title: Mapping physician Twitter networks: describing how they work as a first step in understanding connectivity, information flow, and message diffusion.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Twitter is becoming an important tool in medicine, but there is little information on Twitter metrics. In order to recommend best practices for information dissemination and diffusion, it is important to first study and analyze the networks.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This study describes the characteristics of four medical networks, analyzes their theoretical dissemination potential, their actual dissemination, and the propagation and distribution of tweets.
  
  
  METHODS
  Open Twitter data was used to characterize four networks: the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American College of Physicians (ACP). Data were collected between July 2012 and September 2012. Visualization was used to understand the follower overlap between the groups. Actual flow of the tweets for each group was assessed. Tweets were examined using Topsy, a Twitter data aggregator.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The theoretical information dissemination potential for the groups is large. A collective community is emerging, where large percentages of individuals are following more than one of the groups. The overlap across groups is small, indicating a limited amount of community cohesion and cross-fertilization. The AMA followers' network is not as active as the other networks. The AMA posted the largest number of tweets while the AAP posted the fewest. The number of retweets for each organization was low indicating dissemination that is far below its potential.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  To increase the dissemination potential, medical groups should develop a more cohesive community of shared followers. Tweet content must be engaging to provide a hook for retweeting and reaching potential audience. Next steps call for content analysis, assessment of the behavior and actions of the messengers and the recipients, and a larger-scale study that considers other medical groups using Twitter.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine's Center for Health Communication, Media and Primary Care, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, United States. mishorir@georgetown.edu.
authors.forename: Ranit
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mishori
authors.forename: Lisa Oberoi
authors.initials: LO
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.forename: Brendan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Levy
authors.forename: Calvin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Newport
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D010820:Physicians; D061108:Social Media; D060756:Social Networking; D012955:Societies, Medical; D060145:Text Messaging; D014481:United States
keywords: Twitter; dissemination science; infodemiology; information science; network analysis; physician communication; physician networks; social networking
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