Title: All Atwitter About Radiation Oncology: A Content Analysis of Radiation Oncology-related Traffic on Twitter
Abstract: Twitter, a social networking service with over 462 million users, has been used to predict stock market fluctuations, follow natural disasters, and monitor disease spread. However, little is known about how tweets are used to disseminate information relating to Radiation Oncology. Using Twitter, we evaluated the online content, links, topics addressed, and users tweeting about radiation oncology to determine the quantity and quality of the subject matter discussed on the Twitter platform. We chose nine radiation oncology related search terms and used the Archivist to record Twitter traffic over a consecutive 3-day period in January 2012. Tweets were analyzed to catalogue the tweet content, content of links posted, and user demographics. We identified 1,093 tweets related to radiation oncology. Most frequently, tweet content was "disseminating information" (67.2%), followed by "sharing personal experiences" (13.4%), and "advertisements" (8.7%). 26.4% of tweets had a positive content tone, 31.2% had a negative tone, and 42.3% had a neutral tone. The majority of tweets (78.8%) included links to external websites, of which the most common source was "general media" (48.7%). Of the links posted that evaluated radiation therapy (78.3%), 41.2% were positive, 34.3% were negative, and 24.5% were neutral. The most common cancer tweeted about or linked to was "prostate/genitourinary" (18.8% of tweets), followed by "breast" (16.7%), and "head and neck" (13.7%) malignancies. The most common type of radiation therapy discussed was "proton" (20.5%), followed by "EBRT" (14.4%), and "IMRT" (13.4%). Demographic information was available for 66.9% of users, with 65.7% from North America and 20.9% from Europe. Most evaluable users were "businesses" (15.9%). 11.9% were "M.D.s or medical students," and 5.5% were "non-M.D." medical professionals. This study is the first to evaluate the dissemination of information regarding radiation oncology on a large international social media platform. We found that most of the links posted in this venue came from general media sources rather than peer-reviewed journals. Also, the goal of most tweets seemed to be to share information, rather than personal experiences, and more tweets had a negative tone, though links posted tended to be more positive. Importantly, a minority come from doctors. Medical and professional societies in radiation oncology may benefit from studies such as this in order to better understand public opinion. As social media outlets, such as Twitter, continue to gain popularity, the specialty should closely monitor the applicable user activity and consider social media as an avenue to disseminate information and influence public attitudes towards radiation oncology.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 3
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