{"id":46155,"date":"2014-12-04T15:27:09","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T20:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=46155"},"modified":"2014-12-04T15:33:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T20:33:39","slug":"intent-to-tweet-and-a-failure-of-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2014\/12\/04\/intent-to-tweet-and-a-failure-of-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Intent to Tweet and a Failure of Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>This article was adapted from a piece originally written by\u00a0<\/a><\/em>Larry Husten for<\/em> Forbes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For more than 15 years\u00a0I’ve been trying to figure out\u00a0how\u00a0physicians can get involved with\u00a0social media without devolving into Beliebers. It’s not easy. I often joke that the\u00a0job is a bit like being the social director on a cruise for people with Asperger’s. But here’s the twist: it’s easy<\/em>\u00a0to be the social director on a cruise\u00a0for sorority sisters and fraternity brothers, but you’re not really going to bring anything to the party that they won’t bring themselves. By contrast, those\u00a0Asperger’s cruisers, just like many doctors, really need help making good use of social media.<\/p>\n

A new study published in the venerable\u00a0medical journal\u00a0Circulation<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0a great example of the problems traditional medicine is having trying to figure out\u00a0social media. In this study, the editors of the journal report on a social media experiment. For one year they randomized articles published in Circulation<\/em>\u00a0to social media promotion on Facebook and Twitter\u00a0or no such promotion. The primary endpoint was 30-day page views. The results were very clear. They found no significant difference in the two groups. Here is their conclusion:<\/p>\n

A social media strategy for a cardiovascular journal did not increase the number of times an article was viewed. Further research is necessary to understand the ways in which social media can increase the impact of published cardiovascular research.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, let me say that\u00a0this study was very well performed and that the results are almost certainly valid. Click here to read an excellent, detailed summary of the study by co-author John Ryan.<\/a>\u00a0But the study is also extremely limited. Lee Aase, the director of the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media, wrote an insightful and thoughtful critique<\/a>\u00a0of the study. Among his other observations, he points out that<\/p>\n

This wasn’t really a ‘social media’ vs. ‘no social media’ test. Circulation<\/em> has icons at the bottom of every online article, encouraging readers to share with their social networks.<\/p>\n

Removing those buttons from below the ‘no promotion’ posts would have been a fairer test of social networking’s contribution. Facilitating sharing via these icons is itself a social strategy (and, I would submit, a good one.) The study also didn’t take into account that other institutions may have promoted their authors’ publications via social media.<\/p>\n

The study did test the unique contribution of the Journal’s social accounts to article views. Those selected for promotion were tweeted once by @CircAHA<\/a> and posted to Circulation<\/em>‘s Facebook page<\/a>. Given the diminishing organic reach for Facebook pages and the short half-life of tweets, it’s understandable that posts from one source may not make a statistically significant difference.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aase makes other very useful points. If you are interested in the role of social media in this\u00a0sphere, then you should\u00a0read his entire post.<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u00a0am in complete agreement with Aase. He demonstrates that,\u00a0like so many\u00a0other old-fashioned (and just plain old) members of the medical establishment, the Circulation<\/em> editors\u00a0don’t\u00a0really understand social media.<\/p>\n

Where did the\u00a0Circulation<\/em> editors go wrong? Here’s an example of one recent Circulation\u00a0<\/em>tweet:<\/p>\n

PLN R14del mutation carriers are at high risk for malignant ventricular arrhythmias and end-stage heart failure http:\/\/t.co\/4k8NBtZ4Ul<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Circulation (@CircAHA) August 28, 2014″<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Taylor Swift has nothing to worry about. Of course this kind of tweet\u00a0won’t drive page views. That should be obvious. Look at the last phrase of the\u00a0conclusion of the\u00a0study. The goal of the study was to “increase the impact of published cardiovascular research.” In this antiquated\u00a0view, the whole point of social media is to amplify\u00a0the size of the megaphone that the editors\u00a0already have. As traditional academic leaders, it is their role to tell people in their profession what to read and what to think about when they read it. In other words, to be another example of the top-down model in which they sit at the top.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to argue\u00a0that metrics like page views don’t count, but social media\u00a0should be about more than\u00a0quantity<\/em>. At a more fundamental level, it’s about the quality<\/em> of engagement, the relationship of the site with the user, and vice versa. And it was this aspect that was missing from the\u00a0Circulation<\/em> twitter feed and, of course, wasn’t measured in the study.\u00a0Tweets like this won’t \u2014 can’t \u2014 build a social media\u00a0community. They offer no opportunity or invitation to interact or respond. They take the “social” out of the “media” and leave most people with… well, little or nothing.<\/p>\n

It’s important to acknowledge again\u00a0that social media in this traditional setting\u00a0is really difficult. For many reasons, the overall numbers will never approach \u2014 by several orders of magnitude \u2014 the numbers seen in popular media and the general culture. But, as I started off by saying, it’s important to understand that social media has a crucial role to play in this much smaller sphere. It is precisely because the community is intrinsically small that social media can be valuable. In even the smallest town, Benedict Cumberbatch fans can find people who share their interest. But even at a large research university it’s likely there will only be a very small handful of people who will be interested in precisely the same Circulation<\/em> papers. \u00a0At its best, social media can allow people with extremely narrow interests to find each other, share ideas, and communicate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Larry Husten discusses the challenges those in traditional medicine have with using social media to promote research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1807,2433,247,2432],"class_list":["post-46155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-circulation","tag-facebook","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}