Public engagement with clinical research on social media; which visual medium works best? A 5-year retrospective analysis

Author(s):  
Ciléin Kearns ◽  
Allie Eathorne ◽  
Alex Semprini ◽  
Irene Braithwaite ◽  
Richard Beasley
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Yamada ◽  
Heidi Hudson ◽  
Garrett Burnett ◽  
David W. Ballard ◽  
Jennifer Hall ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sarah Hendrica Bickerton ◽  
Karl Löfgren

Public engagement is a gendered experience, whether offline or online, something which is reflected in women’s experiences of social media. In this article, we seek to systematically explore the experiences from politically engaged women twitter users in New Zealand in order to draw some lessons, through a thematic and interpretative analytical approach, at four different strategic levels on how to deflect intimidating and aggressive behaviour. We conclude that understanding strategically how structural social locations like gender effect the ability to contribute to political participation and engagement, if addressed, can produce more inclusive and productive online political and policy spaces. Further, this strategic approach involves connecting together different levels of response to online negativity such as platform tools, space-curation, and monitoring, having these made coherent with each other, as well as with this strategic understanding of how structural social location plays into access and use of online political and policy spaces.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512110382
Author(s):  
Aimei Yang ◽  
Maureen Taylor

In this study, we explore how a social movement organization ( Sunrise.org ) and its autonomous public community advocated for the Green New Deal on social media. An autonomous public community is a group of publics that initially connect with each other through their engagement with a focal organization. Then, they go on to develop ties among themselves that go beyond simply responding to organizations’ messages. Autonomous public communities are ubiquitous on social media. Our research identifies unique patterns of interactions in an autonomous public community and finds that the Tertius Iungens orientation brings the network together. We also find that while the focal organization is not centralized in an autonomous public community, it still significantly affects tie formation and discourse as the networks evolve. Our study reveals a nuanced understanding of networked organization–public engagement where network structure and discourse are co-created by the organizations and the communities that they engage.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janelle Applequist ◽  
Cristina Burroughs ◽  
Artemio Ramirez ◽  
Peter A. Merkel ◽  
Marc E. Rothenberg ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Participant recruitment for clinical research studies remains a significant challenge for researchers. Novel approaches to recruitment are necessary to ensure that populations are easier to reach. In the context of rare diseases, social media provides a unique opportunity for connecting with patient groups that have representatively lower diagnosis rates when compared with more common maladies. We describe the implementation of designing a patient-centered approach to message design for the purposes of recruiting patients for clinical research studies for rare disease populations. Methods: Using an iterative research approach, we analyzed our previous experience of using web-based direct-to-patient recruitment methods to compare these online strategies with traditional center of excellence recruitment strategies. After choosing six research studies for inclusion in the previous study, in-depth, online interviews ( n = 37) were conducted with patients represented in each disease category to develop and test recruitment message strategies for social media and a Web-based platform for patients to access study information and pre-screen. Finally, relationships were established with Patient Advocacy Groups representing each rare disease category to ensure further dissemination of recruitment materials via their own social media networks. Results: Guided by social marketing theory, we created and tested various recruitment message designs. Three key message concepts preferred by patients emerged: (1) infographic; (2) positive emotional messages; and (3) educational information for sharing. A base study website that was created and edited based on qualitative user-testing. This website includes the option for potential participants to pre-screen and determine their eligibility for the study. Conclusions: Study participants report wanting to be involved in the design and implementation of recruitment approaches for clinical research studies. The application of the aforementioned methods could aide in the evolution of clinical research practices for the recruitment of both rare and common diseases, where patient-centric approaches can help to create targeted messages designs that participants pre-test and support.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reka Solymosi ◽  
Oana Petcu ◽  
Jack Wilkinson

Police agencies globally are seeing an increase in reports of people going missing. These people are often vulnerable, and their safe and early return is a key factor in preventing them from coming to serious harm. One approach to quickly find missing people is to disseminate appeals for information using social media. Yet despite the popularity of twitter-based missing person appeals, presently little is known about how to best construct these messages to ensure they are shared far and wide. This paper aims to build an evidence-base for understanding how police accounts tweet appeals for information about missing persons, and how the public engage with these tweets by sharing them. We analyse 1,008 Tweets made by Greater Manchester Police between the period of 2011 and 2018 in order to investigate what features of the tweet, the twitter account, and the missing person are associated with levels of retweeting. We find that tweets with different choice of image, wording, sentiment, and hashtags vary in how much they are retweeted. Tweets that use custody images have lower retweets than Tweets with regular photos, while tweets asking the question “have you seen...?” and asking explicitly to be retweeted have more engagement in the form of retweets. These results highlight the need for conscientious, evidence-based crafting of missing appeals, and pave the way for further research into the causal mechanisms behind what affects engagement, to develop guidance for police forces worldwide.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Landi ◽  
Antonio Costantini ◽  
Marco Fasan ◽  
Michele Bonazzi

PurposeThe purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate why and how public health agencies employed social media during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to foster public engagement and dialogic accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analysed the official Facebook pages of the leading public agencies for health crisis in Italy, United Kingdom and New Zealand and they collected data on the number of posts, popularity, commitment and followers before and during the outbreak. The authors also performed a content analysis to identify the topics covered by the posts.FindingsEmpirical results suggest that social media has been extensively used as a public engagement tool in all three countries under analysis but – because of legitimacy threats and resource scarcity – it has also been used as a dialogic accounting tool only in New Zealand. Findings suggest that fake news developed more extensively in contexts where the public body did not foster dialogic accounting.Practical implicationsPublic agencies may be interested in knowing the pros and cons of using social media as a public engagement and dialogic accounting tool. They may also leverage on dialogic accounting to limit fake news.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to look at the nature and role of social media as an accountability tool during public health crises. In many contexts, COVID-19 forced for the first time public health agencies to heavily engage with the public and to develop new skills, so this study paves the way for numerous future research ideas.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e28479
Author(s):  
Bryan Lessard

Natural history collections are essential for understanding the world’s biodiversity and drive research in taxonomy, systematics, ecology and biosecurity. One of the biggest challenges faced is the decline of new taxonomists and public interest in collections-based research, which is alarming considering that an estimated 70% of the world’s species are yet to be formally described. Science communication combines public relations with the dissemination of scientific knowledge and offers many benefits to promoting natural history collections to a wide audience. For example, social media has revolutionised the way collections and their staff communicate with the public in real time, and can attract more visitors to collection exhibits and new students interested in natural history. Although not everyone is born a natural science communicator, institutions can encourage and provide training for their staff to become engaging spokespeople skilled in social media and public speaking, including television, radio and/or print media. By embracing science communication, natural history collections can influence their target audiences in a positive and meaningful way, raise the profile of their institution, encourage respect for biodiversity, promote their events and research outputs, seek philanthropic donations, connect with other researchers or industry leaders, and most importantly, inspire the next generation of natural historians.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 814
Author(s):  
Richard D.G. Irvine

This paper draws on digital ethnography to examine the experience of a Catholic English Benedictine monastery in the context of restrictions on religious gatherings during the global COVID-19 pandemic. As the monks expand their digital presence and social media involvement, it is their experience of social withdrawal and apparent expertise in self-isolation that provides the grounding for their public engagement. While Max Weber depicts the monk as a world-transcending “virtuoso”, in a time of lockdown, this separation from the world provides a point of connection with the experience of wider society.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511879772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eszter Hargittai ◽  
Tobias Füchslin ◽  
Mike S. Schäfer

While considerable research has looked at how people use the Internet for sharing and engaging with various types of content from celebrity news to politics, very little of this work has considered how non-specialists interact with science and research material on social media. This article reviews literature on public engagement with science to note that this area is ripe for research on social-media-based engagement in particular. Drawing on a survey of American young adults’ online experiences, we show that using social media for science and research is at least as likely if not more so as engagement with other topics from similarly serious to lighter domains. We also find that platform matters with young adults much more likely to engage with such content on Facebook rather than on Twitter. We end by proposing more focus on this domain in the area of science communication and work on social media.


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