ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2022
Twitter Usage Among Physicians From 2016 to 2020: Algorithm Development and Longitudinal Analysis Study.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Impact of Social Media for Adult Reconstruction Surgeons: A Prevalence Study With Online and Academic Reputations.Arthroplasty today · 2026Article
- Social Media Discussions About Robotic Total Knee Arthroplasty: Cross-Sectional Analysis.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Article
- The impact of social media for shoulder surgeons: a prevalence and correlation study with online and academic presence.JSES international · 2025Article
- Whose tweets about obesity and weight loss gain the most attention: celebrities, political, or medical authorities?International journal of obesity (2005) · 2025Article
- Is oral and maxillofacial surgery lagging behind other specialties on X?Oral and maxillofacial surgery · 2025Article
- The Impact of Social Media for Hand Surgeons: A Prevalence and Correlation Study With Online and Academic Reputations.Journal of hand surgery global online · 2025Article
- Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Virtual MedTwitter Curriculum for Medical Students.Medical science educator · 2024Article
- Twitter (X) as a Communication and Education Tool for Brazilian Cardiologists: Profile, Influence and Challenges.Arquivos brasileiros de cardiologia · 2024Article
- American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy best practice statements on the sharing of endoscopic images and videos on social media.VideoGIE : an official video journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy · 2024Article
- Cross sectional study of Twitter (X) use among academic anesthesiology departments in the United States.PloS one · 2024Article
- Twitter as Educational Tool: A Global Web-Based Cross-Sectional Study on Social Media Behavior of Nephrologists.Kidney international reports · 2023Article
- Using Twitter Data Analysis to Understand the Perceptions, Beliefs, and Attitudes about Pharmacotherapy Used in Rheumatology: An Observational Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Social media insights for neurosurgical oncologists: a survey of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurological Surgeons Joint Section on Tumors.Journal of neuro-oncology · 2023Article
- Impact of #PsychTwitter in promoting global psychiatry: A hashtag analysis study.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Breathing together: A global hashtag analysis of #LungHealth on platform X (formerly Twitter).Digital healthArticle
- Perspectives surrounding robotic total hip arthroplasty: a cross-sectional analysis using natural language processing.Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgieArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPhysicians are increasingly using Twitter as a channel for communicating with colleagues and the public. Identifying physicians on Twitter is difficult due to the varied and imprecise ways that people self-identify themselves on the social media platform. This is the first study to describe a reliable, repeatable methodology for identifying physicians on Twitter. By using this approach, we characterized the longitudinal activity of US physicians on Twitter.
objectiveWe 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.
methodsIn this study, 5 years of Twitter data (2016-2020) were mined for physician accounts. 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. The number of tweets by physician accounts from the 5-year period were counted and analyzed. The top 100 hashtags were identified, categorized into topics, and analyzed.
resultsApproximately 1 trillion tweets were mined to identify 6,399,146 (<0.001%) tweets originating from 39,084 US physician accounts. Over the 5-year period, the number of US physicians tweeting more than doubled (ie, increased by 112%). Across all 5 years, the most popular themes were general health, medical education, and mental health, and in specific years, the number of tweets related to elections (2016 and 2020), Black Lives Matter (2020), and COVID-19 (2020) increased.
conclusionsTwitter has become an increasingly popular social media platform for US physicians over the past 5 years, and their use of Twitter has evolved to cover a broad range of topics, including science, politics, social activism, and COVID-19. We have developed an accurate, repeatable methodology for identifying US physicians on Twitter and have characterized their activity.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.