Harnessing Twitter to empower scientific engagement and communication: The ISTH 2020 virtual congress experience

Abstract

As a result of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH), like many societies around the world, canceled their in‐person hematology congress planned for Milan, Italy, in July 2020. As a result, the first virtual ISTH congress in the organisation’s 51‐year history was delivered, inviting free registration from across the globe. As part of the social media support, marketing, and scientific dissemination efforts for the virtual congress, the ISTH assembled a group of official Twitter Ambassadors, which represented the broad and diverse ISTH community. Ambassadors were tasked to tweet daily throughout the congress and to share their commentary on the hematology research being presented with the “#ISTH2020” hashtag. Ambassadors were also supported by Twitter activities from the two official ISTH‐affiliated journals: the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis ( JTH ) and Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis ( RPTH ). In this forum and through the Twitter ambassadors’ lens, we present the Twitter Ambassadors’ experience, reflect on the impact of social media on the ISTH 2020 congress, and share this experience with the wider scientific community. Specifically, we report on the role of Twitter communication for virtual meetings, discuss the pros and cons of the virtual congress, and offer Twitter‐related recommendations for future virtual or blended congresses. We conclude that the ISTH Twitter Ambassador program broadened social media engagement and offers a novel route to improve social connectivity in the virtual research congress setting.

Digital haemophilia: Insights into the use of social media for haemophilia care, research and advocacy

“…For example, 274 posts tagged with ‘ASH’ (including ‘ASH19’ and ‘ASH20’), 288 posts tagged with ‘ISTH’ (including ‘ISTH20’ and ‘ISTH21’) and 218 posts tagged with ‘WFHVirtualSummit’ appeared primarily during the week of the respective conference. These spikes are in part due to targeted interventions by conference organizers to increase tweets, impressions and engagements; in fact, ISTH appointed ‘Twitter Ambassadors’ for both the 2020 and 2021 conferences (including author BSJ for 2021) 22 . However, we identified some haemophilia‐related tweets that do not explicitly say ‘hemophilia’, making them difficult to identify by search (Supplemental Table 6).…”

“…Our results strongly support the continued promotion of this event. Interestingly, despite explicit social media outreach by ISTH, 22 ISTH and ASH appear to generate comparably few tweets mentioning haemophilia; we recommend that tweet authors tag all haemophilia‐related tweets with ‘#hemophilia’ to improve searchability. Our results also demonstrate the utility of social media for the rapid dissemination of information to the haemophilia community; this is illustrated by the tweets mentioning COVID‐19 as well as the temporal spike around the FDA's ruling on Biomarin's Valrox in 2020.…”

“…These spikes are in part due to targeted interventions by conference organizers to increase tweets, impressions and engagements; in fact, ISTH appointed 'Twitter Ambassadors' for both the 2020 and 2021 conferences (including author BSJ for 2021). 22 However, we identified some haemophilia-related tweets that do not explicitly say 'hemophilia' , making them difficult to identify by search (Supplemental Table 6).…”

Use of Social Media in the Practice of Medicine

“…4 Many professional societies have appointed "Social Media Ambassadors," to disseminate scientific conference findings and key articles from flagship journals. [5][6][7] Journals promoting their research via Twitter saw a 34% increase in subsequent citations than journals without Twitter presence. 7 Our own personal experience with social media has led to collaborative publications with co-authors that we would otherwise have not interacted with.…”

Social Media and Professional Development for Oncology Professionals

“…The use of social media around major cancer meetings is well established. [5][6][7][8] Much of this activity centers around Twitter, where tweets allow for live interactivity that can help reach a broader population beyond those attending in person. 9 Indeed, social media activity often increases substantially around cancer-related conferences, 7 and the continuous growth in participation has been documented (Table 2).…”