Gricks Benjamin, Woo Henry H, Lai Christine Su-Li
Discipline of Surgery, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Department of Urology, Sydney Adventist Hospital Clinical School, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
ANZ J Surg. 2019 Nov;89(11):1485-1489. doi: 10.1111/ans.15474. Epub 2019 Oct 14.
Twitter has been shown to expand the audience and impact of material discussed at medical conferences, however, this phenomenon has not been analysed at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Annual Scientific Congress. The purpose of this study is to document the amount of Twitter activity at the Annual Scientific Congress, and to describe the way delegates use Twitter.
The number of tweets, retweets and contributors from the 2015 to 2018 congresses were determined using the Twitter advanced search function. Tweets were categorized broadly as academic, social or promotional. Union Metrics, an online software, was used to calculate estimates of impact including impressions and reach at the 2018 congress. Popular topics of discussion at all congresses were defined and counted.
Twelve thousand five hundred and eight-six tweets were created with the official hashtag at the time of the four congresses. Activity increased over time except in the number of original tweets between the 2016 and 2018 congresses. Sixty-six percent of the tweets were directly related to congress content, and 23% were social in nature. At the 2018 congress, 16-34% of contributors were matched with a congress delegate.
The tweets analysed were mainly informative. Twitter expanded the audience for material discussed at the Annual Scientific Congresses, and the amount of Twitter activity generally increased. It is in the interest of conference organizers to encourage and regulate Twitter use for maximum effectiveness because it is a powerful tool and use is likely to continue increasing in future.
推特已被证明能够扩大医学会议所讨论内容的受众范围及影响力，然而，这一现象在澳大利亚皇家外科学院年度科学大会上尚未得到分析。本研究的目的是记录年度科学大会上推特的活动量，并描述代表们使用推特的方式。
使用推特高级搜索功能确定2015年至2018年大会的推文、转发推文数量及参与者数量。推文大致分为学术、社交或宣传三类。使用在线软件Union Metrics计算2018年大会的影响力估计值，包括展示量和覆盖范围。定义并统计所有大会上的热门讨论话题。
在这四届大会期间，使用官方主题标签创建了12586条推文。除2016年至2018年大会期间原创推文数量外，活动量随时间增加。66%的推文与大会内容直接相关，23%本质上是社交性的。在2018年大会上，16% - 34%的参与者与大会代表匹配。
所分析的推文主要是提供信息的。推特扩大了年度科学大会所讨论内容的受众范围，推特活动量总体上有所增加。会议组织者鼓励并规范推特的使用以实现最大效果是符合自身利益的，因为推特是一个强大的工具，且其使用在未来可能会持续增加。
