Introduction
Methods
Results
Demographics of participants
Platform | Best practices | Examples mentioned |
---|---|---|
Twitter | Users may find it prudent to divide out different accounts for different usages. Some suggested divisions: – Person-level professional account – Group/Institutional – Research Team | Group/Institution: @WeAreCanadiEM (www.canadiem.org) Residency Program account Departmental account |
Research Team: @METRIQstudy (www.metriqstudy.org) | ||
When engaging in social media promotion of research, consider the following practices when generating a tweet: – Include an image in the tweet – Use descriptive language – Tag people involved – Tagging related organizations or granting agencies involved in the work – Tagging the journal that the article was published within – Using hashtags to join the right conversation Advanced concepts include: – Tweet chats | Understand the nuances between accounts. Have a clear intent and purpose for each account | |
“You have to be aware of what the purpose of each account is and certainly the purpose of my department’s account is very different than my account.”—Piper | ||
“I am really deliberate in my use of hashtags. I also try not to spam. (Laughing). So, like three or less hashtags in a tweet… Also, in my communication, I will take tag certain people that I want to make sure that they are aware.”—Grace | ||
Facebook | Person-level account | N/A |
Facebook pages—Group/Institutional | CanadiEM Facebook Page | |
Instagram | Group/Institutional | PEM Morsels CanadiEM |
Closed social platform | Used for within team communication to enhance the functioning of a team of social media users or producers (e.g. blog community) | Groups using Slack: ALiEM CanadiEM |
Blog | Used for housing general summaries and disseminative works, but also to release new scholarly contributions via a digital platform. | “… we have been producing a case of the week. And disseminating that internationally with our pathology residents and fellows … using blogging platform to do that with the question. It is a short snippet of the case—80 words or less. It has an image or digital image. Like a digital scan and pathology slide as well as the question that goes with it. So that is another way that we have used social media for learners and also for our faculty.”—Grace |
Podcasts | A possible outlet for digital scholarship and academic output. Can be used as its own free-standing academic output, since it is seen as digital scholarship | EM Basic (for junior trainees) EM Guidewire (involves residents) |
Other platforms mentioned without good practice advice: Reddit, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Blogs, Read by QX, ResearchGate |
Good practice | Explanatory quote |
---|---|
Use common sense | “I guess it is fairly straightforward. Just don’t be an idiot… I don’t know I guess I don’t do heaps and heaps of tweeting myself but if I am responding to somebody it will usually be to make sure that I say something positive or say nothing at all.”—Sheila |
Clearly identifying yourself, including conflicts of interest | “I clearly identify myself as my Twitter handle is not my name, but my name is on my Twitter profile. And yeah, I think that is pretty straightforward… like, just behave properly.”—Sheila |
“It’s just really thinking about your profile is a best practice. Just thinking about being transparent to the community [about] who you are and … what you are going to be communicating about in that social media platform. So, [regarding] your presence in your profile, I think another best practice that I really try and think about and encourage other people to think about as well.”—Grace | |
Aligned with self and institution | “I’ve tried to make all of my intentions honorable and things that I would be proud of representing and that would reflect on my institution and institutions in a positive way. And so, my interactions again are founded on what is going to be best for patient care and kindness and making my intentions honorable. And so those are all things that I think of as core values that the institutions that I am affiliated with … support.”—Edward |
Understand the intention of each account in each platform | “I am a big believer in aligning my technology with my goals that I want to achieve. And also separating personal and professional. So, I chose Twitter because at the time it was where I was connecting with people in medical education, finding that it seems like that is where the audience that I wanted to connect with professionally was currently at. I felt like Facebook was more personal. Um, and that Instagram and other, and Instagram especially I guess was just starting to emerge when I was working with getting myself established in medical education. Um, now have I moved to Instagram. I use Instagram, um, more to help I guess personal[ly], but I guess some I had done some work connecting with other professionals on it just a little. Slack is one that I use …”—Grace |
Maintaining respect | “I think in general you try to um, be polite and professional. Like I don’t necessarily think delving into in depth articles on Twitter is necessary or appropriate, um, however responding to people who are having questions or being critical of things I think it is a very reasonable way to go. And [I] try to do it in a respectful way… And that can be productive [in] conversation”—Trevor |
Stay positive | “if I am responding to somebody, it will usually be to make sure that I say something positive or say nothing at all.”—Sheila |
“… always assume that if there is two ways to read something then thinking the kinder way is the way that somebody wants you to read it; I think it is a good rule of thumb because you know like I said, it is hard to interpret tone.”—Anthony | |
“So, [an important aspect is] being respectful, you know only saying things that you would say to other people for the most part being particularly I would say from a department account you know being very positive about all of the people that you work with. I think kind of from a formal account, really you probably have to be positive, [an] uplifting voice.”—Piper | |
Avoid arguments | “I am always surprised at how argumentative some people get. And I think that is a little bit of a shame because I don’t think that … sort of reflects well and this idea about somewhere in between you know maintaining some appropriate composure versus being a skeptic and questioning things. And there are definitely some people who do a good job of that and some people that don’t.”—Sheila |
Knowing when to end a conversation | “If there are people that are engaging that seem to have a substantial agenda, then I am more likely to not continue the conversation for long while still being respectful and just [stop] interacting.”—Trevor |
Anticipate trolls | “I mean you will occasionally get trolled by negative people…I thankfully haven’t had too much with that but every once in a while, something that I put it out on #1, some naysayer will put something negative or sort of like oh it is just like #6 to do something like this.”—Paula |
“You know there [are] always trolls, right? But I think of one, so before I hit publish on anything, I am like super critical of myself first. So, I think if you already are highly concerned about the words that you use and the product that you are publishing then you are going to find that most people are not out there to be obstinate and/or aggressively negative. And if there is a question then usually it is raised with a more honest and um, straightforward inquiry rather than being malicious.”—Harold | |
Engage across silos | “I tried to actively engage others across multiple specialties and disciplines. So not just emergency physicians but other physicians, and not just physicians but nurses and technologists and the public. So, it is mostly I think the fact that I tried to cross barriers that might otherwise limit the scope of other people who are on social media.”—Roger |
Amplify others | “if there was someone that I know that is doing something cool or having something awesome to happen then I might favorite that or retweet that.”—Trevor |
“I tried to disseminate most of the work that we publish. I try to, anything that we publish that I think is worth making people aware of, I will put a plug in for it. Sometimes I will do a Twitter thread if it is a particularly important study. And I will often tag junior investigators or colleagues to increase their follower count.”—Nadir |
Key themes
1) Understanding the nuances of specific platforms
2) Social media team management
3) Online engagement strategies
I try and really welcome people. And make sure that when engaging them and there is somebody new in a social media environment, um, synchronous or asynchronous discussion, I make sure to welcome that person … I try and think about netiquette [sic]. And helping people feel successful when they are using social media …
I have a sense of who I want to read it. And so, if I want the general public to read it then I minimize the jargon and I make it sort of you know interesting to people who are non-medical. But if I want people in my specialty to read it then I don’t mind getting extremely technical.
I tend to not respond emotively [sic] to anything. If I like something, I will like it. Or I may put a fairly neutral response like: “we have done something similar have a look at this paper”. Rather than saying “you know you’re wrong and we are right for these reasons …”’
4) Techniques for effective knowledge sharing
… we try to make sure that we explain sort of the basics instead of just assuming because we know we have a lot of medical student listeners and a lot of early resident listeners, in addition to career emergency physicians. And so, we’ve tried to cover the gamut by covering stuff that is interesting to us as … docs but then also to go into a little bit of the sort of basics to an extent, to kind of address the [other audience groups].
… the other kind of variety of content that I seem to be producing most of these days is like infographics for translation of our research findings … [infographic creation] requires you to do is really distil down what this big study is about … really, it gets you thinking: ‘what is the impact of what we have done?’ … ‘[H]ow do I want to share and frame that for people?’ So, when I do those it ends up being a bit of a self-reflective process on my paper or my research and what it is bringing to the community.
5) e-Professionalism
6) Potential pitfalls
You know I think the biggest balance is… towing this line between self-promotion and sharing your resource or sharing your research and getting stories out about your studies and about what you think is important … I don’t want to be seen as pushing it at people aggressively … I also want to be seen as humble and thoughtful.
… [T]here is a … reason that the Doctor Oz show is the Doctor Oz [show], and it is not just [titled] talking about some shit [sic] with a guy named Bennett. I mean, there is gravitas. There is a professionalism to being a physician. … [there], is a factor of credibility because anything that I put out there I sign my name to.