Twitter use at the 2016 Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health: analyzing #DIScience16

Influence and reach

Klout scores (users’ influence measured by reach and engagement) ranged from 10 to 82 with the average score being 42.0 (SD = 9.9). The top three influencers were (1) AHRQNews, which is an account hosted by US Department of Health and Human Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (co-sponsors of the conference), which contributed five unique tweets; (2) drnic, which contributed one tweet and is a personal account by the CEO of Stark & Wayne; and (3) 7wData, an account from Belgium that focuses on business, information management, analytics, and digital transformation that contributed one tweet. Reach scores (calculated by the total number of users’ followers) ranged from 4 to 95,436 followers (CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control).

The most frequent users were ImpSciX (257 tweets), RMIRECC (239 tweets), and ConsortiumforIS (211 tweets). In sum, these three users accounted for 707 tweets (26.8%) of all conference-related tweets. ImpSciX is associated with ImpSci Exchange a “one stop shop resource for implementation science, curated by UNC’s Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute” (https://impsci.tracs.unc.edu). RMIRECC is the RockyMountain Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Centers for veterans’ suicide prevention (https://www.mirecc.va.gov/visn19/), and ConsortiumforIS is “a joint endeavor of RTI International and UNC School of Global Public Health” (http://consortiumforis.org/). Two of these three users were located in North Carolina.

Use of social media during the conference

The majority of tweets occurred during the 2-day conference. Over the course of the conference, Twitter activity peaked between 1:00 and 1:59 PM on December 14 (day 1), with 292 tweets per hour. The second most active time was between 12:00 and 12:59 PM on December 14, with 228 tweets per hour. This increased activity aligned with the first scientific sessions of the conference that took place between 12:15 and 1:45 PM. The majority of tweets that occurred between 12:00 and 1:59 PM on day 1 were re-tweets (66.9%), indicating that users actively shared and recirculated ideas from the conference.

Twitter discussion of key scientific areas in implementation science

The majority (50.6%) of tweets that we analyzed included scientific promotion and conference promotion (29.9%). The primary conference track discussed was “models, methods, and frameworks” (27.4%) (Tables 1 and 2).

We also assessed whether there was a disease mention or mention of implementation science-related themes. Only 2.4% of tweets explicitly mentioned a disease. Of those that mentioned disease, 17.2% were cancer and chronic pain (12.9%). 17.9% of all tweets included some reference to implementation methods or outcomes. The most common implementation themes within this category were adaptation (24.5%), de-implementation (16.9%), and a combination of acceptability and feasibility (14.8%). Among tweets that included implementation themes and outcomes, 87.5% were during the conference, and of those tweets that included a disease mention, 89.1% were during the conference.

Our team also analyzed the most commonly used words in the dataset by generating a word cloud from the DiscoverText data (Fig. 1). Results from the WordCloud visually depict the frequencies of words used in all Twitter content. Implementation was the most commonly used word and was used in 10.8% of the tweets followed by research (6.8%), Roy Rosin (12.1%) (combined use of Roy and/or Rosin a plenary speaker), and impsci (5.5%).

Advancing knowledge of social media use during academic conferences

Twitter is an emerging space for researchers to communicate and share findings [1, 33]. Over one third of conference tweeters were engaged in Twitter throughout the month of December, and 2352 tweets occurred over the course of the 2-day conference. These findings demonstrate substantive engagement via Twitter, particularly concentrated during the conference dates, which aligns with evidence that Twitter is most commonly used to communicate about live events [34]. The total number of tweets surrounding the D&I conference was substantially greater than the use reported in other conference settings [19, 26, 35], likely reflective of the clear messaging from conference planners about the specific conference hashtag and promotion of social media during the abstract submission process, leading up to, and throughout, the conference.

In addition, conference attendees are likely dissemination and implementation scholars and consequently have bought into the value of strategic dissemination of research evidence. Other studies have demonstrated the poor use of social media among scholars; however, D&I conference attendees may be unique in their level of social media activity, setting the pace for other researchers who seek to disseminate their findings in targeted, relevant ways. Future research could further explore the characteristics of dissemination and implementation researchers to see if they align with findings from other studies that have examined correlates of higher social media use, such as institutional support for dissemination via social media and research topics that may be more relevant for dissemination to the public [7, 17].

Although a large majority of tweets came from accounts in the USA, 21 other countries were represented among Twitter users discussing the conference. These findings demonstrate that scholars have an interest in engaging in scientific discourse related to conferences, even if they are unable to physically attend. This improves the visibility of the conference content and of the conference attendee messages.

In addition, these findings advance our knowledge of how social media is used during academic conferences. The most active times for Twitter were during conference sessions, allowing attendees to virtually attend other sessions by receiving key messages from concurrent sessions through Twitter. This unique feature of Twitter promotes ongoing discussion of topics both for people attending virtually and in person, a key goal identified by D&I conference planners [27]. This information demonstrates the potential opportunity to expand reach and engagement in national scientific conferences.

Future conference planners can continue to support research dissemination via Twitter by including the Twitter handle as part of abstract submission, encouraging presenters to include a Twitter handle in their presentations, and creating an active social media environment by creating an easy-to-remember conference hashtag and actively tweeting throughout the conference. These strategies can also promote the communication of conference-related research findings to a wider audience.

Emerging areas of dissemination and implementation research

Our findings also provide a deeper understanding of key themes and emerging areas of interest in dissemination and implementation research. Not surprisingly, half of all tweets were scientific promotion, with a specific focus on sharing implementation models, methods, and frameworks during the conference. This focus is especially important given that current literature often lacks implementation frameworks and rigorous implementation science methods [36, 37].

Future research could leverage the D&I conference platform to identify ways to incorporate social media strategies in dissemination efforts in order to help expand relevant research findings to academic and non-academic audiences. Such efforts could help improve the speed of delivery of research findings by promoting commentary among Twitter users, exploring the use of Twitter as an educational tool for dissemination and implementation researchers, and considering opportunities for improving relevance of findings to non-academic audiences.

Key themes identified by the conference planning committee include de-implementation, creative ways to implement (i.e., keynote speaker, Roy Rosin’s topic, “The Implementation Conundrum”), and the tension between adaptation and fidelity. The most common implementation themes (adaptation, de-implementation, and acceptability and feasibility) reflect the goals of conference planners. The most frequently re-shared tweets also reflected these themes and commonly mentioned fidelity, adaptation, and the keynote speaker, Roy Rosin [27]. Knowing the impact of keynote speakers on driving the conference dialog can help planners and scientists plan and promote discussion around urgent research areas, conference activities, future efforts, and conference themes moving forward.

Limitations

While this is the first report to describe how social media is used during an implementation science conference, it has several limitations. First, this paper provides cross-sectional snapshots of content from the 2016 D&I conference. While we were able to document trends before, during, and after the conference, we did not examine annual trends. Thus, this analysis serves as a baseline of conversations that took place surrounding the 2016 meeting and should be considered a snapshot in time. Follow-up studies would need to be conducted to understand changes in Twitter use and content over several years. In addition, we only captured tweets that included the official hashtag of the conference; however, it is possible that conference-related tweets were sent without the official hashtag. We did not independently explore other common, related hashtags (e.g., #impsci, #implementation); however, our analysis demonstrated that these were commonly used in parallel with the official tag. Future studies may include a broader search criteria and extend to assess use of other social media platforms such as Facebook.