Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology Department, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Oct 6;15(10):e0240326. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240326. eCollection 2020.
COVID-19 has highlighted an opportunity for medical professionals to engage in online Public Engagement with Science (PES). Currently a popular platform for PES is Reddit. Reddit provides an Ask Me Anything (AMA) format for subject matter experts to answer questions asked by the public. On March 11, 2020, from 2:00 to 4:00pm EST, two Emergency Department physicians from Massachusetts General Hospital hosted an AMA session on coronavirus. We retroactively conducted an analysis of the questions and answers from this AMA session in order to better understand the public's concerns around coronavirus and identify future opportunities for medical experts to leverage the Reddit AMA format in communicating with the general public. Results suggested that participants sought not only to obtain information, but to engage in discussion, and did so with each other in the absence of expert responses. The majority of bi-directional discussion occurred between participants. Due to the volume of questions and ratio of experts to participants, not all questions were answered. More posts provided facts or opinions, than posts that providing resources or requesting resources.
COVID-19 凸显了医学专业人员参与在线公众参与科学 (PES) 的机会。目前，PES 的一个热门平台是 Reddit。Reddit 为主题专家提供了一种问答 (AMA) 格式，供公众提问。2020 年 3 月 11 日，美国东部时间下午 2 点至 4 点，来自马萨诸塞州综合医院的两名急诊医生主持了一场关于冠状病毒的 AMA 会议。我们对这次 AMA 会议的问答进行了回顾性分析，以便更好地了解公众对冠状病毒的担忧，并确定医学专家未来利用 Reddit AMA 格式与公众沟通的机会。结果表明，参与者不仅寻求获取信息，还希望进行讨论，而且在没有专家回复的情况下，他们彼此之间也进行了讨论。大部分双向讨论发生在参与者之间。由于问题的数量和专家与参与者的比例，并不是所有的问题都得到了回答。提供事实或观点的帖子多于提供资源或请求资源的帖子。
