scholarly journals Building a community of practice through social media using the hashtag #neoEBM

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. e0252472
Author(s):  
Amy Keir ◽  
Nicolas Bamat ◽  
Bron Hennebry ◽  
Brian King ◽  
Ravi Patel ◽  
...  

Objectives Social media use is associated with developing communities of practice that promote the rapid exchange of information across traditional institutional and geographical boundaries faster than previously possible. We aimed to describe and share our experience using #neoEBM (Neonatal Evidence Based Medicine) hashtag to organise and build a digital community of neonatal care practice. Materials and methods Analysis of #neoEBM Twitter data in the Symplur Signals database between 1 May 2018 to 9 January 2021. Data on tweets containing the #neoEBM hashtag were analysed using online analytical tools, including the total number of tweets and user engagement. Results Since its registration, a total of 3 228 distinct individual Twitter users used the hashtag with 23 939 tweets and 37 259 710 impressions generated. The two days with the greatest number of tweets containing #neoEBM were 8 May 2018 (n = 218) and 28 April 2019 (n = 340), coinciding with the annual Pediatric Academic Societies meeting. The majority of Twitter users made one tweet using #neoEBM (n = 1078), followed by two tweets (n = 411) and more than 10 tweets (n = 347). The number of individual impressions (views) of tweets containing #neoEBM was 37 259 710. Of the 23 939 tweets using #neoEBM, 17 817 (74%) were retweeted (shared), 15 643 (65%) included at least one link and 1 196 (5%) had at least one reply. As #neoEBM users increased over time, so did tweets containing #neoEBM, with each additional user of the hashtag associated with a mean increase in 7.8 (95% CI 7.7–8.0) tweets containing #neoEBM. Conclusion Our findings support the observation that the #neoEBM community possesses many of the characteristics of a community of practice, and it may be an effective tool to disseminate research findings. By sharing our experiences, we hope to encourage others to engage with or build online digital communities of practice to share knowledge and build collaborative networks across disciplines, institutions and countries.

Author(s):  
Benjamin Toff

This chapter makes the case that the task of engagement for journalism researchers is far more challenging than is typically appreciated. Even provocative research findings must ruthlessly compete for the attention of highly distracted audiences. This chapter outlines results from a small study examining relative rates of social media interactions (e.g., comments, shares, and likes) on Facebook posts made by three organizations that seek to bridge the divide between academia and professional communities of practice—the Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Journalism Lab, and the Poynter Institute. Analysis of what posts do (and do not) receive attention show that although some scholarly research attracts engagement, it pales in comparison to other posts circulated by these same organizations. The findings suggest that translating research in the contemporary media environment requires more innovative and proactive outreach strategies.


Author(s):  
Kim M. Mitchell

This paper argues that social media can function as an informal community of practice in writing scholarship where knowledge is absorbed into a user’s identity and practice through storytelling. Social media has increasingly attracted academics and educators as a method of trialing new research ideas and classroom strategies, seeking early peer review, and as a knowledge translation strategy for sharing research findings. Platforms such as Twitter and blogs work in tandem to provide exposure, encourage reflection, and build community. Storytelling becomes a form of persuasion, through use of literary strategies, to influence change. This argument recognizes how social media writing is situated in a unique genre and requires writing strategies that may be unfamiliar to academic writers. A social media storytelling interlude demonstrates a case of social media persona development for writing scholarship and acts as an example of the voice, tone, and literary strategies of social media writing. The paper concludes with a discussion of strategies aligned with researching the impact of social media on pedagogical practices.


Author(s):  
Bex Lewis ◽  
David Rush

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.Keywords: community of practice; technology steward; microblogging; social media; professional network(Published: 11 June 2013) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2013, 21: 18598 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.18598


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395171876662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Brooker ◽  
Julie Barnett ◽  
John Vines ◽  
Shaun Lawson ◽  
Tom Feltwell ◽  
...  

Increasingly, social media platforms are understood by researchers to be valuable sites of politically-relevant discussions. However, analyses of social media data are typically undertaken by focusing on ‘snapshots’ of issues using query-keyword search strategies. This paper develops an alternative, less issue-based, mode of analysing Twitter data. It provides a framework for working qualitatively with longitudinally-oriented Twitter data (user-timelines), and uses an empirical case to consider the value and the challenges of doing so. Exploring how Twitter users place “everyday” talk around the socio-political issue of UK welfare provision, we draw on digital ethnography and narrative analysis techniques to analyse 25 user-timelines and identify three distinctions in users’ practices: users’ engagements with welfare as TV entertainment or as a socio-political concern; the degree of sustained engagement with said issues, and; the degree to which users’ tweeting practices around welfare were congruent with or in contrast to their other tweets. With this analytic orientation, we demonstrate how a longitudinal analysis of user-timelines provides rich resources that facilitate a more nuanced understanding of user engagement in everyday socio-political discussions online.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Urman ◽  
Stefania Ionescu ◽  
David Garcia ◽  
Anikó Hannák

BACKGROUND Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have been willing to share their results quickly to speed up the development of potential treatments and/or a vaccine. At the same time, traditional peer-review-based publication systems are not always able to process new research promptly. This has contributed to a surge in the number of medical preprints published since January 2020. In the absence of a vaccine, preventative measures such as social distancing are most helpful in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Their effectiveness can be undermined if the public does not comply with them. Hence, public discourse can have a direct effect on the progression of the pandemic. Research shows that social media discussions on COVID-19 are driven mainly by the findings from preprints, not peer-reviewed papers, highlighting the need to examine the ways medical preprints are shared and discussed online. OBJECTIVE We examine the patterns of medRxiv preprint sharing on Twitter to establish (1) whether the number of tweets linking to medRxiv increased with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) which medical preprints were mentioned on Twitter most often; (3) whether medRxiv sharing patterns on Twitter exhibit political partisanship; (4) whether the discourse surrounding medical preprints among Twitter users has changed throughout the pandemic. METHODS The analysis is based on tweets (n=557,405) containing links to medRxriv preprint repository that were posted between the creation of the repository in June 2019 and June 2020. The study relies on a combination of statistical techniques and text analysis methods. RESULTS Since January 2020, the number of tweets linking to medRxiv has increased drastically, peaking in April 2020 with a subsequent cool-down. Before the pandemic, preprints were shared predominantly by users we identify as medical professionals and scientists. After January 2020, other users, including politically-engaged ones, have started increasingly tweeting about medRxiv. Our findings indicate a political divide in sharing patterns of the top-10 most-tweeted preprints. All of them were shared more frequently by users who describe themselves as Republicans than by users who describe themselves as Democrats. Finally, we observe a change in the discourse around medRxiv preprints. Pre-pandemic tweets linking to them were predominantly using the word “preprint”. In February 2020 “preprint” was taken over by the word “study”. Our analysis suggests this change is at least partially driven by politically-engaged users. Widely shared medical preprints can have a direct effect on the public discourse around COVID-19, which in turn can affect the societies’ willingness to comply with preventative measures. This calls for an increased responsibility when dealing with medical preprints from all parties involved: scientists, preprint repositories, media, politicians, and social media companies. CONCLUSIONS Widely shared medical preprints can have a direct effect on the public discourse around COVID-19, which in turn can affect the societies’ willingness to comply with preventative measures. This calls for an increased responsibility when dealing with medical preprints from all parties involved: scientists, preprint repositories, media, politicians, and social media companies.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Kaji ◽  
Maggie Bushman

BACKGROUND Adolescents with depression often turn to social media to express their feelings, for support, and for educational purposes. Little is known about how Reddit, a forum-based platform, compares to Twitter, a newsfeed platform, when it comes to content surrounding depression. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to identify differences between Reddit and Twitter concerning how depression is discussed and represented online. METHODS A content analysis of Reddit posts and Twitter posts, using r/depression and #depression, identified signs of depression using the DSM-IV criteria. Other youth-related topics, including School, Family, and Social Activity, and the presence of medical or promotional content were also coded for. Relative frequency of each code was then compared between platforms as well as the average DSM-IV score for each platform. RESULTS A total of 102 posts were included in this study, with 53 Reddit posts and 49 Twitter posts. Findings suggest that Reddit has more content with signs of depression with 92% than Twitter with 24%. 28.3% of Reddit posts included medical content compared to Twitter with 18.4%. 53.1% of Twitter posts had promotional content while Reddit posts didn’t contain promotional content. CONCLUSIONS Users with depression seem more willing to discuss their mental health on the subreddit r/depression than on Twitter. Twitter users also use #depression with a wider variety of topics, not all of which actually involve a case of depression.


2021 ◽  
pp. 004728162110078
Author(s):  
Shanna Cameron ◽  
Alexandra Russell ◽  
Luke Brake ◽  
Katherine Fredlund ◽  
Angela Morris

This article engages with recent discussions in the field of technical communication that call for climate change research that moves beyond the believer/denier dichotomy. For this study, our research team coded 900 tweets about climate change and global warming for different emotions in order to understand how Twitter users rely on affect rhetorically. Our findings use quantitative content analysis to challenge current assumptions about writing and affect on social media, and our results indicate a number of arenas for future research on affect, global warming, and rhetoric.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3836
Author(s):  
David Flores-Ruiz ◽  
Adolfo Elizondo-Salto ◽  
María de la O. Barroso-González

This paper explores the role of social media in tourist sentiment analysis. To do this, it describes previous studies that have carried out tourist sentiment analysis using social media data, before analyzing changes in tourists’ sentiments and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the case study, which focuses on Andalusia, the changes experienced by the tourism sector in the southern Spanish region as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are assessed using the Andalusian Tourism Situation Survey (ECTA). This information is then compared with data obtained from a sentiment analysis based on the social network Twitter. On the basis of this comparative analysis, the paper concludes that it is possible to identify and classify tourists’ perceptions using sentiment analysis on a mass scale with the help of statistical software (RStudio and Knime). The sentiment analysis using Twitter data correlates with and is supplemented by information from the ECTA survey, with both analyses showing that tourists placed greater value on safety and preferred to travel individually to nearby, less crowded destinations since the pandemic began. Of the two analytical tools, sentiment analysis can be carried out on social media on a continuous basis and offers cost savings.


Author(s):  
Giandomenico Di Domenico ◽  
Annamaria Tuan ◽  
Marco Visentin

AbstractIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedent amounts of fake news and hoax spread on social media. In particular, conspiracy theories argued on the effect of specific new technologies like 5G and misinformation tarnished the reputation of brands like Huawei. Language plays a crucial role in understanding the motivational determinants of social media users in sharing misinformation, as people extract meaning from information based on their discursive resources and their skillset. In this paper, we analyze textual and non-textual cues from a panel of 4923 tweets containing the hashtags #5G and #Huawei during the first week of May 2020, when several countries were still adopting lockdown measures, to determine whether or not a tweet is retweeted and, if so, how much it is retweeted. Overall, through traditional logistic regression and machine learning, we found different effects of the textual and non-textual cues on the retweeting of a tweet and on its ability to accumulate retweets. In particular, the presence of misinformation plays an interesting role in spreading the tweet on the network. More importantly, the relative influence of the cues suggests that Twitter users actually read a tweet but not necessarily they understand or critically evaluate it before deciding to share it on the social media platform.


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.


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