When it comes to social media influence the names Austin Chiang, Ryan Madanick and ‘Gastro Girl’ are among the top 50 with the greatest reach, according to a new analysis of the ‘GI Twittersphere’.
And two un-named Australian gastroenterologists are also reported to be among the top social media influencers with regard to numbers of Twitter followers and engagement metrics such as retweets, likes and views.
The analysis conducted by three gastroenterologists at Brown University, US, examined the engagement levels of 250 Twitter accounts associated with the term ‘gastroenterology’. The accounts included individual clinicians and researchers, institutions and journals.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the list was dominated by individuals, with more than than half the influencers being gastroenterologists, predominantly academic and male and practicing in the US.
These included Dr Austin Chiang, Director of the Endoscopic Bariatric Program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. (@AustinChiangMD, 12,400 followers) and Dr Ryan Madanick (@RyanMadanickMD, 11,900 followers), Assistant Professor of Medicine at UNC School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who works in the Center for Esophageal Diseases and Swallowing.
Almost a quarter of the most influential gastroenterology social media accounts were organisations, such as the American Gastroenterological Association (@AmerGastroAssn, 29,000 followers) and accounts such as @gastrogirl, (5,800 followers), a patient-oriented account run in conjunction with the American College of Gastroenterology.
Of the 25% of gastroenterology social influencers located outside the US, 13% were from the UK, around 4% came from Spain and Canada, while Australia accounted for just over 1%.
The analysis did not identify individual gastroenterologists, but leading Australian gastroenterology accounts identified by the limbic included Professor Emad El-Omar (@emadelomar), Director, Microbiome Research Centre, St George Hospital, NSW and editor of Gut; and Newcastle gastroenterologist Professor Nick Talley, who has 9,150 followers as editor of the MJA (@MJA_Editor).
The most common area of expertise for influencers was IBD with 36%, followed by 18% for endoscopy, 7% in transplant hepatology, and 6.3% in neurogastroenterology and motility.
The authors of the report said it was reassuring to see that although Twitter was skewed towards a younger demographic, the gastroenterology influencers tended to be more senior academics with full professorships and high publication rates.
“With misinformation at an all-time high across all social media platforms, it is reassuring to note that individuals and journals with higher scores of conventional academic/publishing success and impact also tended to carry the most influence on Twitter,” they wrote.
They said Twitter could serve useful functions in gastroenterology by allowing users to engage in interdisciplinary discussions, share original content, and conduct surveys and gain feedback. It could also be a platform to bring attention to individuals and their respective fields of study and for conducting debates and sharing of international perspectives.
“We hope that, based on our evaluation, consumers of gastroenterology material can feel more confident with what is shared on social media, and consider engaging in gastroenterology Twitter discussions themselves,” they concluded.
The findings are published in Gastroenterology.