Over the 5-year period, the number of US physicians tweeting more than doubled (ie, increased by 112%). Results: Approximately 1 trillion tweets were mined to identify 6,399,146 (<0.001%) tweets originating from 39,084 US physician accounts. The top 100 hashtags were identified, categorized into topics, and analyzed. The number of tweets by physician accounts from the 5-year period were counted and analyzed. US physicians on Twitter were identified by using a custom-built algorithm to screen for physician identifiers in the Twitter handles, user profiles, and tweeted content.
Methods: In this study, 5 years of Twitter data (2016-2020) were mined for physician accounts. Objective: We aimed to develop a reliable and repeatable methodology for identifying US physicians on Twitter and to characterize their activity on Twitter over 5 years by activity, tweeted topic, and account type. By using this approach, we characterized the longitudinal activity of US physicians on Twitter. This is the first study to describe a reliable, repeatable methodology for identifying physicians on Twitter. Identifying physicians on Twitter is difficult due to the varied and imprecise ways that people self-identify themselves on the social media platform. University of California, Davis School of MedicineĮmail: Physicians are increasingly using Twitter as a channel for communicating with colleagues and the public.
Journal of Medical Internet Research 7222 articles.
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