversation, which is a method of bringing awareness to the issue. Over the past decade, social media has taken over the spectrum of information exchange in the United States. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a field that is emerging with the growth in popularity of social media. SNA is the practice of analyzing trends in volume and opinion of a population of social media users. Twitter, one popular social media platform, is one of the largest microblogging sites in the world, and it provides an abundance of data related to the trending topics such as climate change. Twitter analytics is a type of SNA performed on data from the tweets of Twitter users. In this work, Twitter analytics is performed on the data generated from the Twitter users in the United States, who were talking about climate change, global warming and/or CO2, over the course of one year (July 2016 - June 2017). Specifically, a regional comparative analysis on the coastal U.S. regions was conducted to recognize which region(s) is/are falling behind on the conversation about climate change. Sentiment analysis was also performed to understand the trends in opinion about climate change that vary over time. Experimental results determined that the southeast coast of the United States is deficient in their discussion about climate change compared to the other coastal regions. Igniting the conversation about this issue in these regions will mitigate the disasters due to climate change by increasing awareness in the people of these regions so they can properly prepare.

Twitter Use and Its Effects on Student Perception of Instructor Credibility

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DeGroot, Jocelyn M.; Young, Valerie J.; VanSlette, Sarah H.

2015-01-01

This study investigates college student perceptions of instructor credibility based on the content of an instructor's Twitterfeed and student beliefs about Twitter as a communication tool. Quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized to explore the effects of three manipulated Twitter feeds (e.g., tweeting social topics, professional topics,…

Clinical Age-Specific Seasonal Conjunctivitis Patterns and Their Online Detection in Twitter, Blog, Forum, and Comment Social Media Posts

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Deiner, Michael S.; McLeod, Stephen D.; Chodosh, James; Oldenburg, Catherine E.; Fathy, Cherie A.; Lietman, Thomas M.; Porco, Travis C.

2018-01-01

Purpose We sought to determine whether big data from social media might reveal seasonal trends of conjunctivitis, most forms of which are nonreportable. Methods Social media posts (from Twitter, and from online forums and blogs) were classified by age and by conjunctivitis type (allergic or infectious) using Boolean and machine learning methods. Based on spline smoothing, we estimated the circular mean occurrence time (a measure of central tendency for occurrence) and the circular variance (a measure of uniformity of occurrence throughout the year, providing an index of seasonality). Clinical records from a large tertiary care provider were analyzed in a similar way for comparison. Results Social media posts machine-coded as being related to infectious conjunctivitis showed similar times of occurrence and degree of seasonality to clinical infectious cases, and likewise for machine-coded allergic conjunctivitis posts compared to clinical allergic cases. Allergic conjunctivitis showed a distinctively different seasonal pattern than infectious conjunctivitis, with a mean occurrence time later in the spring. Infectious conjunctivitis for children showed markedly greater seasonality than for adults, though the occurrence times were similar; no such difference for allergic conjunctivitis was seen. Conclusions Social media posts broadly track the seasonal occurrence of allergic and infectious conjunctivitis, and may be a useful supplement for epidemiologic monitoring. PMID:29450538

Incorporating Social Media into your Support Tool Box: Points to Consider from Genetics-Based Communities.

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Rocha, Heather Mae; Savatt, Juliann M; Riggs, Erin Rooney; Wagner, Jennifer K; Faucett, W Andrew; Martin, Christa Lese

2018-04-01

Patients with newly-described or rare genetic findings are turning to social media to find and connect with others. Blogs, Facebook groups, and Twitter have all been reported as tools for patients to connect with one another. However, the preferences for social media use and privacy among patients, their families, and these communities have not been well characterized. To explore preferences about privacy and membership guidelines, an online survey was administered to two web-based patient registries, Simons Variation in Individuals Project ( www.simonsvipconnect.org ) and GenomeConnect ( www.genomeconnect.org ). Over a three-month period, invitations were sent to 2524 individuals and 103 responses (4%) were received and analyzed. Responses indicate that Facebook is the most popular resource accessed within this sample population (99%). Participants used social media to look for information about their diagnosis or test results (83%), read posts from rare disease groups or organizations (73%), participate in conversations about their diagnosis (67%), and connect with others to find support (58%). Focusing on privacy issues in social media, respondents indicate that membership and access impact the level of comfort in sharing personal or medical information. Nearly 60% of respondents felt uncomfortable sharing photos or medical information within a public Facebook group, whereas only 12% of respondents felt uncomfortable sharing in private group targeted to families alone. Using this preliminary data concerning social media use and privacy, we developed points for genetic counselors to incorporate when discussing available support resources for patients with a new, or rare, genetic diagnosis or genetic test result. Genetic counselors are trained to provide anticipatory guidance to families adapting to new genetic information, and are well-equipped to help patients consider their preferences about using social media as a source of information and support.

Incorporating Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook in Economics Classrooms

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Al-Bahrani, Abdullah; Patel, Darshak

2015-01-01

Social media is one of the most current and dynamic developments in education. In general, the field of economics has lagged behind other disciplines in incorporating technologies in the classroom. In this article, the authors provide a guide for economics educators on how to incorporate Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook inside and outside of the…

Using Twitter for Teaching and Learning in an Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology Course.

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Gonzalez, Shawneen M; Gadbury-Amyot, Cynthia C

2016-02-01

The aim of this study was to describe the implementation of one form of social media (Twitter) in an oral radiology course and evaluate dental students' use and perceptions of this technology for teaching and learning. An author-developed questionnaire was used to solicit second-year students' knowledge, use, and perceptions of Twitter for teaching and learning in an oral radiology course at one U.S. dental school. A combination of Likert scales, multiple allowable answers, and an open-ended comment question was employed. The questionnaire was piloted in spring 2010 followed by data collection in spring 2011. Out of 45 students, 40 (88.9%) completed the questionnaire. Of the respondents, 95% reported having not used Twitter prior to their second year of dental school; 55% of them created an account for the course. The top two reasons they gave for creating an account were viewing radiographic examples and staying informed about questions and answers that were posted. The top two reasons they gave for not creating an account were that the content was viewable online without an account and not wanting another online account. The students perceived the Twitter sessions as helpful and reported it improved accessibility to the instructor. The results of this study challenged the assumption that dental students are well versed in all forms of social media, but overall, these students agreed that the use of Twitter had enhanced the learning environment in the radiology course.

Using support vector machine ensembles for target audience classification on Twitter.

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Lo, Siaw Ling; Chiong, Raymond; Cornforth, David

2015-01-01

The vast amount and diversity of the content shared on social media can pose a challenge for any business wanting to use it to identify potential customers. In this paper, our aim is to investigate the use of both unsupervised and supervised learning methods for target audience classification on Twitter with minimal annotation efforts. Topic domains were automatically discovered from contents shared by followers of an account owner using Twitter Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). A Support Vector Machine (SVM) ensemble was then trained using contents from different account owners of the various topic domains identified by Twitter LDA. Experimental results show that the methods presented are able to successfully identify a target audience with high accuracy. In addition, we show that using a statistical inference approach such as bootstrapping in over-sampling, instead of using random sampling, to construct training datasets can achieve a better classifier in an SVM ensemble. We conclude that such an ensemble system can take advantage of data diversity, which enables real-world applications for differentiating prospective customers from the general audience, leading to business advantage in the crowded social media space.

Using support vector machine ensembles for target audience classification on Twitter.

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Siaw Ling Lo

Full Text Available The vast amount and diversity of the content shared on social media can pose a challenge for any business wanting to use it to identify potential customers. In this paper, our aim is to investigate the use of both unsupervised and supervised learning methods for target audience classification on Twitter with minimal annotation efforts. Topic domains were automatically discovered from contents shared by followers of an account owner using Twitter Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA. A Support Vector Machine (SVM ensemble was then trained using contents from different account owners of the various topic domains identified by Twitter LDA. Experimental results show that the methods presented are able to successfully identify a target audience with high accuracy. In addition, we show that using a statistical inference approach such as bootstrapping in over-sampling, instead of using random sampling, to construct training datasets can achieve a better classifier in an SVM ensemble. We conclude that such an ensemble system can take advantage of data diversity, which enables real-world applications for differentiating prospective customers from the general audience, leading to business advantage in the crowded social media space.

"Back-Stage" Dissent: Student Twitter Use Addressing Instructor Ideology

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Linvill, Darren L.; Boatwright, Brandon C.; Grant, Will J.

2018-01-01

In this content analysis, we explored how students address instructor ideology in the university classroom through the social media platform Twitter. We employed Boolean search operators through Salesforce Marketing Cloud Radian6 software to gather tweets and identified English language tweets by how students referenced their instructor's…

The Source and Credibility of Colorectal Cancer Information on Twitter.

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Park, SoHyun; Oh, Heung-Kwon; Park, Gibeom; Suh, Bongwon; Bae, Woo Kyung; Kim, Jin Won; Yoon, Hyuk; Kim, Duck-Woo; Kang, Sung-Bum

2016-02-01

Despite the rapid penetration of social media in modern life, there has been limited research conducted on whether social media serves as a credible source of health information. In this study, we propose to identify colorectal cancer information on Twitter and assess its informational credibility. We collected Twitter messages containing colorectal cancer-related keywords, over a 3-month period. A review of sample tweets yielded content and user categorization schemes. The results of the sample analysis were applied to classify all collected tweets and users, using a machine learning technique. The credibility of the information in the sampled tweets was evaluated. A total of 76,119 tweets were analyzed. Individual users authored the majority of tweets (n = 68,982, 90.6%). They mostly tweeted about news articles/research (n = 16,761, 22.0%) and risk/prevention (n = 14,767, 19.4%). Medical professional users generated only 2.0% of total tweets (n = 1509), and medical institutions rarely tweeted (n = 417, 0.6%). Organizations tended to tweet more about information than did individuals (85.2% vs 63.1%; P users. Coupled with the Internet's potential to increase social support, Twitter may contribute to enhancing public health and empowering users, when used with proper caution.

Development Impact of Social Media

OpenAIRE

Ackland, Robert; Tanaka, Kyosuke

2015-01-01

This paper assesses the role of social media in social and economic development. The web and in particular, social media such as social network sites (e.g. Facebook) and microblogs (e.g. Twitter), allows ordinary citizens to connect with one another and share information via computer-mediated networks. This behavior is often explicitly or implicitly networked (for example, people ‘friend’ one another on Facebook and ‘follow’ one another on Twitter, leading to the formation of s...

A study to understand the role of social media marketing in an international industrial organisation, and the advantages and disadvantages of using this strategy in the organisation.

OpenAIRE

Ramesh, Deepika

2012-01-01

It is unquestionable that the internet has made a huge impact on the society as a whole. Social media is one such advanced technology tool that has become the latest trends in people’s lives. The success of social media can be seen in terms of the million Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn users. Hence, many companies have started using the various social media platform as a marketing tool in order to capitalise on the benefits of using this tool. This paper hopes to understand the role of social...

Leveraging Twitter to gauge evacuation compliance: Spatiotemporal analysis of Hurricane Matthew.

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Martín, Yago; Li, Zhenlong; Cutter, Susan L

2017-01-01

Hurricane Matthew was the deadliest Atlantic storm since Katrina in 2005 and prompted one of the largest recent hurricane evacuations along the Southeastern coast of the United States. The storm and its projected landfall triggered a massive social media reaction. Using Twitter data, this paper examines the spatiotemporal variability in social media response and develops a novel approach to leverage geotagged tweets to assess the evacuation responses of residents. The approach involves the retrieval of tweets from the Twitter Stream, the creation and filtering of different datasets, and the statistical and spatial processing and treatment to extract, plot and map the results. As expected, peak Twitter response was reached during the pre-impact and preparedness phase, and decreased abruptly after the passage of the storm. A comparison between two time periods-pre-evacuation (October 2th-4th) and post-evacuation (October 7th-9th)-indicates that 54% of Twitter users moved away from the coast to a safer location, with observed differences by state on the timing of the evacuation. A specific sub-state analysis of South Carolina illustrated overall compliance with evacuation orders and detailed information on the timing of departure from the coast as well as the destination location. These findings advance the use of big data and citizen-as-sensor approaches for public safety issues, providing an effective and near real-time alternative for measuring compliance with evacuation orders.

Leveraging Twitter to gauge evacuation compliance: Spatiotemporal analysis of Hurricane Matthew.

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Yago Martín

Full Text Available Hurricane Matthew was the deadliest Atlantic storm since Katrina in 2005 and prompted one of the largest recent hurricane evacuations along the Southeastern coast of the United States. The storm and its projected landfall triggered a massive social media reaction. Using Twitter data, this paper examines the spatiotemporal variability in social media response and develops a novel approach to leverage geotagged tweets to assess the evacuation responses of residents. The approach involves the retrieval of tweets from the Twitter Stream, the creation and filtering of different datasets, and the statistical and spatial processing and treatment to extract, plot and map the results. As expected, peak Twitter response was reached during the pre-impact and preparedness phase, and decreased abruptly after the passage of the storm. A comparison between two time periods-pre-evacuation (October 2th-4th and post-evacuation (October 7th-9th-indicates that 54% of Twitter users moved away from the coast to a safer location, with observed differences by state on the timing of the evacuation. A specific sub-state analysis of South Carolina illustrated overall compliance with evacuation orders and detailed information on the timing of departure from the coast as well as the destination location. These findings advance the use of big data and citizen-as-sensor approaches for public safety issues, providing an effective and near real-time alternative for measuring compliance with evacuation orders.

Tracking Gauteng thunderstorms using Crowdsourced Twitter data between Soweto and Pretoria

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Laurie Butgereit

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Summer thunderstorms in Gauteng are often dramatic, noisy, wet events. They can appear suddenly on exceptionally hot sunny days travelling fast across the province. With such dramatic arrivals, people often flock to social media sites such as Twitter to comment on the rain, wind, hail, lightning and thunder. This paper investigates the possibility of mapping the track of Gauteng thunderstorms by using crowdsourced data from Twitter. This paper describes a model (entitled the ThunderChatter Model and instantiation of that model which extracts data from Twitter, analyses the textual information for thunderstorm information and plots the appropriate data on a map. For evaluation purposes, these generated maps are then compared against lightning-stroke maps provided by the South African Weather Service. The maps are visually compared by independent people using Content Analysis techniques ensuring unbiased and reproducible results. The results of this research are mixed. For thunderstorms which traverse the strip of land between Soweto and Pretoria more or less correlated to the N1 highway (and representing the most heavily populated area of Gauteng and the area with the highest percentage of home Internet facilities, the results are excellent. However, in outlying areas of Gauteng such as Carletonville, Heidelberg, Hammanskraal and Bronkhorstspruit, the thunderstorms are only trackable using crowdsourced Twitter data in the case of extreme storms which damage property. The results imply that data obtained from social media could be used in some cases to supplement geographical data obtained from traditional sources.

Applying linguistic methods to understanding smoking-related conversations on Twitter.

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Sanders-Jackson, Ashley; Brown, Cati G; Prochaska, Judith J

2015-03-01

Social media, such as Twitter, have become major channels of communication and commentary on popular culture, including conversations on our nation's leading addiction: tobacco. The current study examined Twitter conversations following two tobacco-related events in the media: (1) President Obama's doctor announcing that he had quit smoking and (2) the release of a photograph of Miley Cyrus (a former Disney child star) smoking a cigarette. With a focus on high-profile individuals whose actions can draw public attention, we aimed to characterise tobacco-related conversations as an example of tobacco-related public discourse and to present a novel methodology for studying social media. Tweets were collected 11-13 November 2011 (President Obama) and 1-3 August 2011 (Miley Cyrus) and analysed for relative frequency of terms, a novel application of a linguistic methodology. The President Obama data set (N=2749 tweets) had conversations about him quitting tobacco as well as a preponderance of information on political activity, links to websites, racialised terms and mention of marijuana. Websites and terms about Obama's smoke-free status were most central to the conversation. In the Miley Cyrus data (N=4746 tweets), terms that occurred with the greatest relative frequency were positive, emotional and supportive of quitting (eg, love, and please), with words such as 'love' most central to the conversation. People are talking about tobacco-related issues on Twitter, and semantic network analysis can be used to characterise on-line conversations. Future interventions may be able to harness social media and major current events to raise awareness of smoking-related issues. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Social media as a risk communication tool following Typhoon Haiyan

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Christine Tiffany Cool

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Problem: In the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, the World Health Organization (WHO Representative Office in the Philippines had no social media presence to share timely, relevant public health information. Context: Risk communication is essential to emergency management for public health message dissemination. As social media sites, such as Facebook, are popular in the Philippines, these were adopted for risk communication during the response to Haiyan. Action and outcome: The WHO Representative Office in the Philippines established Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Thirty days after these social medial channels were established, a gradual increase in followers was observed. Facebook saw the largest increase in followers which occurred as posted content gradually evolved from general public health information to more pro-active public health intervention and preparedness messaging. This included information on key health interventions encouraging followers to adopt protective behaviours to mitigate public health threats that frequently occur after a disaster. Lessons learnt: During the response to Haiyan, creating a social media presence, raising a follower base and developing meaningful messages and content was possible. This event underscored the importance of building a social media strategy in non-emergency times and supported the value of developing public health messages and content that both educates and interests the general public.

Social media as a risk communication tool following Typhoon Haiyan.

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Cool, Christine Tiffany; Claravall, Marie Chantal; Hall, Julie Lyn; Taketani, Keisuke; Zepeda, John Paul; Gehner, Monika; Lawe-Davies, Olivia

2015-01-01

In the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, the World Health Organization (WHO) Representative Office in the Philippines had no social media presence to share timely, relevant public health information. Risk communication is essential to emergency management for public health message dissemination. As social media sites, such as Facebook, are popular in the Philippines, these were adopted for risk communication during the response to Haiyan. The WHO Representative Office in the Philippines established Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Thirty days after these social medial channels were established, a gradual increase in followers was observed. Facebook saw the largest increase in followers which occurred as posted content gradually evolved from general public health information to more pro-active public health intervention and preparedness messaging. This included information on key health interventions encouraging followers to adopt protective behaviours to mitigate public health threats that frequently occur after a disaster. During the response to Haiyan, creating a social media presence, raising a follower base and developing meaningful messages and content was possible. This event underscored the importance of building a social media strategy in non-emergency times and supported the value of developing public health messages and content that both educates and interests the general public.

Bullying and Mobbing in Academe: Challenges for Distance Education and Social Media Applications

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Oravec, Jo Ann

2012-01-01

Bullying and mobbing are migrating to online realms, intensifying the damage involved and increasing the complexities of these issues. Social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) are intensely communal in many senses; they may serve to increase the negative aspects of bullying and mobbing as well as provide community-oriented tools for mitigation.…

Twitter Sentiment Analysis Applied to Finance: A Case Study in the Retail Industry

OpenAIRE

Th\\'arsis Tuani Pinto Souza; Olga Kolchyna; Philip C. Treleaven; Tomaso Aste

2015-01-01

This paper presents a financial analysis over Twitter sentiment analytics extracted from listed retail brands. We investigate whether there is statistically-significant information between the Twitter sentiment and volume, and stock returns and volatility. Traditional newswires are also considered as a proxy for the market sentiment for comparative purpose. The results suggest that social media is indeed a valuable source in the analysis of the financial dynamics in the retail sector even whe...

Using Twitter to Understand Public Perceptions Regarding the #HPV Vaccine: Opportunities for Public Health Nurses to Engage in Social Marketing.

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Keim-Malpass, Jessica; Mitchell, Emma M; Sun, Emily; Kennedy, Christine

2017-07-01

Given the degree of public mistrust and provider hesitation regarding the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, it is important to explore how information regarding the vaccine is shared online via social media outlets. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the content of messaging regarding the HPV vaccine on the social media and microblogging site Twitter, and describe the sentiment of those messages. This study utilized a cross-sectional descriptive approach. Over a 2-week period, Twitter content was searched hourly using key terms "#HPV and #Gardasil," which yielded 1,794 Twitter posts for analysis. Each post was then analyzed individually using an a priori coding strategy and directed content analysis. The majority of Twitter posts were written by lay consumers and were sharing commentary about a media source. However, when actual URLs were shared, the most common form of share was linking back to a blog post written by lay users. The vast majority of content was presented as polarizing (either as a positive or negative tweet), with 51% of the Tweets representing a positive viewpoint. Using Twitter to understand public sentiment offers a novel perspective to explore the context of health communication surrounding certain controversial issues. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Use of Twitter in Large Lecture Courses: Do the Students See a Benefit?

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Ross, Heather M.; Banow, Ryan; Yu, Stan

2015-01-01

The purpose of this two-year quantitative study was to determine the usefulness of the micro-blogging tool Twitter in large classes for improving the students' sense of community and belonging. Three instructors of large classes were recruited to test the outcomes of using Twitter as a learning tool, one each from the Departments of Geography and…

Tweeting the Meeting: Twitter Use at The American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting 2013-2016.

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Attai, Deanna J; Radford, Diane M; Cowher, Michael S

2016-10-01

Twitter social media is being used to disseminate medical meeting information. Meeting attendees and other interested parties have the ability to follow and participate in conversations related to meeting content. We analyzed Twitter activity generated from the 2013-2016 American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meetings. The Symplur Signals database was used to determine number of tweets, tweets per user, and impressions for each meeting. The number of unique physicians, patients/caregivers/advocates, and industry participants was determined. Physician tweeters were cross-referenced with membership and attendance rosters. Tweet transcripts were analyzed for content and tweets were categorized as either scientific, social, administrative, industry promotion, or irrelevant. From 2013 to 2016, the number of tweets increased by 600 %, the number of Twitter users increased by 450 %, and the number of physician tweeters increased by 457 %. The number of impressions (tweets × followers) increased from more than 3.5 million to almost 20.5 million, an increase of 469 %. The majority of tweets were informative (70-80 %); social tweets ranged from 13 to 23 %. A small percentage (3-6 %) of tweets were related to administrative matters. There were very few industry or irrelevant tweets. Twitter social media use at the American Society of Breast Surgeons annual meeting showed a substantial increase during the time period evaluated. The use of Twitter during professional meetings is a tremendous opportunity to share information. The authors feel that medical conference organizers should encourage Twitter participation and should be educating attendees on the proper use of Twitter.

Morphological Adaptation of English Loanwords in Twitter: Educational Implications

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Dashti, Fatimah; Dashti, Abdulmohsen A.

2017-01-01

The influx of English borrowed items into Kuwait has recently considerably increased, driven by both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, mainly through new electronic media, and direct contact with the donor language. Kuwaitis, especially, the new generation heavily make use of English loanwords in mobile devices applications such as Twitter,…

Army Social Media: Harnessing the Power of Networked Communications

Science.gov (United States)

2011-09-01

Social Networking : – Facebook – MySpace – Friendster 9/1/2011 Content sharing: -You Tube -Flickr -Vimeo -Photobucket Collaborating/ knowledge...Americans use social media tools and Web sites monthly Social networking is now the #1 activity on the web • Twitter: 54 Million users • Facebook ...anyone you don’t know on Facebook or social networking platforms -Don’t post deployment information, when you’re going on vacation or when

The Impact of Twitter and Facebook on Nursing Practice and Education: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

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Asiri, Hanan; Househ, Mowafa

2016-01-01

This systematic review aims to answer the following question: What is the impact of Twitter and Facebook on nursing practice and education? Any article that was written in English and was published in PubMed and Computers Informatics Nursing (CIN) journal from 2011 up to 2016 and discussed the impact of Twitter and Facebook on nursing practice and education was included, while any opinion and review articles were excluded. The results show three themes that are covered by the literature: (1) using social media to enhance students' confidence and /or self-efficacy, (2) characteristics of nurses who use social media, and (3) preferred modes of communication. Further research is still needed to reveal the impact of Twitter and Facebook on nursing education as well as other specialties of nursing practice.

Air Twitter: Mashing Crowdsourced Air Quality Event Identification with Scientific Earth Observations (Invited)

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Robinson, E. M.

2010-12-01

The ability to easily expose content through the web using social media sites like YouTube, Flickr, Blogger and Delicious have given the Earth a “skin” of photos, videos and citizen reporting that enhance our understanding ofour surroundings. Businesses are taking advantage of this constant stream of information by “listening” to the social-media chatter on the web. Social listening allows businesses to better identify their customers and provide tailored service to that group. News agencies are also using social listening techniques and have implemented sites like iReport, since it is more and more likely that citizen reporters will ‘break’ news stories and identify major events. Scientist can benefit from social listening as well. Community remote sensing can incorporate the new and evolving social media ‘sensors’ along with remotely sensed surface and satellite data to provide another dimension of contextual understanding about what is occurring in the natural environment. Air Quality (AQ) events such as fires and dust storms are highly visible and impact daily life, thus the pictures, videos, blogs and tweets are shared through web within minutes of the event occurring. Air Twitter is a social media listening tool that aggregates user generated content from around the web that are described using terms like air quality, fire and smoke. Air twitter then filters content further for outdoor air quality and then binds to the content by tagging the filtered stream with #AirQuality. This stream is retweeted through a separate twitter account for the ESIP Air Quality WG (@ESIPAQWG). A unique and unexpected outcome of this is that it has allowed a community of over 1250+ people to follow this stream. Followers include Gov. Schwarzenegger and Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, as well as many local communities AQ agencies that publish their real-time surface monitoring data through Twitter. The aggregated Air Twitter stream is also saved in a database

Twitter Activity Associated With U.S. News and World Report Reputation Scores for Urology Departments.

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Ciprut, Shannon; Curnyn, Caitlin; Davuluri, Meena; Sternberg, Kevan; Loeb, Stacy

2017-10-01

To analyze the association between US urology department Twitter presence and U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) reputation scores, to examine the content, informational value, and intended audience of these platforms, and to identify objectives for Twitter use. We identified Twitter accounts for urology departments scored in the 2016-2017 USNWR. Correlation coefficients were calculated between Twitter metrics (number of followers, following, tweets, and Klout influence scores) with USNWR reputation scores. We also performed a detailed content analysis of urology department tweets during a 6-month period to characterize the content. Finally, we distributed a survey to the urology department accounts via Twitter, inquiring who administers the content, and their objectives for Twitter use. Among 42 scored urology departments with Twitter accounts, the median number of followers, following, and tweets were 337, 193, and 115, respectively. All of these Twitter metrics had a statistically significant positive correlation with reputation scores (P twitter use among urology departments was visibility and reputation, and urologists are considered the most important target audience. There is statistically significant correlation between Twitter activity and USNWR reputation scores for urology departments. Our results suggest that Twitter provides a novel mechanism for urology departments to communicate about academic and educational topics, and social media engagement can enhance reputation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mining for Social Media: Usage Patterns of Small Businesses

OpenAIRE

Balan, Shilpa; Rege, Janhavi

2017-01-01

Background: Information can now be rapidly exchanged due to social media. Due to its openness, Twitter has generated massive amounts of data. In this paper, we apply data mining and analytics to extract the usage patterns of social media by small businesses. Objectives: The aim of this paper is to describe with an example how data mining can be applied to social media. This paper further examines the impact of social media on small businesses. The Twitter posts related to small businesses are...

The Use of Social Media in SMEs: A Case Study for Burdur, Turkey

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Adnan Kalkan

2017-10-01

Full Text Available In today’s business world, social media tools (i.e. facebook, twitter, Linkedin, etc. begin to play an important role in reaching and communicating with customers for businesses. However, the importance of using social media can’t be still understood by SMEs so far. Businesses use different social media tools in various purposes in their life. In this research we aim to investigate the ideas of SMEs about social media and their aims of using social media tools. Data were collected from SMEs operating in Burdur by simple random sampling. The data obtained from the 84 questionnaires was entered to computer and statistical analysis was carried out by using SPSS 20 statistical program. In this study, reliability analysis was used firstly. Then, some descriptive analyses were carried out about using social media for SMEs. Finally, a frequency table regarding the social media usage in SMEs was given. As a result, it was seen that 82.1% of SMEs participating in this study have a social network page. Secondly, SMEs are using facebook social media network mostly. In addition, SMEs have expressed that they attend all statements involved in the use of social media scale.

Identifying Sentiment of Hookah-Related Posts on Twitter.

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Allem, Jon-Patrick; Ramanujam, Jagannathan; Lerman, Kristina; Chu, Kar-Hai; Boley Cruz, Tess; Unger, Jennifer B

2017-10-18

The increasing popularity of hookah (or waterpipe) use in the United States and elsewhere has consequences for public health because it has similar health risks to that of combustible cigarettes. While hookah use rapidly increases in popularity, social media data (Twitter, Instagram) can be used to capture and describe the social and environmental contexts in which individuals use, perceive, discuss, and are marketed this tobacco product. These data may allow people to organically report on their sentiment toward tobacco products like hookah unprimed by a researcher, without instrument bias, and at low costs. This study describes the sentiment of hookah-related posts on Twitter and describes the importance of debiasing Twitter data when attempting to understand attitudes. Hookah-related posts on Twitter (N=986,320) were collected from March 24, 2015, to December 2, 2016. Machine learning models were used to describe sentiment on 20 different emotions and to debias the data so that Twitter posts reflected sentiment of legitimate human users and not of social bots or marketing-oriented accounts that would possibly provide overly positive or overly negative sentiment of hookah. From the analytical sample, 352,116 tweets (59.50%) were classified as positive while 177,537 (30.00%) were classified as negative, and 62,139 (10.50%) neutral. Among all positive tweets, 218,312 (62.00%) were classified as highly positive emotions (eg, active, alert, excited, elated, happy, and pleasant), while 133,804 (38.00%) positive tweets were classified as passive positive emotions (eg, contented, serene, calm, relaxed, and subdued). Among all negative tweets, 95,870 (54.00%) were classified as subdued negative emotions (eg, sad, unhappy, depressed, and bored) while the remaining 81,667 (46.00%) negative tweets were classified as highly negative emotions (eg, tense, nervous, stressed, upset, and unpleasant). Sentiment changed drastically when comparing a corpus of tweets with social bots

The use of social media in pharmacy practice and education.

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Benetoli, Arcelio; Chen, Timothy F; Aslani, Parisa

2015-01-01

Social media is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. It has significant potential as a health communication and educational tool, and may provide a medium for the delivery of health-related services. This systematic review aimed to investigate the use of social media in professional pharmacy practice and pharmacy education, and includes an evaluation of the research designs utilized. Medline, Embase, PubMed, IPA, and CINAHL databases were broadly searched for peer-reviewed research studies about pharmacy and social media (SM). The search was restricted to years 2000 to June 2013, with no other restrictions applied. Key words used were within three concept areas: "social media" and "pharmacist or student" and "pharmacy." Twenty-four studies met the inclusion criteria. SM was broadly addressed as a general concept in 3 of the 24 studies. The other 21 studies investigated/used specific SM tools. Fourteen of those addressed social networking sites (SNS), four wikis, two blogs, and one Twitter. The studies' foci were to describe SM use (n = 17 studies) by pharmacist, pharmacy educators, and pharmacy students and investigate usage related topics (such as e-professionalism and student-educator boundary issues); or the use of SM as an educational tool in pharmacy education (n = 7). Pharmacy students were the subject of 12 studies, pharmacists of six, and faculty members and administrators of four. Survey methods were used in 17 studies, alone or with an additional method; focus groups were used in two; interviews in one; and direct observation of social media activity in seven. Results showed that SM in general and SNS in particular were used mainly for personal reasons. Wikis, Facebook, and Twitter were used as educational tools in pharmacy education with positive feedback from students. Research investigating the use of SM in the practice of pharmacy is growing; however, it is predominantly descriptive in nature with no controlled studies identified. Although some

Tweeting Supertyphoon Haiyan: Evolving Functions of Twitter during and after a Disaster Event

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David, Clarissa C.; Ong, Jonathan Corpus; Legara, Erika Fille T.

2016-01-01

When disaster events capture global attention users of Twitter form transient interest communities that disseminate information and other messages online. This paper examines content related to Typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda) as it hit the Philippines and triggered international humanitarian response and media attention. It reveals how Twitter conversations about disasters evolve over time, showing an issue attention cycle on a social media platform. The paper examines different functions of Twitter and the information hubs that drive and sustain conversation about the event. Content analysis shows that the majority of tweets contain information about the typhoon or its damage, and disaster relief activities. There are differences in types of content between the most retweeted messages and posts that are original tweets. Original tweets are more likely to come from ordinary users, who are more likely to tweet emotions, messages of support, and political content compared with official sources and key information hubs that include news organizations, aid organization, and celebrities. Original tweets reveal use of the site beyond information to relief coordination and response. PMID:27019425

Tweeting Supertyphoon Haiyan: Evolving Functions of Twitter during and after a Disaster Event.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Clarissa C David

Full Text Available When disaster events capture global attention users of Twitter form transient interest communities that disseminate information and other messages online. This paper examines content related to Typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda as it hit the Philippines and triggered international humanitarian response and media attention. It reveals how Twitter conversations about disasters evolve over time, showing an issue attention cycle on a social media platform. The paper examines different functions of Twitter and the information hubs that drive and sustain conversation about the event. Content analysis shows that the majority of tweets contain information about the typhoon or its damage, and disaster relief activities. There are differences in types of content between the most retweeted messages and posts that are original tweets. Original tweets are more likely to come from ordinary users, who are more likely to tweet emotions, messages of support, and political content compared with official sources and key information hubs that include news organizations, aid organization, and celebrities. Original tweets reveal use of the site beyond information to relief coordination and response.

Profiling Twitter Activists: The Protests Against the Republic of Croatia’s Government

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mato Brautović

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Twitter s a social network and a microblogging service. Examples from Iran, Tunisia and Egypt have shown the possibilities of using Twitter as a platform for activism. This research looks at the manner in which Croatian activists use this tool and how such users and uses are distinct from average users. This paper establishes that activist users differ vastly from average Twitter users. Activist users have a significantly higher number of friends and followers. An increase in the number of friends leads to an increase in the number of followers (and vice versa. In addition, activist users publish a large number of posts regardless of their follower number, even though that number is significantly higher than that of friends. Activist users forward interesting information more often, while they disregard Twitter as a tool for conversation or coordination. Still, activist users and average users are similar in regard to the poster’s profile and posting quantity. Both categories of users follow the power-law distribution.

Social Media Engagement and the Critical Care Medicine Community.

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Barnes, Sean S; Kaul, Viren; Kudchadkar, Sapna R

2018-01-01

Over the last decade, social media has transformed how we communicate in the medical community. Microblogging through platforms such as Twitter has made social media a vehicle for succinct, targeted, and innovative dissemination of content in critical care medicine. Common uses of social media in medicine include dissemination of information, knowledge acquisition, professional networking, and patient advocacy. Social media engagement at conferences represents all of these categories and is often the first time health-care providers are introduced to Twitter. Most of the major critical care medicine conferences, journals, and societies leverage social media for education, research, and advocacy, and social media users can tailor the inflow of content based on their own interests. From these interactions, networks and communities are built within critical care medicine and beyond, overcoming the barriers of physical proximity. In this review, we summarize the history and current status of health-care social media as it relates to critical care medicine and provide a primer for those new to health-care social media with a focus on Twitter, one of the most popular microblogging platforms.

Hello, world: Harnessing social media for the Rosetta mission

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Baldwin, Emily; Mignone, Claudia; O'Flaherty, Karen; Homfeld, Anne-Mareike; Bauer, Markus; McCaughrean, Mark

2015-04-01

The European Space Agency's (ESA) comet-chasing Rosetta mission was launched in 2004, before social media became a popular tool for mainstream communication. By harnessing a range of platforms for communicating the key messages of this unprecedented mission as it reached its destination ten years later, new audiences were reached and a global impact was achieved. Rosetta-specific social media accounts - @ESA_Rosetta on Twitter, the Rosetta Mission Facebook page and the rosettamission Instagram account - were developed during 2013/14 and used alongside the traditional reporting line of the main ESA website and the Rosetta blog to build awareness about the mission. Coordinated with ESA's existing social media channels (Flickr, YouTube, G+, Twitter, Facebook and Livestream) and with the support of ESA's country desks and Rosetta partner agency accounts (including @philae2014), information could be shared in a number of European languages, ensuring a wide reach across Europe - and the world. We discuss the roles of the various social media accounts in supporting and promoting the competitions and social media campaigns that were built around the key mission milestones of 2014: waking up from deep space hibernation (January), arriving at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (August) and naming the landing site for Philae ahead of the landing event in November. We discuss the different approach to each channel, such as the first person twitter accounts, the dialogue with and between blog users, and the discussions held live via G+ Hangouts with leading scientists and spacecraft operators. We compare and contrast the audiences, the interaction we had with them and how challenges were overcome. We also use the science-fiction-meets-science-fact Ambition short movie, and its "undercover" dissemination on social media, as an example of how the profile of the Rosetta mission was raised in a unique way. By using a variety of social media platforms to target different audiences with