Qualitative Twitter analysis of participants, tweet strategies, and tweet content at a major urologic conference.

INTRODUCTION

The microblogging social media platform Twitter is increasingly being adopted in the urologic field. We aimed to analyze participants, tweet strategies, and tweet content of the Twitter discussion at a urologic conference.

METHODS

A comprehensive analysis of the Twitter activity at the European Association of Urology Congress 2013 (#eau2013) was performed, including characteristics of user profiles, engagement and popularity measurements, characteristics and timing of tweets, and content analysis.

RESULTS

Of 218 Twitter contributors, doctors (45%) were the most frequent, ahead of associations (15%), companies (10%), and journals (3%). However, journals had the highest tweet/participant rate (22 tweets/participant), profile activity (median: 1177, total tweets, 1805 followers, 979 following), and profile popularity (follower/following ratio: 2.1; retweet rank percentile: 96%). Links in a profile were associated with higher engagement (p<0.0001) and popularity (p<0.0001). Of 1572 tweets, 57% were original tweets, 71% contained mentions, 20% contained links, and 25% included pictures. The majority of tweets (88%) were during conference hours, with an average of 24.7 tweets/hour and a peak activity of 71 tweets/hour. Overall, 59% of tweets were informative, led by the topics uro-oncology (21%), urologic research (21%), and urotechnology (12%). Limitations include the analysis of a single conference analysis, assessment of global profile and not domain-specific activity, and the rapid evolution in Twitter-using habits.

CONCLUSION

Results of this single conference qualitative analysis are promising for an enrichment of the scientific discussions at urologic conferences through the use of Twitter.