Background and Objectives There is an increasing use of social media amongst the urological community. However, it is difficult to identify urological data on various social media platforms in an efficient manner. We proposed a hashtag, #UroSoMe, to be used when posting urology-related content in the social media platforms. The objectives of this article are to describe how #UroSoMe was developed and to report the data of the first month of #UroSoMe. Material and Methods We formally introduced the hashtag, #UroSoMe, to the urological community through the Twitter social media platform on 14th December 2018. The #UroSoMe working group was formed, and the members actively invited and encouraged people to use the hashtag #UroSoMe when posting urology-related contents. After the #UroSoMe (@so_uro) platform on Twitter had grown to more than 300 users, the first live event of online case discussion, i.e. #LiveCaseDiscussions, was conducted. A prospective observational study of the hashtag #UroSoMe Twitter activity during the first month of its usage from 14 December 2018 to 13 January 2019 was evaluated. Outcome measures included the number of users, number of tweets, user location, top tweeters, top hashtags used and interactions between users. Analysis was performed using NodeXL (Social Media Research Foundation; California, USA; https://www.smrfoundation.org/nodexl/), Symplur (https://www.symplur.com) and Twitonomy (https://www.twitonomy.com). Results The first month of #UroSoMe activity documented 1373 tweets/retweets by 1008 tweeters with 17698 mentions and 1003 replies. The #LiveCaseDiscussions was able to achieve a potential reach of 2,033,352 Twitter users. The top tweets mainly included cases presented by #UroSoMe working group members dur- ing #LiveCaseDiscussions. The twitonomy map showed participation from 214 geographical locations. The major groups of participants using the hashtag #UroSoMe were ‘Researcher/Academic’ and ‘Doctor’. By March 2019, The Twitter account of #UroSoMe (@so_uro) had grown to more than 1000 followers. Conclusions Social media is an excellent platform for interaction amongst the urological community. The results demonstrated that #UroSoMe was able to achieve widespread engagement from all over the world.
COnneCting the UrOlOgiCAl COmmUnity: the #UrOSOme experienCe
Castellani D;
2019-01-01
Abstract
Background and Objectives There is an increasing use of social media amongst the urological community. However, it is difficult to identify urological data on various social media platforms in an efficient manner. We proposed a hashtag, #UroSoMe, to be used when posting urology-related content in the social media platforms. The objectives of this article are to describe how #UroSoMe was developed and to report the data of the first month of #UroSoMe. Material and Methods We formally introduced the hashtag, #UroSoMe, to the urological community through the Twitter social media platform on 14th December 2018. The #UroSoMe working group was formed, and the members actively invited and encouraged people to use the hashtag #UroSoMe when posting urology-related contents. After the #UroSoMe (@so_uro) platform on Twitter had grown to more than 300 users, the first live event of online case discussion, i.e. #LiveCaseDiscussions, was conducted. A prospective observational study of the hashtag #UroSoMe Twitter activity during the first month of its usage from 14 December 2018 to 13 January 2019 was evaluated. Outcome measures included the number of users, number of tweets, user location, top tweeters, top hashtags used and interactions between users. Analysis was performed using NodeXL (Social Media Research Foundation; California, USA; https://www.smrfoundation.org/nodexl/), Symplur (https://www.symplur.com) and Twitonomy (https://www.twitonomy.com). Results The first month of #UroSoMe activity documented 1373 tweets/retweets by 1008 tweeters with 17698 mentions and 1003 replies. The #LiveCaseDiscussions was able to achieve a potential reach of 2,033,352 Twitter users. The top tweets mainly included cases presented by #UroSoMe working group members dur- ing #LiveCaseDiscussions. The twitonomy map showed participation from 214 geographical locations. The major groups of participants using the hashtag #UroSoMe were ‘Researcher/Academic’ and ‘Doctor’. By March 2019, The Twitter account of #UroSoMe (@so_uro) had grown to more than 1000 followers. Conclusions Social media is an excellent platform for interaction amongst the urological community. The results demonstrated that #UroSoMe was able to achieve widespread engagement from all over the world.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
