The top 100 Twitter influencers in cardiology

Abstract

<abstract><sec> <title>Importance</title> <p>Twitter represents a growing aspect of the social media experience and is a widely used tool for public education in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. In the last few years, there has been concern about the dissemination of false health information on social media. It is therefore important that we assess the influencers of this health information in the field of cardiology.</p> </sec><sec> <title>Objective</title> <p>We sought to identify the top 100 Twitter influencers within cardiology, characterize them, and examine the relationship between their social media activity and academic influence.</p> </sec><sec> <title>Design</title> <p>Twitter topic scores for the topic search “cardiology” were queried on May 01, 2020 using the Right Relevance application programming interface (API). Based on their scores, the top 100 influencers were identified. Among the cardiologists, their academic h-indices were acquired from Scopus and these scores were compared to the Twitter topic scores.</p> </sec><sec> <title>Result</title> <p>We found out that 88/100 (88%) of the top 100 social media influencers on Twitter were cardiologists. Of these, 63/88 (72%) were males and they practiced mostly in the United States with 50/87 (57%) practicing primarily in an academic hospital. There was a moderately positive correlation between the <italic>h-index</italic> and the Twitter topic score, <italic>r</italic> = +0.32 (<italic>p</italic>-value 0.002).</p> </sec><sec> <title>Conclusion</title> <p>Our study highlights that the top ranked cardiology social media influencers on Twitter are board-certified male cardiologists practicing in academic settings in the US. The most influential on Twitter have a moderate influence in academia. Further research should evaluate the relationship between other academic indices and social media influence.</p> </sec></abstract>

The Top 100 Twitter Influencers in Infectious Diseases

“…Although our study did not find a statistically significant correlation between the Twitter topic score of the infectious disease influencers and their h-index, we identified a high average h-index with a mean of 35.55 ± 5.23 (mean ± 95% confidence interval) and a median of 29.5. The h-index median was higher than identified for cardiologist influencers (median, 22), orthopedic surgeons (median, 7), and plastic surgeons (median, 5) in previous studies 13,15,16 . Recent discussions highlighted that the h-index failed in evaluating the influence outside the traditional academic environment, which could be the case for Twitter influencers 18,19 .…”

“…The h-index median was higher than identified for cardiologist influencers (median, 22), orthopedic surgeons (median, 7), and plastic surgeons (median, 5) in previous studies. 13,15,16 Recent discussions highlighted that the h-index failed in evaluating the influence outside the traditional academic environment, which could be the case for Twitter influencers. 18,19 Alternative metrics are being developed with the goal to measure authors' impact as complementary methods to traditional metric systems such as the h-index.…”

“…Recent studies on the main influencers in the cardiology field have shown a moderate positive correlation between their Twitter topic scores and their academic Hirsch index (h-index) 13 . The h-index is a quantitative measure of the scientific productivity and citation impact of a researcher, a representation of the individual's influence in the scientific and academic field 14 .…”

Top 100 #PCOS influencers: Understanding who, why and how online content for PCOS is influenced

“…By leveraging machine learning, semantic analysis and natural language processing, Cronycle utilises graph partitioning techniques to determine a numerical score of “influence” based on connections (follower/following) to other influencers on a particular topic and secondarily by engagement (views, likes, retweets) which represents the authority of an influencer within the topical community ( 11 ). This also has been used in similar studies in other specialties like cardiology ( 12 ) and critical care medicine ( 13 ). Recently, some of the authors of this article have applied this methodology to study the global impact of stroke awareness month ( 14 ), deep vein thrombosis awareness month ( 15 ), hernia awareness Month ( 16 ) and world hypertension day ( 17 ).…”

Social Media in Transplantation: An Opportunity for Outreach, Research Promotion, and Enhancing Workforce Diversity

“…Effective use of visual abstracts and the use of popular hashtags such as #surgtwitter can help to promote research while having a positive impact on professional growth by increasing research metrics, including Altmetric and H-index. 18…”